The Family: The Shocking True Story of a Notorious Cult by Chris Johnston & Rosie Jones

Author:Chris Johnston & Rosie Jones [Johnston, Chris & Jones, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminology, Cults, Non-Fiction, Religion, Social Science, True Crime
ISBN: 9781925307597
Google: FZR3DQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01N8OVNQI
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2016-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

The answers to these questions were not as straightforward as perhaps David hoped, but he had still made his point in brutal fashion. He and his brother wrote that if followers of Anne answered yes to more than two of the questions, ‘It is time to stand back and seriously evaluate what you are letting yourself in for. THINK ABOUT IT!!’

Why has Anne not returned to Australia after the Uptop raid, the letter asked. Will her ‘so-called blue light or any other bullshit’ protect her? She lives in the lap of luxury, with expensive cars, while her members’ mortgages keep turning. Does the money go to deserted mothers or lost cats and dogs or the homeless or development projects in the Third World, as Anne sometimes claimed it did? ‘Don’t kid yourself! You are financing Anne’s personal wealth and for what?’

Everything she does is about power, David and his brother wrote. Power and control. She made many cult members change their name not for their benefit but for hers. She made some become nurses and go to England and funnel invalid pensions into her bank account. She made others leave their husbands or wives or, indeed, their own children. ‘What is pathetic is that you are still stuck in the rut.’

The letter asks cult members to do two things: ask questions of each other about their lives and their regrets, and ‘get out now. There is life after Anne and the Family!’

David and his brother copped abuse at the Lodge that night. But David also knows of one cult member who left: ‘probably not as a result of it, but it certainly helped them along the way’. Then a few weeks later he got a letter, which he says was obviously dictated by Anne. It was about betrayal and the grim consequences thereof. David had betrayed Anne spectacularly, but by now he didn’t care because he had allowed himself to believe in the idea that it was not betrayal if it was right. ‘The letter was full of stuff about how if you allow somebody to put out the light in your heart — that is, drag you out of the cult — you’ll be in darkness for ever. All the normal sort of bullshit they went on with.’

He wrote his own letter back, but with an extra ingredient. ‘I went out in the paddock and I got a little piece of cow manure, wrapped it up in a plastic bag, put it in an envelope, and posted it back with a note saying: Next time you want to send someone bullshit, send them the real thing.’

He has never been approached by anyone in The Family since.

After David’s letter, Anne sent her followers a recorded discourse. She knew, of course, that the Uptop children were talking to police. She knew that the police had a taskforce set up to find her, and she knew that a fellow named Lex de Man was leading the investigation. She said that unenlightened people, even members of The Family, had a strong tendency to doubt.

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