Sydney Morning Herald - August 27, 2008
by Bellinda Kontominas
ALISON PELS thought she had finally escaped the grasp of the cult Kenja Communications when she left the group in February last year.
But six months later the then 20-year-old found herself the subject of a bizarre plot by Jan Hamilton and other members of the group, who disguised themselves with fake facial hair and wigs while posing as directors of a play.
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 Hamilton was yesterday ordered by a court not to stalk, harass or intimidate Ms Pels as part of a two-year apprehended violence order, made after Ms Hamilton and Kenja members had staged fake auditions for a performance of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the West Pymble Community Hall on October 17 last year.
Outside court Ms Pels, whose father and brother left Kenja but whose mother remains a member, said she had recognised two Kenja members in the audition room and became extremely distressed.
"My whole body had shut down, I was in absolute terror," she said.
"In my mind it wasn't just that they were trying to scare me, I thought that they were going to kill me."
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.
This article was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cult-founder-warned-off-after-bizarre-audition-ploy/2008/08/26/
1219516472353.html
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Campaign to clear cult leader
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Ken Dyers: Tributes and accusations
Evil forces drove husband to suicide: widow
Cult leader buried
Sex cult's final outrage
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Showing posts with label Kenja Communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kenja Communications. Show all posts
26 Jul 2008
Kenja Communications cult abuse case: 'staff asked to lie'
Sydney Morning Herald - July 26, 2008
by Alex Tibbitts
A FORMER executive of Kenja Communications - the personal development group founded by Ken Dyers, who committed suicide last year while facing 22 charges of sexual assault against two girls - has claimed she was asked to lie when other abuse allegations were made against Dyers in the 1990s.
"I can't say I ever saw him do anything," a former director of a Kenja centre told the Herald after the screening of a documentary about Dyers at the Dendy Cinema in Newtown on Thursday night.
"I didn't have any intimate knowledge of what was happening in the rooms but what they wanted us to do was to all say that the processing doors were open because that was their argument - that Ken wasn't in the rooms on his own with the children - but he was."
Dyers's widow and Kenja co-founder, Jan Hamilton, said Dyers was cleared of those charges in court and last night she presented a "public lecture" entitled "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Jan Dyers and friends expose the facts about the attack on Ken Dyers, Kenja and your personal freedom".
The $65 "lecture" is actually a play reading, which would make little sense if you were not well versed on the allegations against Dyers.
Ms Hamilton also said the film Beyond Our Ken was "a tabloid beat-up with serious omissions and that she and Dyers were not given the right of reply.
But the film culminates in a scene in which Dyers responds to a question by poring over a young girl's body, explaining he needs to clear her of negative sexual energy. He then launches into a seven-minute tirade in which he accuses his persecutors of tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch hunt.
"I think it's a very balanced film," film-maker Luke Walker said. "I made sure Kenja always had their right of reply often to the detriment of the narrative."
The film-makers interviewed Hamilton, psychologists and cult-busting Uniting Church minster David Millikan as well as happy and disgruntled Kenja participants including Cornelia Rau, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after attending Kenja sessions and ended up in an immigration detention centre.
They also interviewed relatives of another four Kenja attendees who either committed suicide or went missing, presumed dead.
The film-makers set out to demonstrate how one ends up trapped in such an organisation, which has been labelled a cult.
Kenja's basic tenant is that a human is a spirit whose potential is blocked by "negative spirits" that have "attached" themselves to the person's spirit in this and past lives.
In the film Dyers demonstrates how he rids participants of these spirits through "energy conversion" - a process in which he or a Kenja "processor" stairs at the subject for an inordinate amount of time.
The film says Kenja creates a non-threatening environment to teach their philosophy then isolates the participant from the outside world by filling their lives with expensive Kenja activities, leaving them with little time for sleep or engaging with the world outside Kenja.
Kenja runs many activities so participants can reach their potential but if the standard of singing and dancing shown in the film is any indication they have a long way to go or Dyers' philosophy was seriously flawed.
Mr Walker spent six months attending the Melbourne centre before Melissa Maclean came in with the cameras.
"I just hung out with them for six months and couldn't see the problem. They believed in peculiar things but many people believe in peculiar things. What's the problem with that? If anything I found it tedious and exhausting feigning enthusiasm for all that time."
But former participants say Kenja makes it difficult for you to leave the organisation, by suggesting people outside the organisation will not understand you, that you can't survive in the outside world without Kenja's support and if you do leave you will lose any contact with your only social network - Kenja participants.
"The problem with Kenja is they practise a form of unregulated psychotherapy; that's what energy conversion is," Mr Walker said. "The majority find it harmless but when someone has a latent medical illness such as Richard Leape [who went missing 14 years ago] and Cornelia Rau, it exacerbates their condition. When they start jabbering like idiots, they panic and throw them out. They don't want anything to show that Kenja doesn't work."
The film alleges Kenja sessions involved nudity and sex.
Dyers was charged in 1995 with 11 counts of sexual assault against four girls from two former Kenja families. He was acquitted of all charges.
In 2005 he was charged with another 22 counts of sexual assault against two girls who were 12 at the time.
Dyers twice asked to be declared medically unfit so he would not have to stand trial and was given a year's stay of proceedings.
The day Dyers committed suicide police telephoned him about more allegations of sexual assault.
The day after the complainant's father, a long-time Kenja participant, said he raised the issue with Kenja executives, one of them, Windy Tinkler, accused him of assaulting her and took out an interim apprehended violence order against him.
The father was charged with assault but this month was found not guilty and the AVO was revoked.
The film catches him before his daughter made the allegations, saying Kenja training "made me more effective in what I do in my business life and my personal life".
After the film screened on Thursday night he said he was left with a feeling of "betrayal" by Kenja.
Beyond Our Ken will screen in Brisbane on Tuesday and Canberra on Wednesday. It will also be screened in Melbourne on September 10 to coincide with its release on DVD.
by Alex Tibbitts
A FORMER executive of Kenja Communications - the personal development group founded by Ken Dyers, who committed suicide last year while facing 22 charges of sexual assault against two girls - has claimed she was asked to lie when other abuse allegations were made against Dyers in the 1990s.
"I can't say I ever saw him do anything," a former director of a Kenja centre told the Herald after the screening of a documentary about Dyers at the Dendy Cinema in Newtown on Thursday night.
"I didn't have any intimate knowledge of what was happening in the rooms but what they wanted us to do was to all say that the processing doors were open because that was their argument - that Ken wasn't in the rooms on his own with the children - but he was."
Dyers's widow and Kenja co-founder, Jan Hamilton, said Dyers was cleared of those charges in court and last night she presented a "public lecture" entitled "Guilty until Proven Innocent: Jan Dyers and friends expose the facts about the attack on Ken Dyers, Kenja and your personal freedom".
The $65 "lecture" is actually a play reading, which would make little sense if you were not well versed on the allegations against Dyers.
Ms Hamilton also said the film Beyond Our Ken was "a tabloid beat-up with serious omissions and that she and Dyers were not given the right of reply.
But the film culminates in a scene in which Dyers responds to a question by poring over a young girl's body, explaining he needs to clear her of negative sexual energy. He then launches into a seven-minute tirade in which he accuses his persecutors of tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch hunt.
"I think it's a very balanced film," film-maker Luke Walker said. "I made sure Kenja always had their right of reply often to the detriment of the narrative."
The film-makers interviewed Hamilton, psychologists and cult-busting Uniting Church minster David Millikan as well as happy and disgruntled Kenja participants including Cornelia Rau, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia after attending Kenja sessions and ended up in an immigration detention centre.
They also interviewed relatives of another four Kenja attendees who either committed suicide or went missing, presumed dead.
The film-makers set out to demonstrate how one ends up trapped in such an organisation, which has been labelled a cult.
Kenja's basic tenant is that a human is a spirit whose potential is blocked by "negative spirits" that have "attached" themselves to the person's spirit in this and past lives.
In the film Dyers demonstrates how he rids participants of these spirits through "energy conversion" - a process in which he or a Kenja "processor" stairs at the subject for an inordinate amount of time.
The film says Kenja creates a non-threatening environment to teach their philosophy then isolates the participant from the outside world by filling their lives with expensive Kenja activities, leaving them with little time for sleep or engaging with the world outside Kenja.
Kenja runs many activities so participants can reach their potential but if the standard of singing and dancing shown in the film is any indication they have a long way to go or Dyers' philosophy was seriously flawed.
Mr Walker spent six months attending the Melbourne centre before Melissa Maclean came in with the cameras.
"I just hung out with them for six months and couldn't see the problem. They believed in peculiar things but many people believe in peculiar things. What's the problem with that? If anything I found it tedious and exhausting feigning enthusiasm for all that time."
But former participants say Kenja makes it difficult for you to leave the organisation, by suggesting people outside the organisation will not understand you, that you can't survive in the outside world without Kenja's support and if you do leave you will lose any contact with your only social network - Kenja participants.
"The problem with Kenja is they practise a form of unregulated psychotherapy; that's what energy conversion is," Mr Walker said. "The majority find it harmless but when someone has a latent medical illness such as Richard Leape [who went missing 14 years ago] and Cornelia Rau, it exacerbates their condition. When they start jabbering like idiots, they panic and throw them out. They don't want anything to show that Kenja doesn't work."
The film alleges Kenja sessions involved nudity and sex.
Dyers was charged in 1995 with 11 counts of sexual assault against four girls from two former Kenja families. He was acquitted of all charges.
In 2005 he was charged with another 22 counts of sexual assault against two girls who were 12 at the time.
Dyers twice asked to be declared medically unfit so he would not have to stand trial and was given a year's stay of proceedings.
The day Dyers committed suicide police telephoned him about more allegations of sexual assault.
The day after the complainant's father, a long-time Kenja participant, said he raised the issue with Kenja executives, one of them, Windy Tinkler, accused him of assaulting her and took out an interim apprehended violence order against him.
