Inside Australia’s notorious cult ‘The Family’ whose woman leader ‘collected’ dozens of children and injected them with LSD as she prepared for apocalyptic war

WITH their cutely cropped hair and matching clothes, these cherubic children look like an image of innocence and happiness.

But in reality they are the prisoners of a delusional cult leader on a drug-fuelled mission to gather kids in preparation for an apocalyptic war.

Children were drugged and beaten by elders in The Family

Anne Hamilton-Byrne, the charismatic mother figure who led the creepy Australian sect known as The Family, thought she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Taking in kids from brainwashed parents over the course of nearly twenty years, she raised her flock as her own at a secluded property in Lake Eildon in Victoria state.

And despite apparently fawning over these innocent kids, allegations of beatings, starvation and even the drugging of young boys and girls with powerful LSD in the 1970s and 80s are still rife.

These accusations are laid bare in an upcoming documentary titled The Family, which even features chilling accounts from Hamilton-Byrne herself.

Speaking of her obsession with creating a brood of identical children, she says: "'I wanted them to look like brothers and sisters — I must admit this.

"I loved them in their little smocks and jeans and the long hair and ribbons. It was beautiful. It was lovely to see."

And when confronted about why she imprisoned 28 kids over her twenty-year reign, she says simply: "I love children".

Born Evelyn Edwards in 1921 to a mentally ill mother and an absent father, Hamilton-Byrne was working as a yoga teacher when she met English physicist Dr Raynor Johnson in 1963.

The following year they set up a group dedicated to spreading a surreal combination of Christianity and Hinduism, with Hamilton-Byrne at its centre.

Attracting middle-class New Age parents and dolling out heaps of LSD, Hamilton-Byrne convinced them to hand over custody of their kids to her in order to create a "master race".

After undergoing years of seclusion, brutal punishment and doses of powerful psychiatric drugs, upon reaching adolescence the children were put through a bizarre initiation involving taking LSD and sitting in a dark room.