A woman accused of being a ”cult leader” and claiming she was from the ”bloodline of Jesus Christ” is working as a government-employed psychologist on the Gold Coast.
Natasha Lakaev, founder of northern NSW new age ”company” Universal Knowledge, is working for Queensland Health as a supervised psychologist at the Ashmore Community Mental Health Service.
A woman accused of leading a cult that has damaged the lives of scores of people is working as a psychologist with vulnerable patients at a community mental health service in Queensland.
Natasha Lakaev’s Universal Knowledge organisation was offering courses until last year that prophesied the world would end in December 2012 and almost everyone except her devotees would die.
A former member of her inner circle, Carli McConkey, has told The Sunday Age that Ms Lakaev was physically violent and psychologically manipulative, and had persuaded her followers that she was the Queen of Atlantis, a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and one of 12 members of the Intergalactic Council of the Universe.
Carli McConkey spent the best years of her life in a cult. She only escaped earlier this year. What’s frightening about her story is that this could happen to any of us.
Clinical Professor Doni Whitsett of the University of Southern California has been working with victims of cults and their families for 20 years. Carli’s is ”a tragic textbook case”, she says.