The father was charged with assault but this month was found not guilty and the AVO was revoked.
The film catches him before his daughter made the allegations, saying Kenja training "made me more effective in what I do in my business life and my personal life".
After the film screened on Thursday night he said he was left with a feeling of "betrayal" by Kenja.
Beyond Our Ken will screen in Brisbane on Tuesday and Canberra on Wednesday. It will also be screened in Melbourne on September 10 to coincide with its release on DVD.
This story was found at:
25 Jun 2008
Dead Cult Leader's Wife Continues to Terrorize Abuse Survivor
The Daily Telegraph - Australia
June 26, 2008
Woman's fake beard was 'bogus'
by Byron Kaye
THE last time Jan Hamilton failed as an actress - getting dumped from the lead in My Brilliant Career - Judy Davis got the part and became famous.
But Hamilton's latest bad performance, allegedly dressing as a man, donning a wig and fake beard and holding bogus theatre auditions, has landed her in court.
Hamilton, who with her child sex-accused husband Ken Dyers founded the Kenja cult in Sydney's north shore, yesterday fought an apprehended violence order over the alleged stunt.
A former cult member seeking the AVO said it was part of Hamilton's attempt to "terrorise" her over the suicide of Dyers, whom she had accused of sexually abusing her weekly from age 12 to 15.
Downing Centre Local Court heard how the young woman - who was born into the cult and cannot be named - turned up to the audition for Chekhov's Three Sisters at West Pymble Community Hall on October 17 last year.
The man and three women holding the auditions were disguised in dread- locked wigs and talking in phoney American accents. The women introduced themselves as "Paul", "Brandon" and "Moshi".
But Nicole Saunders, who was hired to help with the auditions and did not know the others, said within five minutes of arriving the former cult member became hysterical.
"She walked straight out the side exit," Ms Saunders recalled. "She was shaking and she was calling out to a car, 'It's Jan! Jan's here! She's wearing a moustache!"
The young woman's father was waiting in the car. Ms Saunders told the court: "She said the woman inside, her name is Jan Hamilton, her husband sexually abused her and he had suicided and they were blaming her.
"Things were not what they seemed. All these strange oddities started to fall together so that it was one big oddity. I wanted to leave."
The woman's father, a cult member for 25 years until his daughter raised the sex abuse claims, told the court he went into the hall and immediately recognised the unusual attire.
"I'd seen it before at Kenja's in the clowning classes. They use it as props and things. It wasn't a very good disguise. It looked quite silly," he said.
The former cultist told the court she had lied to school friends about her involvement in Kenja: "I told them that I was a dancer and I had to go to dancing competitions interstate every weekend. I was ashamed of being in the cult."
Kenja also forced her to sign a false statutory declaration denying the abuse, she said. The case continues.
This article was found at:
http://www.news.com.au/
dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23922828-
5006009,00.html
June 26, 2008
Woman's fake beard was 'bogus'
by Byron Kaye
THE last time Jan Hamilton failed as an actress - getting dumped from the lead in My Brilliant Career - Judy Davis got the part and became famous.
But Hamilton's latest bad performance, allegedly dressing as a man, donning a wig and fake beard and holding bogus theatre auditions, has landed her in court.
Hamilton, who with her child sex-accused husband Ken Dyers founded the Kenja cult in Sydney's north shore, yesterday fought an apprehended violence order over the alleged stunt.
A former cult member seeking the AVO said it was part of Hamilton's attempt to "terrorise" her over the suicide of Dyers, whom she had accused of sexually abusing her weekly from age 12 to 15.
Downing Centre Local Court heard how the young woman - who was born into the cult and cannot be named - turned up to the audition for Chekhov's Three Sisters at West Pymble Community Hall on October 17 last year.
The man and three women holding the auditions were disguised in dread- locked wigs and talking in phoney American accents. The women introduced themselves as "Paul", "Brandon" and "Moshi".
But Nicole Saunders, who was hired to help with the auditions and did not know the others, said within five minutes of arriving the former cult member became hysterical.
"She walked straight out the side exit," Ms Saunders recalled. "She was shaking and she was calling out to a car, 'It's Jan! Jan's here! She's wearing a moustache!"
The young woman's father was waiting in the car. Ms Saunders told the court: "She said the woman inside, her name is Jan Hamilton, her husband sexually abused her and he had suicided and they were blaming her.
"Things were not what they seemed. All these strange oddities started to fall together so that it was one big oddity. I wanted to leave."
The woman's father, a cult member for 25 years until his daughter raised the sex abuse claims, told the court he went into the hall and immediately recognised the unusual attire.
"I'd seen it before at Kenja's in the clowning classes. They use it as props and things. It wasn't a very good disguise. It looked quite silly," he said.
The former cultist told the court she had lied to school friends about her involvement in Kenja: "I told them that I was a dancer and I had to go to dancing competitions interstate every weekend. I was ashamed of being in the cult."
Kenja also forced her to sign a false statutory declaration denying the abuse, she said. The case continues.
This article was found at:
http://www.news.com.au/
dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23922828-
5006009,00.html
13 Aug 2007
Campaign to clear cult leader
Sydney Morning Herald, August 11, 2007
By Alex Tibbits
The truth - according to Jan Hamilton - will cost you.
For $50 you can hear the widow of cult leader Ken Dyers - who committed suicide while facing 22 charges of sexual assault against two girls who were 12 at the time - talk tonight about "the true story about Ken Dyers and the attacks on our civil liberties".
It's another part of the campaign by Kenja - the "personal development centre" Dyers founded with Ms Hamilton - to clear the deceased leader's name and portray his accusers as "unscrupulous, criminal-minded individuals".
Two weeks ago Kenja placed an advertisement in Sydney papers, including the Herald, proclaiming Dyers' innocence.
The campaign has angered at least one of the parents of the alleged victims.
"They are saying my daughter is a liar outside of the court system," he said. "They are saying that the other girls are liars. They've tried to do that through the press and now they're trying to build up a campaign."
The lecture is part of Kenja's "Act for Change" campaign, which seems to be trying to make Dyers a martyr to civil liberties.
Its website states: "The tragic death of Ken Dyers is an example of what can happen when a person is consistently denied justice."
But by taking his own life, Dyers denied his alleged victims their day in court and any opportunity for justice.
The ad for the lecture that ran in the Herald this week was headed "In Australia we are guilty till proven innocent", but Ms Hamilton said it was not an attack on the legal system, it was just about the perceived presumption of guilt in the media.
The next line of the ad says "Imprisonment before trial on flimsy evidence", although Ms Hamilton admitted her husband was never imprisoned.
The Act for Change website states Dyers was a victim of a campaign "despite successfully disproving all allegations in court".
He did not disprove any allegation in court.
The allegations that made it to court in 1993 were not proved "beyond reasonable doubt" yet the website claims "the jury accepted the plaintiffs were liars".
Juries, though, pass judgements on the accused - not plaintiffs - and the jury did find Dyers guilty of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old girl - which was later overthrown by the High Court.
Ms Hamilton said Dyers did not have to face trial for the 2005 charges on grounds of ill health even though he was refused a permanent stay of proceedings.
Ms Hamilton said she was campaigning because "nowhere did Ken have the opportunity to clear his name". But Dyers twice asked to be declared medically unfit so he would not have to stand trial for the 2005 charges.
"It would have killed him," Ms Hamilton said.
The day Dyers committed suicide police telephoned him about more allegations of sexual assault.
Ms Hamilton said all the allegations were a conspiracy involving a former MP Stephen Mutch, money-grubbing cult busters, former Kenja members, their children, drug addicts, suicides, expensive divorce proceedings, money laundering, assault charges, blackmail, corrupt police and the media.
The Act for Change website says: "These laws are being abused by unscrupulous, criminal-minded individuals who have attacked public figures and people in responsible positions. These unscrupulous people are obsessed with their own personal agenda and self gain."
When asked what the children involved had to gain from making the allegations, Ms Hamilton repeated her stories of conspiracies before suggesting "the love of a father".
She admitted she had not pursued any of her allegations through the courts or a complaints process.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/campaign-to-clear-cult-leader/2007/08/11/1186530630814.html
By Alex Tibbits
The truth - according to Jan Hamilton - will cost you.
For $50 you can hear the widow of cult leader Ken Dyers - who committed suicide while facing 22 charges of sexual assault against two girls who were 12 at the time - talk tonight about "the true story about Ken Dyers and the attacks on our civil liberties".
It's another part of the campaign by Kenja - the "personal development centre" Dyers founded with Ms Hamilton - to clear the deceased leader's name and portray his accusers as "unscrupulous, criminal-minded individuals".
Two weeks ago Kenja placed an advertisement in Sydney papers, including the Herald, proclaiming Dyers' innocence.
The campaign has angered at least one of the parents of the alleged victims.
"They are saying my daughter is a liar outside of the court system," he said. "They are saying that the other girls are liars. They've tried to do that through the press and now they're trying to build up a campaign."
The lecture is part of Kenja's "Act for Change" campaign, which seems to be trying to make Dyers a martyr to civil liberties.
Its website states: "The tragic death of Ken Dyers is an example of what can happen when a person is consistently denied justice."
But by taking his own life, Dyers denied his alleged victims their day in court and any opportunity for justice.
The ad for the lecture that ran in the Herald this week was headed "In Australia we are guilty till proven innocent", but Ms Hamilton said it was not an attack on the legal system, it was just about the perceived presumption of guilt in the media.
The next line of the ad says "Imprisonment before trial on flimsy evidence", although Ms Hamilton admitted her husband was never imprisoned.
The Act for Change website states Dyers was a victim of a campaign "despite successfully disproving all allegations in court".
He did not disprove any allegation in court.
The allegations that made it to court in 1993 were not proved "beyond reasonable doubt" yet the website claims "the jury accepted the plaintiffs were liars".
