Nude processing sessions and alleged sexual abuse: The cult still operating in Australia

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: The Morning Edition
Title: Nude processing sessions and alleged sexual abuse: The cult still operating in Australia
Host: Samantha Selinger-Morris
Guest: Harriet Alexander (Investigative Reporter)
Date: January 26, 2026

This episode delves into the ongoing existence and legacy of Kenja, an Australian performing arts and spiritual organization widely described as a cult. Through conversations with Harriet Alexander, the discussion explores the cult’s troubling history, the alleged sexual abuses perpetrated by co-founder Ken Dyers, the role of enablers within the group, barriers to justice for survivors, and why Kenja still persists in Australian cities today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction: A Shocking Allegation ([00:03]–[01:28])

• Introduces the case of “XC,” a pseudonym given to a woman who, at age 14, was allegedly sexually abused by Ken Dyers, leader of Kenja, allegedly aided by nine female members.
• Sets the context for an exposé on the persistent operation of Kenja and the stories that have surfaced.

2. Discovery of Kenja ([01:28]–[02:58])

• Harriet Alexander recounts first learning of Kenja in 2020, linking it to the story of Cornelia Rau, an Australian who had been a member before suffering mental health issues and being detained.
• The ABC drama “Stateless” (inspired by Rau’s story) reignited memories for former members, catalyzing former insiders to come forward.
• Harriet: “I just got completely drawn into this labyrinth that’s really still revealing itself to me.” ([02:53])

3. What Is Kenja? Beliefs & Practices ([02:58]–[05:45])

• Founded in 1982 by Ken Dyers (age 60) and Jan Hamilton (age 32)—the group’s name is a blend of “Ken” and “Jan.”
• Kenja blended social club activities, performing arts, and a spiritual practice based on purging “attached spirits” via so-called processing sessions.
  • Members paid fees; events included dance classes, sporting competitions, clowning; the group had offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, and Noosa.
• The group’s unusual spiritual element involved “processing sessions”—often a form of meditative ritual, but in early years sometimes involved nude, paired practices, intended to “purge spirits.”
• Significant sexual elements: Dyers allegedly conducted private nude sessions, claiming they were therapy or preparation for sexual relationships.
• Quote from survivor: “He tricked me into having sexual intercourse … into telling me that it’s therapy. I was captive for the times I was in his therapy session.” ([05:45]–[05:49], attributed via Alexander’s research.)

4. Cult Dynamics and Recruitment ([05:49]–[07:16])

• Police frequently categorize Kenja as a cult due to:
  • Charismatic leadership (Dyers)
  • Control over members’ relationships
  • Discouragement of outside contact
  • Attraction for individuals seeking belonging or spiritual meaning
• Recruitment methods: included selling flowers at train stations, sausage sizzles at Bunnings, and targeting the lonely or lost.
• The organization grew rapidly to 200 members by the early 1990s, with founder-leased apartments and a central property in Bundina.

5. The Alleged Abuse: XC’s Story ([07:16]–[09:18])

• XC’s civil case details: brought against Jan Hamilton and nine senior female members for allegedly facilitating Dyers’s abuse.
• The group orchestrated secret meetings:
  • Provided a Nokia phone to XC for arranging sessions
  • Used code (“session with Blythe McLachlan”), disguises, and covert transport.
• Dyers was in his 80s; XC, age 14 at the time.
• These events occurred after Dyers had already faced court on sexual abuse charges and was under bail conditions restricting child contact.

6. Legal Proceedings and Loopholes ([09:18]–[11:45])

• Dyers’s 1999 conviction for aggravated indecent assault (against four girls) was quashed on a technicality; retrial was abandoned due to his age and time elapsed.
• Further accusations led to 22 charges; another woman came forward while he was on bail.
• Quote from Dyers (documentary): “The usual suspects are after me again, but I am not running away from them. I never did.” ([10:18])
• Shortly after new allegations, Dyers died by suicide before standing trial. Court documents allege he assaulted XC as recently as a month before his death.
• Dyers and his defenders always denied wrongdoing.

