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So good, so good, so good. Give big, Save big with Rack Friday deals at Nordstrom Rack. For a limited time, take an extra 40% off red tag clearance for a total Savings up to 75% off. Save on gifts for everyone on your list from brands like Vince Cole, Haan, Sam Edelman and more. All sales final and restrictions apply. The best stuff goes fast, so bring your gift list and your wish list to your nearest Nordstrom rack today. When you think of Australia, odds are that your mind goes to a happy place. Maybe you think beach, surfing, sunshine, and actually in 2023, it ranked as one of the best countries to live in the world by international comparisons of wealth, education, health and quality of life. So there are so many positives to such a beautiful place. But just like any other thing in life, where there is good, there's also bad. And unfortunately, today we're going to be focusing in on the bad. Today's case is about an Australian cold. I actually think we're yet to cover a cold on the podcast. I've done plenty of cases of colds over on TikTok. I actually covered this specific story over on TikTok not too long ago. But don't worry if you watch that video. Consider this to be a much deeper dive on this case because we'll be talking about some things that I didn't have time to mention over on TikTok. This cult is referred to as the Family, and it is widely considered to be one of the most notorious and significant cults in Australian history. And there's a few things about this cult that stand out for me. First one being that in a very unusual twist, today's cult leader is a woman, not a man. And a lot of the beliefs taught from her were very much based on what you can consider to be feminine, let's say. So think maternity, motherhood, creating a family. Secondly, a huge thing about this cult is that they like to steal babies, human babies, steal them from their mothers and claim them as their own. Yeah, you heard that right. And third, at their peak, at her peak, the cult leader, Ann Hamilton Bryan, managed to manipulate over 500 people to join her culture. And what also makes this cult different than the others is that the followers came more from a middle, higher class group of well educated people. And a lot of them, rather than targeting younger people who would usually be easier to manipulate, more vulnerable people, she targeted people that were quite smart, quite book smart. And you'll see what I mean when we really get into the thick of it, which is kind of how she got away with doing what she was doing for so long because. Because she basically created her own little city with her own little rules with her followers, who all allowed the cold to go undetected for as long as it did. So let's get into it. Big disclaimer. We are going to be talking about children. So if you think that listening to this is going to harm your mental health in any way, shape or form, I totally understand. Please skip this video, skip this episode, and I will see you in my next one. This is the story of the family. Anne Hamilton Bryan was born Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards. She later on changes her name. She was the eldest of seven kids to her parents, Ralph and Florence. Her parents met just after World War I ended and they ended up moving to the town of Sale in Australia, where Ralph worked as an engineer cleaner on the railway roads. So the kids were all raised in Sale, but it was not a happy upbringing by any means. The first of all, the marriage between Anne's parents was a rocky one, to say the least. Her father, he kind of did nothing, honestly. He was a very distant person and he left not only his wife but also his seven children alone for extended periods of time. He would walk out on them essentially and be MIA for days or weeks or months at a time, likely because their life at home was so troubled and he wanted to run away from it, I would assume. And so he was constantly in and out of the picture. Her mother, Florence, on the other hand, she spent Ann's entire childhood basically in and out of the hospital. She claimed to be a medium who was able to communicate with the dead, which, that's one thing, okay. But it was her behavior that really made people's eyebrows rise. On one occasion when she was in what we can now assume to be an episode or some sort of psychotic breakdown, Florence set her hair on fire in public, just to give you an idea of the things that she was doing. She was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and she spent basically the entire second half of her life in different mental facilities. And by 1929, when Anne would have been in primary school, her and her siblings were often, I would say more often times than not residing in an orphanage because of how absent both of their parents were. So safe to say that there was way more instability and struggles throughout her childhood than most people face. And I find this to be important because I do think it plays a massive part in her motivation. When you're looking into a motive, in this case for doing the things that she goes on to do, I think that Ann, her entire life, she, since she was a child, so badly craved love and affection and the feeling of belonging in a loving family. And because she never got that as a child, once she became an adult, she put all of her effort and attention into creating, quote, unquote, the family that she never had. Hence what ends up becoming the name of the cult. There isn't much information about Ann's teenage years, but by 1941, when she was in her early 20s, she met and married a man called Lionel Harris. They