Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land

A Preliminary Survey of the Australian Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 “ Controversies” 1960–2000

Bernard Doherty

ABSTRACT: Between 1960 and 2000 witnessed four waves of “cult controversy.” This article provides a historical overview of these con- troversies. The four historical vignettes presented demonstrate the signifi- cance of Australia in the wider global history of the “cult wars” and some of the local societal reactions occasioned by various home grown and inter- national new religious movements that have proved controversial. This article identifies a series of the key episodes and periods that might serve as historical landmarks for the writing of a more fulsome history of new reli- gions in Australia, introduces to a scholarly audience some of the important individuals involved in these Australian controversies, and highlights the key new and cult-watching groups whose interactions have col- lectively shaped the Australian societal response over this period.

KEYWORDS: New Religious Movements, Australia, Cult Awareness Movement

s has been the case in other countries, over the past half-century Australia has played host to a series of “cult controversies” about new religions, yet these remain a surprisingly understudied phe- A 1 nomenon. Since the early 1980s a handful of sociologists and religious studies scholars have written periodic surveys of contemporary research

Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 24, Issue 1, pages 5–30. ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480. (electronic). © 2020 by The Regents of the University of . All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints- permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2020.24.1.5.

5 and synoptic overviews of the social construction of the “cult problem” in Australia.2 However, nothing approaching a diachronic historical survey has yet been undertaken, and aside from a handful of passing references little has been published pertaining to the cult-watching groups of var- ious stripes that have existed in Australia since the 1960s.3 In this article I propose that the history of “cult controversies” in Australia can be broken down into at least four waves of controversy.4 In providing a nar- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 rative overview of each of these periods I have a threefold purpose. First, I identify a series of key episodes that might serve as historical landmarks for the writing of a more fulsome history of new religions in Australia. Second, I introduce to a scholarly audience some of the important in- dividuals—adherents, cult awareness activists, journalists, politicians, and churchmen—who have become combatants in various skirmishes in the Australian theater of what scholars have dubbed the “cult wars.”5 Third, I highlight some of the key new religions and cult-watching groups whose interactions have collectively shaped Australian “cult con- troversies” from the early 1960s until around the year 2000. In doing this I demonstrate that, far from being of marginal interest, Australia has often been an internationally significant, but largely overlooked, locale in the global “cult wars.”

THE FIRST WAVE: SCIENTOLOGISTS UNDER THE BED (1960–1972)

Internationally, the best-known Australian cult controversy involves the Church of in early 1960s . A series of com- plaints about the activities of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International and related Scientology organizations, from members of the mainline churches, mental health sector, the tabloid media, and the , led to the establishment of an official board of inquiry into Scientology by the Parliament of the State of in 1963. Hearing evidence between late 1963 and 1964, the “Anderson Inquiry,” headed by Queen’s Counsel Kevin Victor Anderson (1912–1999), insti- gated legislative bans on the practice of Scientology in Victoria in 1965, followed by Western Australia (1968), and (1969).6 What is less known about these events is that they produced what was arguably the world’s first cult-awareness group—the Committee for Mental Health and National Security—the brainchild of disgraced self-proclaimed Australian Labor Party publicist Phillip Wearne (1925–1970) in his per- sonal vendetta against Scientology.7 It also witnessed some of the first stirrings of what has proven to be an enduring conflict between Scientology and sectors of the Australian mental health establishment— personified by the active role played in the inquiry by psychiatrist Eric Cunningham Dax (1908–2008).

6 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land

Following an acrimonious correspondence with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) and a break with Scientology in early 1963, Wearne, a talented comic book illustrator and petty criminal turned failed entrepreneur, began to inform all and sundry about the purported danger posed by Scientology. Wearne blamed Scientology for his financial woes and sued them in the Victorian Supreme Court claim- ing they had “brainwashed” him; Scientology settled out of court.8 He Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 lobbied his former political connections and produced periodicals including a short-lived magazine entitled Probe in which he promoted claims, later repeated during the Anderson Inquiry, that Scientology was trying “to take over control of the Commonwealth Government.”9 The truth of the matter seems more prosaic: media reports from just prior to his break with Scientology, as well as Wearne’s checkered history, sug- gest that his overblown claims about Scientology’s subversive intent reveal much about the nature of his Committee for Mental Health and National Security and the conservative Cold War social climate in which this group emerged. Wearne officially formed the Committee for Mental Health and National Security on 3 December 1963. Drawing heavily on Cold War fears, this group became the first cult-awareness group to bridge fears of political subversion and communist “”—popularized by theKoreanWarandinpopularculturethroughfilmssuchasThe Manchurian Candidate (1962)—and concerns about Scientology through its short-lived publication Reality.10 Wearne also courted influential fig- ures in the mental health establishment, including the chairman of Victoria’s Mental Health Authority, Eric Cunningham Dax, who claimed during the Anderson Inquiry that Scientologists “brainwashed” their adherents.11 Wearne’s publications and declassified intelligence files paint a picture of the actions he undertook, both as a witness before the Anderson Inquiry but also more widely through his extensive media campaign against Scientology and reporting of Scientologists and others he suspected of subversion to various sectors of the Australian security services—who, it is fair to say, considered Wearne a less than reliable informant.12 These publications also highlight the strategies Wearne used, chief among which was seeking moral and material support from the mental health sector for his campaign. Publication costs were par- tially met by advertising, including from psychiatric drug manufacturers. Despite having no formal qualifications, Wearne was even able to pres- ent on the topic of Scientology at the 1965 annual meeting of the local branch of the British Psychological Society at the University of Tasmania.13 Aside from Wearne’s tireless self-promotion and activism, the Committee for Mental Health and National Security existed more-or- less “in name only.”14 After the successful campaign against Scientology

7 Nova Religio during the Anderson Inquiry and (allegedly) alerting overseas govern- ments in Rhodesia and New Zealand regarding Scientology’s activities, the Committee faded into obscurity.15 Before his untimely death in 1970, Wearne briefly re-emerged in the late 1960s to claim in a sworn affidavit that his activities against Scientology had been covertly financed by the ’ Central Intelligence Agency.16 The Committee for Mental Health and National Security more-or-less disappeared following Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Wearne’s death, last appearing on the public record producing a single rambling anti-fluoridation pamphlet in the early 1970s, more akin to similar literature circulating among conspiracy-driven fringe groups on the political far right than overseas anticult groups that formed in the 1970s.17 The Australian Scientology controversy of the late 1960s and the Committee for Mental Health and National Security were representative of Cold War era fears regarding perceived threats to social decency, political subversion, and consumer protection from alleged medical quackery, rather than later explicitly “cult” controversies. The topic of per se was absent until late in the Anderson Inquiry and was only a minor consideration in subsequent parliamentary debates.18 The state parliamentary debates during the late 1960s placed greater emphasis on the undesirability of banning organizations, with Australian Labor Party politicians who opposed the legislation—some of whom were dual-ticket holders who at various times simultaneously held membership of the Labor party and the Communist Party of Australia—comparing anti- Scientology legislation to Prime Minister Gordon Menzies’ (1894– 1978) failed attempts to have the communist party banned during the 1950s. Anderson himself drew the same analogy and, despite being a staunch anti-communist, also warned Victorian legislators about the misplaced sympathy that he believed proscribing Scientology was likely to occasion.19 Scientology responded to what it viewed as unfair attacks by compiling extensive “False Report Corrections” files against Wearne and other oppo- nents, and commenced a campaign against what it viewed as a vast con- spiracy against it, targeting in particular the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Scientology found ready allies in the Australian Labor Party who, while generally unsympathetic to Scientology itself, shared its con- cerns about the politicization of various intelligence services and sought to curtail these security agencies.20 From the late 1960s into the 1980s Scientologists joined political parties, protested outside of Australian embassies abroad, and campaigned for Freedom of Information and tighter intelligence accountability legislation. Thanks in large part to political allies amongst the left-faction of the Labor party, Scientology eventually had itself declared a “religion” by Attorney General and later High Court Justice Lionel Murphy (1922–1986) in early 1973, exploiting a loophole in the original anti-Scientology legislation that made such laws

8 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land unenforceable. Anti-Scientology laws were quickly overturned in South Australia and Western Australia. No convictions were ever recorded.21 The Scientologists—still ostensibly illegal in three states at the begin- ning of the 1970s—became far less controversial as the decade wound on, and achieved piecemeal legal recognition for various exemptions permitted to recognized religious groups, culminating in a famous 1983 High Court victory—Church of the New Faith v Comissioner for Pay-roll Tax Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 (Vic).22 Despite these gains, however, the heavy-handed legislation of state governments had galvanized the first generation of Australian Scientologists into effective community organizers against religious intolerance.

THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN CULT PANIC (1974–1983)

With the 1972 election of the progressive Australian Labor Party Government of Gough Whitlam (1916–2014), the largely isolated Scientology controversy of the late 1960s subsided. However, with the belated flowering of the Australian counterculture in the late 1960s, anti-Vietnam War sentiment, and the burgeoning of a growing youth culture, an increasing number of young Australians (the “baby boomers”) followed international trends and began to rebel against the more con- servative values of their parents.23 Beginning with the visit of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008) on the coattails of Beatlemania in 1967, a series of new religions that were to prove controversial internationally began to arrive in Australia and win young converts. The response from parents was predictable, leading to the formation of the first enduring parent-based Australian cult-awareness group and the importation of the controversial practice of . In response, the besieged new religions even- tually banded together to form the Better Family Relations Association, which sought to highlight the threat of deprogramming and win support in the media and parliament. The first parent-driven cult-awareness groups in Australia emerged in the mid-1970s initially in response to two groups: the Universal Brotherhood commune, found in rural Western Australia, and the Children of God, which was nation-wide. However, parents concerned about their children’s involvement with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the , and later and the , followed toward the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. The Universal Brotherhood commune was established in 1971 and emerged from the wider channelled visions and apocalyptic portents of Fred Robinson, a and religious seeker in his eight- ies. Robinson had deep roots in Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and numer- ous other alternative social and political movements dating back to the Great Depression, when his Queensland cane farm had undergone

9 Nova Religio foreclosure.24 In the late 1960s Robinson embarked on one last tour as an itinerant speaker, warning about impending environmental and nuclear catastrophe. Robinson’s themes touched on the Zeitgeist of late 1960s Australia and he soon began to attract large crowds of counter- cultural youths at various events across Australia—including an estimated crowd of 10,000 at the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin, , a watershed of the counter-culture in Australia.25 By the early Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 1970s the media had cast Robinson as a “pop guru,” though other articles implied something more sinister, one calling him the “pied piper of the outback” as a number of young people began to flock to the commune.26 Setting up communities in rural Western Australia, the group attracted youths who were drawn to Robinson’s New Age message of back-to-the- land self-sufficiency, vegetarianism, alternative medicine, and a rejection of the conservative status quo. Universal Brotherhood quickly attracted the ire of parents of young members, most of whom were aged in their early twenties. These parents believed that their children had been recruited under false pretenses and were being taken advantage of by the group. Chief among them was Rupert Horwood (1922–1987), whose twenty-five-year-old daughter had left her family in Melbourne in early 1974 with two friends to join the commune after hearing one of Robinson’s public lectures. Concerned about his daughter’s well-being and mental health, Horwood wrote to Universal Brotherhood leaders several times to no avail. By June of 1974, Horwood was penning long itemized letters attacking the Brotherhood’s beliefs and practices, noting his consultation of “experts overseas,” and expressing his intention to devote all his time and energy to expose the group following his impending retirement.27 Matters soon escalated, and when Horwood travelled to Western Australia in October 1974 he became involved in an altercation with members of the commune. From that point onward Horwood became an implacable opponent of what he called the “pseudo-religious ,” and commenced a personal crusade against these groups. By 1975 Horwood had begun writing to state and federal parliamen- tarians about his concerns, demanding government action. Horwood’s concerns reached their apogee in late March when his daughter’s already fragile mental health took a downward turn, she departed from the group, and was voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital back in Melbourne.28 Horwood’s response was swift and decisive. He published letters to the editor in major daily newspapers across the country and wrote at length to numerous politicians about the “cult problem.” Horwood became an implacable one-man campaigner against what he viewed as the abuses of the new religions, and he formed the Citizens Freedom Association. Over the period from 1975 to 1983 Horwood was the most vocal proponent and distributor of secular anticult material that originated from similar groups in the United States, and he was

10 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land a focal point for parents seeking information or support when their children joined new religions. Horwood’s investigations in attempts to extract his daughter also led to his introduction to another man who was concerned about these new religions—Catholic priest Father Barry Tobin. Tobin first became interested in the “cult problem” in 1974, during his chaplaincy work at a hospital in Fairfield, Melbourne, where a nurse Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 introduced him to Horwood. Tobin became involved in the Citizens Freedom Association, and the two men became the nucleus around which the various figures of the early cult-awareness movement in Australia orbited.29 The Children of God became the target of their first joint campaigns. In efforts to escape the negative media, the mobilization of early anticult groups, and the possibility of a wider crackdown in the United States, the first missionaries from the Children of God arrived in in 1972. They initially settled in trendy inner-city Bohemian enclaves, and over the next two years set up colonies and recruited new members in various Australian cities. At first, local evangelical Christians and the media greeted these missionaries with little suspicion and even a degree of curiosity.30 However, owing to international developments and local conditions, within a year of their arrival the missionaries’ honeymoon period was wearing off. Reports from Christians overseas and further inquiries by local evangelicals resulted in a media campaign against the Children of God in religious papers, beginning March 1973.31 Negative material, largely distributed by Horwood, Tobin, and their allies, formed the basis of later articles, which appeared with increasing frequency in the wider media from 1975 to 1978.32 Together with internal changes in the Children of God—particularly the expansion of flirty fishing in 197433—this media campaign led to political concern being voiced in both state and federal parliaments, particularly in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, where Liberal Party parliamentarian Tim Moore called repeatedly and unsuc- cessfully for a judicial inquiry.34 These political concerns and extensive media coverage culminated in late 1976 with a police raid on Children of God communes for suspected immigration violations. Although no charges were laid and no members were deported, the group did become more scattered.35 Furthermore, that year (b. 1930) visited Australia and attempted the first recorded local deprogramming against an American Children of God missionary. The missionary dramatically escaped Patrick by jumping out of a motel lavatory window.36 Meanwhile, lobbying by the Citizens Freedom Association—by then known as the Association for Exposing Pseudo-Religious Cults—of both state and federal parliaments raised wider concerns. Politicians later tabled a number of petitions about the “cult threat” in parliament and expressed sympathy for parents.37 However, politicians acknowledged