7. The Cult’s Defenders—Even Among Parents ([12:08]–[13:59])

• Despite the convictions and allegations, many Kenja members, including mothers of abuse victims, continue to defend Dyers and remain within the group.
  • Alexander suggests: “I almost … think that they almost have to believe that he’s been wrongly maligned because the XC allegations suggest that the adults were complicit.”
• Few former female members have publicly reckoned with their own roles in facilitating abuse.

8. The Media’s Role and Public Narrative ([13:33]–[14:51])

• Discussion of The Sydney Morning Herald and other newspapers running pro-Dyers advertisements—even after multiple allegations—reflects shortcomings in broader cultural and institutional responses.
• After Dyers’s death, Kenja ran public-relations campaigns, including the stage show “A Witch Hunt—Guilty Until Proven Innocent.”
• Jan Hamilton unsuccessfully sued NSW over Dyers’s death, claiming police harassment.

9. The Charisma of Ken Dyers ([14:51]–[15:50])

• Host discusses “the thrall” of Dyers over his followers, including possible explanations:
  • Charisma, promises of belonging, cures for loneliness, and spiritual answers.
  • Dyers also used temper and public humiliation as control tactics.
• Quote: “If you went against him, he’d fly into a rage often, and sometimes he’d humiliate you in front of the group.” ([15:20])

10. Redress for Survivors: Barriers & Failures ([16:03]–[18:29])

• Legal difficulties for survivors: with Dyers deceased, only senior members or the institution itself can be sued.
• XC’s case settled confidentially; sale of Hamilton’s house may be telling.
• Kenja has evaded joining Australia’s National Redress Scheme for abuse survivors, exploiting legal loopholes.
  • “It’s one of the very few institutions that haven’t signed up to the scheme despite having claims against it.” ([17:05])
  • Not a registered charity; government sanctions have no impact.
  • Still active, so government can’t be “funder of last resort.”
• Many survivors still found solidarity by agreeing to testify for others, pursuing justice primarily for collective acknowledgment rather than compensation.

11. Why Kenja Still Exists ([18:29]–[19:37])

• Group has shrunk since Dyers’s death, but persists in Sydney and Melbourne.
• Alexander describes current members: “A group of very ordinary looking women … trudging into court each day … just this weird sort of insular psychology.”
• Remaining members seem psychologically captive and insular; unlikely to attract many new members, but children born into the group remain at risk.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the persistence and mentality of followers (Harriet Alexander, [18:41]):
  “I think that they're just still captured by that psychology and by the group. So they'll stay there. But it's hard to see them getting too many new members.”

• On the role of enablers (Harriet Alexander, [12:47]):
  “A lot of the mothers of girls who say they're abused remain in Kenja to this day, and I think they're probably still in the thrall of Dyers.”

• On Ken Dyers’s control (Harriet Alexander, [15:20]):
  “He clearly must have had some kind of charisma… If you went against him, he'd fly into a rage often, and sometimes he'd humiliate you in front of the group. So you were sort of afraid of letting him down.”

• On the failures of redress (Harriet Alexander, [17:05]):
  “It’s one of the very few institutions that haven’t signed up to the [National Redress] scheme despite having claims against it.”

