The family by Chris Johnston and Rosie Jones: 2 March, 2017

Drawing on police files, diary entries, recordings of cult-leader Anne Hamilton-Byrn, and original interviews with survivors and investigators, The Family goes inside one of the most bizarre cults in modern history to expose its strange and shocking story.

Chris Johnston is a senior writer for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, based in Melbourne. He has been covering developments related to the Family for several years. Rosie Jones is an award-winning writer, director and editor. Her most recent feature documentary, The family, premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July 2016.

Chris Johnston and Rose Jones will join us for a Q&A on Thursday, 2 March between 8 and 9pm. Please leave any questions you have below. (And discuss the book at your leisure!)

Want to buy The family? Receive 10% off when purchasing it from Readings at State Library Victoria. To receive the discount online, enter the promo code BOOKCLUB in the promo code box during online checkout. To receive the discount at our State Library bookshop, simply mention the Thursday night book club at the counter.

How many of the extended Family group, living in the hills, were you able to track down and interview?
What happened to the psychiatrists who ran the private hospital in Kew? Were they ever convicted for their part in delivering LSD without consent?

I 'd say we tracked down at least 20 people who'd been in the cult - actually probably more... haven't sat down and added them up.
The only living psychiatrist is still in Feny Creek - nobody has been prosecuted.

The psychiatrists were never convicted. At the the time LSD was legal for therapy if you had a license. The charges of adminstering drugs were never pursued becaise the police felt it would be harmful for the former cult children to be cross-examined.

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Was it a complicated process to obtain access to the archival material that you used in undertaking the research? What were some of the challenges and how did you address them?

Extremely complicated. We had to move very carefully and negotiate our way through. The archive came from many sources - it was a massive job to track and co-ordinate it all.

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Hi Chris and Rosie, thanks for the Q&A. I have two questions for you.

Did you come across anything you found particularly surprising during your research? I imagine you go into this kind of story expected a certain level of shocking details but did anything go beyond that?

And how do you about writing about this kind of story and keep it believable? Where there any parts of the narrative you looked at and thought "Okay, no matter how we present this, readers won't buy it"?

Thanks!

I still find it hard to believe that a cult could own a psychiatric hospital and within that hospital were 3 cult psychiatrists who had licenses to use LSD on patients - and one of them was liberating the LSD and taking it up to the Dandenongs for cult use.

I wAs surprised that the abuse of the children was so extreme and that the peole who perpetrated it were so 'normal'. An interesting insight into human nature!

As far as keeping it believable - we knew it all to be true! We wanted the readers to trust that.

@ Chris

Okay that's astonishing. A genius idea on their part. But astonishing.

@ Rosie

Hm, yeah, that's unsettling. Life's so much easier when you can just pretend that the people who do that kind of thing are mental or emotional outliers.

But I guess one of the points of great non-fiction is to break down those assumptions, eh?

Thanks for the answers.

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How did you verify all the info you used in the book? Seems like some of it would've been hard to verify given the circumstances. :-/

We took hreat care to make sure that our 'facts' were correct but often we are telling the story through memories, and they are notoriously unreliable. That's why I wanted to tell the story through multiple perspectives.

We came across many things that we could not prove. Only things we could prove or we knew to be true via documents or other primary sources were used.

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How do you choose what to focus on and what to ignore when you're trying to tell the best story in nonfiction? How can you decide what's the most important parts?

It's pretty difficult! I found all the interviews compelling so hard to edit. Ultimately this is the tip of a massive iceberg.

As Rosie kept on reminding me, it is all about propelling the story forward. Diversions are to be avoided. Find the events in people's lives that add to the story and use those, put the rest aside.

Sounds like there's material left for a sequel then, haha. Any interest in a follow up focusing on some of the parts or side-stories that didn't support the main arc (assuming there are any)?

It was very difficult. The story was huge but we had to focus on the wonderful first person testimony and build from there.

Cory - it is a big story and we have only just scratched the surface.

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Hi Chris and Rosie 👋🏼

What was the most challenging aspect of turning a real-life trauma into a compelling story?

I think understanding that people can be re-traumatised by re-telling their story and to be careful with them even when they have given consent.

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