11 Nova Religio that as long as such groups were not violating any state or federal laws it was inappropriate for them to do more.38 No government was willing to legislate or instigate greater official scrutiny of new religions, despite ongoing pressure to establish official investigations. Declassified archival documents amply demonstrate that behind the scenes several govern- ment departments, as well as the intelligence services, were monitoring the activities of different groups and implementing less coercive mea- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 sures that fell within the bounds of the existing statutory framework.39 The failure of earlier anti-Scientology legislation was still fresh in mind, and, despite serious concerns about Ananda Marga, Malcolm Fraser’s (1930–2015) Federal Liberal Party Government (1975–1983) recog- nized that any anticult legislation could theoretically fall foul of the prevailing judicial interpretation of Section 116 of the Australian Constitution.40 Out of frustration and desperation, a handful of parents turned to deprogramming to extract their adult offspring from the new religions. Deprogramming in Australia never reached the same levels that it did in other countries. The number of documented cases are few, and only two, those of a Hare Krishna and a Unificationist, proceeded to trial and no convictions were recorded.41 Be this as it may, new religions were aware of what was transpiring overseas. Led by Melbourne Scientologist and social worker Eva Ross, members of several new religions formed a loose coalition—the Better Family Relations Association—to defend themselves against hostile media, to highlight the threat deprogram- ming posed to civil liberties, and to call for a more irenic and dialogue-based approach to resolving family religious discord. The Better Family Relations Association also included a handful of sympa- thetic civil libertarians, including former deputy Prime Minister turned counter-culture enthusiast Jim Cairns (1914–2003) and Christian clergy- men such as Jesuit sociologist Father Noel Ryan (1916–1993). While its fortunes were mixed, in the late 1970s this coalition lobbied politicians to defend the civil liberties of members of new religions, and proved suc- cessful in dividing political opinion on the “cult menace.”42 Moreover, at least one psychologist concerned about civil liberties, Michael Ross, raised concerns independently in social science periodicals and subsequently undertook a series of psychometric assessment studies of members of new religions in response to the excesses of deprogrammers.43 Driven predominantly by activist Scientologists, the Better Family Relations Association began, like similar groups overseas, to distribute an alleged “Deprogramming Manual” (later suggested to be a forgery),44 denounced local cult-awareness groups to politicians, and publicly chal- lenged the same groups to disown the controversial practice of depro- gramming and instead adopt an approach that sought greater concord between youths who joined new religions and their parents. As in the United Kingdom, this strategy—among other factors—drove a wedge

12 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land into the nascent cult-awareness movement in Australia, particularly as significant moral weight was given to their cause by Better Family Relations Association members such as the scholarly Ryan and other respected churchmen, and independently by the psychologist and civil libertarian Ross. In this heated atmosphere some cult-awareness activists, notably Horwood and Tobin, eventually denounced forced deprogram- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 mings—though others continued to engage in the practice. Tobin’s about-face came belatedly, after he narrowly escaped civil liabilities in April 1977 for his role in an attempted deprogramming of a Hare Krishna woman. Tobin’s days as a self-appointed cult buster were num- bered and his involvement in the failed deprogramming proved his undoing and brought media opprobrium to bear on the developing Australian cult-awareness movement. While Tobin remained defiant and continued to comment publicly on the new religions into the 1980s, according to later reports he was sanctioned by Archbishop of Melbourne Frank Little (1925–2008). After his acquittal, Tobin’s activ- ism eventually faded into obscurity—outside of media reports that con- tinued to cite the 1977 case as an example of religious bigotry.45 Horwood proved more difficult to sideline even after he denounced forced deprogramming, and he continued his public denunciation of the cults into the 1980s, albeit as a solo-activist who distanced himself from the Association for Exposing Pseudo-Religious Cults. This group found itself reeling from a 1978 serial expos´e in the controversial pro- gressive newspaper Nation Review and appears to have disbanded by the early 1980s. While other figures in the Australian cult-awareness - ment were important in other ways, the effective marginalization of Tobin and Horwood prevented the early parent-driven cult-awareness groups from ever achieving more than mild political censure of new religions. Regardless, between 1978 and 1983—in the wake of on 18 November 1978 and wider controversies surrounding Ananda Marga and the Unification Church46—cult-awareness groups were still able to monopolize media coverage of new religions and attract sporadic support from politicians and concerned clergy. Ultimately the Better Family Relations Association’s lobbying strategy proved more effective, and a change of federal government in early 1983, followed by the Scientology High Court win later that year, saw the end of what this article has called the “Great Australian Cult Panic.”

KIDS IN CULTS (1986–1996)

With the 1983 High Court decision on Scientology, other new reli- gions were sanguine. While isolated cult controversies continued in the early 1980s—most notably over the Rajneesh movement community in

13 Nova Religio

Fremantle, Western Australia47—in general, concerns temporarily abated, and previously hostile mainstream media began to run more human-interest stories on various groups.48 This hiatus was short lived. The period from the late 1980s into the 1990s became a watershed in the history of child protection internationally, and themes associated with child abuse came to be applied to new religions.49 Beginning with raids on The (Australian) Family in 1987, the perceived threat posed by new Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 religions to children became the prime focus for controversy during this period. The history of The (Australian) Family, not to be confused with the Children of God who also used this name, remains highly contested.50 In brief, The (Australian) Family was a small esoteric group established in Melbourne during the 1960s. Founder Anne Hamilton-Byrne (1921– 2019) combined pre-existing esoteric currents with 1960s enthusiasm for Eastern spiritual practices—in particular, forms of yoga. Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s the group maintained a presence in com- munities in the Dandenong Ranges in Northern Victoria, particularly in the rural hamlets around Lake Eildon. Following a complex series of events, in 1987 The (Australian) Family became the subject of an exten- sive child services investigation and police raid that resulted in twenty- sevenchildrenbeingtakenonasstatewardsamidclaimsofforced drugging, maltreatment, and later revelations of considerable financial and identity fraud. No initial charges were laid and Hamilton-Byrne, who had acquired considerable international property holdings, relocated overseas to the Catskill Mountains in New York State. Despite an extensive media cam- paign and the establishment of a police task force codenamed Operation Forest, Hamilton-Byrne evaded authorities until the 1993 and assault on the Branch Davidian community outside , , by federal agents, through which information emerged that re- sulted in her extradition.51 Hamilton-Byrne and her husband pleaded guilty to charges of forging documents and were fined $5,000 (AUD) each. While often accompanied by sensationalism, stories about The (Australian) Family’s treatment of children were harrowing, and helped to sensitize the Australian public to new religions as a threat to children. This also contributed to the Australian episode of the international panic over so-called . Most accounts date the appearance of Satanic Ritual Abuse claims in Australia to August 1986, when several American advocates for the belief in extensive child abuse being undertaken by multi-generational Satanic cults attended the Sixth International Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect held in Melbourne, followed by specialist seminars for mental health workers.52 However, as overseas, many of the wider fears associ- ated with alleged “devil worship,” which accompanied the so-called “Occult Revival”53 of the 1960s, had been present in Australia

14 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land sporadically since the mid-1960s.54 Concern about this, particularly in Christian circles, led to the Anglican Diocese of Sydney establishing a 1974–1975 commission of enquiry and a much publicized report into “The Occult.”55 This type of material, along with imported religious literature from the United States and United Kingdom, lay the founda- tions for Christian responses during the 1980s and into the 1990s—with Satanic Ritual Abuse tropes mirroring those found internationally hit- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 ting the media as early as 1987.56 The first clinical and legal cases of alleged Satanic Ritual Abuse in Australia soon appeared. By the early 1990s a significant number of mental health professionals had become convinced of its reality and were holding large conferences and distributing guidelines for dealing with such cases across Australia—sometimes with the explicit sanction of larger mental health bodies.57 To truncate a lengthy narrative, all the same constituencies who have been identified in the dissemination of ideas relating to “Satanic Panic” in cases overseas, from conservative Pentecostal and evangelical Christians, through feminist activists and social workers, to mental health professionals, the media, and cult- awareness groups, eventually came to see as a real and present danger to Australian children. These advocates found support particu- larly in the New South Wales Legislative Council from parliamentarians such as conservative Christian Democrat Reverend Fred Nile (b. 1934) and controversial Australian Labor Party parliamentarian Franca Arena (b. 1939), who both attempted, in different ways, to politicize these concerns. Amid conspiratorial claims voiced under parliamentary privilege by Arena, Satanic Ritual Abuse eventually became one subject of a wide- reaching investigation by the Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, headed by Justice James Wood. The chapter on Satanic Ritual Abuse was clear in its conclusions, finding that such claims were, among other things, “blown up by the mass media because of their bizarre and attention grabbing nature.”58 While the political cachet of Satanic Ritual Abuse claims proved minimal, in the meantime some cult- awareness activists had embraced these claims. Their influence, com- bined with that wielded by feminist activists from within the social work sector and parts of the media, made the threat a near ubiquitous, though never entirely unchallenged, feature in the Australian press.59 In Australia the more established evangelical counter-cult activists were not to blame for promoting belief in Satanic Ritual Abuse, and, like their international co-religionists, proved more cautious. Exceptions included fringe figures in small Pentecostal churches, convicted crim- inals dubiously claiming to be ex-Satanists in the Mike Warnke mould,60 and a former policeman turned Pentecostal pastor who was the source of some of the more exaggerated claims about satanic activity in New South Wales.61 However, more established Christian counter-cult activists, such

