May 7, 2025 • 52 mins
At just 18 months old, Ben Shenton was handed over to a woman who claimed she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
That woman was Anne Hamilton-Byrne, the leader of a secretive doomsday cult called The Family. For 14 years, Ben lived cut off from the outside world—beaten, starved, drugged, and taught to stay “unseen, unheard, unknown.” The cult twisted Christianity into a tool of fear and control.
Ben was finally rescued at age 15 during a police raid. Today, he’s an advocate for survivors and a pastor who still follows the teachings of Jesus Christ, just not the version the cult tried to force on him.
You can find Ben’s website, Rescue the Family, here, and his book Life Behind the Wire here.
CREDITS
Guest: Ben Shenton
Host: Claire Murphy
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on On a Thursday.
In June twenty nineteen, Anne, a ninety eight year old
former yoga instructor suffering from dementia, passed away in a
Melbourne nursing home. Now, an elderly woman's quiet death in
(00:27):
a suburban aged care facility wouldn't normally garner international press attention,
but the passing of Anne Hamilton Burne made headlines both
here and overseas. Her passing described by a detective who
knew her true identity as the end of the life
of one of Victoria's most evil people. Anne Hamilton Burne
(00:50):
was a leader of the cult known as the Family.
Now you may have seen photos of those children lined
up in perfect symmetry, their hair dyed blindingly bright blonde,
their clothes similar to those worn by children of the
royal family, or the von Traps from the sound of music,
all matching. The boys in velvet blue jumpers, the girls
(01:11):
in floral dresses, knee high socks, and Mary Jane's. These
children were not ants, but they called her mother. Many
adopted from parents who worshiped the woman who claimed she
was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. But when three of
those children escaped and went to police, the world of
(01:32):
the family would come crashing down, leaving those who knew
no other life than one of complete control under the
hand of Anne Hamilton Burne to start over. I'm Claire
Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring
the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people
(01:54):
who know the most about them. If you were to
travel to Lake Elden in Victoria in the sixties, seventies
and eighties, like thousands of Australian families did and still do,
you would find an eye ideally Coustralian setting, a place
you and I would have loved to have set up camp,
with its lush greenery and secluded waterfront property. It was peaceful,
(02:16):
that is until he walked a little further and found
the property known as kay Lama, for the Lake Eilden compound,
with all its tree lined beauty, was also a prison,
wrapped in barbed wire to keep the dozens of children
who would call it home from wandering too far from
the influence of Anne Hamilton burn and the glamorous yoga
(02:38):
teacher to wealthy suburban Melbourne mums. With her polished blond
updew and her shining perfectly touched up lipstick, managed to
convince up to five hundred adult followers to join her
at Lake Hilden and other properties in Melbourne and across
the Dandenong Rangers. She went from teaching them how to
stretch to teaching them about her reincarnation, claiming to be
(02:59):
the embodiment of Jesus Christ. On that Lake Hilden compound,
Hamilton Burne had curated a family gathering children, some of
whom were adopted under suspicious circumstances, whose outward appearance of
cherubic angels or dressed in matching outfits covered up a
life of fear and torment, of drugging, brainwashing, featings, and starvation.
(03:23):
One of those children was Ben Andrew Shanton, who, at
age fifteen, was finally rescued from the clutches of the
cult leader and sent back out into the real world,
with a lifetime of obedience and servitude, punishment and reward
the only things to base his new existence on. Ben
sat down with us to remember his life in the
(03:43):
before and the life he's managed to reclaim and create
in the after Ben, thank you so much for agreeing
to chat to us today. I would like to start
from a point where you're not even in existence yet,
if that's okay with you, Because you were born in
nineteen seventy two and you're a planned pregnancy, but not
(04:07):
in the way that say, parents of twenty twenty five
are probably planning a pregnancy. Can you explain how you
came to be in the first place.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Sure, let me give a very brief overview of a
woman called Anne Hamilton Byrne. She had her own major
issues in life, a broken family, her own mental issues.
She was a control freak, as I cover in the book,
so very much looked to create a world that she
controlled everything. And the sixties bought up a existential threat,
(04:43):
which was nuclear warfare and the belief that Vietnam War
communism flowing through everything. So the Western society was dealing
with issues that they were seeing in their landroums now
on TVs, in newspaper articles that weren't there before. So
it gave in the nineteen sixties in Australia, Melbourne, it
(05:06):
gave an impetus for a belief system of this what
we've been told doesn't work. Let's try something different. So
my mother, as I worked out, became involved in this.
She started going down the path. She had her own
issues in her marriage. As happens. Others say she had
an idyllic marriage Jewish community. Things seemed to be very good.
(05:29):
They were from the outside, everything was fantastic, but she
says it was a very difficult marriage. She had physical
issues to so, having had car accident, had whiplash, had
problems with her spine, and so she had major medical problems.
It gave involved in Hatha yoga. The leader of the
(05:49):
cult started that I was teaching it, and my mother
got involved and then began to experience. At a time
when she went for some back surgery, there was no
twenty twenty five, even fifteen years ago, you able to
do keyhole site to fix the issues with the spine,
take out a little bit of the vertebra and the
(06:11):
nerves of a least back in the sixties, the Mayo clinic,
which she had connections to, had no answers. She was
about to go in for some exploratory service and Burne
knocked on the door. Her eldest son invited her in
and she told my mother, if you follow me, I'll
heal you. And my mother that stage is looking for
(06:31):
an escape out of what she called a loveless marriage.
She's bedridden, in a lot of pain. She's rejected that
her religious groundings, which is Christianity and Jadaism and looking
for Hatha yoga into the occult, and Ann claimed to
be the reincarnation of Jesus, had seen healing happen. She
(06:53):
experienced it. So that was a start in my mother's
life that transitioned away from her own autonomy, her own
family into handing that over. She said that and called
her back from the dead, gave her a new life,
a new start, and a future. Then Anne claimed as
(07:14):
well that the world's going to be destroyed by nuclear warfare,
and you can be part of creating a brand new star.
At the age of Aquarius, which you go back into
the sixties is and the cultic belief that there are
ages and there are booms, the Great White Brotherhood. If
we go back, that will send individuals down that will
(07:36):
rescue society. Give it these shifts. Jesus Christ one, Muhammed's another.
You'll go through all the prophets. They just name these
the different embodiments of them, and then Ann claimed to
be the latest embodiment. So my mother was convinced of
that left a loveless marriage. And then Anne said to her,
you need to have a child that's not a Jewish.
(07:57):
So okay, So the master recarnation of Jesus, the avatar
of Christ, has given her a direction, and so that's
what she did. She shocked up with an Englishman, Peter Shenton,
and I.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Came along so and says to your mother, you need
to have a baby that's not Jewish. So she gets
pregnant with Peter, and then eighteen months later she decides
to say to your mother, hand that baby over. I mean,
(08:35):
you obviously know what happened. Now, can you give us
an idea of like your mom's state of mind when
she's asked to hand over her eighteen month old child.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah. And I've talked to my mom as I built
a relationship with her and set it up so that
she sent my father over to England, back where the
cult functioned as well, turned my mother into a single mother,
asked her to look after one of her properties in
(09:05):
Australia as a care giller, and made it clear that
she could give me the best life possible, far better
than what my mother could. And the other thing in
here is to think of this. If you believe that
your guru has requested something from you and is going
to recreate the world, and your child's been chosen to
(09:27):
be one of those people to do it, that's a
pretty heavy request. You are one of the chosen, your
child have been picked. And as doctor Rayna K. Johnson,
who was the Master of Queen's College, one of the
founding members of the cult, said when he wrote his
memoir on this stuff, is that Anne Hamilton byrne knew
(09:50):
who would be born, who they'd be born to, where
they would be, and would gather these children. So my
mother is convinced her son is one of them who
has been specially selected to restart this world and bring
it into a brand new face.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So whenever we hear or read about the family, it's
often accompanied by that photo of the children lined up
in symmetry, wearing the matching outfits, with all your hair
dyed blonde. When you see yourself in those photos, what
are we seeing in the eyes of yourself, your brothers
(10:31):
and sisters as you're posing in these group shots to
show just how perfect a little family and has created
for herself. Like, what do you see when you look
at those pictures?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, it's it was just life. We were her children,
we were different ages. We'd line up Von Trapp style
the sound of music which we'd watch, dressed in outfits
that matched, and that was just what we want us
to do. And did you look back on that and
you see it's choreographed as you look in at and
(11:02):
I'm the same. And indeed did craft a belief that
she had these children, which she didn't. We were all
either adopted or handed over. So she lived the lies.
She created a lie that shows the level of control
she had over people to be able to present something
that wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Do you believe that she chose to dye your hair
so that you would look more like Anne because Anne
was blonde herself?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Do you think that was the reason, Because there's often
been some discussion around whether Anne was actually trying to
achieve something racial in building this cult, in this army,
and that she wanted a future where it was white
people as the strongest that there was this link to
this Areyan race idea.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I don't know about whether she was going further. Definitely,
the first one's correct. She wore blonde wigs, her hair
was blondish, yes, So I think she was trying to
make us appear like that. Some of the girls and
some of the guys she didn't so they it would
to look like her husband. What was that the third husband,
Bill Hamilton, burn black hair. Her daughter who was her
(12:14):
real daughter, Natasha, she had red hair, so a couple
of them were allowed to have read So I think
she was trying to present that this is what it was.
But running in the background as well, remember as she
was planning on presenting once the world went through the
nuclear holocaust, this group of children that were not going
to be children by them, by adults that were going
(12:35):
to take the world over and recreate everything. So how
that was going to happen? Good luck without it never happened,
thank god, But that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
What's really interesting when you talk about the plan, because
we all presume that in a cult, the cult leader
would want their followers to be as uninformed as possible.
They want them to believe only what they tell them.
