204: Wrath - Anne Hamilton-Byrne & "The Family"

The Family, also known as the Santiniketan Park Association or the Great White Brotherhood, was an Australian New Age group formed in the mid 1960s under the leadership of Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The group taught a hodgepodge of Western and Eastern religious doctrines, with Hamilton-Byrne claiming to have been a reincarnation of Jesus. Classic cult move, Anne....The group became the centre of controversy when its compound in Olinda, Victoria, was raided by police in August 1987 amid allegations of child abuse. All children were removed from the premises, and were discovered to have been adopted through illegal means.  Hamilton-Byrne and her husband were eventually arrested in 1993 and charged with conspiracy to defraud and to commit perjury in relation to the adoption scams, but those charges were eventually dropped and they fled on the lamb to the Catskill Mountains of New York.