"The Family" Cult Nightmare: The Dark Legacy of Anne Hamilton Byrne

Transcript

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Welcome to the Eastern Crime Zone, a show about investigations of real true crime cases.

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I'm your host, cassie Millay, and every week I'll take you through new details about cases you're familiar with and completely new cases you've never heard of before.

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Grab a detective hat and get settled in for a true crime case.

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This is Eastern Crime Zone.

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What is your worst nightmare?

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One of mine is being drugged.

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Obviously, as a woman, this is a very real fear.

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And when I leave my house, very real fear.

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And when I leave my house which is almost never, but when I leave my house I don't leave my drinks unattended.

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But being drugged or given any sort of substance that you're unaware of would only happen at a bar, right.

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Well, the cult we're talking about today takes drugging its initiates to new levels by using LSD during religious ceremonies to convince wealthy Australian citizens into believing the woman with the world's worst hairline was actually the reincarnated Jesus Christ.

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And that's not even the worst of it.

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Today's case does unfortunately involve physical abuse of children.

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So if that's not something you want to hear right now, please don't.

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I'll see you next week with something else.

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In order to understand how we got to the family cult, let's go back and explore where Anne Hamilton Byrne started.

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Anne Hamilton Byrne was actually born with the name Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards.

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Anne won't change her name from Evelyn to Anne until the 1950s, but we're going to call her Anne the whole time Now.

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She was born in the town of Sale, two hours east of Melbourne, on December 30th 1921.

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She was the oldest of seven children belonging to Florence Hoyle and Ralph Edwards.

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Anne's father, ralph, had fought in World War I and married Florence when he returned.

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At some point in her childhood, anne would live at the old Melbourne orphanage, with her father being listed as whereabouts unknown because he had left the family fleeing from a war debt.

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He did reappear when Anne was three years old.

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Her mother during this time was most likely in a mental hospital because she would spend the majority of her life in one.

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Florence Hoyle was known in the area for being someone who had lit her hair on fire in the street and also claimed to be a medium who could speak to the dead.

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Anne's parents had a lot of issues, clearly individually, but Anne would later claim that her birth family was enlightened.

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She would claim a lot of things about them.

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Actually, she said the reason her mother was deemed mentally ill was because she was channeling spirits and that her entire family could astral project out of their bodies and into the spirit world.

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At eight years old, anne would enroll in the Sunshine Primary School on the west side of Melbourne.

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After this there's a significant period of Anne's life that is undocumented, until she's about 20 years old.

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At this time Anne's mother would be put into an asylum, just as Anne was marrying her first husband.

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Anne's first husband was named Lionel Harris.

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Lionel was down for Anne.

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He would do anything for her.

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He actually went AWOL from the military for eight months and was arrested by military police for abandoning his post because he fled with Anne to Victoria, australia.

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Lionel would serve one more year in the military before being discharged after this incident.

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Together the couple would have one biological child together named Judith.

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Lionel Harris would actually die prematurely.

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He was on his way to Sydney, australia, to pick up a child, a baby boy, that he and Anne wanted to adopt from the Bernardo homes.

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He was only 33 years old when two cars collided at an intersection, causing his death.

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Anne would later marry Michael Riley, a South African naval officer, in 1965.

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This marriage only lasted for one year, but put her in contact with the renowned and highly well-connected influential Melbourne academic, dr Rainer Carey Johnson, who is going to be very important in today's case.

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Michael Riley was Dr Johnson's gardener.

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Anne would later start teaching yoga at the Gita School.

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Anne would later begin teaching yoga at the Gita School of Yoga.

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This school was opened in 1960 by Margaret Segsman.

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Segsman was the daughter of a Swiss banker and she lived in Indian ashrams and followed a Tibetan guru.

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Anne would meet Margaret on a rainy day and helped her pull some awnings down outside of the yoga school, anne would introduce herself as a physiotherapist and a nurse.

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These claims that she was a physiotherapist and a nurse could never be substantiated through registrations with relevant boards or certificates gained from courses completed.

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It is believed that she would later even borrow part of Margaret's story about having a Tibetan master and making it her own.

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Yoga was a booming craze in Melbourne in the 1960s, with the popularity of Eastern mysticism and the occult accelerated by the Beatles' trip to India and the hippie movement.