moved into a cute house together. They had a baby girl who they named Judith. And they settled down, always good after they had been together and married as a family of three for a while. In 1955, the couple decided that they were ready to grow their family. They wanted to have another baby, but this time they wanted to adopt one. So an and Lionel got in contact with a children's facility, Barnado's Homes, and they got approved to adopt a baby. They were over the moon. I mean, they were so excited to grow their little family of three into a little family of four. But they would never get to because on the drive to pick up the baby that they were going to adopt, Ann's husbands got into a terrible car accident and it was fatal, and he passed away. And with what seemed like two seconds, Ann lost not only her husband, but also the baby that she was meant to adopt. Because after her husband passed, the adoption facility now did not want this baby to be adopted by a single parent. And that was a huge turning point for the way that Anne's life would turn out to be, because it was following that that it changed everything for Anne. She changed her name from Evelyn to Anne Hamilton. She changed her lifestyle, her hobbies, everything about her. She changed, basically transforming herself into a completely different person. She became absolutely obsessed with yoga, Started practicing as a yoga teacher in Melbourne, training with a woman whose name was Margaret. Margaret was a Swiss woman, and she was very interesting herself because she claimed to have lived in an Indian cave for five years. I didn't. I couldn't fact check that for. For to be 100% certain, but if she just. This woman claimed to be in a cave. Come on, you can kind of imagine the kind of person that she was. So Anne was learning from her and teaching yoga. However, she did end up leaving Margaret's side after a few months because Margaret essentially asked her to leave. After Ann allegedly put a spell on a student and things got weird and they went their separate ways. She eventually went on to open her own Studio teaching, mainly middle aged woman. But her practice was different to say the least, because she started mixing in spiritual and philosophical teachings while mixing Hindu and Christian ideas and beliefs, while also preaching about supernatural beliefs and practices. Like it got to the point where they were using Ouija boards in her classes, which is pretty crazy. I mean, imagine signing up for a yoga class expecting to do nothing more than to practice yoga, but then your teacher starts spewing out information about the occult and then brings out a Ouija board to talk to the dead. I bet that was an original experience for most of her students if I've ever heard one. But the thing is that they fed right into it. I know, trust me, it sounds crazy, but it only escalated more and more because Ann somehow has this weird thing about her that made her capable of making those around her believe what she wanted them to believe. They would also in her classes talk about marital problems. So Anne would encourage her students, I guess you call them her students, to leave their husbands because she would tell them that they were all amazing and grand and incredible and anything that was wrong in their lives was the husband's fault. So she would encourage them to leave them. And guess what? The women would, they would get a divorce, they would leave their homes, leave their families behind, and then move in with Anne, pretty much starting to create this little cult of hers. So it gets to a point where Anne starts thinking, oh, wow, I really do have a lot of influence over these women. And they really do believe what I say, and I love that and I want more of it because she's getting a taste of what it felt like to, I guess, be in control of people by having a significant amount of influence over the way that they're. They lived their lives, really. And she was loving it. In 1962, Anne realized that to be able to continue growing her cult, she needed more power, she needed more control. And what would be the easiest way for her to get that? Well, she decided that it would be not only the easiest but also the smartest thing for her to lure men into the cult. But not just any men, a particular group of men who could prove to be a benefit to her. And to get this, she needed a powerful, intelligent man that had power, that had the right connections and knew of other powerful men and had a lot of influence over them. Raynor Cary Johnson. He was a perfect man in extremely intelligent. He had a PhD in physics, he was high up at his job at the University of London, had a lot of connections with well respected professors, doctors, politicians, lawyers, teachers, Raynor had studied in two different universities, and after graduating, he was seen as nothing short of a leading scholar. And although his interest, you could say at one point in his. In his life earlier on, were focused on science, he shifted away from that and more so towards the study of the paranormal phenomena in the spiritual world. And that was huge and very important because Ann also shared that common interest of the paranormal. So when their paths crossed, Rainer was married with children. And something that you need to know about Ann is that every single thing that she does is well thought out, unfortunately, and calculated. So in order to make sure that she would be able to recruit him for the specific role that she wanted him to play in her life, Anne went out to talk to people who knew Raynor, knew about his life and had information on him. She learned about him from those who knew