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Segment Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 00:03 — Introduction, context, and background of XC’s allegations
• 01:28 — Harriet discovers Kenja and ties to Cornelia Rau
• 02:58 — Overview of Kenja’s history, activities, and beliefs
• 05:00 — Processing sessions, sexualized practices, and abuse allegations
• 06:15 — Cult dynamics and recruitment tactics
• 07:16 — Details of XC’s civil case and orchestration of abuse
• 09:37 — Legal history, failed retrial, Dyers’s suicide
• 12:08 — Media coverage, Kenja’s PR, mothers as defenders
• 14:51 — Ken Dyers’s charisma and control methods
• 16:03 — Barriers for survivors, National Redress Scheme loopholes
• 18:41 — Ongoing existence of Kenja and psychological capture of remaining members

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Conclusion

Through deeply reported journalism and survivor accounts, this episode exposes how Kenja, despite damning allegations and public scrutiny, continues to operate—sustained by psychological manipulation, legal gaps, and cultural blind spots. The discussion spotlights past institutional failures, the complex psychology of complicity, and the formidable obstacles facing survivors even today. Harriet Alexander’s investigation underscores the importance of public vigilance and institutional accountability in confronting contemporary cults and abuse.

Transcript

[A]

She was given the pseudonym XC by a court to protect her identity and she's never spoken publicly about her experience. But the court documents from her case against Ken Dyers reveal a harrowing set of allegations. At the age of 14, she says that Dyers, the leader of the performing arts and social organization Kenja, sexually abused her. And she alleges that nine other members of his organization, all but one of them women, helped him to do it. Dyer's was in his early 80s at the time. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris and you're listening to the Morning Edition from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Today, investigative reporter Harriet Alexander on why Kenja, which police have called a cult, is still operating in cities across Australia. And a note, this episode may be distressing to some listeners. Harriet, welcome back.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

You always have some of the most unbelievable stories. So let's launch into this one because so many of us have heard cult stories, right? We've watched them play out in movies, but I imagine a lot of listeners are like myself, you know, they don't think that people in their own neighborhoods might get caught up in them. But then years ago, you came across a pretty peculiar organisation running out of Sydney. It then expanded into other cities. So tell us how you stumbled onto this.

[B]

I actually came across Kendra in early 2020. It's like a social club with a performing arts component and a spiritual component. The ABC was airing, I don't know if you remember, Stateless. It was a drama that was inspired by the true story of Cornelia Rao. What is this place?

[A]

It's a dance studio. Dance classes at $400 a week.

[B]

She was an Australian citizen who'd been wrongly detained and held in an immigration detention centre. They want to know why someone who looks just like them trapped in a place like this. And Rao was clearly suffering from mental health issues. But what a lot of people. Well, what I'd forgotten is that immediately before she was detained by immigration authorities, she'd been a member of Ken, and it had clearly messed with her.

[C]

We're going to transfer all that fear, all that negative energy out of you into me and away.

[B]

And so when this program aired on the abc, people had been. Members of Kenja were watching and it stirred up a lot of memories for them. And they still hadn't really worked through what had happened to them when they were in the group. So they started chatting to each other and they ended up contacting us because they were ready to tell their stories for the first time. And so when I heard this. I originally thought there might be a news story it, but when I started talking to them, I just got completely drawn into this labyrinth that's really still revealing itself to me.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're going to get into some of these stories that are honestly just hard to believe in just a bit. But first of all, what exactly is Kenja like? What do its members believe?

[B]

So Kendy's and Jan Hamilton co founded Kenja in Sydney in 1982. He was 60, she was 32. The group's name, Ken Jar, was an amalgam of their first name, Ken Jar.

[C]

Welcome to Thursday night workshop, Jan. Representing Ken and Jaz.

[B]

They had physical office space in Sydney, in Surry Hills and on Bourke street in Melbourne. They had offices in Canberra and Noosa, and you're paid to be a member. And then they ran all these stedfords, sporting competitions, clowning classes. It was called I am weighted down by this terrible thought that I might never ever get married. But they also had a spiritual philosophy. And under that philosophy, they believed that a person's worldly troubles were caused by attached spirits which are holding them back. So they held what were called processing sessions, basically a form of meditation to purge those spirits. I am perceptive about the negative thoughts that I have, and I've got rid of a lot of that stuff that says I'm less than I am.

[A]

It's gone.