But from what I was reading in your book and
from interviews that you've done, previously I realized you were
all very well educated, like to a point where when
(13:08):
you got older, a lot of you were sent off
to boarding schools in England, where you said the other
part of the cult was functioning, Like why educate you
so well?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I think the failure here is you didn't realize that
knowledge is power. But what was fascinating, though, is that
we'd often get newspaper articles or newspapers with articles cut out,
so we were getting filtered information given to us. Everything
that came in was monitored controlled. So part of any
culture is you control the narrative. Now that sounds all freaky,
(13:45):
but it happens all the time. Editors decide what goes
into papers you've got. I guess nowadays it's a lot
easier to get information out there, but there were gatekeepers,
and so every culture has gatekeepers. They even in my
own home, there were things that I would elevate us
good that I wanted my kids to do. If they
did it, I'd reward them and say this is good,
(14:07):
would celebrate their successes. And if there were failures, they
didn't get talked about. All the time they were dealt with.
You would work through those, but they weren't elevated as
something we'd always talk about. So every healthy culture and
unhealthy ones, they control the narrative. So I did the
same thing. What I think she missed, though, is that
the more intelligent and the more information you give people,
(14:29):
then they can analyze and criticize. And I think that's
the piece she missed, is you look back on it. Yes,
dumbing people down so they don't question is one way
to handle it. But then you can't. There's no critical thinking,
there's no ability to be able to manage stuff. So
I think she wasn't as smart as she thought she was.
So how I speak about it is she did a
(14:51):
very good job of bringing the plants up in the greenhouse,
but she never thought how they're going to function once
you put them out of the world. So she had
a plan. She carefully crafted them, made the perfect environment
to make sure that these plants were going to be
good and shong, But when it came to getting them
out into the world, abject failure in almost every case.
(15:12):
And I just don't think she thought through that.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I read about how your days were structured at Ki Lama,
and from an outsider's perspective, it seems like a very
healthy and well rounded way to live. You get up early,
you do yoga, you have a vegetarian breakfast, you meditate,
you are educated. At your homeschooling, there's more meditation, lunches
(15:37):
again vegetarian, and then there's maybe more yoga. It seems
like a really healthy way to bring up a child.
But can you tell us what was happening in those days?
Because it was very monotonous, right, It was the same
thing pretty much day in day out. Yes, what was
that like for you just to go through those motions
every single day? Because you were doing that for thirteen years?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yes, and monotonous is correct. Now you then have the
underlying education. You're then doing critical analysis. You're then realizing
this is not the best is slowly, bit by bit
information starts to filter in of what was around us,
what society had happened, and then you start to study
World War one, World War two history, concentration camps who
(16:24):
we'd call ourselves a concentration camp, who begin to join
the dots. So this was the challenge, and then some
of the girls in there and talk about Sarah went
on became a doctor. As another girl there who studied
psychology others had businesses, I mean buying large a group
of quite intelligent people, and that would be the synopsis
(16:45):
of a lot of us that when we were pulled out,
there was an element of intelligence there. So with that
came frustration anger. So we all responded differently, and everyone
does respond to environment differently. Two of the youngest ones,
for example, their body stopped producing growth all ones, so
they were underweight height and that's called psychosomatic dwarfism, so
(17:09):
the body when it's under long term emotional stress will
just stop producing growth hormones. And then when they were removed,
they went up to stand and height standard way, so
there's that response. My response was complete compliance. As you
read in the book there. I made a decision early on.
We're all dragged into a room. Someone's broken the rules,
(17:30):
stolen something that they shouldn't have. I can't even remember
what it was, but we're all interrogated who did this?
Whoever doesn't say you're all going to get punished, and
I just decide I did it just because I don't
want to live with that fit, and then I walk
out after that, I'm not going to do this if
I know if someone's done this, I have this inbuilt
sense of justice in me. That can be useful. It
(17:52):
can also be very difficult get us into trouble. But
this inbuilt sense of right and wrong. So if I
knew someone had done wrong, even though wrong was in
a rule book, that you and I might look at
that going knowing that's not wrong, that's harsh rule, but
that was the rules. That was the morals to fined
for me. So when they were broken, I would tell
(18:12):
on who did it, and that created an incredible tension.
So there was this underlying responses to how we all
handled it. Some outly rebelled, some completely complied, Some had
physical issues of just shutting themselves down emotionally. Others lived
in a fantasy world, I mean there was and others
just held themselves And I one of the girls, she
(18:34):
just said, I just held myself as to who I
was and almost rocking back and forward. I didn't allow
myself to feel things. So there was very different responses.
So that underlying clashes of how things happened created a
very toxic environment.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
To say the least, you mentioned the rule book. Can
you give us an idea of what this is because
you talk about it in an abstract way, but it
was a literal, physical rule book that Anne had created
and had attached punishments to rules that were broken, and
they were physical signed off, like actually her signature on
the bottom of these pages to say that this is
(19:10):
what the process is if you do breakstead rule. Can
you give me an idea of what was in that
rule book and the punishments that would apply to those things?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Okay, So some of those things would be if someone
was to wet their bed, they would get cold shower,
miss out on meals. That would be one. If someone
was to answer back to one of the caregivers we
call them aunts and uncles. They were doing what was
called guru savor service to the master two weeks on,
two weeks off. For a lot of the ants. They
(19:39):
were very regimented on what we could and couldn't do
with them if we answered back. Punishments were defined and
then Anne wouldn't make them up as she went. There
was a period of time there where it was a
rule book said you would be dunked in water if
you disobey if you steal. So there's you read the
book at stories of two occasions there where vitamin c's
(20:02):
got stolen. The rule book said that's belting, that dunking
in water. So that's what happened in that time.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And when you say dunking and water, it doesn't mean
just throwing you in the lake. You were held head
first underwater, right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yes, yes, so it would be called water torture. So
it was we were all lined up, we were belted
a bucket of water. I had held under the bucket
of water. Interrogan, did you do this? No, I didn't
head under, hold there until you thought you were suffocating,
brought back out again. So horrendous, horrendous experience. There's no
two ways. I mean, it caused nightmares, caused major issues.
(20:42):
These things shape your personality, is what happened. And anyone
who's lived under domestic violence will know the living with fear,
the walking on eggshells, the coing favor with those in
authority or the absolute rejection of them, the hatred of them,
the love hate relationship. I mean, it says a setus.
I've lived life and started dealing with people. You go, yes,
(21:03):
this is domestic abuse on steroids. Tragically, many women and
indeed some men go for It's not just many women
and children live with this, so it wise you were
a certain way that you end up with pathologies that
Anne used to control us. And this was the evil
genius of her. She understood if she could separate us,
(21:23):
isolate us, make it so that we couldn't build relationships
with one another, and punish us, then she could control us.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Can you tell me about how she would make you
compliant in the punishment process. Saw an interview that you
did where you got quite emotional when you talked about
telling on a brother who had respiratory problems and then
he would end up locked in cold dark sheds and
you know, would be suffering for days on end. And
now that you reflect on that, you understand how awful
(21:54):
that is. But at the time, yes, you felt like
you were doing a good thing, the right thing. Can
you just talk to us about how Anne made it
so none of you could ever really connect with each other.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And so when the connection was attempted, Claire, what she
would do is she would separate you, or she'd punish
you for it, or she'd set you against each other.
So she set herself up as if you tell and
you give me information, I will award you if you
form a relationship with someone which is a hedge against
having a relationship with me that I can control you,
I will destroy that. So two of the girls, Sarah
(22:29):
and Adtoinette, highly intelligent, highly intelligent, they were good friends,
and make sure they were both brutally punished and separated
so they were not with us. In the same version,
they were separate meals. They were made to sleep in
the bathroom by themselves. This happened again and again, this
(22:52):
type of abuse. Soon as you began to form a
relationship with someone had to find it and make sure
it was torn up so you couldn't build a friendship
with them. Because any friendship then means you have an
emotional barrier against puce. Let's be protection. So by stripping
that away, that you then create the direct connection to you.
(23:13):
So she would then take people away with her to
try and form a bond rhythm, and then she would
violate our trust to show that she was in control.
So she's making very clear I control you everything that
happens in your life. I control stone my good side,
we're good. Become my enemy. Your life's not worth living.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Can I ask then about how connected Anne was, because yes,
she threatened people in this kind of spiritual way, but
she could make people's lives difficult in the real world
because when we look at who was attached to the
family back in the seventies and eighties, it was people
that I know, like Reg Ansett, the former owner of
(23:56):
Ansett Airlines, who owned a TV station at the time.
He would reportedly quash any stories that would come out
about the family. There was also connections to possibly even
the Victorian premier at the time, the Liberal Party. There
were doctors, psychiatrists, Like when we think about cult sect members,
we think of really vulnerable people, uneducated who are sucked
(24:18):
in because they know I promised something like the way
that your mum was, but the reality was and was
connected to some really high profile people who helped her
maintain this cult for a really long time.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yes, and that well, I guess was slight unique here
in that she connected with the intelligent intelligensia through Greg Johnson,
so he was the dean of Queen's College. He had
incredible influence and he had his own connections. I mean,
thirty two years of functioning at that level at Queen's
(24:54):
College in Melbourne University brings with it a lot of
tudos and a lot of respectability whenever there are any issues.
She dropped him out whenever there were any problems, and
he had his own connections. A lot of those connections
you spoke of were friends of his. So he was
convinced that Anne was who she claimed to be and
recruited for her. So if it wasn't for him, I
(25:16):
don't think the cult would ever have gone anywhere. It
just would have been this kookie woman who was a
yoga teacher, wielded some spiritual power, helped some people, but
he gave it validity. He gave it respectability and the
connections that came with it. So he would make the
phone calls to his friends and get stuff to happen.