him. And then one day, she just showed up at the front steps of Raynor's house. She knocked on the door, Raynor answered, and Ann gave him her speech about who she was. She did her pitch, and she told him that she could predict the future. She started throwing out all of these facts about him that she had secretly gathered from other people, but of course, Rainer doesn't know that. So he's standing there listening to this stranger tell him all about himself and his life and his family. And based on the information that she was giving him, Raynor starts thinking very quickly that she can predict the future, because how else would she know about him and his family and everything that they're doing? I think she brought up a future vacation they had planned. So Raynor was convinced, and in 1963, not only him, but also his wife and children fully commit and fall into Anne's colds. And this is now when the cult is officially created or founded, I guess you can say, in a ritual that Anne held, she offered hallucinogenic mushrooms. That's a hard word for me to say, but she would often do this. This is a common theme with Anne throughout this entire video, because different substances would of course, make her people easier to manipulate. But she gave mushrooms to Ranor, his family, and four other students, and she managed to convince them to see her as Christ herself. And just like that, the. That little group became the first official members of this cult. And at this point, the main goal of the cult was to recruit people because more followers meant more power. And remember, Ann went out to find a man in the first place because she had full intentions of using him to help her grow her following, which he did. So Ranor would Talk to his businessman friend, and he would say, guess what? I met this lady. There's this lady, she's incredible. She can predict the future. She can talk to spirits. She's a medium with supernatural powers. And she also just so happens to teach amazing yoga classes. So you should get your wife to go. And the men would. And slowly but surely, this cult starts growing. Anne continues teaching, quote, unquote, yoga, but in reality, she's just preaching absolute nonsense, telling her now cult members all about how she is Jesus Christ. She tells them all about how she has all of these powers, about how, of course, in usual cult fashion, about how the end of the world is coming. But her whole pitch to them was that if they stayed with her in this cult, in this group, then she would be able to save them when the day came. And one of her absolute favorite things to talk about was about how she was so powerful, meaning that she never aged, meaning that she never got older. That was one of her big claims. And she would fully lie to her cult members about this. And then secretly, she would go behind their backs, get facelifts to pull up her face to avoid wrinkles so that her followers would really believe that she truly did not age. She would go and get work done, and she would get liposuction treatments. She would. She would buy wigs and she would wear them with the goal of appearing to be 10 to 15 years younger than her actual age. And that's why her hairline is so far back, by the way, because this was in the 60s, keep in mind. And she got a handful of facelifts done that pushed her hairline back further and further each time. So there's that. So Anne and Raynor decide to name this cult. And are you ready to hear the name, the first name that they agreed on? The Great White Brotherhood. Yeah, I wonder how they came up with that one. I don't know, but they did. And I hate to say it, but they were doing a disgustingly incredible job at growing their group. More and more people of power are joining the Great White Brotherhood, some of them being doctors, which, again, is a very calculated move by Anne because she just uses all these people. Every single person that she's recruiting, she's recruiting them for a specific reason, to be able to use them for her advantage. And with the help of Raynor, their next recruit became Dr. Lance Whitaker. He was a psychiatrist and a doctor who practiced medicine at a women's hospital. And his big thing was incorporating the use of LSD in his patients and in his Treatments, you can kind of see how this became a massively beneficial thing to Ann because, one, she's now able to get the doctors in her cult to get substances because they have access to them. She uses the substances to feed to her members, making it all that much easier for her to be able to brainwash them, considering that they would start to hallucinate and completely believe everything that came out of Anne's mouth. And secondly, she would use the substances to purposefully make cult member, the cult members very, very ill without their knowledge. And then she would stop giving them substances, quit cold turkey. Her followers would then get better. And she would use this as her claim that she healed them because she had healing powers, because she was the female reincarnation version of Jesus Christ herself, when in reality, they were never sick in the first place. Anne was just feeding them substances to make them feel really ill in order to then be able to stop giving them substances, making them automatically feel better, and using that to say that she healed them with her powers. But, of course, when she did heal them, quote, unquote, heal them afterwards, Anne would want something in return. And that something that she demanded was their obedience. Basically, she would say, look, I will keep you healthy. I will stop any danger from coming to you, and I will make sure that when the end of