15 Nova Religio as Churches of Christ minister Reverend Adrian van Leen of Concerned Christian Growth Ministries, early on expressed suspicion about the more extreme claims. Even Jan Groenveld of the Cult Awareness and Information Centre, by her own admission a victim of clerical child abuse who would have otherwise been sympathetic to claims about Satanic Ritual Abuse-based repressed memories, found herself the victim of these accusations by her own daughter.62 That said, Satanic Ritual Abuse claims Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 in Australia were not without their supporters among some cult-awareness activists, and this period witnessed the entry into the Australian “cult scene” of other, more militant, figures. Tony McClelland founded CultAware in 1992 following his son’s involvement in Scientology, and from the outset sought to create an Australian equivalent to the in the United States.63 As well as protesting outside of Scientology headquarters and lobbying government, McClelland’s group became involved with advo- cates of belief in Satanic Ritual Abuse. The most vocal of these advocates was Martin Katchen, a former student, and arguably prot´eg´ee, of University of academic and one-time anti-Satanist campaigner Carl Raschke.64 In the early 1990s, Katchen, then a doctoral student in the University of Sydney’s Department of Studies in Religion, became a devoted campaigner in Australia. His contribution to the book Out of Darkness (1990), a key text for those who believed in the reality of Satanic Ritual Abuse, proved influential.65 Katchen was a self-identified anticult activist with links to the Cult Awareness Network. Through a series of presentations at anticult conferences and elsewhere, he sought to lend an academic veneer to the more extreme claims that had emerged in parts of the Australian media. His work, however, appears to have been received with ambiguity, even in cult-awareness circles.66 With a handful of academic publications under his belt, and having contributed to the short-lived satanic panic in Australia, Katchen was eventually awarded his doctorate by the University of Sydney in 1997 on the topic of “Children of Brainwashing: Traumatic Dissociation in Persons Raised in Thought Reforming Religious Movements.” After this he ceased to publish widely. Katchen and other activists’ involvement with the Cult Awareness Network, however, provided a casus belli to Scientology and coincided with the emergence of a new coalition in Australia who responded to this controversy. By the early 1990s the members of the Action Group for Religious Liberty—a successor to the Better Family Relations Association—had already seen the potential danger of ideas regarding Satanic Ritual Abuse.67 The group’s semi-regular newsletter at the time preempted the media crisis to come. Reverend David Griffith from the , for example, attended the 1989 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion meeting in Salt Lake City and noted in a subsequent newsletter article the potential for a Satanic Ritual Abuse based “witch

16 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land hunt” to occur in Australia.68 Similarly, self-professed conservative Anglican Reverend Ian Hunter—whose own church had witnessed acts of desecration—penned a sober, if somewhat misinformed, piece on the “occult.”69 Despite the meagre resources and influence of the group, by late 1991 the Australian media had embraced many of the excesses of “Satanic Panic” exhibited internationally. The Action Group for Religious Liberty was not alone in seeking to Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 challenge Satanic Ritual Abuse claims. The Pan-Pacific Pagan Alliance sought to dispel misinformation about Neopaganism during the early 1990s.70 The alliance, however, proved more successful in the media, leading to a number of more careful feature articles that differentiated Pagan practices from Satanic Ritual Abuse claims and since this time hostility to Neopagans in Australia has generally been markedly less than other new religions.71 The Action Group for Religious Liberty disbanded soon after the 1993 death of central figure Noel Ryan. In the ensuing years, members of Scientology publicly rebuked cult-awareness activists like Katchen and fellow campaigner psychiatrist Anne Schlebaum.72 Just as CultAware picketed their churches, Scientologists responded in kind and harried other passers-by with claims about CultAware’s complicity in fostering “Satanic Panic” at their events — highlighting in particular how claims overseas had been discredited, and pointing to media reports impugn- ing Schlebaum’s testimony to the Wood Royal commission. After the Commission’s report heavily criticized Schlebaum’s work with alleged victims, and Arena’s ignominious fall from grace in the late 1990s, wide- spread concern over Satanic Ritual Abuse disappeared quietly. The skep- tical line became more widespread, particularly in the media.73 Even police surgeon Ed Ogden, who had personally witnessed the damage wrought on the children of The (Australian) Family and who had earlier been cited by Fred Nile in parliament regarding satanic cults, came to adopt a skeptical position.74 However, while this controversy simmered, a far more dramatic event took place surrounding The Family (formerly the Children of God). Years of activism by figures such as Adrian van Leen in his Take a Closer Look newsletter; scrutiny from social services resulting from a cus- tody dispute between a current and former member; and the formation of Project Disk and Project Omen, both New South Wales police task- forces charged with investigating reports of child abuse, resulted in the next Australian cult controversy, this time surrounding the small remnant community of the Children of God (then known as the Family of Love, now The Family International). Initially in response to a public tip given to a hotline established in a campaign to address child abuse in October 1991, pressure from tabloid media program A Current Affair,75 and coin- ciding with a wider international push against The Family in Argentina and other countries,76 circumstances escalated and led to a series of

17 Nova Religio dramaticraidsonthegroup’scommunalhousesinSydneyand Melbourne on 15 May 1992. These raids resulted in 142 children being taken into protective custody and was, as historians Dorothy Scott and Shurlee Swain noted, the “largest, most dramatic, and most public child protection intervention in Australian history.”77 Unlike many earlier cult-awareness measures, however, this event resulted in both promoting considerable public sympathy and mobiliz- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 ing the media against the raids. Vocal churchmen, including later cult critic and Uniting Church minister Reverend David Millikan, publicly questioned the integrity of the raids; conservative Fred Nile prayed with members of The Family.78 At the same time, Victorian Premier Joan Kirner (1938–2015) made a tasteless joke, subsequently repeated across the media, which captured the general mood: “What is the difference between Community Services Victoria and a Doberman?” The answer given was “a Doberman eventually returns your children.”79 While the cause of child protection was something that those across the political spectrum supported, this case was widely seen as an act of hubris and bureaucratic overreach by child services. Amid much media grandstanding, legal counsel for The Family in Sydney, Chris Murphy, ruthlessly attacked the Department of Community Services’ case and by October 1992 had negotiated an interim settlement in New South Wales that obligated the parents to provide greater socialization for their children outside the religious community. In Victoria, however, matters were complicated, and as Kirner’s “joke” above suggests, more politically heated. Unlike the argu- ably sloppy legal case in New South Wales, Community Services Victoria had enlisted the services of Ian Freckelton, a lawyer and legal scholar of considerable weight with an interest in cult-awareness issues, whose legal team had compiled what all parties acknowledge was a weighty brief in what was referred to as the “White Book.”80 After considerable legal argument over an extended series of hearings, a mediation agreement was reached in Victoria in April 1994. Later, in New South Wales, a num- ber of members were eventually awarded considerable damages when the State Supreme Court found the raids to have been illegal.81 However, the nationwide media controversy this case attracted ensured the effective end of The Family’s public missionary work in Australia. While some community leaders later became briefly involved with the Action Group for Religious Liberty, The Family ceased to be a major part of the Australian cult scene, and leading members of the group soon moved to other missionary fields overseas without further controversy. While the saga over The Family was still before the courts, however, the events outside Waco, Texas, which the Australian tabloid television program A Current Affair had already played an initial role in exposing, occasioned the fourth wave of cult controversy in Australia— that over potentially explosive “doomsday cults.”

