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February 12, 2025 17 mins

Belle Gibson's Friend & Whistleblower Reveals What Led Her to Exposing the Cancer Fraudster

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It was the lie that shook Australia cancer con woman
Belle Gibson.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Bell Gibson admits she made up the whole story.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
And inspired the Netflix sensation Apple Side of Vinegar, the
story and undoing of Bell Gibson.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I have been healing brain cancer with natural medicine.

Speaker 4 (00:17):
It's working for me.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
It is you didn't have brain cancer, No, I didn't.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Joining us today is Chanelle Bell Gibson's former friend who
exposed her in one of the most shocking fraud cases
in Australian history. Chanelle is here with Robin Kipp and
Corey Oates to share her story.

Speaker 5 (00:35):
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Chanelle. You are a former friend of Belle Gibson. How
did you guys meet?

Speaker 5 (00:43):
We met when I was doing a writing internship at
a publication that was interested in doing a piece on her.
So I reached out and she invited me to the
launch of the Whole Pantry app and so we met
that night at her event.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
So early on, you were there when she was first
starting to get some influence and people started to know
who she was.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
That's right, it was when her star was really on
the rise and she was starting to gain a lot
of influence.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
And you became a friend of hers then.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Yeah, So we didn't get much time to speak that
night at her events, so we went for coffee and
it turned out we had some mutual friends. And then
it was quite difficult to get information out of her
for the story that we were interested in doing, because
as you've probably seen in the show and in interviews
that she does, it's very difficult to get straight answers

(01:38):
from her. So I went for coffee again lunch, and
then just naturally a friendship formed, and yeah, it evolved
from them.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
So this story Apple Side of Inigo has been an
absolute Netflix sensation. It's bizarre that it's an Australian story,
and you know there's some for those that missed it,
there's you know, there's been interviews on sixty Minutes in
the last decade as well with Belle Gibson. I should
say I'm saying Belle with a bee, there's nothing to
do with the actor mel Gibson, but it is definitely

(02:10):
it is definitely someone who is quite an actor, you
have to say. And the story that she ran is
that she had multiple illnesses, but particularly brain cancer and
was able to cure this by eating clean and drinking
juices and apple side vinegar and things like that.

Speaker 5 (02:29):
Yeah, that's right, and it was a very dangerous message
that she was spreading. The very vulnerable people with cancelor
making very serious decisions about their life and their health.
So that's why I thought it was really important to
stop the misinformation that she was spreading because it was

(02:50):
all based on a lie.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
And just with that, like you obviously knew, you know
before it obviously came out and try to stop her.
Do you remember how long it was like the first
time you first realized then obviously when you had to
try and get other people to help you exposure m m.

Speaker 5 (03:08):
Yeah, it was quite a few months, and it was
quite disheartening to see how challenge challenging it is to
actually get people to believe you and stop someone from
doing harm. I first went to the police to record it.
They told me I didn't have any evidence, which I didn't.
I went to quite a high profile lawyer who actually

(03:31):
had someone very close to them, a young woman that
had cancer, and he felt kind of quite affected by
what I was trying to do, and he actually accused
me of flander and decimation. I then went to Australia's
top investigative journalist at the time. He hadn't heard of
Bow and he said he might look into it, and

(03:52):
he might or he might not. And I never heard
back from him. So yeah, I started to feel quite powerful,
lesson exhausting all the avenues that I had, and I
was then turning to family and friends and extended network
to see if anyone could help. And eventually my former
boss went to the editor at the Age and vouched

(04:15):
for me for something incredible.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
And then did you maintain a friendship through this time?
Like while you were trying to expose her, did you
cut off your friendship or were you still friends?

