NOTES ON SOURCES

We have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information within this book was correct at time of publication. Where we have relied on others’ firsthand accounts of events, we have quoted their words as recorded for the feature documentary The Family or additional interviews with them. Where we have quoted from letters, transcripts, and case files, we have reproduced the text as it appeared in the original.

First-person accounts in The Family are drawn from interviews with 18 participants filmed for the feature documentary The Family as well as separate interviews with some over four years of research. Six of these interviews were with former cult children, two with former Australian policemen, and one with a former FBI agent in the United States. Two more were with journalists who had covered the cult’s story. One series of interviews was with a current cult member, and several more were with former cult members.

Further material is from files gathered for the Victoria Police taskforce Operation Forest, the library of The Age, and police and legal sources. We also interviewed numerous other people who had dealings with the cult or had family connections to it, but never joined.

We have used ABC radio interviews with Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne, Donald Webb, and Megan Dawes by Ranald MacDonald from 25 October 1994 and 3 May 1995.

Material on the earliest formations of The Family is drawn from Dr Raynor Johnson’s unpublished diary, covering the years 1962 to 1978.

We drew on Dr Sarah Moore’s book Unseen, Unheard, Unknown (Penguin Australia, 1995; published under the name Sarah Hamilton-Byrne) for her descriptions of LSD use in the cult.

In the chapter ‘The Seekers’, we have drawn on Raynor Johnson: a biographical memoir by Alan Moore (Lakeland Publications, 2007), Lift Up Your Eyes by Ambrose Pratt (Robertson and Mullens, 1935), and The Light and the Gate by Raynor Johnson (Hodder and Stoughton, 1964). We also referred to The Light and the Gate in ‘Blue Rooms’, regarding The Venerable Sumangalo.

In ‘Uptop’, we have referred to Dr Sarah Moore’s book Unseen, Unheard, Unknown, in particular her descriptions of self-harming while at Uptop. We have also drawn from her book in ‘The Hole’ (descriptions of the food at Uptop and attending Kenlaurel dancing school), ‘The Sound of Music’ (hair bleaching), ‘Hurleyville’ (Swami Muktananda), and ‘The Kingdom’ (her medical career).

In ‘The Hole’, we have drawn on ‘“Mother” Tells: I illegally took 28 children’, The Herald, 5 November 1987.

In ‘Fires’, we have referred to Marie Mohr’s report for Channel Nine News, 30 October 1985.

In ‘Sacred Manna’, we have quoted from Dr L. Howard Whitaker’s paper on therapeutic use of LSD from ‘Lysergic Acid Diethylamide in Psychotherapy’, parts I and II, in The Medical Journal of Australia 51: 5–8, 11 January 1964. We have also used material from one of Marie Mohr’s reports, ‘The Family Part 3’, featuring Marie Mohr in Hawaii with Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne, A Current Affair, Channel Nine, 30 April 1990, and have quoted from the Daily Hansard, Parliament of Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 51st Parliament, First Session, Tuesday 15 May – Wednesday 16 May 1990.

In ‘Santiniketan’, we referred to Raynor Johnson: a bio-graphical memoir by Alan Moore to help understand Johnson’s last days. In the text we have referred to an interview with Johnson, ‘Secret Society Part One’, Dateline, Channel ATV-0, circa June/July 1971. We have also quoted from the letter David Whitaker wrote (with his brother) to members of The Family, of which he provided us a copy.

In ‘Love is in the Air’, we have quoted from the speech that Marie Mohr gave at Leeanne’s wedding in 1995, courtesy of Leeanne and Marie Mohr.

In ‘Blue Rooms’, we have used extracts from Anthony Leigh’s manuscript, ‘Now I Can Get My New Tattoo’, courtesy of Anthony Leigh.

In ‘Hurleyville’, we have referenced Raynor Johnson’s article in Light, College of Psychic Studies, volume 95, number 3, 1975.

In ‘The Kingdom’, we have quoted from the eulogy David Whitaker wrote for his mother, of which he provided us a copy. We have also quoted from Karl Stefanovic’s story ‘The Family’, Sixty Minutes, Channel Nine, 2 October 2009, and drawn from Stephen Drill’s article ‘Authorities Launch Review After Links Between Notorious Cult “The Family” and Melbourne School’, The Sunday Herald Sun, 27 July 2014.