New Idea Investigates Podcast

If you harbour a borderline morbid fascination with cults, you’re certainly not alone. Countless movies, novels, plays, podcasts and articles explore the psychology behind why people join cults, and why people start them. One of Australia’s most infamous cults was simply known as The Family. The Family was headed by a Victorian woman named Anne Hamilton Byrne, who at her height through the 1960s until the late 1980s, ran the sadistic apocalyptic sect with hundreds of members.Anne was as beautiful and charismatic as she was delusional and dangerous.Anne – who was born Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards – was a yoga teacher turned cult leader who convinced her followers she was Jesus Christ reincarnated.Her ethos was simple – the world was going to end, and the only way you could be saved is if you joined The Family. Along with her husband Bill, Anne started recruiting followers from a psychiatric clinic. She targeted middle-class professionals, some even with medical backgrounds, and essentially ‘bra