Juries, though, pass judgements on the accused - not plaintiffs - and the jury did find Dyers guilty of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old girl - which was later overthrown by the High Court.
Ms Hamilton said Dyers did not have to face trial for the 2005 charges on grounds of ill health even though he was refused a permanent stay of proceedings.
Ms Hamilton said she was campaigning because "nowhere did Ken have the opportunity to clear his name". But Dyers twice asked to be declared medically unfit so he would not have to stand trial for the 2005 charges.
"It would have killed him," Ms Hamilton said.
The day Dyers committed suicide police telephoned him about more allegations of sexual assault.
Ms Hamilton said all the allegations were a conspiracy involving a former MP Stephen Mutch, money-grubbing cult busters, former Kenja members, their children, drug addicts, suicides, expensive divorce proceedings, money laundering, assault charges, blackmail, corrupt police and the media.
The Act for Change website says: "These laws are being abused by unscrupulous, criminal-minded individuals who have attacked public figures and people in responsible positions. These unscrupulous people are obsessed with their own personal agenda and self gain."
When asked what the children involved had to gain from making the allegations, Ms Hamilton repeated her stories of conspiracies before suggesting "the love of a father".
She admitted she had not pursued any of her allegations through the courts or a complaints process.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/campaign-to-clear-cult-leader/2007/08/11/1186530630814.html
4 Aug 2007
Dyers followers left rudderless in a sceptical world
The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Aug. 4, 2007
David Millikan
www.smh.com.au
David Millikan spent weeks with Ken Dyers making a film about him. Here, he recounts his strange experiences with a man convinced he had extraordinary powers.
You meet a person like Ken Dyers only once in a lifetime. Driven by an internal force which could be frightening at times, he vented in explosive fits of rage, sometimes turning onto those closest to him, including the followers who had given everything to be with him. They would stand before him, white-faced, trembling and so frightened they seemed to lose the shape of humanity itself.
Once, he told how he had been confronted in the street by a group of 20 men who were there “to do me in”.
“I walked up to the leader and grabbed a handful of his genitals. A man is useless when he is intimidated. I attacked them with mental pictures. I gave them a picture of flipping their eyeballs out onto their cheeks, out there, flapping around. They walked away.”
At other times, he could appear broken, a shell of a man himself. In his home on the cliffs of Bundeena one day he suddenly turned and, using the plaintive voice of a young boy, said: “I can transform DNA through what I do in Kenja. You know that means we could change the evolutionary process. If only, if only, I can convince the world. But they hate me.”
In 1982, at the age of 60, Dyers set up Kenja Communications with Jan Hamilton, a sometime actress who taught classes in the art of clowning. Dyers claimed special gifts, insisting he could turn lost and fumbling souls into confident, beautiful leaders of men. Together, the couple began teaching what they called “energy conversion”.
The Kenja website describes this meditation as a “way to permanently eliminate the suppressed emotion, thought or energy that can divert us from what we want to achieve”.
Today there are Kenja centres in Melbourne, Canberra, and its headquarters in Surry Hills. Kenja has about 250 members.
In the years before he established Kenja, Dyers studied Scientology. In 2005 when asked about this foray into L. Ron Hubbard’s “religion”, he angrily said: “I’ve moved way beyond that.”
He said a group of scientists had come to study his methods. “They said: ‘You’re doing quantum physics.” Laughing derisively, Dyers said: “I told them: ‘Bullshit, I’m so far beyond quantum physics you wouldn’t have a clue’.”
Among his other claims, Dyers said he was a troubleshooter for Sir Frank Packer - “I worked with Clyde, not his brother” - and had been trained by the world’s top samurai teacher.
“The foreign minister in the Fraser government offered me $24,000 to go to the Philippines and teach the peasants my secrets of survival.”
Dyers compulsively alluded to earlier friendships with the titans of Australian business. But before Kenja, he ran a window sash replacement business in the eastern suburbs.
Central to Dyer’s mythology of his own greatness was the story that his remarkable”powers” were honed in the fierce battles of World War II.
He said he had been seconded to British intelligence, had learned Arabic within two weeks of arriving in Cairo, had advised top brass on battle tactics.
“I’ve got every medal an Australian soldier can get,” he insisted. His war record says nothing of this.
The central act of the Kenja approach was what Dyers called “processing”. During the period that I spent filming Dyers, he used this as a test for allowing me to continue the project. In Surrey Hills, in a room filled with 80 people, he set up lines of chairs to face each other. Those on the right were “processors”, while two comfortable office chairs were allocated at the end of one row for Dyers and me.
I took my place next to two women in their 20s. As Dyers walked into the room, there was a buzz of appreciation.
He strode to me, ruffled my hair and said: “I’ll be processing David. He’s my white-haired boy.” He again ruffled my hair and in a low voice that only I and the two girls nearby could hear, he said: “Or maybe I want to be his white-haired boy.” Then he sat himself opposite, pulled me in close and put his legs outside mine and pressed in.
“Some people throw themselves around in processing,” he said. “I need to hold you.” He stared into my face and said: “Look into my eyes and concentrate on the energy.” That was it. There were no words, no movement. The room became suddenly still, with 40 couples locked in this embrace.
It was not long before Dyers began to have trouble keeping his eyes open. He began drifting into sleep for minutes at a time, offering an opportunity to look around. Others around the room appeared to be transfixed in a strange dance. Joined at the knees, they gazed into each others eyes, searching for that communication which goes beyond thought and words.
At first it was intensely uncomfortable, difficult to settle on the left or right eye. I decided to distract myself and began building a wood-fired brick pizza oven in my mind.
Forty minutes later, Dyers sat back. He said: “You’re good at that. Not a lot of people can sit still that long.”
I said: “I actually found it quite relaxing. Once I knew what I was doing.”
Dyers said: “What did you feel? Did you feel the energy?”
I said: “No, not really.” He patted me on the knee and moved away.
The members of Kenja passionately believe they hold the key to the wellbeing of the world. They have made enormous sacrifices in making Kenja first in their lives. Until last month, Kenja was held together by the sheer force of the guru’s self-certainty. While the great man was alive, there was no reason for questions or doubts. There was, in a sense, no reason to think.
Jan Hamilton, his partner for 28 years said: “He was so evolved, beyond anything I have ever seen before.”
Now they face the world without him and they need three things to survive: money, recruits and publicity.
While the faithful remain and tithe their incomes, the money is there. As for publicity and recruits, that could be a problem. They must now find a way of explaining themselves to a sceptical and jaded world.
While Dyers was alive this was not a problem, for nothing seemed to daunt his spirit. Those who remain now face the terrible possibility that it was all about Dyers and not about the salvation of the world.
The Reverend Dr David Millikan is a Uniting Church minister. He works part-time as a producer with Channel Seven and lectures at Charles Sturt University.
Aug. 4, 2007
David Millikan
www.smh.com.au
David Millikan spent weeks with Ken Dyers making a film about him. Here, he recounts his strange experiences with a man convinced he had extraordinary powers.
You meet a person like Ken Dyers only once in a lifetime. Driven by an internal force which could be frightening at times, he vented in explosive fits of rage, sometimes turning onto those closest to him, including the followers who had given everything to be with him. They would stand before him, white-faced, trembling and so frightened they seemed to lose the shape of humanity itself.
Once, he told how he had been confronted in the street by a group of 20 men who were there “to do me in”.
“I walked up to the leader and grabbed a handful of his genitals. A man is useless when he is intimidated. I attacked them with mental pictures. I gave them a picture of flipping their eyeballs out onto their cheeks, out there, flapping around. They walked away.”
At other times, he could appear broken, a shell of a man himself. In his home on the cliffs of Bundeena one day he suddenly turned and, using the plaintive voice of a young boy, said: “I can transform DNA through what I do in Kenja. You know that means we could change the evolutionary process. If only, if only, I can convince the world. But they hate me.”
In 1982, at the age of 60, Dyers set up Kenja Communications with Jan Hamilton, a sometime actress who taught classes in the art of clowning. Dyers claimed special gifts, insisting he could turn lost and fumbling souls into confident, beautiful leaders of men. Together, the couple began teaching what they called “energy conversion”.
The Kenja website describes this meditation as a “way to permanently eliminate the suppressed emotion, thought or energy that can divert us from what we want to achieve”.
Today there are Kenja centres in Melbourne, Canberra, and its headquarters in Surry Hills. Kenja has about 250 members.
In the years before he established Kenja, Dyers studied Scientology. In 2005 when asked about this foray into L. Ron Hubbard’s “religion”, he angrily said: “I’ve moved way beyond that.”
He said a group of scientists had come to study his methods. “They said: ‘You’re doing quantum physics.” Laughing derisively, Dyers said: “I told them: ‘Bullshit, I’m so far beyond quantum physics you wouldn’t have a clue’.”
Among his other claims, Dyers said he was a troubleshooter for Sir Frank Packer - “I worked with Clyde, not his brother” - and had been trained by the world’s top samurai teacher.
“The foreign minister in the Fraser government offered me $24,000 to go to the Philippines and teach the peasants my secrets of survival.”
Dyers compulsively alluded to earlier friendships with the titans of Australian business. But before Kenja, he ran a window sash replacement business in the eastern suburbs.
Central to Dyer’s mythology of his own greatness was the story that his remarkable”powers” were honed in the fierce battles of World War II.
He said he had been seconded to British intelligence, had learned Arabic within two weeks of arriving in Cairo, had advised top brass on battle tactics.
“I’ve got every medal an Australian soldier can get,” he insisted. His war record says nothing of this.
The central act of the Kenja approach was what Dyers called “processing”. During the period that I spent filming Dyers, he used this as a test for allowing me to continue the project. In Surrey Hills, in a room filled with 80 people, he set up lines of chairs to face each other. Those on the right were “processors”, while two comfortable office chairs were allocated at the end of one row for Dyers and me.
