Meet “THE FAMILY” #Assange

The Family (Australian New Age group) wiki

The Family cult’s secrets exposed Aug 16th 2009 heraldsun

Anne Hamilton-Byrne with her ‘daughter’ Sarah Moore re-unite after years of trauma.

EXCLUSIVE: THE leader of Australia’s most notorious cult, The Family, remains unrepentant two decades after the raid that shocked the nation.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne broke her silence yesterday, saying she was ready to die after reconciling with Sarah Moore, the “daughter” who betrayed her to the authorities.

The Family made headlines around the world in 1987 when the Australian Federal Police and Community Services Victoria raided the cult’s property at Lake Eildon and took six children into care.

Alleged damage: Payout for sect victims Timeline: Creating the family tree Haunting case: Painful justice Cult members: A twisted controller Gallery: Anne Hamilton-Byrne

Police later found 14 children had been brought up in almost complete isolation believing they were the offspring of Hamilton-Byrne and her late husband Bill.

In fact none of them was the Hamilton-Byrnes’, but children of single mothers who had been pressured into giving them up for adoption or cult members who did not want them.

But it was the way the children had been treated that really shocked the nation.

Hamilton-Byrne had ordered the children’s hair be dyed peroxide blonde and they be dressed in identical outfits.

It was also alleged they had been half-starved, beaten and forced to take large quantities of tranquilisers to “calm them down” and even fed LSD when they became adults.

Now, in the first ever interview at her sprawling Olinda compound, the cult leader has defended how she raised the children and attacked those who said she mistreated them as “lying bastards”.

Of her critics, she said: “I would love to put them right, but I can’t.”

She also said she could have sued for defamation, but had decided against any action.

Asked about whether she mistreated her “children”, she said: “They were normal children and they could be disobedient to a point, but not all the time.”

But she would not discuss any specific claims.

On the issue of alleged LSD use in the cult, she said: “Everything on earth has its uses.”

And asked about whether she had any regrets, she would only say: “I’ve got regrets about losing touch with daughter. I’m ready to die now. I don’t mind when I go,” she said after an emotional reunion with her favourite “daughter” Dr Moore, witnessed by the Sunday Herald Sun.

Inside the compound – one of at least half a dozen properties owned by Hamilton-Byrne – elderly helpers scurried around, avoiding eye contact.

The “wrinkly disciples” wore coloured wigs, with heavy make-up, and are said to be among up to 50 cult followers who still defer to Hamilton-Byrne – some living on the property and others in surrounding hills.

From the moment she invited this newspaper into her home, the frail woman was at pains to show off as many happy group photos as she could, to prove her family was as normal as any other.

“We have our differences like any other family,” she stressed, smiling.

The sole male on the sprawling, but crumbling estate was self-professed senior cult member Michael Stevenson.

Dr Moore, also known as Sarah Hamilton-Byrne, had been expelled from The Family two years before the 1987 raid for disobedience, with the curse that she go and die in the gutter, she claimed.

She later qualified as a doctor and volunteered extensively in India and other parts of Asia.

But four years ago her life began to unravel – she developed bipolar disorder. Suffering from chronic pain, she began self-prescribing pethidine, but was caught in 2005.

In December her life took another turn for the worse – she lost her leg, the result, she says, of hospital mistreatment following a suicide attempt.

Having survived, Dr Moore said she has regained her will to live.

Yesterday as she reunited with Hamilton-Byrne, Dr Moore became emotional as remembered their rift.

“I just feel incredibly sad about it,” Dr Moore said. “When I was holding Anne then, I could feel her shaking and crying. I thought ‘Why did it have to come to this?’ “

Dr Moore said she could not escape the fact that she looked on the 87-year-old as her mother.

“I do love Anne and my feelings are still mixed about her,” Dr Moore said. “For many years I went nowhere near her or the cult. I was a prominent part of the public face of those that wanted to expose what happened to us children and to see justice done.
But, despite perhaps appearances to the contrary, at that time I felt enormous loyalty to Anne. To my mind, I had put my life on the line to oppose her, as I believed at the time that to oppose her, to betray her, was to die.”