the world comes, you are saved. All you have to do is obey me, do what I say, refer to me as your master, actually, as the master, rather. Yeah. All of that to say that her followers. To her followers, Ann wasn't just a leader. To them, she was everything. They did call her their master, the master. And they did look at her as the one person who could save their souls. In their minds, without Anne's love and guidance, they were stuck in a horrible, scary world. But she made her followers really, honestly and truly believe that she had the power to break that cycle of being stuck in a horrible, scary world. And because of that, her followers all lived their lives trying to guess what Anne would want them to do, trying to guess what Anne would want from. From them. Every single choice, every action, everything they did was based on what they thought Ann would want or what she would straight up sometimes tell them that she wanted. In the thick of it, her followers weren't even their own people anymore. It was just like they were extensions of Anne. One former member by the name of Andrew said that there was a time that he would have died for Anne. That is how deep her control ran. He also talked about what Ann liked to call clearing sessions, which, in other words, Were trips that they would be put on using mind altering drugs. And in these sessions, Anne would say that the drugs help them to dig back through their memories, even sometimes into their past lives, and clean out whatever was holding them back. But the catch was making them believe that it was Ann, the only person that could truly clear them of everything bad in their past. You had to go to Ann for it, for everything, always her, and had full control and power. Another one of the doctors that Ann met was an older lady by the name of Joy. Joy was the owner of a psychiatric hospital. Ann managed to brainwash her and. And when Joy passed away in 1969, in her will, she left the entire psychiatric hospital. Joanne, do you see where this is going? Because you hear this and you think this is absurd. It's so easy for us to sit here, listen to the story, and think, well, why didn't the cult members just leave if they didn't want to be a part of the cult anymore, why didn't they just walk out? The answer is because they could not. It's usually really, really hard to leave a cult in the first place. But. But in this case, Ann made it a hundred times harder on purpose because if someone talked about leaving or threatened to leave, Ann would say that they were crazy. And she would get a couple of doctors from the cult to sign off on papers to admit the person to her psychiatric hospital against their will. Yeah. So you, if you wanted to leave, too bad. And good luck because Ann was going to convince every single person that you knew that you had gone clinically insane. And you will get sent into a hospital where people think that you're crazy. And you will be fed medications and given substances that you do not need. You will be given treatments that you don't need, sometimes even surgical procedures, full on surgeries that you don't need, until you actually eventually do start to lose your mind a little bit. And Anne didn't only do this with cult members, she actually did it just about any time that it was convenient for her. In 1968, Ann meets a man called Bill Bryan and she absolutely fell in love, head over heels, and she wanted to marry him. However, there was one problem because Bill was already married. He had a wife, fully. However, he also did take a strong liking towards Anne. So what does Ann do? She gets her cult members, the doctors, to sign off on papers to get Bill's wife admitted to her psychiatric hospital against her will. And just like that, she's now out of the picture and her and Bill start dating. They eventually get married. And the cult only continues to grow. We don't know exactly how many people were in the cult at its peak, but we do know that it was, at the very least, 500 people. 500 people. Brainwashed, manipulated, and completely under Anne's control. Back in 1962, Anne had purchased a home in Fernie Creek. And to keep control of her cult, she obviously wants them to be all together and close in proximity. As close as possible, really. So her followers start purchasing, purchasing homes in the same area right next to Ann's. One person does, and then another person, and then another, and it's so sick and twisted, but this is how they really begin to build their own little community. And her followers, remember I said some were doctors, others were lawyers, others were teachers. They had money and got greedy, I guess, and she wanted more power and more control. So then she makes it a rule that every single one of her followers, or members, whatever you want to call them, I don't even know at this point. Every single person in the group had to give 10% of the money that they made to Anne. And it gets to a point that ann is worth $50 million because she's collecting money from many people. This is insane. She ends up buying a house in New York, in London, in Hawaii, because she could afford it. I just. I can't believe that this is. This. This is real life. And now we get to the point of the story in which this cult begins to steal babies. We are going to take a quick break to thank today's sponsors. Hello, fresh. We all know it. We all love it. If you haven't heard of it, I'm going to call your bluff and say that you're lying, because there's no way that you haven't. But my point being, in my busy schedule. Let me just give you a quick rundown of what my days look like. Sometimes. Some days I wake up at 5am, go to the gym, have to, because I'm preparing for a wedding next summer, getting married next summer. I can't skip the gym. I research for TikTok. I film for TikTok. I research for the podcast. I film for the podcast. Then I have to edit everything, which takes me hours. I. I have to run errands, respond to emails, talk to people, take meetings, do more research. So many things that by the time that my fiance gets home, I love him so dearly. But I have to admit that some days, I do not have the energy to cook dinner. 