Children injected with LSD, starved and locked away for DECADES: Inside Australia's notorious cult 'The Family' whose charismatic woman leader convinced followers she was Jesus
Anne Hamilton-Byrne (pictured right) was the glamorous, charismatic and delusional leader of the notorious Australian sect dubbed The Family. One of the very few female cult leaders, she convinced herself and up to 500 followers she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Under the influence of LSD, Hamilton-Byrne believed an apocalyptic war was imminent and that she had a duty to collect children from birth in preparation for a new world. She gathered young boys and girls – some through shonky adoptions, others born to cult members – and raised them as her own on a property in Lake Eildon in central Victoria in the 1970s and 1980s. 'We've received the call – and great things will be done,' she said. The identically dressed children (left and inset), with bleached blonde hair shaped into the same bob, were allegedly bashed, starved and injected with LSD by Hamilton-Byrne and other cult leaders in terrifying sect initiation rituals.