(25:37):
So that was a major, major coup. And any idea,
any movement that starts, they always say this is a
project management one O one. It's the second person who's
the most important. It's not the first leader. The second
person validates it. So you can have someone dancing on
the side of a mountain. There's a large crowd around them,
(26:00):
but it's when someone else joins them, the second person
that validates this person having a dance by themselves and
this is fun. And then you suddenly get a whole
group of people dancing in the meadow. So this was
the key here, and he had incredible influence and to
the day he died, and used him to deflect and
(26:20):
used his connections. And it's interesting he died from the memory,
it would have been February maybe March nineteen eighty seven,
and the cult got raided in August nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Interesting correlation of timeline.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
There isn't it, Yes, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Up Next, Ben reveals how Anne used LSD and other
drugs as a tool to manipulate and control children in
her cult, including him, and described just how far Anne's
influence extended. As I mentioned, some of the high profile
people involved in the cult were doctors and psychiatrists, And
(27:07):
you have mentioned that LSD played quite a role in
the sect members' lives. You didn't get to that point
because there was some kind of age limit put in
place for the children to use LSD, but you were
put on quite a few other prescription medications. Can you
talk to me about why the children were medicated and
(27:27):
how that was weaponized against them at times?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It's a very insightful question. And yes, had psychiatrists, psychologists
around her and what was fascinating. I mean you take
the Wichika and John McKay, they were both psychiatrists that
were and I think Wichika from memory was actually given
(27:58):
the authority by the government to put together a body
that would analyze the effect of self regulation around the
USAID LSD. Once again, we're talking the sixties even now,
psychiatry saying you can microdose on LSD and it can
be beneficial for major mental issues. Well back then the
CIA and we go into it, but I overspeak this,
(28:19):
but LSD was seen as a way to be able
to help people. Okay, comes into Australia supply line. See
the Australian government says, let's have a look at this.
They put witch Care in charge. But he works at
new Haven Hospital and got a connection there with the matron,
has access to all these patients and has access to
LSD and began to utilize this to control people and
(28:44):
threaten people. If you don't fall in line with me,
I'll put you to new Haven Hospital? And did that?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Did she do that to her husband's ex wife?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So that's exactly what happened. She arrived there and was
given appropriate care because she was poor girl. Was tormented
and struggling. So yes, that was done and used that
and look you eat Sarah Moore Sarah Hamilton byrn's book
on Seen Unheard I know, and she documents what she
went through. It's tormenting. I mean a watch was done
(29:17):
to her what she went through. And lester Man who
was responsible for investigating and was put in charge by
the Victorian police. Eventually there are others, but he eventually
was the detective in charge of this. It was able
to erectradda and he did a lot of interviews, hundreds
of hours of interviews, had those tapes his synopsis so on.
(29:38):
Man if she's one of the most evil people that
ever lived. Some of the stuff she did to people
when they were under LSD, Sarah was one of those.
It's nothing short of criminal, nothing short of criminals. She
used it to manipulate, to control. You do that to
a fourteen to sixteen year old when their brains still
be informed. LSD affects the frontal part of the brain
(30:00):
that's not developed to twenty five. You have flashbacks. You
physically assault people with weapons during that time and violate them.
You're going to control people, You're going to really wire them.
You're going to do things to them that are that's wicked,
and that's what I used. She used understood the power
of psychotropics. She understood what she could do with them,
(30:24):
as many spiritual people do. You'll follow many, many religions
throughout the world, and there's the use of lotions and
potions and putting people into an altered state of consciousness
that opens the door. You know, one of the words
of witchcraft is farmer care pharmaceuticals. You're able to get
into an altered state of consciousness where demons can get
(30:45):
in and do things, as well as change the biochemical
neural paths of people, especially the forward of views. So
it was wicked in this. As I said, yes, I
was on medication and to this day, I really don't
know the effect of it. I don't know. I'd know
that I was very photosensitive to light. I know I
was very.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That brings me to my next question, because you talk
about other people getting involved, because other people did ask
questions over the years, and you would have come in
contact with the outside world because you did on occasion
leave the property and interact with the public, but you
were told or scripted things to say to people, and
you were told to remain as unseen, unheard and unknown
(31:28):
as possible. But what would happen if people came to
the property. I know there's that footage of a journalist
in the eighties who's come to ask questions and she says,
are their children here? And they say no, there's no
children here. They deny everything. Where were you guys when
people would come to the property and ask questions downstairs?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So the entry to the property which maimore Channel nine
I believe who's remained a friend for decades after so
she took a real interest begain investigating. She came asked
the questions we were do answer it. There are other times,
especially when I think a girl missing her father ended
up actually going. I think she was taken to New Zealand.
(32:12):
The mother was connected to the cult. He began so
obviously as a father make a lot of noise about that,
and police came looking around. And when that happened, there
was a period of a couple of years I think
where we would get police randomly coming. We were told
what to say to them. We were told we were
to tell them we went to certain schools at night.
(32:33):
We'd be removed from our bed and find ourselves woken up.
Hid it under the house. We go through the boys room,
through a pump room, through a small hole in the wall,
which in the book I've got a bit of a
mudmap of that to show people, and you'd wake up
in the dark, fearful. The police told that they'd take
us away and ran us in the lake with bags
(32:53):
and whatever else, and set up the outside world as
to be a place to be scared of. The authorities
were evil, they were going to hurt us. We were
safe with her, So that was the mentality that we
had the use of psychotropics and the rest to control
the manipulator.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Can we talk about the many faces of nn Hamilton Burne,
because when I first saw a picture of her, she
was not what I expected her to look like. And
when I first saw footage of her, it wasn't what
I expected. Because we are brought up to believe that
evil exists in a monstrous package, and Anne was far
(33:34):
from that. She was beautiful, She was very cultured, she
was very well put together. In footage, she seems very
happy and lighthearted, and she seems really adoring of you
as her children. How do you think she was able
to exist as that person and also as the person
(33:54):
you describe the master manipulator and the one who would
control absolutely.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And they lived side by side the ability with a
sociopath or psychopath. And I think in the book I
try and lay out what other attributes of a psychopath,
and I think I match that this ability where to
live in two worlds. Disability, this awareness of they can
do things to people with no conscience because they see
(34:22):
the end result justifies the means. So most of us
have some level of moral code that says that's off limits,
that's not appropriate. I've just violated someone's face. I've just
taken away their autonomy. You know, I'm a missionary in
an Asia specific nation. There's a default respect for a minister.
(34:44):
That can be very dangerous because therefore it means if
someone's in need, I can use that respect immediately to
control them. So when you build this and it's spoken
about how abuse happens to children, Okay, so you get
an adult that comes in saying I want to help you,
but there's this power base where you can manipulate and
(35:07):
use your power incorrectly. So a sociopath, a psychopath has
no qualms about doing that. They don't think twice. In fact,
they perfect the art of that to realize that the
outcomes I'm after are so important, I don't care the
collateral damage. I see people as a farm to field,
(35:29):
not as an army to equip. I see what I
can get out of them, I see what I can
use to them for my master plan. And they perfect
the art of being able to do that. And that's
how you look at what is a psychopath And then
looking what I did, I said, I believe it, So
I put that in the book, a bit of a chart.
That's what I believe she is and she wants. It's
a great question there, Claire, This ability to be able
(35:49):
to be so warm, so loving, so caring, and yet
at the same time so manipolative. Well, sociopaths psychopaths have
that ability.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You've already mentioned your sisters who ran away or escaped.
Over the years, they would come together and go to
police and tell them that children were definitely being abused
at ky Lama, and in fact they had collected physical,
documented evidence to prove that that was happening, so that
(36:21):
they would not be able to say we checked and
there was nothing happening. They had actual proof. So can
you take us to that day in the eighties, nineteen
eighty seven when you were about to head off to
boarding school. This was your ticket out of ky Lamba, right,
you were ready to roll and all of a sudden
police have surrounded the property.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So that process didn't happen overnight, as you said. So
one of the girls ran away, that was the eldest,
ended up getting herself a job doing what she had
to do another one of them, so she got thrown
out of the culture because her relationship with and had
become quite difficult. She was doing year twelve. She was
living in a down not to set property closer in
(37:05):
Melbourne Upper Frenchuriy Gully, and Anne was controlling her by
removing her access to toilets to function, so she's Her
response had always been one of amellion, that's just how
Sarah functioned. I refused to comply, so she forced a confrontation.
Over the years when Anne was trying to take us
(37:28):
out of the greenhouse and put us into the real world.
The girl she thought the best things finishing school for them,
let them go and learn dancing. So went down to
the Kenlowell's school at the foot hills of Fergi Gully.
I think it was both servily and formed good friendships
with the two sisters. Those two sisters and allowed them
to spend a weekend with them. They realized what they
(37:50):
were going through was horrific, and I think that triggered
their determination. Well, what happened here when Sarah began to
rebel against what Anne was doing, is she invited one
of these girls mothers to a cult property, which unseen
on heard I've known you don't do. She did it
again to force a confrontation and got kicked out, and
so of course she went to live with Kathy Fern.
(38:14):
Kathy's best friend happened to be a lady called Helen Jabond,
who's a prior to investigator, a Christian, who had a
lot of documentation on Anne and began to show that
to help her get her head around. Then another one
of the girls had gone to boarding school, her parents
had given her some money and she was living with
a non cult member going to Brighton Grammar. So the
(38:34):
three of them got together and had asked for the
rule book, which we'd managed to get there down there.
How that worked and yet the day where it happened.
The rule book had been stolen, the ants had realized
things are getting out of control. They'd been stuff going
on and Bill having to burn had been sent back
to calm the farm. See everyone, it's all settled. Your
(38:57):
behavior selves, I'm here. The video that many people saw
man singing was brought back to say she loves us,
We're here and everything's okay. I'm going to come back
for you, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Because she was overseas at the time, and she would
spend a lot of time overseas. She didn't spend a
huge amount of time at Kylam. Her aunt's kind of
handled everything right.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
That's right, And even when she was in Australiay, she'd
spend time day to Melbourne, close to the cult, going
on to side to keep lunch on the different nights,
so we rarely see her anyway. Bill had spent two
weeks with us. He sort of camp stuffed out as
much as possible. We were going to go out on
a housefolk that day, which rarely ever happened. This is incredible,
going to go on a picnic at seven thirty in
(39:35):
the morning, and that's that's the day when the three
girls had gone to the police with the documents, as
she said, they'd realized there was a genuine domestic violence
case happening. So I think it was the CPS, the
community policing squad from not a wanding organized a hundred
police to descend and get us out of there. So,
(39:57):
as you said, my head, by this stage it was
no longer belonde and had been turned to my natural color,
and I knew I was on the fast path to leading.