Dr Moore said she still believed Hamilton-Byrne was responsible for mistreatment of children, but she said the cult leader blamed the “Aunties” for any abuse.

“That’s as far she will go in acknowledging any wrongdoing,” Dr Moore said.“Otherwise she is unrepentant. She is a powerful and charismatic person, and I believe she initially meant well with both creating the cult and collecting us children. Both acts were in compensation and delusional repair for her own childhood.” HeraldSun

The Family review – riddle of a Melbourne cult goes largely unanswered July 2016

Belinda Cleary Daily Mail Australia, 24 Jul 2016

A new look into the Melbourne cult ‘The Family’ reveals its sinister nature

New documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival probes ‘family’
It explores networks Anne Hamilton-Byrne used to ‘steal’ children

The notorious Melbourne cult dubbed ‘The Family’ has been described as ‘sinister and beautiful’ and like a ‘Grimm fairytale’ as it is revealed practicing members still live in Victoria.

A documentary into the LSD-using cult led by yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne will premiere at the upcoming Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday with new information on the cult – which flew under the radar for 20 years.

Rosie Jones, the director of the documentary, described the actions of the cult as series of ‘dark’ events that highlighted ‘human frailty’, The Age reported.

Melbourne cult ‘The Family’ was started in the mid 1960s by yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne and is well-known for the haunting similarities forced on the children to make them look like siblings

Anne Hamilton-Byrne told police that the children were all her natural offspring when they raided her property in 1987

‘How do people get involved in a cult, what draws them in, how do they do things that they would normally find morally reprehensible,’ she said.

‘It opens up a lot of questions that are universal rather than relevant only to this particular group.’

The cult, which was set up in Lake Eildon, was know for having the children dressed identically, their hair bleached blonde and shaped into the same bob.

This was so the children from different parents who were cult members looked like siblings – and their new ‘mother’ Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne famously claimed she was the natural mother of each of the six children found by police during extensive raids of the cult-owned properties.

These raids occurred in 1987 – after one of the cults ‘daughters’ – now revealed to be Hamilton-Byrne’s favourite child Sarah – went to police with abuse allegations.

Following the raid police found another 14 children had been brought up in the isolated home.

She had a total of 14 children living with her at one stage – some of them have spoken out about the abuse they were subject to

Anne Hamilton-Byrne pictured here with some of the children – holding hands with one of the bleach-blonde children

‘How did the cult known as The Family treat members children?’

The children were forced to wear matching clothes and were given matching haircuts so they looked like siblings – and so they looked like their cult ‘mother’

They were forced to stay outside overnight as punishment.

They were encouraged to assist in the punishment of their ‘siblings’.

They were starved and forced to take drugs.

They were lied to about being the biological children of Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

Some were sexually assaulted.

They were forced to practice yoga by their ‘mother’ who was a yoga teacher.

Children who grew up in the strange cult were interviewed for the documentary and spoke of severe punishments for bad behaviour – like being starved or beaten.

They open up about being forced to take drugs including LSD and also of the sexual assault of children.

In 2009 Hamilton-Byrne spoke with the Herald Sun claiming she cared for the children as her own and said anyone who said otherwise were ‘lying bastards’.

She said the only regret she had was ‘losing touch with daughter’ (Sarah) and after an emotional reunion with the young woman who brought the cult down she said she was ‘ready to die’.

Sarah had been thrown out of The Family for disobedience two years before she dobbed her ‘mother’ in to police.

The cult is well-know for its illicit drug use – predominately LSD (Anne Hamilton-Byrne pictured)

Sarah – who was a doctor until she was found to be self-prescribing drugs in 2005 – said she can’t help but see the elderly cult leader as her mum – even as she betrayed her in the media.

‘But, despite perhaps appearances to the contrary, at that time I felt enormous loyalty to Anne. To my mind, I had put my life on the line to oppose her, as I believed at the time that to oppose her, to betray her, was to die.’

She said her ‘mother’ has not ‘owned up’ for any of the abuse children suffered in the cult – blaming it instead on the ‘aunties’.

