Romantic triangle contributed to decline: sister

Cornelia Rau, the mentally ill Australian woman mistakenly held in immigration detention, was involved in a romantic triangle which may have contributed to the decline of her mental health, her sister said.

Christine Rau said today the romantic liaison took place while her sister Cornelia, 39, was involved in a cult known as the Kenja Communications group, based in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

“The things I do know, I don’t want to go into, because they could be defamatory … some involved a romantic triangle, so it could have been thwarted romance on her part,” Ms Rau told reporters on Tuesday.

Ms Rau said a woman called Allison was involved in her sister’s romantic tryst.

“[Cornelia] was part of this romantic triangle … but her involvement with Kenja was of less immediate interest to us than the way her behaviour changed, so we didn’t really pursue that angle,” she said.

The news comes after the Federal Government announced a private inquiry into her sister’s detention.
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In a statement to the media, Ms Rau welcomed the inquiry as a chance to fix the system.

“We agree that there’s been a lot of conflicting accounts coming out over the past four days and hope Mr Palmer’s inquiry will be an opportunity to shed some light both on the circumstances of Cornelia’s detention and on ways to rectify flaws in the mental health and detention systems in the four jurisdictions concerned,” she said.

Christine Rau said despite their personal experience in Cornelia’s case, her family did not have any bad feeling for the authorities involved.

“Quite the opposite; our feelings with the overtaxed and underfunded mental health system have been overwhelmingly positive as have been our dealings with NSW missing persons.”

Ms Rau also pointed to inadequacies with the nation’s missing persons database, saying it needed to be improved.

“It should have been addressed years before now,” she told reporters.

“I’m really sorry that Cornelia’s suffering had to lead to a discussion about these kinds of reforms but I’m very happy if what she went through might lead to improvements in some Australian bureaucracies.”

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