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Anne gathered a following in the yoga community and was very successful, especially at drawing in wealthy middle-aged women to her classes.

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She also had a clear spiritual power that got results in the physical world.

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At the Gita school.

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She is said to have cast a spell on a young man in class who disagreed with her.

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During this incident, anne would go into the kitchen when other people were cleaning up and she muttered he's not going to be here tomorrow, he's going to be very sick.

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And the next day this man was really sick, and this incident caused Margaret Segsman to break all ties with Anne.

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But this incident did have others believing that Anne had influence over people's well-being, whether it was for good or for bad.

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Knowing what we know now, is it possible that she did something to something this man ate or drank?

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Have we checked on him?

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Anne's followers from the yoga school would follow her after she had been forced out.

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With these women, anne had seen how unhappy they were, especially with their husbands, and convinced many of these women to leave their husbands in order to join her family.

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The family wasn't really a cult, yet, just a group that Anne would refer to as her family.

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Once the women did leave their husbands, it was much harder for them to question Anne or leave the group.

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Divorce was not an accepted practice at the time, but Anne accepted them, so they felt like they couldn't really leave.

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She also would convince gay men to follow her as well, since homosexuality was not accepted in Australia at the time either.

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The family had grown a decent bit at this time, but Anne wanted more power.

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And what did she need to get this power?

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A powerful man.

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Her husband at the time was the gardener of Dr Rainer Carey Johnson, as I mentioned earlier.

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Because of this, she knew a lot about Dr Johnson, without Dr Johnson even knowing Anne existed.

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In a roundabout way, this gave her a lot of power over him to convince him that she was clairvoyant.

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Three days before Christmas in 1962, anne would ring the doorbell of Dr Rainer Johnson in the grounds of his home.

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Now, dr Johnson was the English-born head of the University's Queen's College.

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He earned an MA at the University of Oxford and in 1922, a PhD in physics at the University of London.

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He lectured in natural philosophy at the Queen's University, belfast in 1923 and 1927.

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His religious background led to work in Australia, where he was mastered of the Methodist Queen's College at the University of Melbourne from 1934 to 1964.

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By this time, he was married with two young daughters.

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His wife, mary held a Master of Science from the University of London.

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He would also publish several books on mysticism and psychological research in the 1950s and 60s.

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His beliefs and writings eventually created concern within the Methodist church and forced him out.

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So his interests at the time were already perfect for Anne to sink her fingers into and use him.

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Now, when Anne visited Dr Johnson it was just before he was due to visit India.

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Anne informed him that he was going to take this trip and she knew about it because she was clairvoyant and that he needed to watch his wife's health because she could see some danger there with all of her mystical powers or whatever.

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Now Dr Johnson was stunned that Anne even knew about this trip because he didn't know this woman.

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So of course he kind of believed she was psychic.

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But he went to India anyway and they had to return early because his wife was suffering a severe attack of dysentery.

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Now a lot of foreigners get sick when visiting foreign countries, but especially India, because they aren't used to the food there or the new types of bacteria that they don't have defenses for.

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So Anne made a pretty vague shot in the dark and she was right.

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His wife got very, very sick on the trip, but this made sure that the Johnson family believed Anne had seen the future when the Johnsons returned to Melbourne they sought out Anne quickly and became the initial initiates into the Great White Brotherhood which would later become the family.

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The name the Great White Brotherhood makes no sense to me as something that Anne herself would pick.

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It sounds like something a man would name something, especially since it's a brotherhood.

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So it makes me think that she was giving Dr Johnson a little bit of wiggle room, letting him name it or something, and then she changed it later.

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I have no idea where this great white brotherhood thing came from.

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On May 4th 1963, anne's daughter, Judy, 19 at the time, had crashed her car while driving along the Point Napien Highway near Frankston.

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The time had crashed her car.

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While driving along the Point Napien Highway near Frankston, judy had suffered a double compound fracture to the base of her skull and deep facial lacerations.

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This could have easily resulted in her death.

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Now, anne immediately organized spiritual help and prayers and within two days her daughter was sitting up in bed with blood pressure and temperature normal.

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A week later, much to the surprise of hospital staff and surgeons, judy was able to leave the hospital and Dr Johnson and his wife took her home with them.

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Of course, all of this was attributed to Anne's spiritual help.

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As they reflected on this, dr Johnson wrote in his diary that he told his wife I think Anne is the most Christ-like person I have ever met.