[B]

I've gotten rid of it. I mean, get rid of it. I don't mean think so. The curtain was lifted on a lot of these practices in a 2008 documentary called Beyond Our Ken, which was directed and Produced by Melissa McLean and Luke Walker.

[C]

There's a chain of attached spirits which goes right back past this lifetime, right back to other lifetimes. One attached spirit could control 15% of your life. Another one could control another 20%. So each time a section of your life is free, they've been going through their whole life.

[B]

There was always a sort of a quasi, if not an actual sexual element to Kenja. So in the early days, there were group processing sessions where adults would be sitting in the nude and they would be sitting on chairs in pairs opposite each other, doing the purging of the spirits or whatever they did, looking into each other's eyes. And we know that Ken Dyers did private nude processing sessions as well. And numerous girls who grew up in the cult alleged that Dyers abused him during those sessions under the guise of helping them to prepare for their future sexual relationships. He did what I perceive now is sexual and emotional abuse. He tricked me into having sexual intercourse.

[A]

Into telling me that it's therapy.

[B]

I was captive for the times I.

[A]

Was in his therapy session. Wow, Hattie, that's incredibly disturbing. Perhaps. Let's get into how Kenja has been seen more widely. Ken Dyers, when he was alive, always denied that Kenja was a his partner. Jan Hamilton still fiercely denies this, but that's how police often classify Kenja. Why?

[B]

It was quite an all encompassing thing, being a part of Kenja. So sometimes the leaders would tell the younger members who they should form romantic relationships with and had certain features typical of cults. So it had a charismatic leader in Dyers, and it discouraged contact with family and friends who don't just subscribe to its beliefs. And it tended to attract people who were lost or lonely or seeking spiritual meaning. And it grew quite quickly. It grew from about 20 people initially to about 200 by the early 1990s. And Dyers and Hamilton owned several apartments in Sydney which they leased to members. And they themselves lived in a large house overlooking the ocean in Bundina, which was about an hour's drive south of Sydney. One of their recruiting methods has always been selling flowers at places like Edgecliff Station in Sydney and in Lonsdale street in Canberra. And you can still sometimes see people today wandering down, selling flowers, trying to recruit, and they've run sausage sizzles at Bunnings so that they're still around in a much diminished form.

[A]

Okay. And then really the heart of this is that a number of former members of Kenja have told you that Ken Dyer sexually abused them. And one person who claims that Dyers abused her is a woman who has been given the court pseudonym XC to protect her identity. So can you just tell me about her time at Kenja, Both what she has said about Ken Dyers and also about some of the female members of Kenja who allegedly have played a crucial, crucial role in a lot of these stories of alleged abuse.

[B]

Yeah. X has never spoken publicly, but details of her case can be found in court documents that were tendered in a civil action that she brought against Jan Hamilton and nine other senior members of Kenja, all but one of whom were women who she claimed had aided and abetted Dyers in sexually abusing her. So XC was probably Dyers last victim. Dyers took his life in 2007. He generally started becoming interested in girls when they reached puberty. And by the time XC reached puberty, he'd already been charged with sexual abuse, and he was subject to bail conditions to prevent him from coming into contact with children. But she claimed that the women of Kenja provided her with a Nokia phone that she was given for the sole purpose of arranging one on one unsupervised sessions with Dyers. They would be described in text messages as a session with Blythe McLachlan, who was one of the other women in Kenja. And they allegedly gave her a disguise of a wig and glasses that she was asked to wear. They bundled her down to the bottom of the building in a lift. She was taken into a car where they threw a blanket over her and she was driven to a different apartment where Dyers would be waiting for her. He was in his early 80s when this is alleged to have happened and XC was 14 years old.

[A]

And these experiences that XC has alleged, you know, they were all, she has said taking place around 2007. And that's years after Ken Dyers had been found guilty of aggravated indecent assault. A conviction that I think you just mentioned was later quashed on a legal technicality. So tell us about that.

