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Kenja Communication cult co-founder’s bizarre plot backfires
Cult co-founder’s bizarre plot backfires
A former member of cult Kenja Communications has been granted an apprehended violence order following allegations the co-founder instigated a bizarre plot to intimidate and harass her.
Alison Pels, 20, thought Jan Hamilton and another Kenja co-member “were going to kill her” when she discovered they had disguised themselves and posed as directors at a stage audition she attended, Fairfax newspapers have reported.
“My whole body had shut down, I was in absolute terror,” Ms Pels, who left the “personal development” cult in February last year, was quoted as saying.
Ms Hamilton was ordered yesterday not to stalk, harass or intimidate Ms Pels for two years after it was found that she and other Kenja members had staged auditions for a Chekhov play, Three Sisters,at a hall in Sydney’s West Pymble last October.
They had used wigs and facial hair to prevent her from recognising them, according to Ms Pels.
Magistrate Roger Clisdell said the hoax audition had the “bizarre hallmarks” of the Kenja group.
Ms Pels’s lawyer, Brett Longville, said the plot was a sinister attempt to intimidate Ms Pels for making allegations of sexual assault against Ms Hamilton’s late husband, Kenja’s founder Ken Dyers.
Ms Hamilton co-founded Kenja with her late husband, Ken Dyers, who committed suicide last year amid allegations of multiple sex offences against children.
Ms Pels, who has given the Herald permission to name her, was among those who made allegations against him.
[...]Ms Pels’s lawyer, Brett Longville, told the court that Ms Hamilton’s actions were a “sinister” attempt to harass and intimidate Ms Pels for making the allegations against her late husband.
But Ms Hamilton’s lawyer, Harland Koops, said Ms Pels was a “habitual liar”, who had staged the audition process and her subsequent distress in an attempt to cause serious criminal charges to be laid upon Ms Hamilton.
He said Ms Hamilton and other Kenja members had been at her Surry Hills home on the night in question. He produced a video of the group purportedly taken on that night.
However the magistrate, Roger Clisdell, found that the video, which included a shot of a wall clock and close-up of a newspaper showing the date, was a “child-like” attempt at providing an alibi for those members.
He said the video as well as the “hoax audition” had the “bizarre hallmarks” of the Kenja group and he did not find any witnesses from the group, including Ms Pels’s mother, Marty, to be reliable.
Note: Many news reports refer to the cult as Kenja Communications. However, the group itself uses the name Kenja Communication.
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