So we're doing our hathy yoga meditation, we're here running
stand on the steps leading down to where we were
in the boys room downstairs. And thought it might have
been the ants quickly assumed the right position, the right location,
(40:19):
and these strangers turn up and it's on for young
and old. So they had trying to work out what happened.
I think it was one of the girls. I'd have
to think back, but they were there to say, hey,
it's okay, we're here, we're going to help you. Come
out with us. We've got a bus. It's all going
to be okay. We're going to rescue you. So the
thought of being rescued was why would we need to
(40:41):
be rescued? And as you said, I'm planning on leaving anyway.
And so when they took us upstairs out to the bus,
so I remember grabbing a hold of the balustrade at
the top, not letting go, and as I cover the
book there it was I don't know what was going
to my brain. I just throw it. I'm not leaving,
And as you said, I think subconstually I realized I
(41:03):
already had a ticket out of here. Why would I
go with these strangers? And then I think I got
this epiphl or moment of realizing this is the ticket
out of here. So I just I let go and
I went with them, And as we drove away, I
remember saying, you know, a page has been turned. We
finished one chapter, another one's been started, and ended up
being almost without overstaying this, but that's what happened. That's
you know, it was almost like I understood what these
(41:26):
three sisters of mine had done in avert of comments.
So it goes going up with us as they had
rescue us, and now the balls at Arnt Court, what
are we going to do with this? And that night
I'm lying in bed where we're down in the reception center,
I'm on a bunk bed, first time I'd ever been
in one new pajama's brush teeth, I'd eaten a meal,
I've been able to go into a kitchen. I'm free,
and I'm checking through everything I'd said that day, which
(41:48):
is what you did, unseen, unheard, I know, and had
I said something I'd get into trouble for which often
I had in the past. And then I realized, I
don't have to do this anymore. I'm fruit. I don't
need to go back. And that to me was when
I shut the door, when every returning I made a
decision that night, whatever I needed to do a lot
to return, I was going to do. I was never
going back.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Next, Ben shares what happened when he discovered who his
biological mother really was, How we tried to foster a
relationship with her but was immediately shut down. Anne's reign
of terror extending far beyond the reaches of the Kai
Lama property. But then later why that would all change
stay with us. Not long after you are freed, you
(42:36):
speak to your mum really for the first time, freely
speaking to her and understanding how you came to be
in Anne's care. But what was that interaction like, because
you've grown up in a place that has isolated you
for thirteen years, you haven't really known affection. You haven't
really known love, especially not the parental love that is
(42:57):
such a founding thing for most of us in the
creation of who we become as humans later on down
the track, you've been devoid of pretty much all of that.
You speak to your mum, were you hoping in that
moment to get that love and to get that connection
and attachment and tell us what actually happened when you
(43:17):
did speak to her.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
So one hundred percent, Claire, That's exactly what I was
hoping for. When I realized very quickly that Anne was
not my biological mother, great relief. I'm never have to
go back. I'm free. Then anyone around the age also
what I'm fourteen fifteen by that stage at another twenty years,
so anyone between the age of thirty five to fifty five, Lady,
(43:39):
I'm thinking could be my mother? Who could she be?
And hoping for that, you know, hoping for that mood.
I've seen enough movies, I've been enough for an enough
people to know that this, as you said to Bedrock,
foundational thing that we all crave and even me growing up.
I crave that. I crave the love of a mother
and affection and care and validation as a human being,
because that's what a lot of it is. It's this,
(44:00):
it's your being validated as a human being, that you're special,
that you're important, and they helped to shape your character
to direct you done in the promos of love anyway.
So that's what I expected and hopeful when I got
told that my mother was Joy trevellin aren't you Joy?
That was a bad day. That was a very bad day.
(44:20):
And the reason it was a bad day is because
and in her evil genius had set Joy up to
be this person that we all hated. She looked after
the place I had lived in during the week and
would say to different ones of us, come and spend
the week with me. When she was in Australia, she'd
ring Joy, and Joy'd go, no, I don't want to
spend time with me. We'd stay up there. So you
(44:41):
can imagine this woman, as far as we're concerned, is
stopping us from spending time with Anne. We hate her
even though I met her when I was eleven, so
I never met her, but Anne set her up to
be someone to be hated. So when I find out
she's my mother, that's the backgroone. And then yes, shortly
after get a phone call from her in a voice
that I began to learn with Sands, for she put
(45:04):
this voice on when Anne told her say something, and
basically your embarrassment to me, and don't bother turning up
on my doorstep or slammed the door in your face
of everything you've bothered to do that. And the tragedy
with that is that my half brother's twelve years older,
seventeen years older, twenty years older than two of them,
or in fact that the one who's twelve years old.
(45:25):
I had quite a good relationship and had understood that
AD was under controlled her, so we understood this kept
her relationship with her. He was in his mid twenties.
He went to see her and got told I think
I went to see her, or got wrung and said
if he ended up seeing me, she never speaked to
him again. And that's what happened. It's like another one
went to see her in where she's living, talking about
(45:46):
me and got told the same thing. Don't have anything.
You're not to talk to him. I don't have anything
to do with him, his very Fothwright began to challenge
her and just stopped talking about it. John, my father
Peter Shinton was back in Australia, sort of stepped in
when knew him as John Trevellan. He stepped in saying,
you're upsetting her, please stop talking about this, so okay,
(46:08):
and had nothing to do with them, So that shut
down any possibility in me having a relationship with my mother,
which stayed that way until I think I was about
thirty three, so almost twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
How do you, then, Ben, go out into the world
as a free human being. You're a young man, you're
still at school, You're trying to connect with other kids,
I imagine your own age, which would have been incredibly
difficult because you've never connected with kids your own age before,
despite at times being around twenty eight odd of them
on the property at Kilama at any one time. How
(46:46):
do you start to form relationships with people when you
lack the skills to create relationships with people?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Very awkward?
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Clear can imagine they must have thought you such an
oddity when they would first meet you, when you first
were free. I imagine, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And one of those names given to me was psycho
because I was unpredictable. I mean, I'm trying to process
relationships with people. I'm unpredictable. At times, I would struggle
with relating to people. I would get angry very quickly
when things happened. I couldn't control things. I was socially awkward.
Some of them are very kind to me. I mean,
(47:24):
I'd tell one story in the book of a group
of English students that were my peers, that took me
on as a English project on the advice of the
for the English teacher. I was out of some very
kind people, and they did their very best to integrate me,
to help me. But I was an oddity, and I
took a trip around sent Australia, went with a couple
(47:45):
of friends and came back with no one not due
to their fault. I just struggled to relate to people
and connect with them. I lived in such a different world,
with different values and had nothing in common. So I'm
going around Central Australia. I'm in tears. One night things
are blown up and the Peter Frost, the math teacher,
as she said to me, and these your fellow students
(48:07):
had known each other in year eleven for some of
them eleven years, you're a new start, you're awkward, you're struggling,
you need to give it time. I mean they were
sage wise words, but they didn't help me. So I
realized when I came back from that trip, I had
nothing to connect with people like cars, I'd never had
interest in them, sports, I'd never really followed or known.
(48:31):
I had no similar experiences. So I had to work
out how socially awkward I was. And I remember coming
back going, I feel like I'm sinking in a river
and I refuse to do and I'm going to find
out what I need to swim and so whatever it takes,
I'm going to work that out. And I think in
year eleven I repeated it when on did year twelve
(48:51):
sort of struggled through it, struggled with deep depression and
other things. But yeah, I fortunately had a foster mother
who was very very good to me. That helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Your foster mother was also born again Christian, yes, and
faith has become such a big part of the second
chapter of your life, which I find incredibly interesting. And
I hope this is not offensive.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Maine.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It feels like if you were in a cult, why
would you seek religion after finding freedom, because religions are
often spoken about as if they are a cult in
themselves and would require you to fit into a certain
belief pattern and belief system. Was that the reason why
(49:42):
it made sense to you? What was it about faith
and religion that helped you after being so controlled by
somebody up to that point?
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Yes, And I would say it's going to have to
be a bit of a long answer to a very
well thought out question. There's a couple of things here.
First thing is throwing the baby out with a bathwater.
That's part of it. One and did was evil. She
used the name of Christ to give herself validity. She
(50:13):
used a belief system. So what I began to realize
from the shattered perspective of what I'd grown up with,
how do I fix this now? I didn't go looking
for God. I didn't go looking for religion. Many of
us that grew up with this ran to the hills
as you would. You would assimilate anything to do with
someone who's giving you boundaries to live within, to be
(50:37):
destructive and to be evil and to be horrible. But
we all live within boundaries. They're called laws. We all
live with a moral code. I worked at IBM. We
have the one to three nine principle. One vision, three values,
nine practices. So you have a vision, you have values,
you have It bleeds through everything. And I began to
realize that every culture has this underlying a legal tenet cult.
(51:02):
Now what changes them as to whether they're good or
bad is to what they are. What is the belief system?
So why I guess what happened to me becoming a
Christian is I began to realize that God's not evil.
He does exist, he has laid out his word. He
can reach down supernaturally and make a difference in our lives.
And the explanation also is there's a malignant evil force
(51:25):
that's there. Can I see that play out? So study
of history and as this becomes a long, long thing
which we don't have time for today. But I began
to really unpack this, look at what had happened to me,
understand the spiritual influencers behind it. And then God reached out.
I had a vision of Jesus Christ. My foster mother
had had an impact. She didn't talk to me about God,
(51:47):
but I just became curious, began asking questions and Jesus
Christ met me, I had a vision of him. What happened, though,
is I then acted on that, And I think that's
the difference. I had a spiritual experience, but then I
could look at the word of God and could see
that that matched that, and then I began to read
his word, began to live it, began to make it
part of it for my life. So, as I said,
(52:08):
I've just leved that, and it's worked and worked very
very well for me, as it has millions of others.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
While Anne has been nearly six years in her grave,
it might surprise you to know that the cult we
know as the Family still exists, and while it may
not be as influential as it once was, people are
still seduced by its promises, influenced by its teachings, and
controlled by its masters. Thank you to Ben for sharing
his story with us today. His book is called Life
(52:42):
Behind the Wire. Will include a link to it in
our show notes. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me
Claire Murphy and produced by Tarlie Blackman, with audio designed
by Tom Lyin. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be
back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on On a Thursday.
