Some people believed that Anne Hamilton-Byrne she was just a yoga teacher with a penchant for plastic surgery. They saw her with her face stretched, without wrinkles. And they thought that was their greatest pleasure in life. Try to defeat the passage of time. To others, she was the evil leader of The Family, an apocalyptic cult with some 500 followers and more than 28 children who had been torn from their homes. Many of those kids were newborns of single mothers tricked into thinking their babies would go to good homes, some were stolen.
Now, those children grew up and denounced Hamilton-Byrne’s attempt to construct a perfect race through a group of children, some of whom were forced to dye their hair blonde, were raised isolated from the world and with LSD as part of an initiation ritual.
For almost three decades, Anne put together this organization that hid its most disturbing activities in broad daylight, on the outskirts of MelbourneAustralia. This woman claimed that she was the reincarnation of Christ and convinced her followers that she was destined to save the world. Although the group he led Hamilton-Byrne was known as The Familythe name contrasts with the systematic abuses, indoctrination and cruel manipulations that marked its members forever.
Before becoming a cult leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne—who was born Evelyn Edwards in 1921—had a childhood marked by instability and abandonment. His mother, diagnosed with paranoid schizophreniadied hospitalized in a sanatorium. Her father, unable to take care of his daughter, let her spend much of her childhood in orphanages, aimlessly, until fate took her to Melbourne, where her life would take an unexpected turn. Married young, she was widowed after the death of her husband in an accident, and shortly afterward she gave birth to an only son. It was in those years that Anne found in the yoga not just a refuge, but a tool of power. Still unknown in the West, this activity fascinated Anne, who began teaching it to middle-class women who were looking for something more in their daily lives.
In the 1960s, the fashion for Eastern mysticism and alternative spirituality was beginning to gain ground in the West. One of the premises of that decade was the classic initiation trip to India. Anne knew how to capitalize on this trend. His life took a turn in 1963, when he met the physicist Raynor Johnsona scientist with fame in academic circles who was impressed by Hamilton-Byrne’s charisma. He used to describe his wife as “the wisest, calmest, most generous soul I had ever met.” The man, who sought spiritual answers beyond science, came to see in her the guidance he longed for and became her first recruiter for The Family.
Anne used Santiniken, Johnson’s camp on the outskirts of Melbourne, as a convention center and spiritual refuge. There, he organized weekly meetings to indoctrinate his followers. In his speeches, he mixed teachings from Hinduism, Buddhism y Christianityand slowly convinced her group that she was a divine incarnation at the level of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna. Once under his influence, his followers began to give him not only their faith, but also their material goods. By 1968, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was already accumulating fortunes, property and almost absolute control of her disciples.
For Hamilton-Byrne, her mission on Earth included creating a “master race” that embodied her ideals, and that plan had to begin with children. Because of their ancestry over doctors, lawyers, and nurses who were members of their sect, obtaining children for this purpose was surprisingly easy. Some came from other members of The Family and others were adopted illegally. For these maneuvers they used falsified documents and the help of corrupt doctors. In total, 28 children were taken, who were forced to believe that Anne was their biological mother.
These children were completely isolated from the outside world. Their first and last names were changed to Hamilton-Byrne and their hair was dyed blonde, in an effort to make them look like a unified and “perfect” “family.” Her life was spent under the control of women called “aunts”, adults loyal to Anne who took care of the minors. According to the story of Sarah Mooreone of the survivors who had been born into the cult, “Hamilton-Byrne had an obsession with creating perfect children with impeccable clothes, well-groomed blonde hair and no expression of individuality or rebellion.”
For the minors, however, life in La Familia was a nightmare. Any act of insubordination was severely punished. Either they were left without food or they were beaten by Anne with one of her stiletto shoes. Dave Whitaker, another of the children raised within the cult, remembers that everything was fine, as long as Anne’s every word was obeyed. “He wasn’t someone to argue with. There is only one rule: do absolutely everything she tells you,” Whitaker admits many years later, now safe from Anne’s gaze.
Anne’s control over the children was not limited to physical punishment; He also resorted to methods of psychological torture. As the children grew up, Anne and her “aunts” kept them drugged with regular doses of valium to keep them docile. Furthermore, in adolescence, they were subjected to strange initiation rituals where they were administered LSD in large quantities. In this type of baptism, the boys were locked in a room alone, faced terrifying hallucinations while Hamilton-Byrne presented himself as a messianic figure who claimed to be the reincarnation of Christ. This process was intended to break their will and ensure that they did not develop the ability to think or question outside the confines of the sect.
This regime of isolation and abuse was reinforced with the doctrine of The Family: “invisible, unknown, inaudible.” For minors and adults alike, any contact with the outside world was practically non-existent, and any attempt at rebellion was severely repressed.
But in 1987, the regime of terror that Hamilton-Byrne had established began to crumble. Sarah Moorethen 14 years old, was expelled from the sect due to her constant rebellion and uncomfortable questions. When he left, he went to the police and revealed the details of what he had experienced in that field on the outskirts of Melbourne. The girl detailed in detail the abuse and inhumane treatment she had suffered. “During my birth, my mother had a pillow placed over her head. They gave him strong tranquilizers. And as soon as I was born they took me away instantly. They didn’t even allow him to see me,” the girl was able to say many years later.
The police looked at her in surprise and couldn’t interrupt her. Everything changed when Sarah warned that other boys were still in the possession of Anne and her “aunts.” The confession triggered an official investigation, which culminated in a security forces raid on the cult’s headquarters on August 14 of that same year.
During the raid, the children were rescued and taken into protective custody. By then, Hamilton-Byrne had already fled the country. escaped to USA. He hid in the Catskill area of New Yorkwhere he continued to manipulate his followers from the shadows. However, Australian and US authorities continued their investigation. The siege was closing on Anne.
After several years on the run, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was arrested in 1993, charged with multiple crimes, including fraud. Surprisingly, he served very little prison time, and although he was ordered to pay restitution, many survivors never received a single dollar. Hamilton-Byrne spent her final years in an asylum, mired in dementiafar from the memories of the atrocities he had committed.
The survivors of La Familia, for their part, live with the consequences of the abuse in their bodies and minds. Some narrate recurring nightmares, others cannot forget the hallucinations imposed by the forced ingestion of LSD, and some, like Sarah Moore They found the strength to speak and expose the psychological scars that the years in La Familia left on their lives. “She just changed your world. “It turned it upside down overnight,” the woman summarizes.