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And claimed that because the end of the world was coming soon, everyone and everything was going to be wiped away from the earth. But her and her cult members would be okay because she was Jesus herself. But afterwards they would have a problem because they would now have to create their own population of people. So they needed to prepare for that. So in the early 1970s, Ann then changes the name of this cult to the Family. She first, of course, just flat out takes any babies that are born within the cult. If a cult member they were living with or in the general area fell pregnant and would just take the baby after they gave birth and claimed that it was hers. But not only that, she also once again put her psychiatric hospital to use. When a patient would get pregnant, the doctors would help the woman give birth. And immediately after, as soon as the baby was born, the mother's eyes would then be covered with a pillow so that she couldn't see her baby. And the baby would then be taken, removed and stolen by Ann. Afterwards, the members in her cult that were lawyers would then forge birth certificates and list. And as the biological mother, Ann HAMILTON Bryan stole 14 babies from her psychiatric hospital, 14 from her cult members, adding up to a total of 28 stolen babies. All of those children, all 28 of them, would be raised to think that Anne was their mother, even if their real mother was in the cult, coexisting with them, watching them grow up with their own eyes. Oftentimes as well, to avoid any questions, Ann would walk around for months with a fake pregnancy belly, wearing a fake plastic belly, pretending that she was pregnant. She did that so that people wouldn't be confused when she showed up out of nowhere with a newborn baby. And sometimes when she would show up with three at a time, she would just gave. She would just say that she gave birth to triplets. She would also dye the children's hair bright blonde so that they would look alike. To further make people believe that they really were siblings, 28 children were born into the family. Ann bought yet again another house, a bigger one that was even more isolated, in order to have a designated place to be able to raise these 28 children. And she would have what she called aunties helping her raise These kids, because of course she didn't want to do it herself. She wanted to hand that off to someone else. And sometimes those aunties would be the children's real mothers. But they had no idea. The way those kids were treated was horrific. It is truly inhumane. There are of course, rules they had to follow and if they didn't, they would be punished. I will talk about some of the rules first and then we'll go into some of the punishments. First of all, the kids had to wake up at 5am on the dot every single day. First thing in the morning, they would have to be weighed to make sure that they were not gaining any weight. They had to then practice one hour of yoga. They had to listen to Ann's preachings on tape, then they had to chant, then they had to meditate, then they had to do physical exercise. All of that that I just listed off had to be done before they were able to eat breakfast. And then they had to do more exercise, more meditation, more chance. And then schoolwork. Oh yeah, because I forgot to mention, some of the cult members were teachers. So Ann essentially created her own school within the cult. They were also not allowed to speak unless they were specifically given permission. And they had strict rules, first of all on who they could and couldn't speak to, as well as on what exact times they were allowed to use the bathroom. The children were given basically only enough food to make them stay alive. And this included pieces of fruits and steamed vegetables. And if they misbehaved or failed to follow any of the rules, then they would be punished. And I want to make it very clear that when I say misbehaving, misbehaving was whatever and would decide it to be. So, for example, if someone wasn't allowed to use the bathroom at a specific time, but they needed to use the bathroom, they wet their pants. That would be considered misbehaving. Or if a child gained weight, which, mind you, these children are young, they are growing, they are obviously gaining weight. But if they did, that would count as breaking a rule. And also these rules literally changed every single day. So the kids would be breaking rules without having a clue that that rule had been created that same exact day. Some of the punishments included being restricted of food and water for days to the point that they would eat grass and and leaves because they would be so hungry. They would be given ice cold baths, their heads would be placed underwater, their hands would be placed on open flames, and they also would be given substances to the point that some of them would just Go and sit on the ground and stare at nothing for hours because they were so out of it. There were also other physical punishments as well that I'm not going to go into detail about. But just to give you an idea, I will just say that one of the kids had