In June twenty nineteen, Anne, a ninety eight year old
former yoga instructor suffering from dementia, passed away in a
Melbourne nursing home. Now, an elderly woman's quiet death in
(00:27):
a suburban aged care facility wouldn't normally garner international press attention,
but the passing of Anne Hamilton Burne made headlines both
here and overseas. Her passing described by a detective who
knew her true identity as the end of the life
of one of Victoria's most evil people. Anne Hamilton Burne
(00:50):
was a leader of the cult known as the Family.
Now you may have seen photos of those children lined
up in perfect symmetry, their hair dyed blindingly bright blonde,
their clothes similar to those worn by children of the
royal family, or the von Traps from the sound of music,
all matching. The boys in velvet blue jumpers, the girls
(01:11):
in floral dresses, knee high socks, and Mary Jane's. These
children were not ants, but they called her mother. Many
adopted from parents who worshiped the woman who claimed she
was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. But when three of
those children escaped and went to police, the world of
(01:32):
the family would come crashing down, leaving those who knew
no other life than one of complete control under the
hand of Anne Hamilton Burne to start over. I'm Claire
Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring
the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people
(01:54):
who know the most about them. If you were to
travel to Lake Elden in Victoria in the sixties, seventies
and eighties, like thousands of Australian families did and still do,
you would find an eye ideally Coustralian setting, a place
you and I would have loved to have set up camp,
with its lush greenery and secluded waterfront property. It was peaceful,
(02:16):
that is until he walked a little further and found
the property known as kay Lama, for the Lake Eilden compound,
with all its tree lined beauty, was also a prison,
wrapped in barbed wire to keep the dozens of children
who would call it home from wandering too far from
the influence of Anne Hamilton burn and the glamorous yoga
(02:38):
teacher to wealthy suburban Melbourne mums. With her polished blond
updew and her shining perfectly touched up lipstick, managed to
convince up to five hundred adult followers to join her
at Lake Hilden and other properties in Melbourne and across
the Dandenong Rangers. She went from teaching them how to
stretch to teaching them about her reincarnation, claiming to be
(02:59):
the embodiment of Jesus Christ. On that Lake Hilden compound,
Hamilton Burne had curated a family gathering children, some of
whom were adopted under suspicious circumstances, whose outward appearance of
cherubic angels or dressed in matching outfits covered up a
life of fear and torment, of drugging, brainwashing, featings, and starvation.
(03:23):
One of those children was Ben Andrew Shanton, who, at
age fifteen, was finally rescued from the clutches of the
cult leader and sent back out into the real world,
with a lifetime of obedience and servitude, punishment and reward
the only things to base his new existence on. Ben
sat down with us to remember his life in the
(03:43):
before and the life he's managed to reclaim and create
in the after Ben, thank you so much for agreeing
to chat to us today. I would like to start
from a point where you're not even in existence yet,
if that's okay with you, Because you were born in
nineteen seventy two and you're a planned pregnancy, but not
(04:07):
in the way that say, parents of twenty twenty five
are probably planning a pregnancy. Can you explain how you
came to be in the first place.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Sure, let me give a very brief overview of a
woman called Anne Hamilton Byrne. She had her own major
issues in life, a broken family, her own mental issues.
She was a control freak, as I cover in the book,
so very much looked to create a world that she
controlled everything. And the sixties bought up a existential threat,
(04:43):
which was nuclear warfare and the belief that Vietnam War
communism flowing through everything. So the Western society was dealing
with issues that they were seeing in their landroums now
on TVs, in newspaper articles that weren't there before. So
it gave in the nineteen sixties in Australia, Melbourne, it
(05:06):
gave an impetus for a belief system of this what
we've been told doesn't work. Let's try something different. So
my mother, as I worked out, became involved in this.
She started going down the path. She had her own
issues in her marriage. As happens. Others say she had
an idyllic marriage Jewish community. Things seemed to be very good.
(05:29):
They were from the outside, everything was fantastic, but she
says it was a very difficult marriage. She had physical
issues to so, having had car accident, had whiplash, had
problems with her spine, and so she had major medical problems.
It gave involved in Hatha yoga. The leader of the
(05:49):
cult started that I was teaching it, and my mother
got involved and then began to experience. At a time
when she went for some back surgery, there was no
twenty twenty five, even fifteen years ago, you able to
do keyhole site to fix the issues with the spine,
take out a little bit of the vertebra and the
(06:11):
nerves of a least back in the sixties, the Mayo clinic,
which she had connections to, had no answers. She was
about to go in for some exploratory service and Burne
knocked on the door. Her eldest son invited her in
and she told my mother, if you follow me, I'll
heal you. And my mother that stage is looking for
(06:31):
an escape out of what she called a loveless marriage.
She's bedridden, in a lot of pain. She's rejected that
her religious groundings, which is Christianity and Jadaism and looking
for Hatha yoga into the occult, and Ann claimed to
be the reincarnation of Jesus, had seen healing happen. She
(06:53):
experienced it. So that was a start in my mother's
life that transitioned away from her own autonomy, her own
family into handing that over. She said that and called
her back from the dead, gave her a new life,
a new start, and a future. Then Anne claimed as
(07:14):
well that the world's going to be destroyed by nuclear warfare,
and you can be part of creating a brand new star.
At the age of Aquarius, which you go back into
the sixties is and the cultic belief that there are
ages and there are booms, the Great White Brotherhood. If
we go back, that will send individuals down that will
(07:36):
rescue society. Give it these shifts. Jesus Christ one, Muhammed's another.
You'll go through all the prophets. They just name these
the different embodiments of them, and then Ann claimed to
be the latest embodiment. So my mother was convinced of
that left a loveless marriage. And then Anne said to her,
you need to have a child that's not a Jewish.
(07:57):
So okay, So the master recarnation of Jesus, the avatar
of Christ, has given her a direction, and so that's
what she did. She shocked up with an Englishman, Peter Shenton,
and I.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Came along so and says to your mother, you need
to have a baby that's not Jewish. So she gets
pregnant with Peter, and then eighteen months later she decides
to say to your mother, hand that baby over. I mean,
(08:35):
you obviously know what happened. Now, can you give us
an idea of like your mom's state of mind when
she's asked to hand over her eighteen month old child.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah. And I've talked to my mom as I built
a relationship with her and set it up so that
she sent my father over to England, back where the
cult functioned as well, turned my mother into a single mother,
asked her to look after one of her properties in
(09:05):
Australia as a care giller, and made it clear that
she could give me the best life possible, far better
than what my mother could. And the other thing in
here is to think of this. If you believe that
your guru has requested something from you and is going
to recreate the world, and your child's been chosen to
(09:27):
be one of those people to do it, that's a
pretty heavy request. You are one of the chosen, your
child have been picked. And as doctor Rayna K. Johnson,
who was the Master of Queen's College, one of the
founding members of the cult, said when he wrote his
memoir on this stuff, is that Anne Hamilton byrne knew
(09:50):
who would be born, who they'd be born to, where
they would be, and would gather these children. So my
mother is convinced her son is one of them who
has been specially selected to restart this world and bring
it into a brand new face.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So whenever we hear or read about the family, it's
often accompanied by that photo of the children lined up
in symmetry, wearing the matching outfits, with all your hair
dyed blonde. When you see yourself in those photos, what
are we seeing in the eyes of yourself, your brothers
(10:31):
and sisters as you're posing in these group shots to
show just how perfect a little family and has created
for herself. Like, what do you see when you look
at those pictures?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, it's it was just life. We were her children,
we were different ages. We'd line up Von Trapp style
the sound of music which we'd watch, dressed in outfits
that matched, and that was just what we want us
to do. And did you look back on that and
you see it's choreographed as you look in at and
(11:02):
I'm the same. And indeed did craft a belief that
she had these children, which she didn't. We were all
either adopted or handed over. So she lived the lies.
She created a lie that shows the level of control
she had over people to be able to present something
that wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Do you believe that she chose to dye your hair
so that you would look more like Anne because Anne
was blonde herself?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Do you think that was the reason, Because there's often
been some discussion around whether Anne was actually trying to
achieve something racial in building this cult, in this army,
and that she wanted a future where it was white
people as the strongest that there was this link to
this Areyan race idea.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I don't know about whether she was going further. Definitely,
the first one's correct. She wore blonde wigs, her hair
was blondish, yes, So I think she was trying to
make us appear like that. Some of the girls and
some of the guys she didn't so they it would
to look like her husband. What was that the third husband,
Bill Hamilton, burn black hair. Her daughter who was her
(12:14):
real daughter, Natasha, she had red hair, so a couple
of them were allowed to have read So I think
she was trying to present that this is what it was.
But running in the background as well, remember as she
was planning on presenting once the world went through the
nuclear holocaust, this group of children that were not going
to be children by them, by adults that were going
(12:35):
to take the world over and recreate everything. So how
that was going to happen? Good luck without it never happened,
thank god, But that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
What's really interesting when you talk about the plan, because
we all presume that in a cult, the cult leader
would want their followers to be as uninformed as possible.
They want them to believe only what they tell them.
But from what I was reading in your book and
from interviews that you've done, previously I realized you were
all very well educated, like to a point where when
(13:08):
you got older, a lot of you were sent off
to boarding schools in England, where you said the other
part of the cult was functioning, Like why educate you
so well?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I think the failure here is you didn't realize that
knowledge is power. But what was fascinating, though, is that
we'd often get newspaper articles or newspapers with articles cut out,
so we were getting filtered information given to us. Everything
that came in was monitored controlled. So part of any
culture is you control the narrative. Now that sounds all freaky,
(13:45):
but it happens all the time. Editors decide what goes
into papers you've got. I guess nowadays it's a lot
easier to get information out there, but there were gatekeepers,
and so every culture has gatekeepers. They even in my
own home, there were things that I would elevate us
good that I wanted my kids to do. If they
did it, I'd reward them and say this is good,
(14:07):
would celebrate their successes. And if there were failures, they
didn't get talked about. All the time they were dealt with.
