Review of The Family

This is a sad, troubling book about a tragic Australian communal group formed by a woman who believed she was Christ incarnate, attracted influential followers, amassed extraordinary wealth, illegally acquired children to rear as a master race, and who today, aged ninety-five, suffers from advanced dementia and is near death.The authors describe this story as "a tragic, sensational one about power, money, love, hope, and ultimately abuse" (2).Thirty years ago, on August 14, 1987, we Australians were astounded to watch television news showing police and social workers raiding a "cult" called The Family.But instead of carrying out guns, ammunition, or bombs, they carried out almost twenty children.Most were dressed identically, with bleached-white hair, and they said their mother was Anne Hamilton-Byrne.Thirty years later, this sorry saga in Australia's utopian communal history is far from closed.Anne Hamilton-Byrne was born as Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards in 1921 in rural Victoria.With her mother in a mental asylum and her father's "whereabouts unknown," Anne grew up, unloved, often in orphanages, but this did not stop her styling herself to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, a living god.Anne explained that Jesus had reincarnated as a beautiful blond woman because he had previously come as a bearded male "and if he had come with a beard again he might have been recognised and persecuted once more" (26).