The film also explores how far the reach of The Family stretched – Raynor Johnson who was a key member helped Anne recruit doctors and lawyers to the cult.

‘They only recruited really wealthy people, in fact, or people with status and skills they needed.’

The medical staff and lawyers made it easy for the cult to take babies from single mothers who were pressured into signing their children over.

Other babies were those of cult-followers who didn’t want them.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne is no longer the leader of the cult however it is believed to still be in operation

Ben Shenton was given to the cult to be brought up by the charismatic ‘mother’.

In 2013 he described his childhood home as being similar to an institution – said the children were forced to do yoga and were fed very little food.

He told the ABC when he wasn’t being punished he was helping other children to be punished.

‘Removal of food, beatings. Some of them were put outside at night and left outside at different times. Being part of that, helping that to happen because you had feuds with those kids… we grew up controlled and controlling one another.’

Ben was one of the children removed by police in the 1987 raid.

He went to see her in 2011 – and describes the moment as ‘closure’ on his horrific upbringing.

‘It was seeing a final this is who you are … she had lost her power of me when I was removed from the cult… but I guess it’s like closing a door on an event.’

While Anne is in her 80s now with dementia it has been suggested by Jones that between 20 and 30 members of the cult still live in Melbourne.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne is believed to have networked with medical professionals and lawyers in order to take the children from hospital for her cult

Ben Shenton, survivor of the cult The Family – ABC Ballarat – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Who Exactly is “Julian Assange”..?

FTR #724 Wiki of the Damned

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ October 19, 2010

Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained here. (The flash drive includes the anti-fascist books available on this site.)

NB: This description contains material not contained in the original broadcast.

Listen: MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Introduction: The first of several programs dealing with WikiLeaks, this broadcast examines an intelligence-connected mind control cult with which WikiLeaks kingpin Julian Assange appears to be affiliated. As well connected as it is ruthless and criminal, the Santiniketan Park Association of Anne Hamilton-Byrne conditioned children with drugs, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, torture and ritual sexual abuse in order to produce subjects who bent to the will of the group’s leader.

Although Assange (pictured at left) claims to have been “on the run” from the cult, his claims of links to Australian intelligence plus his strange, “platinum” colored hair (distinctive of children raised in the group) suggest that the connections may run much deeper. (Recall in this context that the group practices rigorous, sophisticated mind-control methodology and Assange himself may be sincerely unaware of the depth of his apparent links to the group. The organization also develops multiple identities for the children raised in its ranks, as well as obtaining multiple passports for them. Assange’s mother claims his hair turned white following a difficult custody case involving a child of his. As will be seen later, Assange claims that Australian intelligence has advised him, and there is an apparent link between Australian intelligence and the cult.)

The title of the program comes from two sci-fi/horror movies from the late 1950’s and 60’s called Children of the Damned and Village of the Damned. Both movies featured a generation of platinum-blonde children with psycho-kinetic powers, preternatural intelligence and a really, really bad attitude. The children are pictured in a promotional poster for the film in the upper left. Cult leader Hamilton-Byrne (inset) and her “children” are pictured above and at right. A still from the film is at right. Assange is pictured twice at left. Is this a case of life imitating art?

Possessing considerable wealth, in control of its own psychiatric hospital, composed largely of well-heeled professional people, utilized as an experimentation center by one of Australia’s leading Catholic psychologists, linked to the Australian minister overseeing that country’s intelligence service, the “Family” as they like to be called, used these connections to escape the punishment that would certainly have followed their activities. Available evidence suggests that the group is an intelligence front.

Even former cult members who have turned on the organization have been drawn back into its fold and reconciled with Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

Targeting Russia, China and some of the Central Asian states that emerged following the breakup of the Soviet Union, WikiLeaks has pursued a political agenda that smacks of a Third Position/UNPO/Underground Reich political orientation. The group has also stung the United States, making an already difficult Afghanistan policy that much more difficult following their leaks of key U.S. documents about NATO involvement in that country.