I took my place next to two women in their 20s. As Dyers walked into the room, there was a buzz of appreciation.
He strode to me, ruffled my hair and said: “I’ll be processing David. He’s my white-haired boy.” He again ruffled my hair and in a low voice that only I and the two girls nearby could hear, he said: “Or maybe I want to be his white-haired boy.” Then he sat himself opposite, pulled me in close and put his legs outside mine and pressed in.
“Some people throw themselves around in processing,” he said. “I need to hold you.” He stared into my face and said: “Look into my eyes and concentrate on the energy.” That was it. There were no words, no movement. The room became suddenly still, with 40 couples locked in this embrace.
It was not long before Dyers began to have trouble keeping his eyes open. He began drifting into sleep for minutes at a time, offering an opportunity to look around. Others around the room appeared to be transfixed in a strange dance. Joined at the knees, they gazed into each others eyes, searching for that communication which goes beyond thought and words.
At first it was intensely uncomfortable, difficult to settle on the left or right eye. I decided to distract myself and began building a wood-fired brick pizza oven in my mind.
Forty minutes later, Dyers sat back. He said: “You’re good at that. Not a lot of people can sit still that long.”
I said: “I actually found it quite relaxing. Once I knew what I was doing.”
Dyers said: “What did you feel? Did you feel the energy?”
I said: “No, not really.” He patted me on the knee and moved away.
The members of Kenja passionately believe they hold the key to the wellbeing of the world. They have made enormous sacrifices in making Kenja first in their lives. Until last month, Kenja was held together by the sheer force of the guru’s self-certainty. While the great man was alive, there was no reason for questions or doubts. There was, in a sense, no reason to think.
Jan Hamilton, his partner for 28 years said: “He was so evolved, beyond anything I have ever seen before.”
Now they face the world without him and they need three things to survive: money, recruits and publicity.
While the faithful remain and tithe their incomes, the money is there. As for publicity and recruits, that could be a problem. They must now find a way of explaining themselves to a sceptical and jaded world.
While Dyers was alive this was not a problem, for nothing seemed to daunt his spirit. Those who remain now face the terrible possibility that it was all about Dyers and not about the salvation of the world.
The Reverend Dr David Millikan is a Uniting Church minister. He works part-time as a producer with Channel Seven and lectures at Charles Sturt University.
Ken Dyers: Tributes and accusations
The Sydney Morning Herald
August 4, 2007
Two sets of eyes have been scanning website tributes to the late Ken Dyers. There are people grieving a good man who committed suicide last week in desperation under the weight of scurrilous allegations of sexual misconduct .
Then there are those outraged that an evil man died at his own hand rather than face a barrage of criminal charges for the systematic abuse of children under his thrall.
For supporters of the charismatic creator and guru of the spiritual healing movement Kenja Communications, the website is a fitting honour roll, filled with comments from grateful devotees whose lives had been touched by "an extraordinary life ... focusing on the spiritual essence of mankind and people's positive qualities rather than their liabilities".
But others, mainly disaffected members and anti-cult experts, view those comments as a chilling display of Dyers's control of the fragile and the innocent in his own private cult; messages from children like 14-year-old Brianna, who writes of her relationship with the 85-year-old man: "Ken was my best friend in the whole entire world. He had so much love, understanding and admiration for people. He has helped me grow so much."
Or eight-year-old Alicia, who penned "I loved him a lot ... 'cos I'm one of his bestest friends."
In life, Kenneth Emmanuel Dyers divided people. A free-thinker to some and a sexual deviant to others; a caring student of human emotion or manipulative cult leader prone to outbursts of rage; successful businessman or wealthy leech; war hero or compulsive liar.
In death his legacy remains equally divided, as allegations linger that he abused young girls in nude "conversion" sessions in his Surry Hills offices; while his wife told mourners at his funeral on Wednesday that evil forces had driven her husband to suicide.
The Kenja biography lauds Dyers as a visionary; a rags-to-riches story of achievement, as he first survived on the streets of Sydney during the Great Depression before leaving home at the age of 14 and taking odd jobs such as cleaning pots at a college, becoming a butcher and enlisting in the army.
It is here that the first questions are raised about his credibility. Dyers claimed to have served with distinction as an artillery man with the Australian 9th Division during World War II, seconded to British counter-intelligence and then seeing action at El Alamein. He also tells a story of being at Lae and Finschhafen in New Guinea where his "bodyguard", a Corporal Appel, was hit by a grenade and died in Dyers's arms - a moment "which fuelled Ken on his ceaseless drive to help people enhance their own lives".
But Dyers's war service record indicates a man with a Walter Mitty complex, who only ever achieved the rank of corporal and was demoted to private by the time he was discharged.
It also details a chequered record, including being court-martialled three times. In late 1943 he was in jail for five days awaiting trial on three charges, and eventually convicted of "conduct prejudice to the good order and military discipline". In June 1944 he went AWL for 16 days. In April 1945 he was fined for leaving his sentry post and in July fined again for misconduct. Curiously, it also refers to an assessment of his "mental instability" which is rated at 10 per cent on the day he was demobbed in August 1946.
Dyers became a businessman after the war, claiming to have marketed his own tax accounting system and invented an egg carton as well as trading in precious stones and working as a "troubleshooter" for Consolidated Press, while developing his concepts of human behaviour, which he apparently used running management classes.
Connecting the dots becomes even more difficult into the 1970s when Dyers, now recovering from two failed marriages and with two sons, apparently abandons his business career and sets himself up as a glazier so he can concentrate on helping young drug addicts. His interest in youth is unclear other than his association as an instructor of "boxing, gymnastics and tumbling" at the Rose Bay Youth Club and as a delegate for a junior rugby union association.
It is here, the website says, that he "crystallises" his ideas about meditation and positive energy into a technique he calls "energy conversion", explained as "one-on-one meditation enabling the individual, through the stillness of another, to become conscious of energies creating negative effects in their thinking and their lives, and then to dissipate them. By getting rid of that energy, the problem disappeared."
In 1978 Dyers met Jan Hamilton. The woman who would become his third wife had just returned from London on an Australia Council grant where she had studied the art of being a clown. Hamilton had begun holding clowning classes in Sydney, which she later described as "the use of particular exercises designed to reach in and touch the human part of each individual and to bring out the human in people".
The pair combined their ideas to create Kenja - based on their names - in 1982, and opened a centre in Surry Hills. A decade later, when allegations were first raised over Dyers's tactics and influence over children, Kenja was firmly established, with hundreds of devotees paying thousands of dollars to attend regular classes from sporting teams to music, choir, tap dancing, ballet, gymnastics, poetry and ballroom dancing. The cornerstone was "energy conversion sessions", which allegedly included nude one-on-one sessions, sometimes with women and children.
In 1992 an upper house Liberal MP, Stephen Mutch, described Dyers as "a seedy conman selling mumbo-jumbo garbage", using mind control to draw recruits who found themselves "involuntarily giving over their minds and incomes to Kenja".
This concerted attack became more serious the following year when police charged Dyers with 11 counts of sexual assault against four girls from two ex-Kenja families. He was acquitted of all charges, but in 2005 he was charged with another 22 counts. Dyers was committed to stand trial but the case was deferred after the NSW District Court deemed him unfit and ordered a mental health assessment.
On July 25 this year, police rang Dyers again. There were more allegations and more charges. At 11am, Dyers's body was found in his Bundeena home. He had shot himself in the head.
Police have not released details of the latest allegations but this week a Sydney man wrote to the Herald in protest to the paper accepting a paid advertisement from Dyers' followers.
The man had been a longtime Kenja member, and claimed to have contributed $500,000 to Dyers's legal defence before leaving in March after one of his daughters told him she had been repeatedly sexually abused by Dyers.
"My daughter recently told me through tears that her only crime was to have been born a girl and born into Kenja. What an indictment that is against every person in that group who refuses to take responsibility for their part in promoting lies and hypocrisy! I am disgusted."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ken-dyers-tributes-and-accusations/2007/08/04/1185648160419.html
August 4, 2007
Two sets of eyes have been scanning website tributes to the late Ken Dyers. There are people grieving a good man who committed suicide last week in desperation under the weight of scurrilous allegations of sexual misconduct .
Then there are those outraged that an evil man died at his own hand rather than face a barrage of criminal charges for the systematic abuse of children under his thrall.
For supporters of the charismatic creator and guru of the spiritual healing movement Kenja Communications, the website is a fitting honour roll, filled with comments from grateful devotees whose lives had been touched by "an extraordinary life ... focusing on the spiritual essence of mankind and people's positive qualities rather than their liabilities".
But others, mainly disaffected members and anti-cult experts, view those comments as a chilling display of Dyers's control of the fragile and the innocent in his own private cult; messages from children like 14-year-old Brianna, who writes of her relationship with the 85-year-old man: "Ken was my best friend in the whole entire world. He had so much love, understanding and admiration for people. He has helped me grow so much."
Or eight-year-old Alicia, who penned "I loved him a lot ... 'cos I'm one of his bestest friends."
In life, Kenneth Emmanuel Dyers divided people. A free-thinker to some and a sexual deviant to others; a caring student of human emotion or manipulative cult leader prone to outbursts of rage; successful businessman or wealthy leech; war hero or compulsive liar.
In death his legacy remains equally divided, as allegations linger that he abused young girls in nude "conversion" sessions in his Surry Hills offices; while his wife told mourners at his funeral on Wednesday that evil forces had driven her husband to suicide.
The Kenja biography lauds Dyers as a visionary; a rags-to-riches story of achievement, as he first survived on the streets of Sydney during the Great Depression before leaving home at the age of 14 and taking odd jobs such as cleaning pots at a college, becoming a butcher and enlisting in the army.