18 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land

DOOMSDAY FEARS (1993–2000)

As the final decade of the millennium drew to a close, a handful of international events involving so-called “Doomsday cults” led to increased interest in millennialist religious groups by law enforcement agencies and the media.82 Though geographically distant, Australia felt the impact of events surrounding the at Waco (1993); Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo (1995); the Order of the Solar Temple in Quebec (1994 and 1997), France (1995), and Switzerland (1994); and Heaven’s Gate in (1997). Each of these groups except Heaven’s Gate had some link to Australia. Australian moral entrepre- neurs were able to capitalize on fears about “doomsday cults” to tempo- rarily draw the “cult problem” back into the public eye. Within days of the 1993 tragedy at Waco, New South Wales Liberal Party Member of the Legislative Council Stephen Mutch presented a report to the state parliament on “Cults in Australia.” He encouraged his colleagues to establish a select committee on cult activities along similar lines as that called for by Moore regarding the Children of God fifteen years prior. This was not the first time Mutch had raised the “cult problem” in parliament: a year prior he had publicly criticized a self-help group named Kenja, and according to his own account, he had been interested in the issue since at least the early 1980s. Mutch’s speech, however, attracted little political support except from Franca Arena, but it did touch on the Zeitgeist, and fears about purported cult violence were to grow over the next eight years.83 This palpable millennial panic manifested in public concern about a handful of groups that the media depicted as having the potential to commit acts of millennially inspired violence against either their own members or those surrounding them.84 While security agencies partially shared these concerns, what arguably set Australia apart was that the two most public millennial groups were not predominantly inspired by the kinds of Protestant premillennial concerns found elsewhere in the Western world, but both were apocalyptic that at the time self- identified as Roman Catholic. The self-appointed of the Magnificat Meal Movement and the Order of Saint Charbel were both representative of a visionary milieu that had developed in sectors of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia and internationally since the 1960s. Debra Burslem (b. 1953)—later Geileskey—and William Kamm (b. 1950, better known as “The Little Pebble”) had been reared and nurtured in the atmosphere of post-War pre-Vatican II devotional piety and anti- communism, and considered themselves devout Catholics. In the late 1960s when the vernacular liturgy, in particular, became more wide- spread, it alienated a significant, though often almost entirely neglected, segment within the Catholic Church in Australia, particularly amongst European migrants for whom traditional forms of worship and devotion

19 Nova Religio had assisted cultural transition. All that was needed to ignite this spiritual powder keg was a spark, and the upsurge in purported Marian apparitions critical of the post-Vatican II church, beginning with the visions of Rosa Quattrini (1909–1981) at the village of San Damiano in Italy during the 1960s, provided that spark. From the early 1970s, many Roman Catholic migrants of Anglo-Irish, Italian, Maltese, Lebanese, and Polish heritage strongly embraced new devotions, establishing localized pilgrimage sites Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 and enthusiastically sharing the latest “messages from heaven” in para- church prayer groups. As the content of these messages became increas- ingly apocalyptic and critical of contemporary trends in the Church, some of these para-church groups found themselves in conflict with diocesan authorities. Both the Magnificat Meal Movement and the Charbelites emerged from this wider milieu in the mid-to-late 1980s and into the 1990s.85 By the time of the Branch Davidian situation in 1993, which height- ened public attention on “doomsday cults,” both these groups had estab- lished communes in their respective towns of Helidon (Magnificat Meal Movement) and Nowra (the Charbelites), and both had found themselves in a degree of conflict with local priests and bishops. However, owing to the historical reluctance to give credence to purported Marian appari- tions by opening official investigations, both dioceses initially kept aloof of developments and sought to deal with matters on a low-key and local basis. This proved ineffective, and large numbers of pilgrims attended both apparition sites from Australia and overseas. Disturbing reports forced both diocesan bishops to act more decisively. In the meantime, the local media—with the tacit encouragement of elements in the Church—drew on “” themes to depict both dissident Catholic groups as threats, circulating reports about planned mass suicides.86 First in the Diocese of Toowoomba (beginning 1997), and later in the Diocese of Wollongong (beginning 1998), local bishops established canonically sanctioned diocesan inquiries into the veracity of the alleged apparitions. The reports of both inquiries, only made public in official statements, were equally damning.87 The episcopal decrees issued by Bishops William Morris (in 1999) and Peter Ingham (in 2002) con- cluded that both groups were inauthentic expressions of the Roman Catholic religious life, and that both seers—Kamm and Burslem—were at best deluded dupes, at worst culpable false prophets, wilfully leading the faithful astray and unwilling to submit to legitimate episcopal over- sight.88 While the media covered both episcopal decrees at length, this did not settle the matter in the secular sphere and both groups continue to operate. The Magnificat Meal Movement has denounced any Roman Catholic connection and transformed into a New Age apocalyptic group.89 The Charbelites still strongly adhere to their claimed Catholic identity, though amid Kamm’s ongoing legal battles and dwin- dling numbers they have declined considerably.90

20 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land

Despite the media furor, the transition to the new millennium passed without major in Australia and the panics involving both groups proved to be short-lived. However, they clearly highlight how wider societal fears, coupled with opposition from influential sectors of the wider community—in this case the Catholic Church—could easily esca- late into a full-blown cult panic. It is also worth noting, by way of conclu- sion, that police investigations into both groups, while not establishing Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 a credible wider societal threat of violence, did ultimately uncover serious and indictable offenses. In the case of the Charbelites, media scrutiny and police investigation led to Kamm’s eventual conviction for sexually based offenses against teenage female followers, and he served a lengthy prison term.91 In the case of Burslem, the shadow of possible future legal pro- ceedings for alleged financial misdemeanors continues to hang over her. However, her current residence in Vanuatu precludes prosecution, and at the time of writing members of the Magnificat Meal Movement have been convicted of only minor offenses relating to the disruption of worship in a local Catholic Church in 1999.92

CONCLUSION

These four waves of “cult controversy” in Australia, spanning from the 1960s to the year 2000, present some of the complex social and political dynamics that have operated in Australia as well as signalling areas for future historical inquiry and analysis. These vignettes demon- strate that, far from being a marginal battleground for minor skirmishes, Australiahasbeeninaninternationally significant, but often over- looked, theater of the global “cult wars.” In the first wave, Australia witnessed the foundation of the first docu- mented cult-awareness group and the first sustained attempt by secular governments to apply the “brainwashing” thesis to a new religion and utilize mental health legislation as a form of social control. Moreover, the case of the Committee for Mental Health and National Security and its Cold War era demonstrates how Korean War era fears about communist subversion came to be transmitted to new religions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The second wave of cult controversy took its cue from events overseas, but owing to earlier experience surrounding Scientology bans, the types of legislative debates that had occurred overseas were less prevalent in Australia; while clearly unim- pressed by the activities of several new religions, politicians were unwill- ing to engage in heavy handed statutory actions. Despite this, cult stereotypes were to prove powerful media images that have endured into the present, and while new religions were arguably effective in lobbying parliamentarians, they were far less effective in influencing wider public opinion.

21 Nova Religio

The third wave also followed international precedents in importing anticult fears about child safety. However, the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare in Australia was shorter lived than elsewhere. As happened overseas, new religions campaigned against it, assisted in this regard by a general unwillingness of the larger churches to pay credence to satanic abuse claims and less credulity from influential Christian counter-cult activists. These events, however, deserve far closer study than they have received. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 The account given herein only scratches the surface of how the politi- cization of child protection saw outrageous claims being widely pro- moted such that an entire chapter of the groundbreaking report of the Wood Royal Commission needed to be dedicated to Satanic Ritual Abuse. The fourth wave, focused on doomsday fears and millennial anxieties, also closely followed overseas events. Historical demographic factors in Australia saw two unlikely groups come to the fore, both of which were as much products of a wider social matrix of conservative discontent within the Catholic Church as wider millenarian currents. While law enforcement kept close watch on these groups and ultimately the feared violence never eventuated, the increased scrutiny contributed to the decline of both groups. Coupled with the highly publicized sanc- tions imposed by the Catholic Church both groups were delegitimized and their considerable appeal among disenchanted Catholics was neu- tralized. The Magnificat Meal Movement and the Charbelites demon- strate important case studies for how salient interests from church and state can still operate in tandem to sanction unpopular religious groups even in ostensibly heavily secularized countries such as Australia. This historical repositioning of Australia’s place in the social con- structions of the “cult problem” provides a wider and much-needed international perspective. This essay, therefore, serves as a clarion call to other Australian scholars to further embrace study of both home- grown NRMs and those that have come from overseas because of the significant place Australia holds in the wider history of new religions.