Program Highlights Include: The group’s excessive secretiveness; the group’s lack of candor about their sources of financing in particular; pharmaceutical company Sandoz’s alleged dispensing of free LSD to Family; partial discussion of WikiLeaks’ connections to the milieu of Pirate Bay and Swedish fascist financier Carl Lundstrom; the Hamilton-Byrne cult’s “caring” for Lord Casey, the Australian cabinet member charged with oversight of the Australian intelligence agency; the Hamilton-Byrne cult’s close association with Catholic psychologist Ronald Conway; Conway’s alleged molestation of people associated with the cult; Conway’s role as an expert commentator on the Church’s molestation scandals; a Time magazine review that reinforces the hypothesis that Assange was part of the Hamilton-Byrne cult.

1. The program begins with discussion of a cult with which Assange appears to have been affiliated, although he minimizes his connection to them. It is worth noting that fleeing this cult apparently dominated much of his life at this point, yet the group’s powerful connections appear to have allowed them to track him and his mother. Note that, although “on the run” from the group, Assange’s mother discussed their whereabouts and frequented some of the same places. This may indicate a lack of imagination and/or resources on the part of Mama Assange, or it may indicate a process of creating a legend–a plausible cover for observed phenomenon.

For example, if someone noted a resemblance between Julian Assange and children belonging to the cult, it could be neutralized by saying that he was an opponent of the group.

In light of the apparent mind control techniques practiced by the group, indications of the group’s possible intelligence connections, as well as deliberate and extensive operations to obfuscate the identity of cult members, one should take much of what Assange says about his relationship to the group with a grain of salt. Might he be a member of the cult, who was “sheep-dipped” to mask his links to the group?

Assange’s own track record indicates a record of deliberate, elusive behavior and statements.

. . . . When Assange was eight, Claire left her husband and began seeing a musician, with whom she had another child, a boy. The relationship was tempestuous; the musician became abusive, she says, and they separated. A fight ensued over the custody of Assange’s half brother, and Claire felt threatened, fearing that the musician would take away her son. Assange recalled her saying, “Now we need to disappear,” and he lived on the run with her from the age of eleven to sixteen. When I asked him about the experience, he told me that there was evidence that the man belonged to a powerful cult called the Family—its motto was “Unseen, Unknown, and Unheard.” Some members were doctors who persuaded mothers to give up their newborn children to the cult’s leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The cult had moles in government, Assange suspected, who provided the musician with leads on Claire’s whereabouts. In fact, Claire often told friends where she had gone, or hid in places where she had lived before. . . .

“No Secrets” by Jeff Khatchatourian; The New Yorker; 6/7/2010.

2. Wikipedia gives a nice overview of the group. Note that Wikipedia should, as a rule, be scrutinized very carefully. It is frequently in error. When sources and links check out, as they do here, it is generally reliable.

Around 1964 Dr Raynor Johnson was hosting regular meetings of a religious and philosophical discussion group led by Hamilton-Byrne at Santiniketan, his home at Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne. Also connected was a series of weekly talks he gave at the Council of Adult Education in Melbourne, entitled “The Macrocosm and the Microcosm”. The group purchased an adjoining property which they named Santiniketan Park [1] in 1968 and constructed a meeting hall, Santiniketan Lodge.

The association consisted of middle class, professional people; it has been estimated that a quarter were nurses and other medical personnel, and that many were recruited by Johnson who referred them to Hamilton-Byrne’s hatha yoga classes.[2] Members mainly lived in nearby suburbs and townships in the Dandenongs, meeting each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evening [3] at Santiniketan Lodge, Crowther House in Olinda or another property in the area known as the White Lodge [4].

During the late 1960s and 1970s Newhaven Hospital in Kew was a private psychiatric hospital owned and managed by Marion Villimek, a Santiniketan member; many of its staff and attending psychiatrists were also members.

Many patients at Newhaven were treated with the hallucinogenic drug LSD [7]. The hospital was used to recruit potential new members from among the patients, and also to administer LSD to members under the direction of the Santiniketan psychiatrists Dr John Mackay and Dr Howard Whitaker . One of the original members of the Association was given LSD, electroconvulsive therapy and two leucotomies during the late 1960s.