It is here that the first questions are raised about his credibility. Dyers claimed to have served with distinction as an artillery man with the Australian 9th Division during World War II, seconded to British counter-intelligence and then seeing action at El Alamein. He also tells a story of being at Lae and Finschhafen in New Guinea where his "bodyguard", a Corporal Appel, was hit by a grenade and died in Dyers's arms - a moment "which fuelled Ken on his ceaseless drive to help people enhance their own lives".
But Dyers's war service record indicates a man with a Walter Mitty complex, who only ever achieved the rank of corporal and was demoted to private by the time he was discharged.
It also details a chequered record, including being court-martialled three times. In late 1943 he was in jail for five days awaiting trial on three charges, and eventually convicted of "conduct prejudice to the good order and military discipline". In June 1944 he went AWL for 16 days. In April 1945 he was fined for leaving his sentry post and in July fined again for misconduct. Curiously, it also refers to an assessment of his "mental instability" which is rated at 10 per cent on the day he was demobbed in August 1946.
Dyers became a businessman after the war, claiming to have marketed his own tax accounting system and invented an egg carton as well as trading in precious stones and working as a "troubleshooter" for Consolidated Press, while developing his concepts of human behaviour, which he apparently used running management classes.
Connecting the dots becomes even more difficult into the 1970s when Dyers, now recovering from two failed marriages and with two sons, apparently abandons his business career and sets himself up as a glazier so he can concentrate on helping young drug addicts. His interest in youth is unclear other than his association as an instructor of "boxing, gymnastics and tumbling" at the Rose Bay Youth Club and as a delegate for a junior rugby union association.
It is here, the website says, that he "crystallises" his ideas about meditation and positive energy into a technique he calls "energy conversion", explained as "one-on-one meditation enabling the individual, through the stillness of another, to become conscious of energies creating negative effects in their thinking and their lives, and then to dissipate them. By getting rid of that energy, the problem disappeared."
In 1978 Dyers met Jan Hamilton. The woman who would become his third wife had just returned from London on an Australia Council grant where she had studied the art of being a clown. Hamilton had begun holding clowning classes in Sydney, which she later described as "the use of particular exercises designed to reach in and touch the human part of each individual and to bring out the human in people".
The pair combined their ideas to create Kenja - based on their names - in 1982, and opened a centre in Surry Hills. A decade later, when allegations were first raised over Dyers's tactics and influence over children, Kenja was firmly established, with hundreds of devotees paying thousands of dollars to attend regular classes from sporting teams to music, choir, tap dancing, ballet, gymnastics, poetry and ballroom dancing. The cornerstone was "energy conversion sessions", which allegedly included nude one-on-one sessions, sometimes with women and children.
In 1992 an upper house Liberal MP, Stephen Mutch, described Dyers as "a seedy conman selling mumbo-jumbo garbage", using mind control to draw recruits who found themselves "involuntarily giving over their minds and incomes to Kenja".
This concerted attack became more serious the following year when police charged Dyers with 11 counts of sexual assault against four girls from two ex-Kenja families. He was acquitted of all charges, but in 2005 he was charged with another 22 counts. Dyers was committed to stand trial but the case was deferred after the NSW District Court deemed him unfit and ordered a mental health assessment.
On July 25 this year, police rang Dyers again. There were more allegations and more charges. At 11am, Dyers's body was found in his Bundeena home. He had shot himself in the head.
Police have not released details of the latest allegations but this week a Sydney man wrote to the Herald in protest to the paper accepting a paid advertisement from Dyers' followers.
The man had been a longtime Kenja member, and claimed to have contributed $500,000 to Dyers's legal defence before leaving in March after one of his daughters told him she had been repeatedly sexually abused by Dyers.
"My daughter recently told me through tears that her only crime was to have been born a girl and born into Kenja. What an indictment that is against every person in that group who refuses to take responsibility for their part in promoting lies and hypocrisy! I am disgusted."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ken-dyers-tributes-and-accusations/2007/08/04/1185648160419.html
Evil forces drove husband to suicide: widow
The Sydney Morning Herald
Linda Morris Religious Affairs Writer
August 2, 2007
THE co-founder of the spiritual healing movement Kenja Communications has mounted a ferocious defence of her husband, Ken Dyers, at his funeral and vowed the group would survive the loss of its "prophet".
Jan Hamilton said suppressive forces, evil and corruption and "nightmarish criminal monsters" drove Mr Dyers to his early death last week.
He was facing 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault on two 12-year-old girls when he took his life at his Bundeena home. He was 85.
During yesterday's non-denominational service on a sports oval in Sutherland, Dyers was eulogised as a leader who stood for truth and individual freedom against corrupt elements of the Department of Public Prosecutions, the NSW Police Force and the tabloid media.
"For all those foes who spread the word that Kenja will fold, well it won't," Ms Hamilton said, raising her voice.
About 300 people attended the service. As a skywriter spelt out Dyers's name, the cortege was greeted by a guard of honour of black-clad Kenja members.
A piper played Amazing Grace, a traditional Maori haka was recited and a cauldron of fire stood flanked by wreaths of flowers. Mourners performed musical or poetic tributes to the man they described as an inspiration, emphasising Dyers'love and respect for children and for women's rights.
On an easel was a copy of an advertisement which appeared in Sydney newspapers. It accused "cult-busting" groups of orchestrating a ruthless and unjustified attack against their founder whom they describe as a "blessing to Australia".
The group, founded by Dyers and wife in 1982, has four centres in Australia. They claim to offer an increased understanding of man's "spiritual nature" via meditation sessions known as "energy conversion" by which negative emotions are turned into positive forces. It denies it is a cult.
Dyers' son, Mike, said his father's life read like a boy's-own adventure: a child of the Depression who served in Africa during World War II then found life's purpose during his 30s.
His father had quit life on his terms and by his rules.
Dyers' lawyer Harland Koops said Dyers' battles against sexual abuse allegations had resulted in "Dyers' directive", a legal precedent which reinforced the right of an accused to a fair trial. That he chose to end his life was not an act of cowardice but to end "crushing oppression" by the state, Mr Koops said.
Uniting Church minister David Milliken, who has worked in cult investigation, said Ms Hamilton's tribute reflected the movement's view of life as a battle between the forces of good versus the "darkening world of evil".
"It's a George Bush speech: everyone who believes in the spiritual universe and individual freedom will find these evil forces rallied against them," he said.
It remained to be seen whether the movement outlasted Dyers.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/evil-forces-drove-husband-to-suicide-widow/2007/08/01/1185647979240.html
Linda Morris Religious Affairs Writer
August 2, 2007
THE co-founder of the spiritual healing movement Kenja Communications has mounted a ferocious defence of her husband, Ken Dyers, at his funeral and vowed the group would survive the loss of its "prophet".
Jan Hamilton said suppressive forces, evil and corruption and "nightmarish criminal monsters" drove Mr Dyers to his early death last week.
He was facing 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault on two 12-year-old girls when he took his life at his Bundeena home. He was 85.
During yesterday's non-denominational service on a sports oval in Sutherland, Dyers was eulogised as a leader who stood for truth and individual freedom against corrupt elements of the Department of Public Prosecutions, the NSW Police Force and the tabloid media.
"For all those foes who spread the word that Kenja will fold, well it won't," Ms Hamilton said, raising her voice.
About 300 people attended the service. As a skywriter spelt out Dyers's name, the cortege was greeted by a guard of honour of black-clad Kenja members.
A piper played Amazing Grace, a traditional Maori haka was recited and a cauldron of fire stood flanked by wreaths of flowers. Mourners performed musical or poetic tributes to the man they described as an inspiration, emphasising Dyers'love and respect for children and for women's rights.
On an easel was a copy of an advertisement which appeared in Sydney newspapers. It accused "cult-busting" groups of orchestrating a ruthless and unjustified attack against their founder whom they describe as a "blessing to Australia".
The group, founded by Dyers and wife in 1982, has four centres in Australia. They claim to offer an increased understanding of man's "spiritual nature" via meditation sessions known as "energy conversion" by which negative emotions are turned into positive forces. It denies it is a cult.
Dyers' son, Mike, said his father's life read like a boy's-own adventure: a child of the Depression who served in Africa during World War II then found life's purpose during his 30s.
His father had quit life on his terms and by his rules.
Dyers' lawyer Harland Koops said Dyers' battles against sexual abuse allegations had resulted in "Dyers' directive", a legal precedent which reinforced the right of an accused to a fair trial. That he chose to end his life was not an act of cowardice but to end "crushing oppression" by the state, Mr Koops said.
Uniting Church minister David Milliken, who has worked in cult investigation, said Ms Hamilton's tribute reflected the movement's view of life as a battle between the forces of good versus the "darkening world of evil".
"It's a George Bush speech: everyone who believes in the spiritual universe and individual freedom will find these evil forces rallied against them," he said.
It remained to be seen whether the movement outlasted Dyers.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/evil-forces-drove-husband-to-suicide-widow/2007/08/01/1185647979240.html
3 Aug 2007
Cult leader buried
The Leader - Australia
August 2, 2007
By Dianne Kopae
AS family and friends bade final farewells yesterday to Kenja founder Ken Dyers, controversy continued to rage over the alleged child sex claims which led to his suicide.
The father of one of his alleged victims hit out at weekend newspaper ads claiming the 85-year-old was incapable of committing the child sex offences levelled against him.
The 50-year-old man, who cannot be named because it would identify his daughter, contacted the Leader yesterday to denounce the contents of the full-page advertisement which the cult placed in Fairfax newspapers.
Found shot dead in his Bundeena home on July 25, Mr Dyers was awaiting trial on 22 child sex offences.
Kenja said in the advertisements that Mr Dyers took his own life because he could no longer endure the anguish of child sex allegations.
In 1993, Mr Dyers was charged with 11 counts of sexual assault, but was later cleared of 10 charges.
The Kenja ads said fresh accusations brought by the daughter of Mr Jones (not his real name) and another 12-year-old girl were the final straw for the war veteran.
