The Cult Dossier · No. 180 · Second Generation / Born In
The Manufactured Family
Anne Hamilton-Byrne's children; the Lake Eildon children
1968 – 1987 · Lake Eildon, Victoria, Australia
XVIII. THE SECOND GENERATION — THE ONES WHO NEVER CHOSE
A syncretic New Age teaching in which Hamilton-Byrne was held to be the reincarnation of Jesus. See 060.
Who led it
ANNE HAMILTON-BYRNE and her husband BILL.
What it worshipped and taught
CHILDREN ACQUIRED AND THEN REASSIGNED AN IDENTITY. FOURTEEN INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN were acquired between 1968 and 1975, and later accounts put the total who passed through the property at up to twenty-eight — some obtained through adoptions arranged by sympathetic doctors and nurses, some the biological children of members handed over. THEY WERE RAISED AS SIBLINGS, TOLD HAMILTON-BYRNE WAS THEIR MOTHER, DRESSED ALIKE AND HAD THEIR HAIR BLEACHED BLONDE AND CUT INTO THE SAME BOB. The group taught they were being prepared as a master race to survive an apocalypse. As they reached adolescence, some were given LSD in a ceremony that presented Hamilton-Byrne as divine.
Who was in it
Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne; SARAH MOORE HAMILTON-BYRNE (L200), raised in it and later a doctor and a principal witness; the Victoria Police and federal officers who raided the property.
How it ended, or where it stands
THE GROUP DISSOLVED. THE CHILDREN SPENT DECADES ESTABLISHING WHO THEY ACTUALLY WERE, several of them never fully succeeding.
The dead
No deaths at the compound are established. THE INJURY HERE IS IDENTITY, AND IT DOES NOT PRODUCE A BODY COUNT.
Of note
THE REASON THIS CASE BELONGS IN A SECOND-GENERATION ERA RATHER THAN ONLY IN 060 IS THAT THE GROUP DID NOT MERELY RAISE CHILDREN INSIDE A BELIEF. IT MANUFACTURED THE FAMILY ITSELF.
Birth records were falsified. Unrelated children were told they were siblings. Their hair was bleached to make the fiction visible. A CHILD IN MOST GROUPS IN THIS DOSSIER AT LEAST KNOWS WHO THEIR PARENTS ARE; THESE CHILDREN DID NOT, AND FINDING OUT TOOK SOME OF THEM INTO ADULTHOOD.
THE LEGAL OUTCOME IS THE PART WORTH SITTING WITH. After a raid, an extradition and years of investigation, the conspiracy charges were dropped, the only conviction was for a false declaration, and the penalty was a $5,000 fine. Everything done to the children — the beatings, the starvation, the LSD, the fabricated parentage — produced no criminal liability at all. COMPARE 179: TEXAS COULD NOT HOLD 439 CHILDREN IT HAD REMOVED, AND AUSTRALIA COULD NOT CONVICT FOR WHAT WAS DONE TO THE SIX IT DID. The gap between what these children experienced and what any court recorded is the recurring result of this era.
Birth records were falsified. Unrelated children were told they were siblings. Their hair was bleached to make the fiction visible. A CHILD IN MOST GROUPS IN THIS DOSSIER AT LEAST KNOWS WHO THEIR PARENTS ARE; THESE CHILDREN DID NOT, AND FINDING OUT TOOK SOME OF THEM INTO ADULTHOOD.
THE LEGAL OUTCOME IS THE PART WORTH SITTING WITH. After a raid, an extradition and years of investigation, the conspiracy charges were dropped, the only conviction was for a false declaration, and the penalty was a $5,000 fine. Everything done to the children — the beatings, the starvation, the LSD, the fabricated parentage — produced no criminal liability at all. COMPARE 179: TEXAS COULD NOT HOLD 439 CHILDREN IT HAD REMOVED, AND AUSTRALIA COULD NOT CONVICT FOR WHAT WAS DONE TO THE SIX IT DID. The gap between what these children experienced and what any court recorded is the recurring result of this era.
Its timeline
- 1968–1975 The group, formed around Hamilton-Byrne in Melbourne in the 1960s, acquires FOURTEEN infants and young children.
- 1970s–1980s THE CHILDREN ARE RAISED AT THE PROPERTY AS THE HAMILTON-BYRNES’ OWN, SEVERAL OF THEM ON FALSIFIED BIRTH REGISTRATIONS. Accounts describe beatings, starvation as punishment, and heavy sedation.
- adolescence LSD IS ADMINISTERED TO SOME OF THE CHILDREN in a ceremony framed as an initiation.
- 14 AUGUST 1987 VICTORIAN AND FEDERAL POLICE RAID THE LAKE EILDON PROPERTY AND REMOVE THE SIX CHILDREN STILL LIVING THERE, AGED BETWEEN TWELVE AND SEVENTEEN. The raid followed a complaint from SARAH, then seventeen, who had left. It is how the outside world learns the group exists.
- JUNE 1993 Hamilton-Byrne and her husband are arrested by the FBI at HURLEYVILLE in the Catskills, New York, and extradited to Australia. They are charged with CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD and CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT PERJURY, over falsely registering three unrelated children as their own triplets.
- 1994 THE CONSPIRACY AND PERJURY CHARGES ARE DROPPED. IN THE COUNTY COURT SHE AND BILL PLEAD GUILTY TO MAKING A FALSE DECLARATION AND ARE FINED $5,000 EACH. That is the entire criminal consequence. NO CONVICTION IS EVER RECORDED AGAINST HER FOR ANYTHING DONE TO THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES.
- 13 JUNE 2019 She dies aged 97 in a Melbourne nursing home, having spent her last years with dementia. Some reports gave her age as 98; she was born on 30 December 1921.