Although the psychiatric hospital had been closed down by 1992, in that year a new inquest was ordered into the death of a Newhaven patient in 1975 after new claims that his death had been due to deep sleep therapy. The inquest heard evidence concerning the use of electroconvulsive therapy, LSD and other practices at Newhaven but found no evidence that deep sleep had been used on this patient. The Newhaven building was later reopened as a nursing home with no connections to its previous owner or uses.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne acquired fourteen infants and young children between about 1968 and 1975. Some were the natural children of Santiniketan members, others had been obtained through irregular adoptions arranged by lawyers, doctors and social workers within the group who could bypass the normal processes. The children’s identities were changed using false birth certificates or deed poll, all being given the surname ‘Hamilton-Byrne’ and dressed alike even to the extent of their hair being dyed uniformly blonde[11].

The children were kept in seclusion and home-schooled at Kia Lama, a rural property usually referred to as “Uptop”, at Taylor Bay on Lake Eildon near the town of Eildon, Victoria. They were taught that Anne Hamilton-Byrne was their biological mother, and knew the other adults in the group as ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ They were denied almost all access to the outside world, and subjected to a discipline that included frequent corporal punishment and starvation diets.

The children were frequently dosed with the psychiatric drugs Anatensol, Diazepam, Haloperidol, Largactil, Mogadon, Serepax, Stelazine, Tegretol or Tofranil[4]. On reaching adolescence they were compelled to undergo an initiation involving LSD[13]: while under the influence of the drug the child would be left in a dark room, alone apart from visits by Hamilton-Byrne or one of the psychiatrists from the group[4].

“Santiniketan Park Association”; Wikipedia.

3. More about the cult, from an article about a long-overdue bust of the group. Note the difficulty law enforcement had in bringing this group to justice. One of many indications that the organization was “connected.”

The leader of Australia’s most notorious cult, The Family, remains unrepentant two decades after the raid that shocked the nation.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne broke her silence yesterday, saying she was ready to die after reconciling with Sarah Moore, the “daughter” who betrayed her to the authorities.

The Family made headlines around the world in 1987 when the Australian Federal Police and Community Services Victoria raided the cult’s property at Lake Eildon and took six children into care.

Police later found 14 children had been brought up in almost complete isolation believing they were the offspring of Hamilton-Byrne and her late husband Bill.

In fact none of them was the Hamilton-Byrnes’, but children of single mothers who had been pressured into giving them up for adoption or cult members who did not want them.

But it was the way the children had been treated that really shocked the nation.

Hamilton-Byrne had ordered the children’s hair be dyed peroxide blonde and they be dressed in identical outfits.

It was also alleged they had been half-starved, beaten and forced to take large quantities of tranquilisers to “calm them down” and even fed LSD when they became adults.

Now, in the first ever interview at her sprawling Olinda compound, the cult leader has defended how she raised the children and attacked those who said she mistreated them as “lying bastards”. Of her critics, she said: “I would love to put them right, but I can’t.” . . .

“Anne Hamilton-Byrne, Leader of the Family, Unrepentant but Ready to Die” by James Campbell; Herald Sun; 8/16/2009.

Partial Reblog, Read in full

AANGIRFAN.. Lunch With Assange

Julian Assange and the cult leader close to death

CathyFox Snippets on Hamilton-Byrne; Slindon College; child abuse Oct 20th 2016

Excerpt from UNSEEN, UNHEARD, UNKNOWN by Sarah Moore (Hamilton-Byrne)

My mother was Anne Hamilton-Byrne, the leader of a small sect in the Dandenongs called the Family or the Great White Brotherhood. I was a small part of her plan to collect children in what she herself once called a “scientific experiment”. Later I discovered it was her intention that we children would continue her sect after the earth was consumed by a holocaust. She saw us as the “inheritors of the earth”. I didn’t know that then. In those days I was just a child. A child of a guru, but a child no less.