Speaker 5 (04:25):
I mean Bell actually cut it off because she obviously
knew what I was trying to do and didn't want
her lives to be unraveled, so she obviously wasn't very
happy with what I was doing. But I think what's
really important to say here is that when I went
to Bell and confronted her and asked her to produce

(04:47):
medical evidence to prove that she had cancer, as as
firm as I was demanding answers and evidence, I did
go to her as her friend, and I did tell
her that if she came forward and teld the truth
that I would help her and support her. And after
that night I confronted her. I then went to her

(05:10):
a few days later said are you ready to come forward?
I still showed up at her book launch, sort of
getting her to be accountable. So I actually never set
out to expose bal or have her canceled. I wanted
her to be able to do it. And had she
been able to be able to do that accountability, things

(05:33):
could have played out very differently for her.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
How did she do it? Channel like, this is a
woman who has got herself millions of dollars, published a book,
you know, hundreds of thousands of followers as an influencer,
and you were a friend. How did she do this?

Speaker 5 (05:55):
Well, this is a patent. Bell had actually been already
doing most of her life. She had already been faking
different illnesses and diseases in other communities, and I think
getting quite attached to that sympathy and admiration she would
she would get from pretending to be sick, and from

(06:16):
what I experienced and witnessed, it was also a business strategy.
Her lifestyle changed very quickly. She started to earn a
lot of money from projecting this information and these lies,
so you know, it was benefiting her quite extensively. And

(06:39):
I guess the message here is that especially vulnerable people
with cancer, they want to have hope, They want to
they want to believe that that there's another way that
they can live and maybe not have to inject themselves
with poison. And and so she she leveraged that she
knew that that was the case. And so there was

(07:00):
kind of so many levels to this that also even
the world's biggest companies enabled her to do this.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
But now, because I have a husband who died of cancer,
so I totally understand the desperation. What I guess I'm
trying to get my head around is did was she
a mimic? She must have been copying people, She must
have been reading people with cancer. She must have been
able to articulate all the things that would make it

(07:31):
seem really viable.

Speaker 5 (07:34):
Yes, well, I'm really sorry to hear about your husband. Actually,
my partner at the time had a traumatic brain injury,
and she formed quite a correspond with him and then
claimed that she had a traumatic brain injury as a
result of her brain cancer. And so she was actually

(07:54):
leveraging his symptoms to make them as her own, which
she actually did with many people. She formed a relationship
with a young boy who did have brain cancer and
his family, and she was actually taking advantage of him
to learn about his symptoms to then make them her own.

(08:17):
And this is what she did with many people. And
she went as far as to fake a seizure at
her four year old son's birthday.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
So this is her own four year old child. Yes,
so it's his birthday, So talk us through that. What
happened there?

Speaker 5 (08:37):
Yees? So the actually the young boy that I mentioned
that had brain cancer, he was there with his family
and lots of other young children, which I think is
the most tragic part about this particular story, that they
witnessed this seizure, and yeah it was. It was a
very beautiful day, and all of a sudden, they'll collapsed

(08:57):
to the floor in the middle of the party, convulsion
quite violently, saliva coming out of her mouth. Someone luckily
ushered the children into another room so they wouldn't see
all of it. And this went on for forty minutes.
It was a really long time. Halfway through the seizure,
I actually said, I'm going to call an ambulance, and

(09:20):
all of a sudden, she comes out of the seizure
and says, no, I don't want western medicine involved, and
then she actually went back into the seizure taped it off.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
On.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah sorry, no, no, no go you go.

Speaker 5 (09:39):
Yes. I had actually started to see some red flags
before this, so that was actually the day that confirmed
everything for me. I just felt so sick in my stomach,
and I realized there was something so performative about the seizure.
And that's when I had made up my mind.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
And didn't she be that seizure from getting close to
that little boy who had brain cancer?

Speaker 5 (10:06):
I have heard of that. I can't confirm that, but
I would not be surprised or shocked if that was
the case.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Now, do you have any idea, And I mean it's
maybe an unanswerable question, but do you know how many
people's lives may have been lost or impacted by this?
Because people would have died.

Speaker 5 (10:31):
I mean I can't speak to that, and I mean
even just one person who lost their life or their
health was affected directly by this is enough to measure, right.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
But there would have been hundreds who followed her.

Speaker 5 (10:49):
I look personally, I knew someone in my life who
did stop conventional treatment because of Beale, And unfortunately she's
not here anymore. Obviously we can't directly correlate that, but yes,
I do know people who also know of people that

(11:13):
that did stop treatment because of Beal. It's very devastating.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
What about her husband, what about her partner and her son? Like,
you know, this woman was living a life with a family.
Do you know much about them and whether they, like
the little boy was small, her son, but what about
her partner?