You would work through those, but they weren't elevated as
something we'd always talk about. So every healthy culture and
unhealthy ones, they control the narrative. So I did the
same thing. What I think she missed, though, is that
the more intelligent and the more information you give people,
(14:29):
then they can analyze and criticize. And I think that's
the piece she missed, is you look back on it. Yes,
dumbing people down so they don't question is one way
to handle it. But then you can't. There's no critical thinking,
there's no ability to be able to manage stuff. So
I think she wasn't as smart as she thought she was.
So how I speak about it is she did a
(14:51):
very good job of bringing the plants up in the greenhouse,
but she never thought how they're going to function once
you put them out of the world. So she had
a plan. She carefully crafted them, made the perfect environment
to make sure that these plants were going to be
good and shong, But when it came to getting them
out into the world, abject failure in almost every case.
(15:12):
And I just don't think she thought through that.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I read about how your days were structured at Ki Lama,
and from an outsider's perspective, it seems like a very
healthy and well rounded way to live. You get up early,
you do yoga, you have a vegetarian breakfast, you meditate,
you are educated. At your homeschooling, there's more meditation, lunches
(15:37):
again vegetarian, and then there's maybe more yoga. It seems
like a really healthy way to bring up a child.
But can you tell us what was happening in those days?
Because it was very monotonous, right, It was the same
thing pretty much day in day out. Yes, what was
that like for you just to go through those motions
every single day? Because you were doing that for thirteen years?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yes, and monotonous is correct. Now you then have the
underlying education. You're then doing critical analysis. You're then realizing
this is not the best is slowly, bit by bit
information starts to filter in of what was around us,
what society had happened, and then you start to study
World War one, World War two history, concentration camps who
(16:24):
we'd call ourselves a concentration camp, who begin to join
the dots. So this was the challenge, and then some
of the girls in there and talk about Sarah went
on became a doctor. As another girl there who studied
psychology others had businesses, I mean buying large a group
of quite intelligent people, and that would be the synopsis
(16:45):
of a lot of us that when we were pulled out,
there was an element of intelligence there. So with that
came frustration anger. So we all responded differently, and everyone
does respond to environment differently. Two of the youngest ones,
for example, their body stopped producing growth all ones, so
they were underweight height and that's called psychosomatic dwarfism, so
(17:09):
the body when it's under long term emotional stress will
just stop producing growth hormones. And then when they were removed,
they went up to stand and height standard way, so
there's that response. My response was complete compliance. As you
read in the book there. I made a decision early on.
We're all dragged into a room. Someone's broken the rules,
(17:30):
stolen something that they shouldn't have. I can't even remember
what it was, but we're all interrogated who did this?
Whoever doesn't say you're all going to get punished, and
I just decide I did it just because I don't
want to live with that fit, and then I walk
out after that, I'm not going to do this if
I know if someone's done this, I have this inbuilt
sense of justice in me. That can be useful. It
(17:52):
can also be very difficult get us into trouble. But
this inbuilt sense of right and wrong. So if I
knew someone had done wrong, even though wrong was in
a rule book, that you and I might look at
that going knowing that's not wrong, that's harsh rule, but
that was the rules. That was the morals to fined
for me. So when they were broken, I would tell
(18:12):
on who did it, and that created an incredible tension.
So there was this underlying responses to how we all
handled it. Some outly rebelled, some completely complied, Some had
physical issues of just shutting themselves down emotionally. Others lived
in a fantasy world, I mean there was and others
just held themselves And I one of the girls, she
(18:34):
just said, I just held myself as to who I
was and almost rocking back and forward. I didn't allow
myself to feel things. So there was very different responses.
So that underlying clashes of how things happened created a
very toxic environment.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
To say the least, you mentioned the rule book. Can
you give us an idea of what this is because
you talk about it in an abstract way, but it
was a literal, physical rule book that Anne had created
and had attached punishments to rules that were broken, and
they were physical signed off, like actually her signature on
the bottom of these pages to say that this is
(19:10):
what the process is if you do breakstead rule. Can
you give me an idea of what was in that
rule book and the punishments that would apply to those things?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Okay, So some of those things would be if someone
was to wet their bed, they would get cold shower,
miss out on meals. That would be one. If someone
was to answer back to one of the caregivers we
call them aunts and uncles. They were doing what was
called guru savor service to the master two weeks on,
two weeks off. For a lot of the ants. They
(19:39):
were very regimented on what we could and couldn't do
with them if we answered back. Punishments were defined and
then Anne wouldn't make them up as she went. There
was a period of time there where it was a
rule book said you would be dunked in water if
you disobey if you steal. So there's you read the
book at stories of two occasions there where vitamin c's
(20:02):
got stolen. The rule book said that's belting, that dunking
in water. So that's what happened in that time.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And when you say dunking and water, it doesn't mean
just throwing you in the lake. You were held head
first underwater, right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yes, yes, so it would be called water torture. So
it was we were all lined up, we were belted
a bucket of water. I had held under the bucket
of water. Interrogan, did you do this? No, I didn't
head under, hold there until you thought you were suffocating,
brought back out again. So horrendous, horrendous experience. There's no
two ways. I mean, it caused nightmares, caused major issues.
(20:42):
These things shape your personality, is what happened. And anyone
who's lived under domestic violence will know the living with fear,
the walking on eggshells, the coing favor with those in
authority or the absolute rejection of them, the hatred of them,
the love hate relationship. I mean, it says a setus.
I've lived life and started dealing with people. You go, yes,
(21:03):
this is domestic abuse on steroids. Tragically, many women and
indeed some men go for It's not just many women
and children live with this, so it wise you were
a certain way that you end up with pathologies that
Anne used to control us. And this was the evil
genius of her. She understood if she could separate us,
(21:23):
isolate us, make it so that we couldn't build relationships
with one another, and punish us, then she could control us.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Can you tell me about how she would make you
compliant in the punishment process. Saw an interview that you
did where you got quite emotional when you talked about
telling on a brother who had respiratory problems and then
he would end up locked in cold dark sheds and
you know, would be suffering for days on end. And
now that you reflect on that, you understand how awful
(21:54):
that is. But at the time, yes, you felt like
you were doing a good thing, the right thing. Can
you just talk to us about how Anne made it
so none of you could ever really connect with each other.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
And so when the connection was attempted, Claire, what she
would do is she would separate you, or she'd punish
you for it, or she'd set you against each other.
So she set herself up as if you tell and
you give me information, I will award you if you
form a relationship with someone which is a hedge against
having a relationship with me that I can control you,
I will destroy that. So two of the girls, Sarah
(22:29):
and Adtoinette, highly intelligent, highly intelligent, they were good friends,
and make sure they were both brutally punished and separated
so they were not with us. In the same version,
they were separate meals. They were made to sleep in
the bathroom by themselves. This happened again and again, this
(22:52):
type of abuse. Soon as you began to form a
relationship with someone had to find it and make sure
it was torn up so you couldn't build a friendship
with them. Because any friendship then means you have an
emotional barrier against puce. Let's be protection. So by stripping
that away, that you then create the direct connection to you.
(23:13):
So she would then take people away with her to
try and form a bond rhythm, and then she would
violate our trust to show that she was in control.
So she's making very clear I control you everything that
happens in your life. I control stone my good side,
we're good. Become my enemy. Your life's not worth living.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Can I ask then about how connected Anne was, because yes,
she threatened people in this kind of spiritual way, but
she could make people's lives difficult in the real world
because when we look at who was attached to the
family back in the seventies and eighties, it was people
that I know, like Reg Ansett, the former owner of
(23:56):
Ansett Airlines, who owned a TV station at the time.
He would reportedly quash any stories that would come out
about the family. There was also connections to possibly even
the Victorian premier at the time, the Liberal Party. There
were doctors, psychiatrists, Like when we think about cult sect members,
we think of really vulnerable people, uneducated who are sucked
(24:18):
in because they know I promised something like the way
that your mum was, but the reality was and was
connected to some really high profile people who helped her
maintain this cult for a really long time.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yes, and that well, I guess was slight unique here
in that she connected with the intelligent intelligensia through Greg Johnson,
so he was the dean of Queen's College. He had
incredible influence and he had his own connections. I mean,
thirty two years of functioning at that level at Queen's
(24:54):
College in Melbourne University brings with it a lot of
tudos and a lot of respectability whenever there are any issues.
She dropped him out whenever there were any problems, and
he had his own connections. A lot of those connections
you spoke of were friends of his. So he was
convinced that Anne was who she claimed to be and
recruited for her. So if it wasn't for him, I
(25:16):
don't think the cult would ever have gone anywhere. It
just would have been this kookie woman who was a
yoga teacher, wielded some spiritual power, helped some people, but
he gave it validity. He gave it respectability and the
connections that came with it. So he would make the
phone calls to his friends and get stuff to happen.
(25:37):
So that was a major, major coup. And any idea,
any movement that starts, they always say this is a
project management one O one. It's the second person who's
the most important. It's not the first leader. The second
person validates it. So you can have someone dancing on
the side of a mountain. There's a large crowd around them,
(26:00):
but it's when someone else joins them, the second person
that validates this person having a dance by themselves and
this is fun. And then you suddenly get a whole
group of people dancing in the meadow. So this was
the key here, and he had incredible influence and to
the day he died, and used him to deflect and
(26:20):
used his connections. And it's interesting he died from the memory,
it would have been February maybe March nineteen eighty seven,
and the cult got raided in August nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Interesting correlation of timeline.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
There isn't it, Yes, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Up Next, Ben reveals how Anne used LSD and other
drugs as a tool to manipulate and control children in
her cult, including him, and described just how far Anne's
influence extended. As I mentioned, some of the high profile
people involved in the cult were doctors and psychiatrists, And
(27:07):
you have mentioned that LSD played quite a role in
the sect members' lives. You didn't get to that point
because there was some kind of age limit put in
place for the children to use LSD, but you were
put on quite a few other prescription medications. Can you
talk to me about why the children were medicated and
(27:27):
how that was weaponized against them at times?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It's a very insightful question. And yes, had psychiatrists, psychologists
around her and what was fascinating. I mean you take
the Wichika and John McKay, they were both psychiatrists that
were and I think Wichika from memory was actually given
(27:58):
the authority by the government to put together a body
that would analyze the effect of self regulation around the
USAID LSD. Once again, we're talking the sixties even now,
psychiatry saying you can microdose on LSD and it can
be beneficial for major mental issues. Well back then the
CIA and we go into it, but I overspeak this,
(28:19):
but LSD was seen as a way to be able
to help people. Okay, comes into Australia supply line. See
the Australian government says, let's have a look at this.