``These charges, had they ever gone to trial, would not have survived. Ken was in his 80th year at the time [the offences] ... were alleged to have occurred. The suggestion that he was in any position to molest young girls is simply untenable,'' the advertisement said.
But Mr Jones said he believed ``implicitly'' in the allegations made by his now 17-year-old daughter.
Born to parents who were staunch members of the cult organisation, the teenager was destined for Kenja exposure. But the family of five cut all ties as soon as she made the allegations, Mr Jones said.
Her claims were the catalyst for research into a man he and his wife had known and trusted for more than two decades. Inquiries led to a number of former families who, over the year, ``had suddenly left'' Kenja, he said.
He found a number had left under similar circumstances to his own, ``but none of them will speak out''.
Mr Jones said his family was entrenched in the ``organisation'' and spent many hours a week attending lectures and ``processing sessions'' at the Surry Hills headquarters, where the alleged abuse occurred.
The family's sudden departure and the toll of court proceedings contributed to the Jones's marriage breakdown.
The cost was also personally devastating for his daughter.
She had been unwillingly estranged from friends whom she had known all her life. She sank into depression.
``She was a young girl and all her friends were in [the cult]. Friends are incredibly important in a young girl's life,'' Mr Jones said.
She also suffered post-traumatic stress, struggled with her studies and initially displayed a classic symptom of victims of molestation, he said.
``They go through rituals to cleanse themselves long, hot showers and white towels.''
Four years on, she continues to build a new life surrounded by new friends and one day wants to become a child psychologist to help victims of abuse.
http://www.theleader.com.au/2007/08/cult_leader_buried.php
August 2, 2007
By Dianne Kopae
AS family and friends bade final farewells yesterday to Kenja founder Ken Dyers, controversy continued to rage over the alleged child sex claims which led to his suicide.
The father of one of his alleged victims hit out at weekend newspaper ads claiming the 85-year-old was incapable of committing the child sex offences levelled against him.
The 50-year-old man, who cannot be named because it would identify his daughter, contacted the Leader yesterday to denounce the contents of the full-page advertisement which the cult placed in Fairfax newspapers.
Found shot dead in his Bundeena home on July 25, Mr Dyers was awaiting trial on 22 child sex offences.
Kenja said in the advertisements that Mr Dyers took his own life because he could no longer endure the anguish of child sex allegations.
In 1993, Mr Dyers was charged with 11 counts of sexual assault, but was later cleared of 10 charges.
The Kenja ads said fresh accusations brought by the daughter of Mr Jones (not his real name) and another 12-year-old girl were the final straw for the war veteran.
``These charges, had they ever gone to trial, would not have survived. Ken was in his 80th year at the time [the offences] ... were alleged to have occurred. The suggestion that he was in any position to molest young girls is simply untenable,'' the advertisement said.
But Mr Jones said he believed ``implicitly'' in the allegations made by his now 17-year-old daughter.
Born to parents who were staunch members of the cult organisation, the teenager was destined for Kenja exposure. But the family of five cut all ties as soon as she made the allegations, Mr Jones said.
Her claims were the catalyst for research into a man he and his wife had known and trusted for more than two decades. Inquiries led to a number of former families who, over the year, ``had suddenly left'' Kenja, he said.
He found a number had left under similar circumstances to his own, ``but none of them will speak out''.
Mr Jones said his family was entrenched in the ``organisation'' and spent many hours a week attending lectures and ``processing sessions'' at the Surry Hills headquarters, where the alleged abuse occurred.
The family's sudden departure and the toll of court proceedings contributed to the Jones's marriage breakdown.
The cost was also personally devastating for his daughter.
She had been unwillingly estranged from friends whom she had known all her life. She sank into depression.
``She was a young girl and all her friends were in [the cult]. Friends are incredibly important in a young girl's life,'' Mr Jones said.
She also suffered post-traumatic stress, struggled with her studies and initially displayed a classic symptom of victims of molestation, he said.
``They go through rituals to cleanse themselves long, hot showers and white towels.''
Four years on, she continues to build a new life surrounded by new friends and one day wants to become a child psychologist to help victims of abuse.
http://www.theleader.com.au/2007/08/cult_leader_buried.php
31 Jul 2007
Sex cult's final outrage
The Daily Telegraph - Australia
By Joe Hildebrand
July 31, 2007
FOLLOWERS of cult leader and accused paedophile Ken Dyers have outraged the families of his alleged victims by taking out newspaper advertisements in an attempt to clear the dead man's name.
Supporters of the 85-year-old "Kenja" founder - who shot himself last week while facing 22 counts of child sex assault and indecent assault - took the extraordinary step of placing advertisements in weekend newspapers declaring his innocence.
The full-page ads, which were run in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, accused Dyers' two alleged victims of deliberately lying and behaving in an "appalling" fashion.
They also claimed police were out to get him to further their careers.
"The actions that both girls and fathers of the girls are attempting to hide in these latest allegations are appalling," the advertisement stated.
"It was Ken's final realisation that there are certain members of the police force who are career-orientated and are apparently less interested in the truth than in getting their man, regardless of facts or nature.
"The proof is overwhelming that the girl making the allegations (against Dyers) deliberately lied and manufactured these false allegations."
The father of one of the girls, who was just 12 years old when she was allegedly abused by Dyers, said the statement was a disgrace.
"To think that our daughters have stood up and been extremely brave and to see this slander being perpetrated by a group within the cult is sickening," he told The Daily Telegraph.
The man, who cannot be named without identifying his daughter, has written an open letter to the cult members, hitting back.
"We took this matter to the courts but Mr Dyers did not want to attend," the open letter reads.
"He knew his time was up. Mr Dyers acted in his own interests when he took his life."
It has also been claimed cult members used fake testimonials in the Sydney Morning Herald advertisements.
One of the most prominent signatories in the ad said yesterday he refused permission for his name to be used, but it was placed there anyway.
Dr Hoc Ku Huynh OAM headed one column of a list of supposed supporters of Dyers, even though he declined a request for his name to be used.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22159113-5001021,00.html
By Joe Hildebrand
July 31, 2007
FOLLOWERS of cult leader and accused paedophile Ken Dyers have outraged the families of his alleged victims by taking out newspaper advertisements in an attempt to clear the dead man's name.
Supporters of the 85-year-old "Kenja" founder - who shot himself last week while facing 22 counts of child sex assault and indecent assault - took the extraordinary step of placing advertisements in weekend newspapers declaring his innocence.
The full-page ads, which were run in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, accused Dyers' two alleged victims of deliberately lying and behaving in an "appalling" fashion.
They also claimed police were out to get him to further their careers.
"The actions that both girls and fathers of the girls are attempting to hide in these latest allegations are appalling," the advertisement stated.
"It was Ken's final realisation that there are certain members of the police force who are career-orientated and are apparently less interested in the truth than in getting their man, regardless of facts or nature.
"The proof is overwhelming that the girl making the allegations (against Dyers) deliberately lied and manufactured these false allegations."
The father of one of the girls, who was just 12 years old when she was allegedly abused by Dyers, said the statement was a disgrace.
"To think that our daughters have stood up and been extremely brave and to see this slander being perpetrated by a group within the cult is sickening," he told The Daily Telegraph.
The man, who cannot be named without identifying his daughter, has written an open letter to the cult members, hitting back.
"We took this matter to the courts but Mr Dyers did not want to attend," the open letter reads.
"He knew his time was up. Mr Dyers acted in his own interests when he took his life."
It has also been claimed cult members used fake testimonials in the Sydney Morning Herald advertisements.
One of the most prominent signatories in the ad said yesterday he refused permission for his name to be used, but it was placed there anyway.
Dr Hoc Ku Huynh OAM headed one column of a list of supposed supporters of Dyers, even though he declined a request for his name to be used.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22159113-5001021,00.html
30 Jul 2007
Cult leader Dyers 'now a martyr'
ABC News - Australia
Australian cult leader Ken Dyers committed suicide last week but the controversy around him and his Kenja group has not died with him.
He had been due to face court in May on 22 charges relating to the sexual assault of two girls but was deemed unfit for trial.
It has now emerged that last Wednesday, Dyers' lawyer rang him to say the police wanted to interview him about further allegations of sexual abuse from a girl who attended his "energy conversion" sessions.
The next day, the 84-year-old ended his own life.
In October last year, film director Melissa McLean asked Dyers about the sexual assault allegations he was preparing to defend in court.
The film, Beyond our Ken, which is an entry in this year's Melbourne International Film Festival, looks at Dyers' group, Kenja Communications.
McLean only got halfway through her first question before Dyers produced a furious outburst.
"Why don't you have that viewpoint as well and do something worthwhile with your thing, instead of asking me to defend myself and defend myself?" he said.
"Defend Kenja, well we're playing a clean game, the cleanest game that's being played here in Australia and why do I have to defend myself for that? I don't and I'm not going to."
'Shock' suicide
McLean says she was "shocked" to discover Dyers had committed suicide.
"This is a man who really believes in himself," she said.
"Ken Dyers has always expressed the utmost confidence in what he believed in and to kill oneself was the opposite of that, so I always expected him to battle on to the very end, whatever that was."
In making the film, McLean witnessed a re-enactment of one of Dyers' "energy conversion" sessions.
It was during these sessions that two girls alleged he had sexually assaulted them.
"It seemed to me quite strange and I said that to him, that I was uncomfortable watching him do that because it is so unusual to watch an old man, an 84-year-old man essentially hit on a young girl, but he said he did that so they would recognise when they were being hit on," she said.
The court case should have started in May but the court ordered a mental health assessment for Dyers, whose health was deteriorating.
In the film, Dyers talks about his health issues.
"I'm on the way out. I don't expect to last more than two years but I'll tell you this much, I condemn these bastards of people," he said.
"I've tried to be honest and I've really opened myself completely to you and you're still asking me stupid bloody questions like that, asking me to defend myself."