a nickname, and his nickname was Zebra Stripes because he had so many scars and markings from the punishments that he sustained. And when one child was being physically punished, all of the others were forced to watch. And if they looked away, then they would be punished next. This cult was operating from the early 1960s into the early 1980s, but soon things finally would come crashing down for Anne, and the reason as to why would actually come from within the cult. Some of the adults started wanting to leave, and there was only so much that Ann could try and do to stop them. But the few that did manage to leave, those guys would go and start talking to the media a little bit about this secret, mysterious cult and about their personal experiences within it. And the kids as well, were growing up. The oldest were teenagers by now, and those teenagers had grown up under Anne's control, meaning that it was all that they knew. But the older that they got, the more and more they began naturally to rebel, Sneaking out of the compound they lived in at nighttime and talking to people from the outside world. The public was catching on, and people were so suspicious of what Anne was really doing that it got to a point where one time, police were sent out to investigate. However, there was one little tiny room in the house. It was a room that had been dug out behind a wall and called it the hole. And when officers showed up, the children would be ordered to crawl inside of the hole and to be quiet. So they crammed in there, piling on top of each other, frozen in fear. And the way that you entered the hole was through this tiny little hole that was covered up with a painting on the wall. And so if you didn't know that the hole was there, you would never guess. So police showed up, didn't see any kids, and then they left. However, it wasn't long before the two oldest girls, a girl named Sarah and a girl named Leann, would sneak out, go to the police and tell them everything. With their stories and the courage of those others who escaped, investigators finally had enough to act. On the morning of August 14, 1987, police officers showed up to the compound and raided it, and the children were so, so scared. But they were finally safe, and the aunties were arrested. The children were immediately taken to get the medical help that they Very much needed. And it makes me so incredibly happy to say that all of them were kept together and they were being treated and helped together and taught how to basically function like a normal human being. And it took a very long time and a lot of help. But thankfully the children were okay and. And they managed to pick themselves back up. They also managed to learn everything that they had missed out on their entire lives from being isolated, and they completely turned their lives around. The psychiatric hospital was shut down. The doctors who played a part in this entire thing were forced to surrender their licenses, of course, and at the time of the raid was in New York. And after learning of the raid, she went into hiding with Bill. The raid happened in 1987, and Ann and Bill managed to hide out overseas until 1993, which is crazy. But when they were found, they were finally arrested. And this is going to make you guys so incredibly angry, because when Ann was finally caught, obviously people expected her to be facing very serious charges because she had illegally taken babies and forged documents and subjected children to years of cruelty. However, when the prosecutors started building out this case, they ran into a huge problem. Most of what Ann had done had happened either decades earlier. And at the time, there was no clear laws in place to cover what she had done. So, for example, the children were brought into the family because they were stolen. Doctors and lawyers loyal to Ann falsified birth certificates and adoption papers. That was illegal, but proving exactly who did what and tying it directly to Ann in court was extremely difficult. The kids had been moved around, paperwork had either been destroyed or hidden, and some witnesses that were still continuing to remain loyal to Ann refused to talk because of that. The only thing that prosecutors could prove were fraud related charges, AKA falsifying documents and making false declarations in order to obtain the children. So in 1994, Ann pled guilty to making a false declaration and was fined about $5,000. Other members of her inner circle faced similar fraud charges, but that was it. A fine of $5,000 and she was free to walk. Everything about this cult is so intriguing to me because. What do you mean? What do you mean? $5,000 and she got free. She was so rich. 500 plus people. It's insanity for well over 20 years as well. I could look into this cult for years because there's so much information and so many things, and I just literally cannot believe that everything that I told you happened to real people. And this is a real story. But that is all I have for today's video. Thank you guys so much for spending time with me today. Let me know what your thoughts are on this case and if you love this podcast. First of all, I love you so much and with my whole entire heart. But please make sure that if you haven't already, share the podcast live. Leave a Review it really helps me out and I appreciate you guys more than you will ever know. Hope you guys are having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy and I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode of I wish you were here. As a reminder, you can listen to this podcast anywhere you get your podcast video version. Also available on YouTube. Love you.