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By 1964, dr Johnson was asked to retire from the Melbourne University as his rejection of the divinity of Christ caused major doctrinal issues for the Methodist Queens College.

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He would become fully involved in recruiting.

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At this point he would give talks on spirituality and the paranormal.

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Then if people had questions, he would point them to his guru, anne Hamilton.

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He would help her meet doctors, lawyers, politicians and social workers who would all fall under her spell.

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Once Anne had doctors in the family fall under her spell.

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Once Anne had doctors in the family, it was very scary.

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Anne was able to get different medications.

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She would get medications from the doctors in this group and poison other members until they were very sick.

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Once they were sick, anne would perform a miracle by curing them with her mystic powers, which just meant she would stop poisoning them.

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Obviously this is evil, but how would you not believe it?

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Like if this was happening to you and you felt this way because someone was poisoning you but you didn't know that, you wouldn't believe it.

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You felt this way Someone comes by and does something spiritual to you.

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How would you not believe it?

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This is diabolical.

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Dr Lance Whitaker had joined the cult by this point, and Dr Whitaker would help Anne use LSD to even further manipulate new members.

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These new members would be put through an initiation ceremony where they unknowingly took LSD and were put in a completely dark room for hours.

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Anne would then appear hours later in all white with a smoke machine and a spotlight on her, and she would appear and tell them that she was Jesus Christ.

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So of course, these people that are tripping balls believed her.

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I mean, I would too.

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Honestly.

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These are insane plans and I don't know how you wouldn't believe it.

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By the way, anne is having plastic surgery throughout this entire story, but she's having so much plastic surgery that I can't stop and be like and here she had a facelift, and here she had this done because it would just get in the way and be super annoying.

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But the reason she was having all this plastic surgery was because she told her followers that she couldn't age, because she's a divine being.

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Of course, the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ can't age, duh.

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But by today's standards, the plastic surgery that she was getting was really really bad.

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Her hairline just kept moving like further and further back on her face as they kept having to give her facelifts.

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And it does kind of add to how interesting this story is, because she just looks absolutely bonkers the entire time.

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Now, at this point, dr Johnson introduces a woman named Joy to Anne.

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Now, at this point, dr Johnson introduces a woman named Joy to Anne.

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Joy was the owner of a mental hospital who is nearing the end of her own life.

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Anne wants that mental hospital.

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She finds out that Joy has one and she's like that's mine, I'm going to have it.

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So she puts the charm on Joy and convinces her to change her will to leave the private mental hospital to Anne after her passing.

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So of course, joy does pass away and Anne now owns a private psychiatric hospital.

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This is when the family becomes even more terrifying.

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In Australia, at least in this time, you only needed two doctors to sign off to get someone involuntarily committed to a hospital.

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And remember, anne has a lot of doctors in her pocket at this point.

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They do whatever she wants.

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I mean, they think she's Jesus.

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Anyone who got in Anne's way from this point forward was sent straight to the psychiatric hospital.

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In 1968, anne would meet a man named Bill Byrne and she immediately decided that she wanted Bill, and so she was going to make that happen.

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That was going to be her man.

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But Bill was already married.

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But of course that's not a problem for Anne, because she's never been told no her whole life.

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So Bill's wife was just sanctioned to the mental hospital and pumped full of drugs.

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Bill would abandon his wife like a piece of trash, oh, and his children that he shared with her so he could be with Anne.

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So Bill and Anne got married, which changes her last name to Hamilton Byrne After her marriage to Bill.

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Guess how many members?

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The cult has?

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500 members, over 500 members.

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The cult has 500 members, over 500 members.

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Every week members would meet to listen to Anne's sermons that she would call discourses, while they all did a lot of drugs.

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Unknowingly, she would perform miracles, contact spirits and help her followers speak to their dead loved ones.

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Of course she also told her followers the end of the world was approaching, because all cults are the same.

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In return, anne demanded 10% of all members' income.

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Since all the members she had recruited to this point were wealthy, anne immediately became a multi-millionaire.

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Anne would explain to her followers that by listening to her and doing everything she said, they would actually be repaying their karmic debt.

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If someone wanted to disobey Anne, they would be punished.

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She obviously had the psychiatric facility that she owned, but she would also have doctors in her cult perform unnecessary procedures onto anyone she wanted, including ordering one man to have a lobotomy.

