The Cult Dossier · No. 125 · Commercial / Therapy / Lgat
Kenja Communication
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1982 – present · Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
XII. THE WIDER FIELD — CONCISE ENTRIES
Non-religious — personal development
Who led it
KEN DYERS (14 July 1922 – 25 July 2007) and JAN HAMILTON; the name comes from the first letters of theirs.
What it worshipped and taught
ENERGY CONVERSION — one-on-one sessions in which the practitioner sits silently opposite the client for extended periods. Dyers, a Second World War veteran, claimed the technique cleared psychic blockages.
Who was in it
Ken Dyers; Jan Hamilton; Cornelia Rau, whose 2005 immigration detention scandal in Australia brought Kenja to national attention; the complainants in the 1993 and 2005 child sexual assault charges. Rau was briefly involved with Kenja in 1998 and had shown symptoms of schizophrenia before; her family blamed the group for her decline.
How it ended, or where it stands
ACTIVE — four centres, in Sydney, Greater Western Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. The organisation has outlived its founder by nearly two decades. The allegation against the surviving co-founder remains untested.
The dead
1 (the leader, by suicide)
Of note
Included as the leading Australian example of the personal-development model, and because the Cornelia Rau case made it a matter of federal inquiry.
Its timeline
- 1982 Founded in Sydney.
- 1993 Dyers charged with 11 sexual offences against four girls aged 8 to 15. Across nearly a decade of trials and appeals he is found not guilty on ten; the remaining conviction is overturned by the High Court of Australia in 2002 for a possible misdirection of the jury.
- 2005 Charged with 22 counts of sexual assault against two girls aged 12. He twice seeks to be declared unfit and gets a year's stay.
- JULY 2007 A former member accuses Dyers of repeatedly abusing his daughter. On 25 July, the day police call him about further allegations, DYERS DIES BY SUICIDE, before the 22 charges come to trial.
- 2008 Jan Hamilton is given a two-year apprehended violence order over harassment of a former member.
- 2021 JAN HAMILTON is accused, under parliamentary privilege, of involvement in GROOMING girls for abuse. The allegation has not been tested in court.