Twenty-two to twenty-eight children in all lived at Uptop in its heyday, although the fosters had varying lengths of stay

She used to say that she couldn’t remember all the dates very well because she had so many children. Maybe, in retrospect, we should have realised that was weird but then we never thought it was anything out of the ordinary. She decided upon sets of twins and triplets and gave us ages and birth-dates to fit in with that idea. Birthday changes were just something you accepted. It was as if Anne knew so much more about everything than us and she just might be revealing another piece of our life plan if she changed our birthdays.

We were the children of The Family, the children of Anne Hamilton-Byrne. We were dressed alike. Most of the girls’ hair was dyed blond, cut into fringes and worn long with identical hairstyles and identically-coloured ribbons. All the boys had bowl haircuts.

Portraits of the guru. (Anne Hamilton-Byrne) The cult members were given these photos, to put on their altars to worship.

Why did Anne collect all of us children and make this false ‘family’? I often wonder just what it was she wanted of us. Was it just to satisfy her ego? To satisfy her great need to be worshipped and adored by those around her?

Why did she raise us in almost total social isolation, miles from anywhere, with minimal contact with other humans apart from the sect members who looked after us? Why did she subject us to the bizarre and cruel regimen in which we grew up? Was it to demonstrate that she had the power to create a generation that would be reared with her beliefs and believing in her? I suspect perhaps that there were more sinister motives than these alone. Some of us had multiple birth certificates and passports, and citizenship of more than one country. Only she knows why thus was and why we were also all dressed alike, why most of us even had our hair dyed identically blond. I can only conjecture because I will never know for sure. However I suspect that she went to such great lengths in order to enable her to move children around, in and out of the country. Perhaps even to be sold overseas. I’m sure there is a market somewhere in the world for small blond children with no traceable identities. If she did it, it was a perfect scam. Many ex-sect members have said that they were aware that Anne was creating children by a “breeding program” in the late 1960s. These were ‘invisible’ kids, because they had no papers and there is no proof that they ever existed. Yet we Hamilton-Byrne children had multiple identities. These identities could perhaps have been loaned to other children and the similarity of our appearance used to cover up their absence. One little blond kid looks very like another in a passport photo. I don’t suppose we will ever know the truth because only Anne Hamilton-Byrne knows the truth about the whole affair and the truth is something she will never tell.

I find a lot of my childhood hard to remember. There seem to be very few incidents that actually stand out for me. I remember what our routine was but I don’t remember many individual days. I think this is because we had none of the normal milestones that mark the passing of the years for other children. We never changed grades or teachers. We never celebrated birthdays and it was only occasionally that we celebrated or got presents at Christmas or Easter, if Anne and Bill were there. Life went on and now it seems that the only times that stand out were particularly violent ones. I try to remember things other than beatings and bad times and it’s quite hard. There must have been long periods when nothing in particular happened, bad or good, and we may have had ordinary child-like feelings of fun and excitement then, but these are mostly forgotten.

Because this all happened to me so long ago and because it was such a bizarre childhood, maybe I won’t remember every detail. Yet all the events that I describe DID happen and I will try to recount them with truth and honesty. I will tell the truth as best I can. I know Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne and their followers will not want to hear the truth from one of us and they will say I’m lying or I’m mad.

When I was little Anne used to sometimes slam a carving knife down on the bench while we were eating and scream at us that the next person to step out of line, or move, or be caught with bad manners, would get their ‘bum cut off’. It was a prospect that filled us with terror but it was just a ploy to keep us scared and under control.

Control was everything then. I’m generally not scared of Anne any more though sometimes the fear of her and her followers still grips me. The motto of the sect is ‘Unseen , Unheard and Unknown’, and even now the thought of the consequences of betraying that motto still worries me sometimes. I ‘ve had death threats from sect members before. They may try to kill or hurt me for speaking out against Anne, but only under her direct orders. Many sect members have taken a vow to kill those who harm their Master. They will not walk up to me with a gun. But if I mysteriously drive over a cliff one night because my brakes are suddenly not working, or perish in a sudden fire in my flat, it will be them.