They put witch Care in charge. But he works at
new Haven Hospital and got a connection there with the matron,
has access to all these patients and has access to
LSD and began to utilize this to control people and
(28:44):
threaten people. If you don't fall in line with me,
I'll put you to new Haven Hospital? And did that?
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Did she do that to her husband's ex wife?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So that's exactly what happened. She arrived there and was
given appropriate care because she was poor girl. Was tormented
and struggling. So yes, that was done and used that
and look you eat Sarah Moore Sarah Hamilton byrn's book
on Seen Unheard I know, and she documents what she
went through. It's tormenting. I mean a watch was done
(29:17):
to her what she went through. And lester Man who
was responsible for investigating and was put in charge by
the Victorian police. Eventually there are others, but he eventually
was the detective in charge of this. It was able
to erectradda and he did a lot of interviews, hundreds
of hours of interviews, had those tapes his synopsis so on.
(29:38):
Man if she's one of the most evil people that
ever lived. Some of the stuff she did to people
when they were under LSD, Sarah was one of those.
It's nothing short of criminal, nothing short of criminals. She
used it to manipulate, to control. You do that to
a fourteen to sixteen year old when their brains still
be informed. LSD affects the frontal part of the brain
(30:00):
that's not developed to twenty five. You have flashbacks. You
physically assault people with weapons during that time and violate them.
You're going to control people, You're going to really wire them.
You're going to do things to them that are that's wicked,
and that's what I used. She used understood the power
of psychotropics. She understood what she could do with them,
(30:24):
as many spiritual people do. You'll follow many, many religions
throughout the world, and there's the use of lotions and
potions and putting people into an altered state of consciousness
that opens the door. You know, one of the words
of witchcraft is farmer care pharmaceuticals. You're able to get
into an altered state of consciousness where demons can get
(30:45):
in and do things, as well as change the biochemical
neural paths of people, especially the forward of views. So
it was wicked in this. As I said, yes, I
was on medication and to this day, I really don't
know the effect of it. I don't know. I'd know
that I was very photosensitive to light. I know I
was very.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
That brings me to my next question, because you talk
about other people getting involved, because other people did ask
questions over the years, and you would have come in
contact with the outside world because you did on occasion
leave the property and interact with the public, but you
were told or scripted things to say to people, and
you were told to remain as unseen, unheard and unknown
(31:28):
as possible. But what would happen if people came to
the property. I know there's that footage of a journalist
in the eighties who's come to ask questions and she says,
are their children here? And they say no, there's no
children here. They deny everything. Where were you guys when
people would come to the property and ask questions downstairs?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So the entry to the property which maimore Channel nine
I believe who's remained a friend for decades after so
she took a real interest begain investigating. She came asked
the questions we were do answer it. There are other times,
especially when I think a girl missing her father ended
up actually going. I think she was taken to New Zealand.
(32:12):
The mother was connected to the cult. He began so
obviously as a father make a lot of noise about that,
and police came looking around. And when that happened, there
was a period of a couple of years I think
where we would get police randomly coming. We were told
what to say to them. We were told we were
to tell them we went to certain schools at night.
(32:33):
We'd be removed from our bed and find ourselves woken up.
Hid it under the house. We go through the boys room,
through a pump room, through a small hole in the wall,
which in the book I've got a bit of a
mudmap of that to show people, and you'd wake up
in the dark, fearful. The police told that they'd take
us away and ran us in the lake with bags
(32:53):
and whatever else, and set up the outside world as
to be a place to be scared of. The authorities
were evil, they were going to hurt us. We were
safe with her, So that was the mentality that we
had the use of psychotropics and the rest to control
the manipulator.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Can we talk about the many faces of nn Hamilton Burne,
because when I first saw a picture of her, she
was not what I expected her to look like. And
when I first saw footage of her, it wasn't what
I expected. Because we are brought up to believe that
evil exists in a monstrous package, and Anne was far
(33:34):
from that. She was beautiful, She was very cultured, she
was very well put together. In footage, she seems very
happy and lighthearted, and she seems really adoring of you
as her children. How do you think she was able
to exist as that person and also as the person
(33:54):
you describe the master manipulator and the one who would
control absolutely.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And they lived side by side the ability with a
sociopath or psychopath. And I think in the book I
try and lay out what other attributes of a psychopath,
and I think I match that this ability where to
live in two worlds. Disability, this awareness of they can
do things to people with no conscience because they see
(34:22):
the end result justifies the means. So most of us
have some level of moral code that says that's off limits,
that's not appropriate. I've just violated someone's face. I've just
taken away their autonomy. You know, I'm a missionary in
an Asia specific nation. There's a default respect for a minister.
(34:44):
That can be very dangerous because therefore it means if
someone's in need, I can use that respect immediately to
control them. So when you build this and it's spoken
about how abuse happens to children, Okay, so you get
an adult that comes in saying I want to help you,
but there's this power base where you can manipulate and
(35:07):
use your power incorrectly. So a sociopath, a psychopath has
no qualms about doing that. They don't think twice. In fact,
they perfect the art of that to realize that the
outcomes I'm after are so important, I don't care the
collateral damage. I see people as a farm to field,
(35:29):
not as an army to equip. I see what I
can get out of them, I see what I can
use to them for my master plan. And they perfect
the art of being able to do that. And that's
how you look at what is a psychopath And then
looking what I did, I said, I believe it, So
I put that in the book, a bit of a chart.
That's what I believe she is and she wants. It's
a great question there, Claire, This ability to be able
(35:49):
to be so warm, so loving, so caring, and yet
at the same time so manipolative. Well, sociopaths psychopaths have
that ability.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You've already mentioned your sisters who ran away or escaped.
Over the years, they would come together and go to
police and tell them that children were definitely being abused
at ky Lama, and in fact they had collected physical,
documented evidence to prove that that was happening, so that
(36:21):
they would not be able to say we checked and
there was nothing happening. They had actual proof. So can
you take us to that day in the eighties, nineteen
eighty seven when you were about to head off to
boarding school. This was your ticket out of ky Lamba, right,
you were ready to roll and all of a sudden
police have surrounded the property.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
So that process didn't happen overnight, as you said. So
one of the girls ran away, that was the eldest,
ended up getting herself a job doing what she had
to do another one of them, so she got thrown
out of the culture because her relationship with and had
become quite difficult. She was doing year twelve. She was
living in a down not to set property closer in
(37:05):
Melbourne Upper Frenchuriy Gully, and Anne was controlling her by
removing her access to toilets to function, so she's Her
response had always been one of amellion, that's just how
Sarah functioned. I refused to comply, so she forced a confrontation.
Over the years when Anne was trying to take us
(37:28):
out of the greenhouse and put us into the real world.
The girl she thought the best things finishing school for them,
let them go and learn dancing. So went down to
the Kenlowell's school at the foot hills of Fergi Gully.
I think it was both servily and formed good friendships
with the two sisters. Those two sisters and allowed them
to spend a weekend with them. They realized what they
(37:50):
were going through was horrific, and I think that triggered
their determination. Well, what happened here when Sarah began to
rebel against what Anne was doing, is she invited one
of these girls mothers to a cult property, which unseen
on heard I've known you don't do. She did it
again to force a confrontation and got kicked out, and
so of course she went to live with Kathy Fern.
(38:14):
Kathy's best friend happened to be a lady called Helen Jabond,
who's a prior to investigator, a Christian, who had a
lot of documentation on Anne and began to show that
to help her get her head around. Then another one
of the girls had gone to boarding school, her parents
had given her some money and she was living with
a non cult member going to Brighton Grammar. So the
(38:34):
three of them got together and had asked for the
rule book, which we'd managed to get there down there.
How that worked and yet the day where it happened.
The rule book had been stolen, the ants had realized
things are getting out of control. They'd been stuff going
on and Bill having to burn had been sent back
to calm the farm. See everyone, it's all settled. Your
(38:57):
behavior selves, I'm here. The video that many people saw
man singing was brought back to say she loves us,
We're here and everything's okay. I'm going to come back
for you, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Because she was overseas at the time, and she would
spend a lot of time overseas. She didn't spend a
huge amount of time at Kylam. Her aunt's kind of
handled everything right.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
That's right, And even when she was in Australiay, she'd
spend time day to Melbourne, close to the cult, going
on to side to keep lunch on the different nights,
so we rarely see her anyway. Bill had spent two
weeks with us. He sort of camp stuffed out as
much as possible. We were going to go out on
a housefolk that day, which rarely ever happened. This is incredible,
going to go on a picnic at seven thirty in
(39:35):
the morning, and that's that's the day when the three
girls had gone to the police with the documents, as
she said, they'd realized there was a genuine domestic violence
case happening. So I think it was the CPS, the
community policing squad from not a wanding organized a hundred
police to descend and get us out of there. So,
(39:57):
as you said, my head, by this stage it was
no longer belonde and had been turned to my natural color,
and I knew I was on the fast path to leading.
So we're doing our hathy yoga meditation, we're here running
stand on the steps leading down to where we were
in the boys room downstairs. And thought it might have
been the ants quickly assumed the right position, the right location,
(40:19):
and these strangers turn up and it's on for young
and old. So they had trying to work out what happened.
