Cults Uncovered by Emily G. Thompson

Author:Emily G. Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780744022025
Publisher: DK Publishing

< Contents

The Family

Glamorous and charismatic, Anne ­Hamilton-­Byrne hoodwinked her followers with drugs and tricks. Claiming to be Jesus reincarnated, she presided over a harsh regime riddled with cruelty and child abuse.

“She captivated me with her talk of things spiritual, her knowledge of God, a familiarity with things psychic, and her soothsaying.”

George Ellis, former cult member

Anne ­Hamilton-­Byrne had peroxide blonde hair that she wore in waves and a penchant for cosmetic surgery. She wore expensive perfume and pearls. She also claimed to be Jesus, reborn as a woman. Over the course of two decades, her doomsday cult, The Family, lived in almost complete secrecy, hidden away in the outback near Melbourne, Australia. Aptly, their motto was “unseen, unknown, unheard”—­and so they remained, until their crimes were finally brought to light.

The first of seven children, Anne ­Hamilton-­Byrne was born Evelyn Grace Edwards in Sale, a ­one-­road farming settlement approximately two hours east of Melbourne, on December 30, 1921. Mental illness ran in the family. Her mother, Florence Louise, originally from Wandsworth, south London, England, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia; her father, Ralph Vernon Edwards, was an itinerant, possibly suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder from fighting in World War I. Her mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital after setting her hair on fire in the street, spent 27 years in various hospitals, and ultimately died in one. Her father vanished for long periods of time. To avoid repaying a debt, he went on the run and, by the time Evelyn was three years old, was living in a fishing port on Australia’s west coast. Evelyn’s aunts were institutionalized in Britain, and her sister was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Brisbane after suffering a nervous breakdown.1 As a result of all this upheaval, Evelyn spent much of her childhood in the Melbourne Orphanage.

Aged 20, Evelyn Edwards, who had changed her name to Anne Hamilton, married her first husband, Lionel Wale Harris in 1941. They had one daughter named Judy, but tragically, Lionel died in a car accident in January 1955. Throughout their marriage, Anne suffered a number of miscarriages ­and—­a chilling harbinger of what was to ­come—­she and her husband were planning to adopt a baby girl shortly before his death.

Soon after, Anne took up ­yoga—­the study of which was still in its infancy in the Western ­world—­joining a class run by Margrit Segesman, one of the first European yoga teachers in Australia. By now, Anne was telling people that she was working as a physiotherapist. Anne had practiced as a physiotherapist, but there was no record of her ever training as one. She also knocked 10 years off her true age. During this period, Anne became attracted to Eastern religions and mysticism and was thrown out of yoga class for allegedly putting a “spell” on a fellow student, causing him to be sick.1 “She tried all sorts of things, like the occult,” Segesman recalled drily.

During the 1960s, Anne began to teach a yoga class at the Railway Institute Hall in Geelong. Her students were mostly ­middle-­aged women from Melbourne’s middle class.

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