Kenja's future
Yesterday, the Kenja group took out full page adds as a tribute to Dyers.
They called him "a great Australian" and criticised police, the media and cult awareness groups for "ruthlessly attacking" Kenja for years.
McLean says it is exactly what she expected.
"It will be to bond together and say the bastards got him in the end," she said.
"He's a martyr to the group now. It's not that he killed himself, it's that the press, everybody attacked him and they got him. They beat him down."
But she says without Dyers, Kenja will struggle.
"They have been functioning without him for the past 12 months - he hasn't been able to have any contact with the group while under sexual assault charges, that's the condition of his bail," she said.
"They always thought he would come back at some point. I don't know whether they will go on though. They need a figurehead and I don't know that they really have on without him."
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/30/1992252.htm?section=australia
Australian cult leader Ken Dyers committed suicide last week but the controversy around him and his Kenja group has not died with him.
He had been due to face court in May on 22 charges relating to the sexual assault of two girls but was deemed unfit for trial.
It has now emerged that last Wednesday, Dyers' lawyer rang him to say the police wanted to interview him about further allegations of sexual abuse from a girl who attended his "energy conversion" sessions.
The next day, the 84-year-old ended his own life.
In October last year, film director Melissa McLean asked Dyers about the sexual assault allegations he was preparing to defend in court.
The film, Beyond our Ken, which is an entry in this year's Melbourne International Film Festival, looks at Dyers' group, Kenja Communications.
McLean only got halfway through her first question before Dyers produced a furious outburst.
"Why don't you have that viewpoint as well and do something worthwhile with your thing, instead of asking me to defend myself and defend myself?" he said.
"Defend Kenja, well we're playing a clean game, the cleanest game that's being played here in Australia and why do I have to defend myself for that? I don't and I'm not going to."
'Shock' suicide
McLean says she was "shocked" to discover Dyers had committed suicide.
"This is a man who really believes in himself," she said.
"Ken Dyers has always expressed the utmost confidence in what he believed in and to kill oneself was the opposite of that, so I always expected him to battle on to the very end, whatever that was."
In making the film, McLean witnessed a re-enactment of one of Dyers' "energy conversion" sessions.
It was during these sessions that two girls alleged he had sexually assaulted them.
"It seemed to me quite strange and I said that to him, that I was uncomfortable watching him do that because it is so unusual to watch an old man, an 84-year-old man essentially hit on a young girl, but he said he did that so they would recognise when they were being hit on," she said.
The court case should have started in May but the court ordered a mental health assessment for Dyers, whose health was deteriorating.
In the film, Dyers talks about his health issues.
"I'm on the way out. I don't expect to last more than two years but I'll tell you this much, I condemn these bastards of people," he said.
"I've tried to be honest and I've really opened myself completely to you and you're still asking me stupid bloody questions like that, asking me to defend myself."
Kenja's future
Yesterday, the Kenja group took out full page adds as a tribute to Dyers.
They called him "a great Australian" and criticised police, the media and cult awareness groups for "ruthlessly attacking" Kenja for years.
McLean says it is exactly what she expected.
"It will be to bond together and say the bastards got him in the end," she said.
"He's a martyr to the group now. It's not that he killed himself, it's that the press, everybody attacked him and they got him. They beat him down."
But she says without Dyers, Kenja will struggle.
"They have been functioning without him for the past 12 months - he hasn't been able to have any contact with the group while under sexual assault charges, that's the condition of his bail," she said.
"They always thought he would come back at some point. I don't know whether they will go on though. They need a figurehead and I don't know that they really have on without him."
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/30/1992252.htm?section=australia
Cult leader 'won't face justice'
THE AGE - Australia
Danielle Teutsch
July 29, 2007
A FORMER Sydney MP who raised sex abuse allegations against a cult leader a decade ago says it is a shame he will never be brought to justice.
Stephen Mutch, former federal member for Cook, said Ken Dyers had taken "the coward's way out" by taking his own life last Wednesday.
Dyers, 85, the founder of the healing cult Kenja Communication, was committed last year to stand trial on 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault upon two 12-year-old girls. He was arrested in 2005.
The trial was deferred after the NSW District Court deemed him unfit for trial in May and ordered a mental health assessment. Supporters of Dyers have taken out a full-page advertisement in The Sunday Age and other papers mourning his death and protesting his innocence.
Dyers' wife and co-founder of Kenja, Jan Hamilton, said the ad was taken out by "angry and upset individuals" who were frustrated that her husband's case had not been accurately portrayed in the media.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/28/1185339333767.html
Danielle Teutsch
July 29, 2007
A FORMER Sydney MP who raised sex abuse allegations against a cult leader a decade ago says it is a shame he will never be brought to justice.
Stephen Mutch, former federal member for Cook, said Ken Dyers had taken "the coward's way out" by taking his own life last Wednesday.
Dyers, 85, the founder of the healing cult Kenja Communication, was committed last year to stand trial on 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault upon two 12-year-old girls. He was arrested in 2005.
The trial was deferred after the NSW District Court deemed him unfit for trial in May and ordered a mental health assessment. Supporters of Dyers have taken out a full-page advertisement in The Sunday Age and other papers mourning his death and protesting his innocence.
Dyers' wife and co-founder of Kenja, Jan Hamilton, said the ad was taken out by "angry and upset individuals" who were frustrated that her husband's case had not been accurately portrayed in the media.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/28/1185339333767.html
26 Jul 2007
Sordid shame of sex sect
The Daily Telegraph - Australia
By Lisa Davies July 26, 2007
THE Kenja cult first came under the spotlight up to three years ago after women came foward to claim they were sexually assaulted during its rituals - and when its links to high-profile "refugee" Cornelia Rau were revealed.
Ms Rau, the Australian permanent resident wrongly incarcerated in Baxter detention centre, joined Kenja in the 1990s - shortly before she began suffering schizophrenia.
She was diagnosed with mental health problems shortly after being expelled from the group in 1998.
Former Kenja members have confirmed humiliation tactics were common, as were naked "energy conversion" sessions.
One former follower has told The Daily Telegraph how she was stripped naked and touched all over in a "cleansing ceremony" before she moved away from Sydney with her family.
The woman, named only as Suzanne, said Kenja leader Ken Dyers, who has been found dead, touched her naked body during a sordid "energy" session.
"His hands were almost on my genitals when I pulled away very uncomfortable, and put my clothes on," she said.
"I left then and it wasn't long after that I was taken home by my family.' Suzanne's father Max said his daughter had a mental breakdown when she left Kenja.
"She was so mixed up, you couldn't get a straight word out of her," he said.
Suzanne said only now, more than 10 years after she left, can she see the dangers of the cult.
"They're so reckless with how they treat people. Ken Dyers is a law unto himself," she said.
Her claims have been strongly backed by dozens of calls to The Daily Telegraph.
A cult members' lobby organisation - the Cult Information & Family Support (CIFS) group - has urged State Parliament to look into the practices of cults in NSW, including Kenja.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/ story/0,22049,22136927-5006009,00.html
By Lisa Davies July 26, 2007
THE Kenja cult first came under the spotlight up to three years ago after women came foward to claim they were sexually assaulted during its rituals - and when its links to high-profile "refugee" Cornelia Rau were revealed.
Ms Rau, the Australian permanent resident wrongly incarcerated in Baxter detention centre, joined Kenja in the 1990s - shortly before she began suffering schizophrenia.
She was diagnosed with mental health problems shortly after being expelled from the group in 1998.
Former Kenja members have confirmed humiliation tactics were common, as were naked "energy conversion" sessions.
One former follower has told The Daily Telegraph how she was stripped naked and touched all over in a "cleansing ceremony" before she moved away from Sydney with her family.
The woman, named only as Suzanne, said Kenja leader Ken Dyers, who has been found dead, touched her naked body during a sordid "energy" session.
"His hands were almost on my genitals when I pulled away very uncomfortable, and put my clothes on," she said.
"I left then and it wasn't long after that I was taken home by my family.' Suzanne's father Max said his daughter had a mental breakdown when she left Kenja.
"She was so mixed up, you couldn't get a straight word out of her," he said.
Suzanne said only now, more than 10 years after she left, can she see the dangers of the cult.
"They're so reckless with how they treat people. Ken Dyers is a law unto himself," she said.
Her claims have been strongly backed by dozens of calls to The Daily Telegraph.
A cult members' lobby organisation - the Cult Information & Family Support (CIFS) group - has urged State Parliament to look into the practices of cults in NSW, including Kenja.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/ story/0,22049,22136927-5006009,00.html
Sex 'healing' cult suicide
Daily Telegraph, Australia
By Eoin Blackwell
July 26, 2007 CULT leader and alleged child sex offender Kenneth Emmanual Dyers has been found shot dead.
Police were called to a house in Crammond Ave, Bundenna, yesterday after reports of gun shots.
Officers discovered the 85-year-old's body, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Police last night said they were not treating the death as suspicious and were preparing a report for the coroner.
The WW2 veteran - and founder of controversial cult movement Kenja - was facing trial on 22 charges of child sexual assault and indecent assault.
Members of the cult have told of his grubby "nude healing sessions" and of the cult's links "refugee" Cornelia Rau, who was a member shortly before developing mental illness.
Dyers' was due to face trail in the Downing Centre District Court on May 3, but was deemed unfit for trial and a mental assessment was ordered.
Dyers was arrested in August 2005 and charged with the aggravated sexual assault and aggravated incident assault of two 12-year-old girls.
The charges followed an investigation by Strike Force Caroola, set up in May 2005, by detectives from the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Unit.
Kenja - set up by Dyers and his partner Jan Hamilton - is a non-religious organisation that preaches the power of one-to-one mediation called "energy conversions".
Dyers faced a committal hearing before Downing Centre Local Court last May, which heard the offences against the two girls were alleged to have occurred while the girls attended "energy conversion sessions" with Dyers at Kenja's offices in Surry Hills, between December 2001 and July 2002.
