Jun 14, 2019

From the Archives, 1987: Police raid on secretive sect "The Family"

The Hamilton- Byrne sect school at Eildon on Bolte Bay.CREDIT:MARK WILSON
David Elias
The Age
June 14, 2019

First published in The Age on August 17, 1987

Children taken into custody after raid on sect

Police are trying to establish the identities of six children they have plucked from the bush hideaway of a secretive pseudo-religious sect where they have been kept locked away from society since they were babies.

The six children, aged between 12 and 17, will be taken to the Children’s Court today to seek order for their care and protection under the Community Welfare Services Act.

Meanwhile, Victorian and federal police will continue a long running investigation into the affairs of the cult, which is controlled by a mysterious 66-year-old woman guru who believes that she is a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and long dead figureheads from eastern religions.

In a series of raids on properties owned by sect members and their guru, Mrs Anne Hamilton-Byrne, on Friday morning, police seized a number of prescription and non-prescription drugs of dependence, passports and photographs.

According to police, the children are in a dazed and confused state, brought about by the sudden break from their life of seclusion in a house on the shores of Lake Eildon, where they have been raised under a strict regime by disciples of Mrs Hamilton Byrne.

Over the years, the house has been home and school room to at least 14 children, most of whom were adopted by sect members on the instruction of the guru they call “The Teacher”. Most of them are now over 18 and some, on reaching majority, have left the group. It is understood they have volunteered help to the police investigation.

Until ‘The Age’ carried out an investigation into the sect and the plight of the children in 1982, they were all made to have the same hair dyed blonde to satisfy a whim of Mrs Hamilton-Byrne, who always believed that they would lead a new order of humanity after a nuclear holocaust.

The property is registered with the Education Department as a private tuition centre and, in 1982, a departmental inspector told ‘The Age’ that the children were well cared for, well clothed in uniforms and their educational standards were higher than normal for their respective ages.

But, he said, he felt there was something strange about the set-up. They were regimented like the Von Trapp family of ‘The Sound of Music’ fame and each child when asked for his or her name immediately volunteered a date of birth. The officer said that while he had misgivings there was nothing which could be pinpointed to recommend d the registration should be refused.

After the publication of a story about the children, a question was asked in State Parliament and the then Minister for Education, Mr Fordham, said that there were no grounds for rescinding the registration.

Mrs Hamilton-Byrne, the daughter of a railway worker, was born Evelyn Edwards in Sale 66 years ago, but claims she is younger and has tried to hang on to her youth and beauty with a number of plastic surgery operations.

She formed the sect, known as “The Family”, in the Dandenong ranges more than 20 years ago, after meeting a former member of Melbourne University’s Queens College, Dr Raynor Johnson, who was a scholar of and author of eastern religions and, until his death, a fervent believer in the spirituality of “the Teacher”.

The sect’s beliefs are based on a hotch-potch of Yoga, Buddhism and Christianity and a doctrine of reincarnation and total obedience to the will of “The Teacher”. Its religious rites are practised in a modern temple in Ferny Creek. The temple is protected by barbed wire, padlocked gates and electronic security.

At its height, the sect had more than 200 members, predominantly middle-class professionals, who have worked slavishly for Mrs Hamilton-Byrne and have helped her amass a large number of properties in Australia, Europe and America.

Mrs Hamilton-Byrne travels extensively between her various homes but, since ‘The Age’ published its investigation, she has spent little time in Australia.

The sect’s practices have also had a long connection with the hallucinogenic drugs LSD and psilocybin and, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, it had control of Newhaven, a private mental hospital in Kew where members were submitted to drug treatments, known as clearings.

During these clearing, the subjects were supposed to have been take back into past lives so that they could establish a better understanding of the weakness in their characters and the reasons why they had been condemned to yet further tormented existences on earth.

The drugs were usually administered by qualified medical practitioners who had been recruited into the group. When LSD was banned in the early 1970s the clearings continued, using whatever drugs were available.

According to police, in Friday’s raids on two houses in the Dandenong Ranges, a small quantity of LSD was seized along with other drugs. Members of the groups have been interviewed about these drugs and passports in their possessions. No charges have been laid.

The investigation by the Nunawading community policing squad was started more than two years ago and has been carried out in conjunction with the Federal Police. It is also understood that the sect is under separate investigations by both the Federal Police and the Federal Health Insurance Commission.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/from-the-archives-1987-police-raid-on-secretive-sect-the-family-20190614-p51xtp.html

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