I am training to be a doctor but sometimes I think my medical career will be sabotaged because there are still many in the sect who have a lot of influence in professional and academic circles. It may sound melodramatic, but I know that some who were Anne’s enemies have disappeared in strange circumstances. But I will have to risk her anger and hatred because I need to speak about what happened, to tell with truth and certainty the story as it occurred. It is a story that must be told, and I will make sure that it will be, despite any danger to me. Because no-one knows the truth of what happened except those of us that lived through it. If I do not write this the story will never be heard.

It is hard now for me to explain what it was like to others. Six years later, it seems an alien world; often it feels unreal to me, as if it happened to someone else. It takes an effort to tap into the memories and also the very different thought patterns that marked the way we used to exist. It takes courage to pierce the barrier of sanity and normality that I have carefully erected over the last few years so that I can function in the outside world. Because if I thought and remembered and dwelt in consciousness in that world we grew up in, I could not function today as I do. Yet this story cannot be told without at least some painful memories being involved, for without the pain there would be no Uptop – our background would merely be the harmless, slightly eccentric ideal that the Family always try to convey to the media.

I am not telling this story for revenge or because it is sensational. I am telling it because it is essential in the process of me growing away from my past. This is a story that I think needs to be told. It is in part also to come to terms with the reality that this, like it or not, was my past.

Perhaps once I tell it, I might be able to leave it behind me for good, and finally the nightmares may stop. Then I will be finally free of my childhood, finally perhaps able to shed the shackles of fear and self-loathing that seventeen years of indoctrination instilled as part of my being. No longer will I be a prisoner or a victim.

****************************

There are certain things one remembers about childhood. I remember darkness. I remember that light was something I valued. I remember how Anne hated bright lights and that none of the globes in the overhead lights were allowed to be more than twenty watts. How the windows were heavily curtained. How dull things were. I didn’t know it could have been brighter inside. It’s funny, one of the things the police who rescued us years later commented on, was how dark the place was and how it stank of cats.

It was not until the early 1980s, when I was about twelve or thirteen, that we got mainline electricity. Because there was no electricity the Aunties had to wash everything by hand. This made them angry about dirty clothes and getting your smock dirty was a major crime. There was no generator Uptop in the early days and I remember the Aunties carrying water to the house in buckets. Light came from little gas lamps. Light was rationed in the dark days of childhood. Later the lights ran from a generator during the main part of the day and we used gaslight at night and in the early mornings.

Until we got the electricity connected we had never watched television, except possibly on rare occasions when we were overseas. In fact I don’t think I even knew that it existed until after the electricity was connected. We were in complete isolation Uptop. We didn’t understand where we were situated, even near what city. We didn’t even know that we were close to Melbourne, a city of three million people. We had no concept even of what a city was, or of any other human community other than that in which we existed.

When I was little I thought that ‘overseas’ was over the other side of the lake, and that was where Mummy and Daddy went when they went away. We used to wave out the window to them at night before we went to sleep.

Although we travelled overseas several times, it seemed we basically travelled along a road, hopped on a ‘plane, got off, got into a car and travelled to one of Anne’s properties in America or England. That was it. We weren’t often allowed to see newspapers, in fact that happened only after we were quite a bit older and even then they’d been censored . We were then only allowed to look at the sports section, and that was if we begged, as we loved cricket.

I remember the rigidity of the routines of our life like a march, it went on and on. Looking back, I can see that any game or hobby that we started we would get hooked on, playing it over and over again in our limited spare time. If we got into a game or fantasy we tended to want to keep on with it and it assumed the utmost importance in our lives.

{Unseen, Unheard, Unknown was written by Sarah Moore (Hamilton-Byrne) and published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd in 1995. While the book is currently out of print, will take an order and will search for a used copy. She is currently working on a PhD in Psychoanalytic Theory.} READ IN FULL

‘Evil, Wicked’: What it was like to grow up in one of … 03.08.16

Authorities launch review after links between … – Herald Sun

School linked to cult faces probe – Herald Sun

‘How did the cult known as The Family treat members children?’

Who Exactly is “Julian Assange”..?

FTR #724 Wiki of the Damned

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