ENDNOTES

1 I borrow this phrase in the wide sense used by James A. Beckford, Cult Controversies: The Societal Response to New Religious Movements (London: Tavistock, 1985), 1. 2 I use the phrase “cult problem” in a wider social constructionist sense here. See, for example: Eileen Barker, “The Cult as a Social Problem,” in Religion and Social Problems, ed. Titus Hjelm (London: Routledge, 2011), 198–212. For an alternative perspective see David Feltmate, “Rethinking New Religious Movements Beyond a Social Problems Paradigm.” Nova Religio 20, no. 2 (2016): 82–96. For previous Australian work see, in chronological order: “The New Sects,” Current Affairs Bulletin 58, no. 4 (1981): 4–27; Rachael Kohn, “Cults

22 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land and the New Age in Australia,” in Many Religions, All Australian: Religious Settlement, Identity and Cultural Diversity, ed. Gary D. Bouma (Melbourne: Christian Research Association, 1996), 149–62; Gary D. Bouma, “New Religions in Australia: Cultural Diffusion in Action,” in Religion in a Changing World: Comparative Studies in Sociology, ed. Madeleine Cousineau (London: Praeger, 1998), 203–212; Rowan Ireland, “New Religious Movements and a New Australia,” in Religion in an Age of Change,

eds. Peter H. Ballis and Gary D. Bouma (Melbourne: Christian Research Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Association, 1999), 154–65; Lynne Hume, “New Religious Movements: Current Research in Australia,” Australian Religion Studies Review 13, no. 1 (2000): 27–39; James T. Richardson, “New Religions in Australia: Public Menace or Societal Salvation?” Nova Religio 4, no. 2 (2001): 258–265; Adam Possamai, “Alternative Spiritualities, New Religious Movements, and Jediism in Australia,” Australian Religion Studies Review 16, no. 2 (2003): 69–86; Peter Clarke, New Religions in Global Perspective (London: Taylor & Francis, 2004). 3 For example, Kohn, “Cults and the New Age in Australia,” 157. This article uses the terminology proposed by Eileen Barker. See: Eileen Barker, “Watching for Violence: A Comparative Analysis of the Roles of Five Cult-Watching Groups,” in Cults, Religion, and Violence,eds.DavidG.BromleyandJ.GordonMelton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 132–48, and Eileen Barker, “Charting the Information Field: Cult-Watching Groups and the Construction of Images of New Religious Movements,” in Teaching New Religious Movements, ed. David G. Bromley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 309–29. 4 I borrow the idea of “waves” of “cult controversy” from Philip Jenkins, Mystics and : Cults and New Religions in American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Sean McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists 1955–1993 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 5 This phrase has been popular since at least the early 1990s, though its exact origin remains unknown. For example see Eugene V. Gallagher, ed., “Cult Wars” in Historical Perspective: New and Minority Religions (London: Routledge, 2016). 6 Bernard Doherty, “The Anderson Inquiry and its Australian Aftermath 1963– 1973,” in Handbook of Scientology, eds. James R. Lewis and Kjersti Hellesøy (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 249–78; Bernard Doherty, “Colonial Justice or a Kangaroo Court? Public Controversy and the Church of Scientology in 1960s Australia,” Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 6, no. 1 (2015): 9–49. 7 Daniel Best, The Strange, Strange Story of Phillip Wearne ([?]: Blaq Books, 2015); “The Legacy of Phillip Wearne,” Australian Comics Journal, 5 April 2018, http://australiancomicsjournal.com/wp/the-legacy-of-phillip-wearne/; Steve Cannane, : The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia (Sydney: ABC Books, 2016), 84–98; Bernard Doherty, “The Fertile Mind of Phillip Bennett Wearne, an Early Scientology Apostate,” Acta Comparanda 4 (2017): 129–146. 8 “Scientology Client Made Bankrupt,” The Age, 10 November 1964, 11. “Scientology Blamed by Debtor for Business Loss,” The Age, 20 October 1964, 2. 9 “How Mr Wearne Lost His Shirt: The Scientologists’ Plot to Take Over Australia?” The Bulletin, 23 May 1964, 19; see also Doherty, “The Fertile Mind of Phillip Bennett Wearne,” 133–40.

23 Nova Religio

10 See Joseph Laycock, “Where Do They Get These Ideas? Changing Ideas of Cults in the Mirror of Popular Culture,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 1 (2013), 86–7. 11 “Scientology as Brainwashing?” The Bulletin, 6 June 1964, 13; “‘Scientology’ Perverted Inquiry Told,” Canberra Times, 28 May 1964, 27. 12 Bernard Doherty, “Spies and Scientologists: ASIO and a Controversial

Minority Religion in Cold War Australia, 1956–83,” Intelligence and National Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Security 31, no. 7 (2016): 998. 13 Doherty, “The Fertile Mind of Phillip Bennett Wearne,” 139. 14 Cannane, Fair Game, 100. 15 “Short History of Activities of Members of the Committee for Mental Health and National Security,” Reality 7, no. 1 (1966), 12. 16 On Wearne’s later years see Doherty, “The Fertile Mind of Phillip Bennett Wearne,” 140. 17 Fluoridation and Lawlessness: The Psycho-Politics of Socialism, Subversion and Schizophrenia (n.p.: The Committee for Mental Health and National Security, 1972). 18 Bernard Doherty and James T. Richardson, “Litigation, Liberty, and Legitimation: The Experience of the Church of Scientology in Australian Law,” St Mark’s Review 247, no. 1 (2019): 67–9. 19 Doherty, “Colonial Justice or a Kangaroo Court?” 26. 20 Doherty, “Spies and Scientologists,” 999–1002. 21 Doherty, “Colonial Justice or a Kangaroo Court?” 46–49. 22 Doherty and Richardson, “Litigation, Liberty and Legitimation,” 71–5. This 1983 High Court case—popularly known as the “Scientology Case”—examined at length why the Church of Scientology qualified as a “religion” in Australia, and has since provided the case law precedent for defining “religion” in Australian jurisprudence. 23 On this period see Hilary M. Carey, Believing in Australia: A Cultural History of Religions (Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 1996), 172; Michelle Arrow, Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945 (Sydney: UNSW Pres, 2009). 24 Stephen John Carthew, “A World Within a World Within ‘the World’: The Origins of the Universal Brotherhood, an Australian Countercultural, Back-to- the-Land, New Age Alternative Society and Community” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Australia, 2012). 25 Shirleene Robinson, “1960s Counter-Culture in Australia: The Search for Personal Freedom,” in The 1960s in Australia: People, Power and Politics,eds. Shirleene Robinson and Julie Ustinoff (Newcastle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 132. 26 John Lindblad, “Pied Piper of the Outback,” Pix People, 12 September 1974, 5–6. 27 Extensive correspondence between Horwood and the Universal Brotherhood can be found in the National Archive of Australia (hereafter NAA): Correspondence Files, M2556, Horwood case/sects, 1974-77. 28 John Gavegan, “ Made Girl a ‘Mindless Zombie,’” Daily Telegraph, 21 April 1975, 1, 7.