I think it was one of the girls. I'd have
to think back, but they were there to say, hey,
it's okay, we're here, we're going to help you. Come
out with us. We've got a bus. It's all going
to be okay. We're going to rescue you. So the
thought of being rescued was why would we need to
(40:41):
be rescued? And as you said, I'm planning on leaving anyway.
And so when they took us upstairs out to the bus,
so I remember grabbing a hold of the balustrade at
the top, not letting go, and as I cover the
book there it was I don't know what was going
to my brain. I just throw it. I'm not leaving,
And as you said, I think subconstually I realized I
(41:03):
already had a ticket out of here. Why would I
go with these strangers? And then I think I got
this epiphl or moment of realizing this is the ticket
out of here. So I just I let go and
I went with them, And as we drove away, I
remember saying, you know, a page has been turned. We
finished one chapter, another one's been started, and ended up
being almost without overstaying this, but that's what happened. That's
you know, it was almost like I understood what these
(41:26):
three sisters of mine had done in avert of comments.
So it goes going up with us as they had
rescue us, and now the balls at Arnt Court, what
are we going to do with this? And that night
I'm lying in bed where we're down in the reception center,
I'm on a bunk bed, first time I'd ever been
in one new pajama's brush teeth, I'd eaten a meal,
I've been able to go into a kitchen. I'm free,
and I'm checking through everything I'd said that day, which
(41:48):
is what you did, unseen, unheard, I know, and had
I said something I'd get into trouble for which often
I had in the past. And then I realized, I
don't have to do this anymore. I'm fruit. I don't
need to go back. And that to me was when
I shut the door, when every returning I made a
decision that night, whatever I needed to do a lot
to return, I was going to do. I was never
going back.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Next, Ben shares what happened when he discovered who his
biological mother really was, How we tried to foster a
relationship with her but was immediately shut down. Anne's reign
of terror extending far beyond the reaches of the Kai
Lama property. But then later why that would all change
stay with us. Not long after you are freed, you
(42:36):
speak to your mum really for the first time, freely
speaking to her and understanding how you came to be
in Anne's care. But what was that interaction like, because
you've grown up in a place that has isolated you
for thirteen years, you haven't really known affection. You haven't
really known love, especially not the parental love that is
(42:57):
such a founding thing for most of us in the
creation of who we become as humans later on down
the track, you've been devoid of pretty much all of that.
You speak to your mum, were you hoping in that
moment to get that love and to get that connection
and attachment and tell us what actually happened when you
(43:17):
did speak to her.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
So one hundred percent, Claire, That's exactly what I was
hoping for. When I realized very quickly that Anne was
not my biological mother, great relief. I'm never have to
go back. I'm free. Then anyone around the age also
what I'm fourteen fifteen by that stage at another twenty years,
so anyone between the age of thirty five to fifty five, Lady,
(43:39):
I'm thinking could be my mother? Who could she be?
And hoping for that, you know, hoping for that mood.
I've seen enough movies, I've been enough for an enough
people to know that this, as you said to Bedrock,
foundational thing that we all crave and even me growing up.
I crave that. I crave the love of a mother
and affection and care and validation as a human being,
because that's what a lot of it is. It's this,
(44:00):
it's your being validated as a human being, that you're special,
that you're important, and they helped to shape your character
to direct you done in the promos of love anyway.
So that's what I expected and hopeful when I got
told that my mother was Joy trevellin aren't you Joy?
That was a bad day. That was a very bad day.
(44:20):
And the reason it was a bad day is because
and in her evil genius had set Joy up to
be this person that we all hated. She looked after
the place I had lived in during the week and
would say to different ones of us, come and spend
the week with me. When she was in Australia, she'd
ring Joy, and Joy'd go, no, I don't want to
spend time with me. We'd stay up there. So you
(44:41):
can imagine this woman, as far as we're concerned, is
stopping us from spending time with Anne. We hate her
even though I met her when I was eleven, so
I never met her, but Anne set her up to
be someone to be hated. So when I find out
she's my mother, that's the backgroone. And then yes, shortly
after get a phone call from her in a voice
that I began to learn with Sands, for she put
(45:04):
this voice on when Anne told her say something, and
basically your embarrassment to me, and don't bother turning up
on my doorstep or slammed the door in your face
of everything you've bothered to do that. And the tragedy
with that is that my half brother's twelve years older,
seventeen years older, twenty years older than two of them,
or in fact that the one who's twelve years old.
(45:25):
I had quite a good relationship and had understood that
AD was under controlled her, so we understood this kept
her relationship with her. He was in his mid twenties.
He went to see her and got told I think
I went to see her, or got wrung and said
if he ended up seeing me, she never speaked to
him again. And that's what happened. It's like another one
went to see her in where she's living, talking about
(45:46):
me and got told the same thing. Don't have anything.
You're not to talk to him. I don't have anything
to do with him, his very Fothwright began to challenge
her and just stopped talking about it. John, my father
Peter Shinton was back in Australia, sort of stepped in
when knew him as John Trevellan. He stepped in saying,
you're upsetting her, please stop talking about this, so okay,
(46:08):
and had nothing to do with them, So that shut
down any possibility in me having a relationship with my mother,
which stayed that way until I think I was about
thirty three, so almost twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
How do you, then, Ben, go out into the world
as a free human being. You're a young man, you're
still at school, You're trying to connect with other kids,
I imagine your own age, which would have been incredibly
difficult because you've never connected with kids your own age before,
despite at times being around twenty eight odd of them
on the property at Kilama at any one time. How
(46:46):
do you start to form relationships with people when you
lack the skills to create relationships with people?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Very awkward?
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Clear can imagine they must have thought you such an
oddity when they would first meet you, when you first
were free. I imagine, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And one of those names given to me was psycho
because I was unpredictable. I mean, I'm trying to process
relationships with people. I'm unpredictable. At times, I would struggle
with relating to people. I would get angry very quickly
when things happened. I couldn't control things. I was socially awkward.
Some of them are very kind to me. I mean,
(47:24):
I'd tell one story in the book of a group
of English students that were my peers, that took me
on as a English project on the advice of the
for the English teacher. I was out of some very
kind people, and they did their very best to integrate me,
to help me. But I was an oddity, and I
took a trip around sent Australia, went with a couple
(47:45):
of friends and came back with no one not due
to their fault. I just struggled to relate to people
and connect with them. I lived in such a different world,
with different values and had nothing in common. So I'm
going around Central Australia. I'm in tears. One night things
are blown up and the Peter Frost, the math teacher,
as she said to me, and these your fellow students
(48:07):
had known each other in year eleven for some of
them eleven years, you're a new start, you're awkward, you're struggling,
you need to give it time. I mean they were
sage wise words, but they didn't help me. So I
realized when I came back from that trip, I had
nothing to connect with people like cars, I'd never had
interest in them, sports, I'd never really followed or known.
(48:31):
I had no similar experiences. So I had to work
out how socially awkward I was. And I remember coming
back going, I feel like I'm sinking in a river
and I refuse to do and I'm going to find
out what I need to swim and so whatever it takes,
I'm going to work that out. And I think in
year eleven I repeated it when on did year twelve
(48:51):
sort of struggled through it, struggled with deep depression and
other things. But yeah, I fortunately had a foster mother
who was very very good to me. That helped a lot.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Your foster mother was also born again Christian, yes, and
faith has become such a big part of the second
chapter of your life, which I find incredibly interesting. And
I hope this is not offensive.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Maine.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It feels like if you were in a cult, why
would you seek religion after finding freedom, because religions are
often spoken about as if they are a cult in
themselves and would require you to fit into a certain
belief pattern and belief system. Was that the reason why
(49:42):
it made sense to you? What was it about faith
and religion that helped you after being so controlled by
somebody up to that point?
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Yes, And I would say it's going to have to
be a bit of a long answer to a very
well thought out question. There's a couple of things here.
First thing is throwing the baby out with a bathwater.
That's part of it. One and did was evil. She
used the name of Christ to give herself validity. She
(50:13):
used a belief system. So what I began to realize
from the shattered perspective of what I'd grown up with,
how do I fix this now? I didn't go looking
for God. I didn't go looking for religion. Many of
us that grew up with this ran to the hills
as you would. You would assimilate anything to do with
someone who's giving you boundaries to live within, to be
(50:37):
destructive and to be evil and to be horrible. But
we all live within boundaries. They're called laws. We all
live with a moral code. I worked at IBM. We
have the one to three nine principle. One vision, three values,
nine practices. So you have a vision, you have values,
you have It bleeds through everything. And I began to
realize that every culture has this underlying a legal tenet cult.
(51:02):
Now what changes them as to whether they're good or
bad is to what they are. What is the belief system?
So why I guess what happened to me becoming a
Christian is I began to realize that God's not evil.
He does exist, he has laid out his word. He
can reach down supernaturally and make a difference in our lives.
And the explanation also is there's a malignant evil force
(51:25):
that's there. Can I see that play out? So study
of history and as this becomes a long, long thing
which we don't have time for today. But I began
to really unpack this, look at what had happened to me,
understand the spiritual influencers behind it. And then God reached out.
I had a vision of Jesus Christ. My foster mother
had had an impact. She didn't talk to me about God,
(51:47):
but I just became curious, began asking questions and Jesus
Christ met me, I had a vision of him. What happened, though,
is I then acted on that, And I think that's
the difference. I had a spiritual experience, but then I
could look at the word of God and could see
that that matched that, and then I began to read
his word, began to live it, began to make it
part of it for my life. So, as I said,
(52:08):
I've just leved that, and it's worked and worked very
very well for me, as it has millions of others.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
While Anne has been nearly six years in her grave,
it might surprise you to know that the cult we
know as the Family still exists, and while it may
not be as influential as it once was, people are
still seduced by its promises, influenced by its teachings, and
controlled by its masters. Thank you to Ben for sharing
his story with us today. His book is called Life
(52:42):
Behind the Wire. Will include a link to it in
our show notes. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me
Claire Murphy and produced by Tarlie Blackman, with audio designed
by Tom Lyin. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be
back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
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