When FBI Particular Agent Hilda Kogut pulled up at an free farmhouse deep within the Catskills in June 1993, she used to be there to arrest the delusional however charismatic chief of a evil doomsday cult known as “The Family” based totally in Australia. She had incorrect means of understanding the similar cult that used to be the explanation why Julian Assange’s folk needed to walk at the run for years.
However Kogut informed The Put up that what truly struck her when arresting Anne Hamilton-Byrne — a once-glamorous yoga schoolteacher who had satisfied her Unused Day disciples that she used to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ — and her husband, William Hamilton, in Hurleyville, NY, had been her many plastic surgical procedures.
“This was a vain woman,”mentioned Kogut, who used to be running underneath the steering of Australian detectives in a joint operation. “She’d clearly had so many facelifts that her hairline was pushed way back on her head.”
However Hamilton-Byrne’s self-importance used to be not anything in comparison to the years of abuse she perpetrated on greater than two accumulation helpless and prone young children and babies she illegally followed between 1968 and 1975 within the Melbourne, Australia, segment.
Police and the survivors of the cult mentioned she informed the children she used to be each their mom in addition to the reincarnation of Jesus Christ — and that, when the arena ended, they might be accountable for re-educating the survivors.
Byrne-Hamilton counted greater than 500 well-educated docs, nurses, attorneys, psychiatrists and alternative execs as individuals of The Population, who went along side her deluded and heartless teachings, professionals at the cult informed The Put up.
When Assange, the infamous founding father of WikiLeaks whose 12-year incarceration ended closing occasion when he pleaded in charge to 1 rely of violating the Espionage Function, used to be about 10, his mom, Christine Assange, become romantically concerned with a Population cult member and newbie musician named Leif Meynell Hamilton.
(Christine and Assange’s start father, John Shipton, fracture up when he used to be a child and he didn’t see his dad once more till he used to be 25. Christine later married theater actor Brett Assange; Julian took his identify and regarded as him his father, despite the fact that Christine and Brett divorced when Julian used to be about 9.)
Assange referred to Leif as a “manipulative and violent psychopath” within the 1997 store “Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier.”
He known as the connection between his mom and the a lot more youthful guy “tempestuous” and claimed Leif might be abusive, beating his mom and as soon as punching Assange within the face so withered that his face bled, according to an unauthorized biography.
Assange mentioned he attended 37 faculties far and wide Australia then his mom attempted to split up with Leif, as a result of he stalked them — allegedly the usage of cult connections to test nationwide databases for his or her whereabouts.
The status reportedly grew worse when Christine were given pregnant via Leif and a sour custody combat ensued over Assange’s half-brother, who used to be born someday round 1980. The Put up used to be not able to find both Leif or his alleged son.
“Eventually, it was a matter of us escaping from him,” Assange has mentioned. “We would cross the country and only then suffer this sinister realization that he had found us. He’d suddenly be back in our lives and this grew to be very heavy. He had this brilliant ability to insinuate himself … I pulled a knife on him, told him to keep back from me; but the relationship with him wasn’t about physical abuse. It was about a certain psychological power he sought to have over us.”
That mental energy will have come from what Leif absorbed from The Population and its malevolent chief, whose surname he and alternative fans followed.
Lex De Guy, a former senior investigator with the Victoria, Australia, police, is credited with cracking the thriller of the cult and monitoring Hamilton-Byrne to her Catskills hideaway then she went at the lam. He informed The Put up this occasion that she used to be “essentially the most bad lady I’ve ever recognized.
“This was someone involved with the theft of children, who kept them isolated from the rest of the world and drugged them and injected them with LSD,” De Guy mentioned. “She had the people around her under what almost seemed like a spell.”
Hamilton-Byrne dyed maximum of her followed youngsters’s hair platinum blond so they might seem like siblings, shorten their hair in similar kinds, dressed them identically — and had them drugged with Valium and alternative sedatives from the past they had been little toddlers, consistent with each police and survivors of The Population.
Hamilton-Byrne used to be hardly across the youngsters however she organized for feminine individuals of the cult, known as “aunties,” to maintain the kids, who had been disciplined and punished for essentially the most minor of infractions. They reportedly slept in mini dormitories, had been frequently crushed and disadvantaged of meals for as much as a occasion — and occasionally waterboarded.
Each detectives and the kids themselves mentioned the kids of the cult had been compelled into rituals, known as “clearings,” by which they got LSD.
Diverse accounts of Assange’s hour, each from him and others, have alluded to him or his mom being individuals of the cult, however De Guy does now not suppose that is correct.
Assange used to be now not a number of the 14 or so youngsters rescued from The Population’s wooded compound at the shores of Victoria’s Pool Eildon in 1987 then a number of ladies escaped and informed police in regards to the cult and the abuse, De Guy mentioned.
But if Assange’s notoriety grew in 2010 —then Sweden issued a world arrest warrant for him in reference to allegations of sexual attack and he took shelter within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — rumors circulated that he were a number of the unhappy, drugged boys with the blond bowl cuts in pictures taken of The Population youngsters.
Ben Shenton, 52, used to be one of the crucial youngsters rescued from their jail of barbed twine and foliage in August 1987. He were positioned within the cult at 18 months and used to be 15 years aging when freed. He and the alternative youngsters had been stunned to determine from detectives that the girl they concept used to be their mom used to be now not.
In Shenton’s case, he discovered that one of the crucial “aunties” used to be his organic mom and were confident via Hamilton-Byrne at hand him over and step again from acknowledging him as her kid by any means.
Shenton, writer of “Life Behind the Wire: The True Life Story of Ben Shenton Formerly Benjamin Hamilton-Byrne,” went directly to have a a success 27-year occupation with IBM and has been married for 30 years. However he used to be stunned anew when conspiracy theorists parsing pictures of youngsters in The Population claimed that the picture of Shenton used to be if truth be told Assange.
“It’s quite possible [Leif Meynell Hamilton] was a cult member and, if so, [Assange’s] mother was smart to stay on the move to get away from him,” Shenton informed The Put up. “But Julian was not one of us, and he was lucky. It was brutal what we went through.”
Shenton, who additionally runs a site known as Rescuing The Family, used to be one of the crucial lucky survivors, each he and De Guy say.
Every other kid survivor, Sarah Moore wrote a store in 1995 known as “Unseen, Unheard, Unknown“ — the chant the children had been informed to abide via if any person from the out of doors discovered them.
She become a scientific physician and editor however, in the long run, may just now not triumph over the shock of her early years within the cult. She died of a drug exuberance in 2016. Lex De Guy gave the eulogy at her funeral, he mentioned.
In spite of De Guy’s withered paintings getting Hamilton-Byrne and her husband arrested in Unused York and extradited to Australia, the 2 ended up with just a slap at the wrist: a $5,000 high quality for falsifying a statutory declaration.
Despite the fact that Shenton’s organic mom firstly remained dependable to Hamilton-Byrne, he controlled to forge a dating together with her in after years. They even visited the previous cult chief within the nursing house the place she lived for 12 years with dementia till she died in 2019 at past 98.
Hamilton-Byrne didn’t acknowledge Shenton when she noticed him.
Shenton’s personal mom died closing occasion in the United Kingdom, the place she fled then the cult used to be uncovered, he mentioned.
“I was able to say ‘I love you’ to her although we were more friends than mother and son,” Shenton mentioned. “I wanted to take back what was stolen from me. I also wanted to show that it’s possible to overcome trauma and victimhood and live in victory.”