24 Doherty: Strange Gods in a Great Southern Land

29 Tony Wells, “Priest Probes Cult Fringe,” Sunday Observer, 23 August 1987, 10. 30 Judith Rich, “Exotic religions” Cosmopolitan, May 1974, 68–70, 107; “‘Children of God’ at Queanbeyan,” Canberra Times, 11 November 1972, 14; David Naylor, “Religious Sect Accused of Brainwashing,” Pix People,16December1976,12, 17; “Nothing Sinister—Sect from Dallas,” Sydney Morning Herald,6November 1972, 9. 31 David Claydon, John Hirt and Mal Garvin, “The Children of God—in Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Australia,” Southern Cross, March 1973, 5–6. 32 See Ted Adams, “Parents Warned on ‘Evil Sect,’” The Advocate, 30 October 1975, 1; “Children Hypnotised to Join Sect: Priest,” The Age, 15 February 1977, 6; David Elias, “Gunning for the Children of God,” The Herald, 11 April 1975, 2; Barney Murray, “Move to Protect Teenagers from Sects,” The Australian,12 October 1976, 2; “Sect ‘Evil’ Catholics are Told,” The Australian, 28 October 1976, 3; “Sects Lured 200 Young People,” The Australian, 12 October 1976, 1; “Sect is Brainwashing Young People—MLA,” Sydney Morning Herald,19 November 1976, 2; Christopher Webb, “Why Parents of the Children of God Worry,” The National Times, 17–22 May 1975, 11. 33 See J. Gordon Melton, “Sexuality and the Maturation of the Family,” in Sex, Slander, and Salvation: Investigating The Family/Children of God, eds. James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (Stanford: Center for Academic Publishing, 1994), 74. 34 New South Wales, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 24 February 1977, 4486–5008. All parliamentary documents referenced in this article can be located in the Hansard database of the , found at aph.gov.au, or the Hansard database of the Parliament of New South Wales, found at: www.parliament.nsw.gov.au. 35 New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, Discrimination and Religious Conviction (Sydney: The Board, 1984), 214–19; “Communes Raided by Police,” The Age, 3 December 1976, 5; “Visits, Not Raids, on the Children of God,” The Australian, 3 December 1976, 4. On the background to the “raids” see NAA: Correspondence Files, A446, Children of God, 1972–1978. 36 David Ainsworth, “Opposition to Deprogramming Steps Up,” Dharma (October 1977), 10–12. 37 Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, Petitions, “Religious Organisations,” 6 November 1979, 2589. 38 See the answers of the Federal Attorney General Bob Ellicott in Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 13 October 1976, 1806; Australia, House of Representatives, Debates, 10 November 1976, 2517. 39 This is abundantly clear from an analysis of several files from the late 1970s; see in particular NAA: Correspondence Files, A1838, Protection-Religious Sects- General, 1978–1988; and Correspondence Files, A1838, Consular Protection - Religious Sects - Inter-Departmental Committee on Oversight on Certain Organisations, 1979–1981. 40 On concerns about Ananda Marga see: John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley, The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO 1975–1989 (Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2016), 83–99; Helen Crovetto, “Ananda Marga and the Use of Force,” Nova Religio 12, no. 1 (2008): 26–56. On the complexities of Section 116, see: Renae Barker, State and Religion: The Australian Story (London: Routledge, 2018),

25 Nova Religio

68–99; Luke Beck, Religious Freedom and the Australian Constitution: Origins and Future (London: Routledge, 2018), 114–155. 41 New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, Discrimination and Religious Conviction, 246–252. 42 Mark Plummer, “East is East and West is West But Who Knows if Father Knows Best,” Nation Review, 10–16 February 1977, 400. The Better Family Relations

Association’s approach is well summarized in Leslie Verity, Dangerous Trends: Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 An Analysis of the Social Repercussions of the ‘New’ Religions and the Anti-Religious Movement (Sydney: Better Family Relations Association, 1977); see also Conciliatory Dialogue: A Peaceful Means to Save the Family (n.p.: Better Family Relations Association, 1976). Details of the Better Family Relations Association’s lobbying can be found in NAA: Correspondence Files, A432, Better Family Relations Association - Representations to Attorney General by Dr. D. Ferrel and Mrs. Van De Linde re: Religious Sects, 1977. 43 Michael W. Ross, “Psychological Malpractice and the Anti-Cult Battle: The Brain Awash,” Australian Journal of Social Issues 14 (1979): 201–210. 44 Deprogramming: The Constructive Destruction of Belief—A Manual of Technique (n. p.: n.d.). On this manual and its history see Beckford, Cult Controversies, 228–30, and Stephen A. Kent and Joseph P. Szimhart, “Exit Counseling and the Decline of Deprogramming,” Cultic Studies Review 1, no. 3 (2002): 249–291. 45 Adrian Hunt, “The Anti-Cult Movement—The New Inquisition,” Nation Review, 1–7 December 1978, 11; “Brain Washing and Hypnosis,” Nation Review, 8–14 December 1978, 11; “Friends of the Anti-Cult,” Nation Review, 15–21 December 1978, 14; “What Future the Anti-Cult Movement,” Nation Review,22 December–12 January 1979, 24. 46 For the controversy about the Unification Church at this time see Romilly Fraser, The Jerangle Affair: A Study of the Unification Church in Australia and Public Opposition to its Establishment (Sydney: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World , 1979). 47 On this controversy see Paula O’Brien, “The Rajneesh Sannyasin Community in Fremantle” (Master of Research thesis, Murdoch University 2008). 48 See Bruce Stannard, “The Cash Cults Move from Beyond the Fringe,” The Bulletin, 24 April 1984, 54–7; Robert Thomson, “Sects Welcome Court Decision on Scientology,” Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 1983, 3. 49 Joel Best, Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Dorothy Scott and Shurlee Swain, Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Protection in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002). 50 Carole M. Cusack, “The Family (Australia),” World Religions and Spirituality Project, 3 January 2017, https://wrldrels.org/2018/01/03/the-family/; Sarah Hamilton-Byrne, Unseen, Unheard, Unknown: My Life Inside the Family of Anne Hamilton-Byrne (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books Australia, 1995); Chris Johnston and Rosie Jones, The Family (Brunswick, VIC: Scribe, 2017). 51 Gerard Ryle, “Where is This Woman?” The Age: Extra, 8 September 1990, 1, 4. 52 Richard Guilliatt, Talk of the Devil: Repressed Memory and the Ritual Abuse Witch- Hunt (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996); Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, “The

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Devil Down Under: The Satanic Panic in Australia, from Rosaleen Norton to ‘Alison’s Birthday,’” in Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, eds. Kier- La Janisse and Paul Corupe (Godalming, Surrey: FAB Press, 2016), 291–307; Michael Hill, “Satanic Ritual Abuse—Now You See It, Now You Don’t,” Australian Religion Studies Review 7, no. 2 (1994): 58–64; Michael Hill, “Satan’s Excellent Adventure in the Antipodes,” Issues in Child Abuse Accusations 10 (1998), http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume10/j10_9.htm; Timothy Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 Lynch, Satan’s Empire: The Panic over Ritual Abuse in Australia (Saarbru¨cken, VDM Verlag Dr. Mu¨ ller, 2011); James T. Richardson, “The Social Construction of Satanism: Understanding an International Social Problem,” Australian Journal of Social Issues 32, no. 1 (1997): 61–85. 53 Marcello Truzzi, “The Occult Revival as Popular Culture: Some Random Observations on the Old and the Nouveau Witch,” Sociological Quarterly 13 (1972): 16–36. 54 Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic (Sydney: Horwitz Publications, 1965); Nevill Drury and Gregory Tillett, Other Temples, Other Gods: The Occult in Australia (Sydney: Methuen, 1980), 100–112. 55 The Occult: Report of an Anglican Commission of Enquiry (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1975). On this report and its reception see Drury and Tillett, Other Temples Other Gods, 100–135. 56 See Judy Mishinski and Paulene Turner, “Crusade of the Occult-Busters,” Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1987, 17; Frank Walker, “Satanists Lure Kids to Covens,” The Sun-Herald, 27 September 1987, 20. 57 See for example Eithne O’Donovan, Ritual Abuse: Information for Health and Welfare Professionals (Kings Cross: NSW Sexual Assault Committee, 1994); John Schuttermaier and Arthur Veno, “Counselors’ Beliefs About Ritual Abuse: An Australian Study,” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 8, no. 3 (1999): 45–63; Linda Johnson, “Surviving Satanism: Overcoming Self Destructive Behaviour in Rural Adolescents,” Youth Studies Australia 13, no. 3 (1994): 46–52. 58 Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, Final Report, Volume 4: The Paedophile Inquiry (Sydney: Government of the State of New South Wales, 1997), 103. 59 See Norman Aisbett, “Dark World of the Secret Satanic Cults,” The West Australian, 14 March 1991, 11; Yvonne Preston, “The Scream that Must be Heard,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 1990, 41; Yvonne Preston, “Abused and Abandoned,” Australian Left Review no. 126 (1991): 22–25; Mike Safe, “Speak of the Devil,” The Australian Magazine, 30 November 1991, 9–14. 60 Mike Warnke (b. 1946) was an American Christian comedian who claimed to be an ex-Satanist during the 1970s and 1980s. He was later exposed as having fabricated his story. See Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott, Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal (Chicago: Cornerstone Press, 1993). 61 “Profiles ...The Cult Victims,” New Idea, 8 October 1988, 35; Preston, “The Scream that Must be Heard,” 41. 62 Guillatt, Talk of the Devil, 115–6, 239–245. 63 Anthony McCelland, “Scientology: Church, Cult or Con?” The Australian Women’s Weekly (September 1992), 94–6; Sian Powell, “My Suburbia Strikes Back,” The Australian 13–14 May 1995, 5.