[B]

Yeah. Dyers was found guilty of aggravated indecent assault in 1999. There'd been four complainants in that case and that was the only charge that stuck.

[A]

3. Ken Dyers was arrested and charged with four counts of indecent assault and seven counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with four girls aged between eight and 15. It's alleged Mr. Dyers committed the offences during what he calls energy conversion sessions. Three years and about.

[B]

But the conviction was quashed on a legal technicality. Fresh allegations were part of a campaign to destroy him and his organization Kenja, by disaffected and bitter former members.

[C]

The usual suspects are after me again, but I am not running away from them. I never did. I think it's time the media started looking at people.

[B]

And the DPP elected not to run a retrial after weighing up a number of factors, including his age and the time that had lapsed since the alleged offence. Unfortunately, this meant that he continued to reoffend. And several women claimed they were sexually abused by Dyers. In the following years, two of them reported him to police. He was charged with 22 offences. And while he was waiting for his trial, a third woman came forward and said he had molested her while he was on bail. So that basically meant that he would. Bail would probably be revoked. And realising that he shot himself. And as recently as a month before he shot himself, he'd allegedly caused XC to scream in pain as he sexually assaulted her. And when he finally stopped, he shouted at her for making him stop. Look, he's always maintained his innocence, but this is what she alleged in the court documents and what we know from other sources. When he did maintain his innocence, he became invariably very frustrated, which was recorded in a documentary called Beyond I Can that was filmed a few years before his death at the height of the allegations.

[C]

Instead of asking me to defend myself.

[B]

Defend myself, have a look at the young people who are not defend Kenja.

[C]

We're playing a bloody clean game, the cleanest game that's ever been played in Australia. And why do I have to defend myself of that?

[B]

You don't, Kenya.

[C]

I don't, and I'm not going to.

[A]

We'll be right back. Of course, in the face of these allegations of horrific abuse by Dyers, we've got not just members of Kenja, which you might expect, you know, including his partner Jan, fiercely defending his legacy. And Kenja, you know, they've got ads lionizing him as a great Australian. They put on a live theatrical show called A Witch Hunt. Guilty until Proven Innocent. But you've written that some of Dyer's fiercest defenders were the mothers of the girls who say they were abused by him. Now, this is fascinating, disturbing. So can you just walk us through this?

[B]

Yeah, I find it really fascinating as well. A lot of the mothers of girls who say they're abused remain in Kenja to this day, and I think they're probably still in the thrall of Dyers. But I almost, I mean, this is just my armchair psychology, but I, I, I think that they almost have to believe that he's been wrongly maligned because the XC allegations suggest that the adults were complicit in what happened. So if he's the monster that their daughters say he is, well, where does that leave them? And it's. There are a few women who have, who have come out of Kendra and talked about what happened in Kendra and what they did, which takes enormous courage to acknowledge your own part along this.

[A]

Line of questioning, I guess, about the people who have failed these girls who allege horrific abuse. We've got to talk about the fact that our own papers ran advertisements sponsored by Kenja. We were called out by Media Watch at the time, this is back in 2007. So can you tell us about that? And I don't know what's perhaps reflects, if anything, about our broader culture and the way it might have protected an alleged sexual abuser.

[B]

Yes, it wasn't exactly our finest hour when we ran advertisements in support of Ken Dyers. I think he placed ads in a number of newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald, proclaiming his innocence. And Media Watch took an interest when two weeks after his death, Kendra paid for ads in the Fairfax papers which attacked those girls credibility. It was part of a public relations campaign after Diaz's suicide that also included a lecture by Jan Hamilton and a documentary presented live on stage by many of Kenja followers that promised to tell the true story of what happened. There was a documentary titled A Witch Hunt. Guilty until proven Innocent. And Hamilton actually, years later, also tried to sue the state of New South Wales for Diaz's death because she said that he'd killed himself because he was hounded by police. That was unsuccessful.

