THE FAMILY
Australia’s most notorious cult, The Family was led by self-professed messiah Anne Hamilton-Byrne.
Based in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, it traded on Christianity and a mix of Eastern and Western religious themes.
Senior cult members worked at the Newhaven psychiatric hospital in Kew, from where patients were recruited.
They were allegedly administered the hallucinogenic drug LSD.
Several children were taken into care when Australian Federal Police agents and Community Services Victoria staff raided a Lake Eildon property in 1987.
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.
The children’s hair was dyed peroxide-blonde and they were dressed in identical outfits.
It is also alleged they were half starved, beaten and forced to take large amounts of tranquillisers and fed LSD when they became adults.
In an interview with the Sunday Herald Sun in 2009, Hamilton-Byrne gave the following responses.
Question: Did she mistreat “her children”?
Response: “They were normal children and they could be disobedient to a point, but not all the time.”
Question: Was LSD used?
Response: “Everything on earth has its uses.”
Her estranged “daughter”, Dr Sarah Moore, told the Sunday Herald Sun: “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.”
CHILDREN OF GOD
This sect gained notoriety in the 1970s over claims of child sex abuse and a practice known as “flirty fishing” — where female devotees were encouraged to lure new members with sex.
Children of God was formed in 1968 by US pastor David Berg, who called himself Moses David.
Secrecy and negative publicity involving overseas Children of God branches sparked controversy about the religious group in Australia.
Raids were carried out in Victoria and NSW, amid concerns about the welfare of children.
The children involved said they were never abused.
A Children’s Court magistrate in Victoria temporarily placed children in the care of Community Services Victoria.
TRIALS OF THE CENTURY: SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
The families, who homeschooled their children, insisted they were simply a fundamentalist Christian community spreading the word across the globe.
A child welfare worker claimed some of the children told them they were required to always smile, and crying was punished with a beating using a wooden paddle or stick.
In the end in 1994, the children were returned to their families.
In NSW, a similar legal custody battle had waged.
A damages claim was confidentially settled.
THE MOONIES
This cult’s presence in Australia declined dramatically from its peak in the 1970s when it was centred in the Melbourne suburb of Elwood.
The traditional theology of the Moonies, or Church of Unification, was based on the belief that founder Sun Myung Moon was a second Jesus Christ.
This cult was best known for marrying together followers in their hordes who, in return for promises of spiritual enlightenment, offered total loyalty.
At the age of 92, Myung Moon — who turned his movement into a multi-billion dollar business empire — died of organ failure after complications from pneumonia.
So far he has not managed a second coming.