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64 On Carl Raschke’s role in the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic see Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 105–25. 65 David K. Sakheim and Susan E. Devine, eds., Out of Darkness: The Controversy over Satanism and Ritual Abuse (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). 66 Guillatt, Talk of the Devil, 240–1.

67 As discussed earlier, this group was concerned about negative media coverage, Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 and members included both new religions and mainstream churchmen from the Uniting Church in Australia, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Church of Australia. For more about this group see John Bodycomb, “New Religions and the Media,” Australian Religion Studies Review 1, no. 2 (1988): 36. 68 David Griffiths, “Does the World Need Another Witch Hunt?” AGRL Review, Winter, 1990: 6. 69 Ian Hunter, “Satanism, Religious Freedom and Community Safety,” AGRL Review, Winter, 1990: 4–5. 70 On this activism see: Paganism, Beliefs and Practices: A Guide to in Australia and New Zealand (Carnegie, VIC: Pan Pacific Pagan Alliance, 1994); Lynne Hume, Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 58. 71 Chris Uhlmann, “The Pagans of Canberra,” Canberra Times, 30 October 1994, 19. 72 Guilliatt, Talk of the Devil, 89–93. 73 Lynch, Satan’s Empire, 377–389. 74 Edward Ogden, “Satanic Cults: Ritual Crime Allegations and the ” (master’s thesis, University of Melbourne, 1993); Mary Patterson, “Satan, Sex and Pseudoscience,” Res Publica 6, no. 2 (1997): 15–18. 75 A Current Affair later played a major part in precipitating the involving the Branch Davidians. See Martin King and Marc Breault, Preacher of Death: The Shocking Inside Story of and the Waco Siege (London: Signet 1993), published in the United States as Marc Breault and Martin King, Inside the Cult: A Member’s Chilling, Exclusive Account of Madness and Depravity in David Koresh’s Compound (New York: Signet Books, 1993). 76 James T. Richardson, “Social Control of New Religions: From ‘Brainwashing’ Claims to Child Sex Abuse Accusations,” in Children in New Religions, eds. Susan J. Palmer and Charlotte E. Hardman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 172–186; Stuart Wright and Susan J. Palmer, Storming Zion: Government Raids on Religious Communities (New York: Oxford University press, 2016), 73–98. 77 Scott and Swain, Confronting Cruelty, 169. 78 David Millikan, “Safety First? DCS and the Family of Love,” National Outlook, June 1992, 8–12. 79 Damian Murphy, “Sects in the Open,” The Bulletin, 22 March 1994, 38–39. 80 For some of the more responsible journalism at the time see Wanda Jamrozik and John O’Neill, “Family Feud,” The Independent Monthly, March 1994, 70–77; Ian McMinn, “Sects and the Welfare Worker,” The Bulletin, 2 June 1992, 28; see also Ian Freckelton, “‘Cults,’ Calamities and Psychological Consequences,” Psychiatry, Psychology and the Law 5, no. 1 (1998): 1–46.

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81 On the conclusion of these cases see J. Gordon Melton, “The Children of God/The Family Court Case in Australia, 1992,” CESNUR, 7 April 2000, https:// www.cesnur.org/testi/TheFamily/australia.htm. 82 Jean François-Mayer, “Cults, Violence and Religious Terrorism: An International Perspective,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24, no. 5 (2001): 361–62; see also the special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence 14, no. 1 (2002).

83 New South Wales, Legislative Council, Debates, 22 April 1993, 1429–1434; New Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020 South Wales, Legislative Council, Debates, 24 November 1992, 9724; New South Wales, Legislative Council, Debates, 22 April 1993, 1429–1434. On the Kenja controversy see also: Peter Ring, Chris Markovitch, and David MacLachlan, Our Australian Freedoms are Under Threat (Canberra: self-pub., 1993). 84 Media on the two groups discussed is extensive. See: Greg Roberts, “Police fear cult ,” The Age, 7 August 1999, 3; Susan Borham and Rosa Maiolo, “Prophet & Loss,” Sydney Morning Herald, 23 December 1993, Spectrum 1. 85 On Australia, see: Bernard Doherty, “The Road to : Yves Dupont and the Latin Mass Society of Australia 1966–1977,” Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 35 (2014): 87–107; Bernard Doherty, “‘Mourning the Death of Our Faith’: The Little Pebble and the Marian Work of Atonement 1950–1984,” Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 36 (2015): 231–273; Janet Kahl and Bernard Doherty, “Channelling Mary in the New Age: The Magnificat Meal Movement,” Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 7, no. 2 (2016): 295–313. Internationally, see: Joseph P. Laycock, The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); E. Ann Matter, “Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Late Twentieth Century: Apocalyptic, Representation, Politics,” Religion 31, no. 2 (2001): 125–153; Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorgje (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 86 Tanya Giles and Paul Anderson, “Cults Vigil,” Herald Sun, 5 April 5 2000, 1; Fergus Shiel, “Religious Community Denies Any Mass Suicide Plan,” The Age,10 July 1997, 8; Michelle Tydd, “Death Camp Fears,” Illawarra Mercy, 4 July 1997, 1. 87 The author has read both official reports and notes that the decrees reflect their findings. 88 The decrees by bishops against both groups are numerous. See Bishop Joseph Hitti, Letter to the People of the Diocese of St Maroun in Australia, 24 July 1995. Bishop Peter Ingham, Mr William Kamm also known as The Little Pebble, 16 June 2002; Bishop William Morris, Statement by Bishop Morris on the Churches Position RE the Magnificat Meal Movement, 1 July 1997; Bishop William E Murray, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pastoral Letter, 2 December 1984. Archbishop George Pell, Official Notification, 13 June 1997 and Bishop Philip Wilson, Decree,27 September 1999; these official public church statements are no longer available online but are available on request from the relevant Diocesan chancelleries or from the author. For a discussion of both groups see Bernard Doherty, “Marian Arks Cut Adrift: The Post-Roman Catholic Development of Two Australian Marian Apparitional Movements,” in Mariology at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, eds. Kevin Wagner, M. Isabell Naumann, Peter John McGregor, and Paul Morrisey (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 98–121.

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89 Kahl and Doherty, “Channelling Mary in the New Age.” 90 Bernard Doherty, “Order of Saint Charbel,” World Religions and Spirituality Project, 26 May 2018, https://wrldrels.org/2018/06/26/order-of-saint-charbel/. 91 Doherty, “Order of Saint Charbel,” and Peter Yeomans, “‘The Little Pebble’: Cult Leader & Child Sex Offender,” Australian Police Journal 67, no. 1 (2013): 44–9. 92 Kahl and Doherty, “Channelling Mary in the New Age,” 297. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article-pdf/24/1/5/406844/nr.2020.24.1.5.pdf by The University of Queensland user on 21 December 2020

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