Speaker 5 (11:36):
I mean, that was the main reason. One of the
main reasons I also went to Bell is because I
witnessed that Bale's son was aware that his mother was
basically dying. So so that was one of my main concerns.
Her partner at the time, Clive, we never really could
figure out his involvement. He was connected to her business,

(11:57):
but it was really hard to pin down whether he
knew or not. As depicted in the show, he was
quite withdrawn, quiet, someone that was kind of just sort
of always there in the background. So, I mean, I
can't speak directly to what you know, what went on
behind the scenes, behind closed doors, but yeah, I do

(12:21):
know he did have concerns much.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
Yeah. In twenty seventeen, it was that Belle was convicted
of misleading and deceptive conduct of Federal Court of Australia
ordered to pay a fine of about four hundred thousand
Australian dollars, but she never never did she never saw time,
she never went to jail. Do you and that sounds
like the fine was less than the money she made

(12:46):
being a fraud. Do you feel like that conviction was enough?

Speaker 5 (12:51):
No? I mean justice really hasn't been served for the
people that bell has impacted because that fine hasn't been
for she hasn't paid any of it. But also she
hasn't taken any accountability to give closure to the people
she took advantage of and the charity she ripped off.
And what is actually most devastating about that fine that

(13:13):
she hasn't paid is that one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of that fine has been ordered by the judge
to be paid to the family of that little boy
that did have brain cancer that she took advantage of.
Unfortunately he's no longer with us, but that money is
for compensation for his family and that will just be

(13:36):
really tragic. If that family.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
She's not that yet, and so she never paid the fine.
Do we know what she's doing now where she is now.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
I do know that over the years, Belle has earned
some type of income with different jobs, and I think
Belle could still try and make some amends in some
way by voluntarily making any contribution to that fine and
not doing that just because she's been ordered to. But

(14:06):
it's just the right thing to do, and it's really
upsetting that she still kind of won't do the right
thing to make this right in any way.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
May you feature quite heavily in the Netflix show your
character does Apple p Seidleviniger. How do you feel about
this particular portrayal of this whole story.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
I'm not very comfortable with the TV show, to be honest.
I think it's obviously a glamorization drama for entertainment purposes.
I do think they are trying to tell some important
messages through the show, which is real to the story
about how we can easily be misled by people online,

(14:50):
how these companies enabled Bell by not doing any due diligence.
But there's a few things that I've found unethical about.
It is mess character who is based on a real
person j SAME's code who I knew. I wasn't close
friends with her, she was a public figure, and she
was telling her story about healing herself naturally from cancer,

(15:14):
which she did have. However, in the show, they've actually
kind of villainized her in a way, and I'm sure
it's quite traumatizing for her family to see that, and
from what I know, they didn't make any contact with
her family or give her family a heads up about that.
And I also think it's really unoriginal and quite a

(15:37):
cliche stereotype that they've pitted two women against each other
as the main plot of this story as rivals, bitchy
kind of gossip competitive narrative, which actually wasn't real. Belle
was inspired by Jess, but they didn't have a rivalry.

(15:58):
And I also think that it's ironic that the show
is all about how bad it is that someone financially
took advantage of people with cancer for that very show
to profit from that harm that was cause to people
with cancer. So I would like to hope that Netflix
for the film producers have maybe made some donations to

(16:21):
the people that were impacted by Baal, And I just
really hope something positive can come out of this well.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
I can tell you this, Youane. We are donating five
hundred dollars to the Cancer Council on behalf of you
for your time this morning. We really appreciate you sharing
with us this morning.

Speaker 5 (16:38):
Thank you. That's really appreciated.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
And I guess that the message of this is about
the power of influences and the awful ramifications of people
who have no conscience destroying other people's lives.

Speaker 5 (16:55):
Yes, it's a very scary story and I hope there
are some important lessons that we can learn from it.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Thank you so much, so much, Thanks Chanel

Speaker 5 (17:07):
Thank you, bye bye.
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