[A]

I mean, one question that is really unanswered for me in all of this is, did Ken Dyers have some sort of charm or aura around him which led to so many people being in his thrall? You know, you mentioned that it's possible that the mothers of the women who allege this horrific abuse by him, that they could possibly still be in his thrall. So what was it about him? I guess aside from of course, what he promised, which was perhaps a cure for loneliness or a cure for spiritual unease.

[B]

I mean, he. He clearly must have had some kind of charisma. Cause so many people signed up to his philosophy and subscribed to it and thought that it was helping them and they had a bad temper as well. So if you. If you went against him, he'd fly into a rage often, and sometimes he'd humiliate you in front of the group. So you were sort of afraid of. Of letting him down, I guess, or of saying something that you didn't agree with. But there was probably also the element of wanting to please him as well.

[A]

Wow, that's interesting. And so now, of course, many of these women, they're growing up, they're coming to terms with what happen at Kenja. They're speaking up. So do you actually expect that more of them might sue?

[B]

I think it's very tricky. Dyes is dead, obviously, so you'd have to do what XC did and sue Hamilton and the other senior members of Kenja for failing in their duty of care. XC's case was ultimately settled before it went to trial, and we don't know the terms, it was a confidential settlement. But we do know that afterwards Hamilton's house at Bundina went on the market. So that tells you something. But it does also tell you that there's a question mark over what kind of of assets and money would be available if they did sue. I know that some of them had hoped to receive compensation under the National Redress scheme. This was a scheme for the victims of sexual abuse that was set up by the royal commission. ED offers a payment of $150,000, counselling and a direct response from the responsible institution to people if their claims are substantiated. But Kendra has somehow managed to slip through every available loophole to evade its responsibilities under this scheme. It's. First of all, it says no abuse ever occurred, so there's no need to join. So it's one of the very few institutions that haven't signed up to the scheme despite having claims against it. The federal government tried to introduce sanctions for institutions that didn't join, such as the loss of charity status. But Kenja's not a charity, so it doesn't have anything to lose. The government does offer to stand in as the funder of last resort for organisations that are defunct. But Kenja's still going, so it could join the scheme if it wanted to. It's just chosen not to. So it's a pretty hollow outcome for Canja survivors. The scheme only works if organisations work in good faith and recalcitrant organisations get off scot free. However, despite having little hope of personal compensation, when XC sued Hamilton and the other Kenja members, a long procession of women who were abused by Dyers themselves agreed to give evidence on XC's behalf. And some of them felt guilty about the girls who came after them and who'd been abused because they said nothing of their own treatment. I spoke to one woman who remembered at the time she was being abused by dyers. She remembered these little toddlers who ended up becoming his later victims and they were prepared to stand up and give evidence to help assist her because they just wanted to see justice finally served.

[A]

Kenja, of course, still continues to operate in Sydney and in Melbourne. So how do you make sense of that? You know, how do you reflect on that? You've been looking into this story off and on for four years. How do you make sense of that?

[B]

It's a much diminished organisation from what it was in its height. That probably happened after dyers left. It was very odd. When I was turning up to the early court cases in the XC case, there was sort of a group of very ordinary looking women in normal clothes. They didn't stand out at all, trudging into court each day and they were just this weird sort of insular psychology. They'd all talk to each other and glance at me. One of them was sent to mind me. So she used to come and sit next to me on a bench when I was waiting outside the court. I think that they're just still captured by that psychology and by the group. So they'll stay there. But it's hard to see. It's hard to see them getting too many new members. Although, you know, I suppose there are still families that are having children and who are growing up within the cult.

[A]

Wow. Harriet, thank you so much for your time.

[B]

My pleasure.

[A]

Today's episode of the Morning Edition was produced by Julia Carr Catzel. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. Archival audio in today's episode was taken from A Current Affair and the documentary Beyond Our Ken. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit theage or smh.com au subscribe and to stay up to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in the show Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.

[B]

It.