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Cult survivor ends up in court
More articles on this topic: The Family/Great White BrotherhoodIn her book Unseen Unheard Unknown - which borrows its title from the motto of the cult she escaped from - Sarah Moore feared her nascent medical career would be damaged as a result of being in “The Family“. Yesterday that career was in jeopardy when she faced court on prescription-drug charges.
In the 1970s and ’80s The Family’s leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, adopted 14 children, including Moore, and brought them up to believe they were her own, subjecting them to a regimen of isolation, indoctrination and extreme discipline.
Moore wrote that she was violated by a diet of drugs, violence, sleep deprivation and emotional manipulation as part of Hamilton-Byrne’s “scientific experiment”. Her autobiography detailed how she woke to the sounds of children howling as they received their first belting for the day. “We were given daily doses of tranquillisers to ‘calm us down’ and I think these took the edge off everything,” Moore wrote.
Now for Moore to continue as a doctor she has to place faith in the same judicial system that she has said had failed her when no child abuse charges were laid against Hamilton-Byrne after the cult’s Eildon property was raided in 1987.
In the Ringwood Magistrates Court yesterday, Moore, 35, pleaded guilty to 160 charges relating to forging prescriptions to obtain pethidine from November 2004 to April this year. More than 70 additional charges were struck out.
Leading Senior Constable Lisa Aulich told the court that Moore had travelled around Melbourne and Victoria on 40 occasions in her search for the strong painkilling drug.
“She has consistently stated to police that she has done it for the pain,” Senior Constable Aulich said.
Shortly before committing the offences, Moore suffered a miscarriage. She also experienced post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder and took the pethidine not to get “happy and high” but as a way of blocking out suffering, the court heard. She has tried to commit suicide several times. “I was five the first time I tried to die,” she wrote.
Moore’s lawyer, Bradley Newton, said the crime was victimless. “If there is a victim, it’s potentially Dr Moore,” he said. “It’s these circumstances that continue to haunt her today.”
Lawyers from The Family were in court yesterday, just as they were at Moore’s successful bail application in May. When Mr Newton alerted the court, magistrate Nunzio La Rosa replied: “It’s a public environment.”
But Moore had great support from an almost packed courtroom which included a local councillor, health care professionals and her mother, from whom Moore was taken at birth.
In documents tendered to the court, Moore twice used the name Annemarie Hamilton-Byrne to obtain pethidine.
“Her lament is that she has put herself in a position through the relapse that she could not help tsunami-affected people in South-East Asia,” Mr Newton said. “She wants to go and help people…”
Psychiatrist Byron Rigby said Moore thrived on helping others and a penalty that would prohibit her from continuing to practise medicine would add to the psychological terror she already suffered and would further strip away her identity.
Dr Rigby said it was “fundamental to her sanity” for Moore to continue as a doctor.
Mr Newton said Moore was capable of complying with a bond, but Mr La Rosa questioned whether the court should extend any leniency to Moore, who has had three court appearances between 1998 and 2001.
Mr La Rosa said Moore had suffered a childhood that no one should have to endure. “It has had an indelible effect on her and, despite that, she has risen… almost like a phoenix to great heights.”
He will sentence Moore, of Upper Ferntree Gully, next week.
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