Raphael Aron took his first call from a cult survivor in the 1970s during a psychology placement with a crisis hotline. It was the “old days” of cults, he says, when headlines were dominated by Charles Manson, Jonestown and the abduction of Patty Hearst. Closer to home, the Children of God and the Family, led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, were gaining notoriety.
But Aron says Australia’s cults problem is now “more real than it’s ever been”, telling a Victorian parliamentary inquiry this week that there have been several “tragic outcomes”. These include the death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs in Queensland in 2022.