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Now, if you don't know, a lobotomy is a pretty barbaric procedure used to sever the connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex.

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That involves drilling into the patient's skull and removing brain tissue.

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Several immediate and long-term side effects are known after lobotomy Bleeding after the operation, brain infection and abscess, dementia, epilepsy, intellectual impairment, disinhibition and inappropriate social behavior, apathy, incontinence, obesity, dementia and death.

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Since Anne had been preaching the end of the world, she was telling her followers that they would need to repopulate with lots and lots of children to create a new master race, which I guess is where the great white brotherhood part comes into all this.

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In the 1970s Anne was in her 50s, but of course she told her followers she was a lot younger and never aged.

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So Anne would naturally just pretend to be pregnant all the time, like constantly.

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But when you're pregnant, people do expect to see a baby at some point.

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So where would Anne get them from?

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She can't produce one because she's of a certain age, and especially not at the rate that she's pretending to be pregnant for.

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So where does she get them?

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Well, she just starts stealing them.

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Adoption was poorly regulated in Australia at the time and unmarried motherhood still carried a lot of social stigma.

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Teenage mothers or mothers in the psychiatric hospital and owned would never see their babies again after giving birth.

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You had babies born in cult hospitals, delivered by cult midwives, handed over to cult social workers.

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Cult lawyers would then falsify adoption paperwork.

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Some cult members were actually convinced to hand over their own babies to be raised as Anne's, which you might be wondering.

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Why would they willingly give over their babies?

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But it all makes sense when you remember they thought she was Jesus, like they were convinced with drugs that she was Jesus.

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So I I kind of get it.

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Anne would steal 14 children using her psychiatric hospital and 14 others from cult members, totaling 28 children.

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One of the children was Anne's biological grandchild from her only child, judith, but all of the children would believe that Anne and Bill were their biological parents.

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To explain how she had 28 children so quickly, she would claim a lot of them were triplets or twins.

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She would also bleach the children's hair and give them all similar clothes and haircuts, so they would be more like biological siblings.

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Honestly, it reminds me of the kids from American Horror Story Hotel.

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If you've seen that season, tell me.

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Find the difference in these pictures.

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I'll wait.

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You can't thank you.

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These children would live at a secluded property known as Uptop or Kai Lama, which was a tribute to Tibetan Buddhism.

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Life for these children was absolutely awful.

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They would be raised by female cult members that Anne would refer to as aunties.

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There were three main aunties named Elizabeth, margaret and Trish.

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The aunties were absolutely evil and enforced authoritarian rules over these children, no matter how small they were.

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For the children, their days consisted of yoga, listening to recordings of Anne's sermons, and schoolwork and chores.

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Food was often withheld from the children until they were starving, especially the girls, since Anne wanted them to be thin and she was always harder on the girls.

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I think every day there were beatings.

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Some of the beatings were very vicious.

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Every day there were beatings.

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Some of the beatings were very vicious.

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I'm quite surprised that people survived them.

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She had me under LSD for days.

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She'd just come in like every 12 hours or so and give me another piece because I wasn't working hard enough.

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These are some of the 28 children collected by cult leader Anne Hamilton Byrne.

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She wanted us to be the new race of children, these perfect children who would save the world.

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I had to start it.

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That was the divine vision.

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Why did you start to take in the children?

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I love children.

00:21:13.924 --> 00:21:23.403
The kids slept in dormitories with girls in one room and boys in the other, and they could not have any individuality or even friendships between themselves.

00:21:23.403 --> 00:21:29.865
Two girls had gotten too close to each other and were actually banned from speaking to one another for an entire year.

00:21:29.865 --> 00:21:39.942
They all thought this was normal, though, because they had no electricity, so no radio or TV to even get a glimpse of what a normal childhood was like.

00:21:39.942 --> 00:21:43.602
The punishments for these children were extremely brutal.

00:21:43.602 --> 00:21:51.185
Aunties would beat the children for almost anything, like not putting the cap on toothpaste properly or putting on mismatched socks.

00:21:51.185 --> 00:21:56.765
The beatings would be by hand or with tools like canes or pieces of wood with nails.

00:21:56.765 --> 00:22:02.166
Sticking out Ice-cold showers and holding their little hands over open flames were also common.

00:22:02.166 --> 00:22:08.662
Bedwetting was extremely common, since the children would be beaten if they got up in the night to use the restroom.

00:22:08.662 --> 00:22:16.911
Not to mention that bedwetting can also be a symptom of abuse, which obviously they were being abused and that's going to cause bedwetting.

00:22:16.911 --> 00:22:19.920
It's all just a really effed up cycle.

00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:22.622
It's all just a really effed up cycle.

00:22:22.622 --> 00:22:28.905
One child was nicknamed Zebra Stripes by the other children since he had markings all over him from wetting the bed.

00:22:28.905 --> 00:22:32.407
So often Even infants were beaten for wetting themselves.

00:22:32.407 --> 00:22:37.832
On one occasion Anne came storming in with a knife threatening to cut the children's bottoms off.

00:22:37.832 --> 00:22:42.273
But mostly it was the aunties disciplining the children on the behalf of Anne.

00:22:42.273 --> 00:22:46.836
Older children would sometimes be forced to assist with these punishments as well.

00:22:46.836 --> 00:22:56.232
If any children broke a rule, the aunties would interrogate the children to see who had broken that rule, but the children would never tell on each other.

00:22:56.232 --> 00:23:04.148
There's a lot more abuse towards these children from Anne, her husband Bill and the aunties, but of course this was all kept under wraps.

00:23:04.148 --> 00:23:06.339
The children were coached on how to act.

00:23:06.339 --> 00:23:12.124
When she needed them to perform, Anne would bring them out to show off how perfect her family was.

00:23:12.203 --> 00:23:20.949
On occasion, when a child went missing in the 1980s, the police believed that the cult may have been involved, so police arrived to investigate.

00:23:20.949 --> 00:23:23.857
Believe that the cult may have been involved, so police arrived to investigate.

00:23:23.857 --> 00:23:27.546
This child was actually not taken in by Anne, but now that the police were here, this was the end right.

00:23:27.546 --> 00:23:31.222
But no, of course not Nothing happened.

00:23:31.222 --> 00:23:39.384
But this incident did tip the media off that something weird was going on with this group and the media began to report on Anne.

00:23:39.384 --> 00:23:42.674
Members began to leave at this point and actually speak to the media about what was going on.

00:23:42.674 --> 00:23:44.400
Members began to leave at this point and actually speak to the media about what was going on.

00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:51.686
Because of this, Anne went to live in one of her homes in upstate New York in the United States and rarely came back to the cult in Australia.

00:23:51.686 --> 00:23:57.428
She was still in complete control, however, just via phone to her loyal followers.

00:23:58.896 --> 00:24:01.208
The children were also getting older and rebelling.

00:24:01.208 --> 00:24:04.761
They would sneak out at night in search of food and some kind of escape.

00:24:04.761 --> 00:24:10.038
Two of the girls, Leanne and Sarah, actually made friends with the other kids in the community.

00:24:10.038 --> 00:24:15.765
They were starting to understand what the real world was like and they would come back and tell the other kids about it.

00:24:15.765 --> 00:24:22.586
Sarah actually would bring a friend home with her one day, resulting in Sarah being kicked out and Leanne following.

00:24:22.586 --> 00:24:25.442
Sarah and Leanne went to the police together.

00:24:25.442 --> 00:24:29.244
The police actually believed them and raided up top.

00:24:29.244 --> 00:24:37.650
The children had been taught from a young age that the police were evil, so even though they were being saved, the kids were absolutely terrified.

00:24:37.650 --> 00:24:59.747
The police raided other properties belonging to Anne and found a lot of documentation of the cult, including members, and all of the LSD Members were trying to sever all connections to the cult as quickly as possible, but many of the doctors who had helped Anne had their licenses taken away and the psychiatric hospital Anne owned was shut down.

00:25:00.849 --> 00:25:11.780
Dr Johnson, who helped Anne basically get the family started, had his reputation ruined, but Anne and Bill were safely living in New York where authorities in Australia could not touch them.

00:25:11.780 --> 00:25:19.287
After they were rescued, the children had a very long, and probably lifelong, journey to recovery.

00:25:19.287 --> 00:25:24.799
They would struggle to eat or be around adults without flinching because of their treatment at up top.

00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:33.507
One child named Cassandra had been starved so much she was unable to walk and looked more like a five-year-old than her actual age of 12.

00:25:33.507 --> 00:25:39.526
After she was rescued, she would grow a full 11 inches in one year.

00:25:39.526 --> 00:25:46.681
The children had also learned that Ann wasn't their real mother and that they had been stolen from their biological parents.

00:25:48.144 --> 00:25:51.460
Police even struggled to build a case against Ann and Bill.

00:25:51.460 --> 00:25:58.580
Obviously, the children had told them everything, but other members, including the aunties, would never give Ann up.

00:25:58.580 --> 00:26:02.509
There was also a statute of limitations for child abuse.

00:26:02.509 --> 00:26:09.676
Anne was eventually arrested by the FBI and extradited back to Australia to stand trial for her crimes.

00:26:09.676 --> 00:26:24.919
Now let's list a few that she could be charged with, and let's see which one it is Running a cult for 30 years, abusing the medical system, stealing children, child abuse, dragging people against their will and plenty more.

00:26:25.861 --> 00:26:28.948
But what is the one charge that she got stuck with?

00:26:28.948 --> 00:26:33.983
Forging the birth certificates for three of the 28 children.

00:26:33.983 --> 00:26:35.667
That's all she got charged with.

00:26:35.667 --> 00:26:40.886
Forging birth certificates Of course Bill would be charged with the same crime.

00:26:40.886 --> 00:26:45.097
Certificates Of course Bill would be charged with the same crime.

00:26:45.097 --> 00:26:46.740
The punishment for this charge was only $5,000.

00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:54.621
So Ann and Bill basically got no punishment, since they were multi-millionaires and $5,000 is probably lunch for them.

00:26:54.621 --> 00:27:03.207
The aunties were only charged with fraud and faced no consequences for physically and mentally abusing children for years.

00:27:04.636 --> 00:27:10.576
It's alleged that Ann had loyal cult members still involved in the legal system who helped her escape punishment.

00:27:10.576 --> 00:27:14.223
The cult continued with Ann still in charge.

00:27:14.223 --> 00:27:17.898
After this, In 2004, Ann was diagnosed with dementia.

00:27:17.898 --> 00:27:23.659
Bill had already died at this point point, so ann was put into a luxury care facility to lift up.

00:27:23.659 --> 00:27:35.722
Bill had actually died by this point, so ann was put into a luxury care facility to live out the rest of her days before dying at age 98 in june of 2019.

00:27:35.722 --> 00:27:38.506
The family and the family.

00:27:38.506 --> 00:27:42.270
The family inherited all her money and lives today in Melbourne.

00:27:42.355 --> 00:27:44.840
Peter does this cult still exist?

00:27:46.766 --> 00:27:47.126
It does.

00:27:47.126 --> 00:27:54.665
The family exists in Australia and also up in Hurleyville, new York, that house that you saw on tape there.

00:27:54.665 --> 00:27:59.022
We actually were shooting out there and a fellow pulls up and he says what are you guys doing here?

00:27:59.022 --> 00:28:00.642
And I said we're doing a story about a cult.

00:28:00.642 --> 00:28:02.442
And he goes, it's not a cult.

00:28:02.442 --> 00:28:04.943
And he peels out and goes into the driveway of the house.

00:28:04.943 --> 00:28:09.027
So they're still active and they're still believing in their Messiah.

00:28:09.955 --> 00:28:25.419
This case is obviously absolutely awful, especially for all the children involved, people who were unjustly admitted to psychiatric facilities drugged against their will, to psychiatric facilities drugged against their will.

00:28:25.419 --> 00:28:29.828
But the most infuriating part is the lack of consequences for Anne, Bill, the aunties, all of the people who made all of this possible.

00:28:29.828 --> 00:28:32.119
But this is the world we live in.

00:28:32.119 --> 00:28:39.586
The rich just don't have the same rules as the rest of us, which is why these things are always important to talk about, in my opinion.

00:28:39.586 --> 00:28:43.718
Thank you so much for watching or listening all the way to the end.

00:28:43.718 --> 00:28:45.403
I appreciate the support immensely.

00:28:45.403 --> 00:28:47.996
I'll see you next week with a new case.

00:28:47.996 --> 00:28:51.898
Remember to stay safe and question everything you.

"The Family" Cult Nightmare: The Dark Legacy of Anne Hamilton Byrne

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