Dyers maintained his innocence throughout, accusing former Kenja members of making up the allegations.
In a fawning statement, Kenja Communications last night described Dyers' death as a "tragic day for Australia and for the human spirit".
"There has been a relentless attack on Ken and Kenja for over 20 years," the statement said.
"This attack was launched by spurious, so-called anti-cult groups, some politicians and individuals with criminal intentions, who have fabricated false allegations of child sexual abuse against him.
"The police were continuing to hound and harass Mr Dyers, working with disaffected and hostile people, who wanted to destroy Ken to hide their own misdeeds.
"It is clear that Ken decided he could not, in his state of health, continue to fight any longer."
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22136859-5006009,00.html
By Eoin Blackwell
July 26, 2007 CULT leader and alleged child sex offender Kenneth Emmanual Dyers has been found shot dead.
Police were called to a house in Crammond Ave, Bundenna, yesterday after reports of gun shots.
Officers discovered the 85-year-old's body, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Police last night said they were not treating the death as suspicious and were preparing a report for the coroner.
The WW2 veteran - and founder of controversial cult movement Kenja - was facing trial on 22 charges of child sexual assault and indecent assault.
Members of the cult have told of his grubby "nude healing sessions" and of the cult's links "refugee" Cornelia Rau, who was a member shortly before developing mental illness.
Dyers' was due to face trail in the Downing Centre District Court on May 3, but was deemed unfit for trial and a mental assessment was ordered.
Dyers was arrested in August 2005 and charged with the aggravated sexual assault and aggravated incident assault of two 12-year-old girls.
The charges followed an investigation by Strike Force Caroola, set up in May 2005, by detectives from the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Unit.
Kenja - set up by Dyers and his partner Jan Hamilton - is a non-religious organisation that preaches the power of one-to-one mediation called "energy conversions".
Dyers faced a committal hearing before Downing Centre Local Court last May, which heard the offences against the two girls were alleged to have occurred while the girls attended "energy conversion sessions" with Dyers at Kenja's offices in Surry Hills, between December 2001 and July 2002.
Dyers maintained his innocence throughout, accusing former Kenja members of making up the allegations.
In a fawning statement, Kenja Communications last night described Dyers' death as a "tragic day for Australia and for the human spirit".
"There has been a relentless attack on Ken and Kenja for over 20 years," the statement said.
"This attack was launched by spurious, so-called anti-cult groups, some politicians and individuals with criminal intentions, who have fabricated false allegations of child sexual abuse against him.
"The police were continuing to hound and harass Mr Dyers, working with disaffected and hostile people, who wanted to destroy Ken to hide their own misdeeds.
"It is clear that Ken decided he could not, in his state of health, continue to fight any longer."
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22136859-5006009,00.html
25 Jul 2007
Sydney cult leader found dead
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
July 25, 2007
Les Kennedy
www.smh.com.au
The leader and co-founder of a Sydney based healing cult facing trial on multiple alleged sex abuse offences against two 12-year-old Sydney girls was found dead today.
Police will not reveal the circumstances in which Kenneth Emmanuel Dyers, 85, the founder of Kenja Communications died or where his body was found.
Police from Sutherland and forensic officers were called to his home in Crammond Avenue, Bundeena, earlier today.
Sutherland Police have declined to comment on the death as detectives prepare a report for the State Coroner.
His death comes as a trial in the Sydney District Court was deferred pending a decision by the Mental Health Tribunal as to whether he was fit to plead.
He faced 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault upon two 12-year-old girls.
Dyers, who had been on bail, had been contesting the charges since his arrest by officers from the Child Protection and Serious Sex Crimes Squad in October 2005 after a long-running investigation by Strike Force Caroola.
When he was first charged on October 28, 2005, his lawyer Harland Koops told Sutherland Local Court that he could not have sexually assaulted the girls at Kenja’s Surry Hills offices between December 2001 and July 2002 because he suffered erectile dysfunction for 15 years.
The charges included four counts of aggravated indecent assault in relation to one victim, as well as a further 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault and one of aggravated sexual assault relating to the second girl.
Throughout successive court appearances Dyers’s wife and Kenja co-founder, the former actress Jan Hamilton, and followers have maintained his innocence.
Police alleged in evidence presented during his committal the offences took place during one-on-one “energy conversion sessions” inside the Kenja office designed to assist in clearing negative energies.
His followers have claimed he has been the victim of a campaign to destroy him by “bitter and disaffected” former followers.
This included Dyers defeating in the High Court a previous unrelated sexual assault allegation levelled against him in 1993.
Dyers and Ms Hamilton founded Kenja in 1982 preaching the positive power of a form of meditation called energy conversion.
Among those who undertook a course was Cornelia Rau, the former airline steward woman wrongly detained at Baxter Detention Centre, who attended Kenja workshops in 1998.
While on bail Dyers has been treated for a series of illnesses including a lumbar condition.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/18827/kenja
July 25, 2007
Les Kennedy
www.smh.com.au
The leader and co-founder of a Sydney based healing cult facing trial on multiple alleged sex abuse offences against two 12-year-old Sydney girls was found dead today.
Police will not reveal the circumstances in which Kenneth Emmanuel Dyers, 85, the founder of Kenja Communications died or where his body was found.
Police from Sutherland and forensic officers were called to his home in Crammond Avenue, Bundeena, earlier today.
Sutherland Police have declined to comment on the death as detectives prepare a report for the State Coroner.
His death comes as a trial in the Sydney District Court was deferred pending a decision by the Mental Health Tribunal as to whether he was fit to plead.
He faced 22 charges of aggravated indecent and sexual assault upon two 12-year-old girls.
Dyers, who had been on bail, had been contesting the charges since his arrest by officers from the Child Protection and Serious Sex Crimes Squad in October 2005 after a long-running investigation by Strike Force Caroola.
When he was first charged on October 28, 2005, his lawyer Harland Koops told Sutherland Local Court that he could not have sexually assaulted the girls at Kenja’s Surry Hills offices between December 2001 and July 2002 because he suffered erectile dysfunction for 15 years.
The charges included four counts of aggravated indecent assault in relation to one victim, as well as a further 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault and one of aggravated sexual assault relating to the second girl.
Throughout successive court appearances Dyers’s wife and Kenja co-founder, the former actress Jan Hamilton, and followers have maintained his innocence.
Police alleged in evidence presented during his committal the offences took place during one-on-one “energy conversion sessions” inside the Kenja office designed to assist in clearing negative energies.
His followers have claimed he has been the victim of a campaign to destroy him by “bitter and disaffected” former followers.
This included Dyers defeating in the High Court a previous unrelated sexual assault allegation levelled against him in 1993.
Dyers and Ms Hamilton founded Kenja in 1982 preaching the positive power of a form of meditation called energy conversion.
Among those who undertook a course was Cornelia Rau, the former airline steward woman wrongly detained at Baxter Detention Centre, who attended Kenja workshops in 1998.
While on bail Dyers has been treated for a series of illnesses including a lumbar condition.
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/18827/kenja
Kenja leader found dead at Bundeena
The Leader - Australia
July 25, 2007
Kenneth Dyers, 85, founder of spiritual organisation, Kenja Communications, was found dead at his Bundeena home today.
Police went to the house in Crammond Avenue, Bundeena around 11am and found a man dead from a gunshot wound.
Police media would only say said it was not treating the death as suspicious and police were preparing a brief for the coroner.
The World War II veteran and co-founder of Kenja Communications, which has offices in Surry Hills, Parramatta, Canberra and Melbourne, had faced court a number of times on a range of child sexual assault charges dating back to 1993.
Dyers' matters were last dealt with in Downing Centre District Court on May 3, 2007.
He was deemed unfit for trial at the time and a mental health assessment was ordered.
His file is marked ''date-to-be-fixed for trial''.
Dyers maintained his innocence throughout, accusing disaffected Kenja members of falsifying allegations.
According to its website, Kenja Communications is a non-religious group which helps people to gain `increased spiritual understanding in a physical world'.
Its trademark is the Dyers-pioneered `energy conversion' meditation technique.
Bundeena resident Neil De Nett said Mr Dyers seemed like a friendly and fit old man.
"The news stories around him in the last couple of years weren't really a subject of gossip for people,'' Mr De Nett said.
"I had read some things in the paper that were a worry, but as a person I found him quite nice.''
In a March 2007 Kenja newsletter interview, Dyers explained his concept of double happiness.
"It's very hard to sit down and make yourself happy.
"I found that out a long time ago.
"People can only stand a certain amount of happiness before they flow it back to you.
"I call it double happy: I make you happy, and then you flow it back to me.''
http://www.theleader.com.au/2007/07/kenja_leader_found_dead_at_bun.php
July 25, 2007
Kenneth Dyers, 85, founder of spiritual organisation, Kenja Communications, was found dead at his Bundeena home today.
Police went to the house in Crammond Avenue, Bundeena around 11am and found a man dead from a gunshot wound.
Police media would only say said it was not treating the death as suspicious and police were preparing a brief for the coroner.
The World War II veteran and co-founder of Kenja Communications, which has offices in Surry Hills, Parramatta, Canberra and Melbourne, had faced court a number of times on a range of child sexual assault charges dating back to 1993.
Dyers' matters were last dealt with in Downing Centre District Court on May 3, 2007.
He was deemed unfit for trial at the time and a mental health assessment was ordered.
His file is marked ''date-to-be-fixed for trial''.
Dyers maintained his innocence throughout, accusing disaffected Kenja members of falsifying allegations.
According to its website, Kenja Communications is a non-religious group which helps people to gain `increased spiritual understanding in a physical world'.
Its trademark is the Dyers-pioneered `energy conversion' meditation technique.
Bundeena resident Neil De Nett said Mr Dyers seemed like a friendly and fit old man.
"The news stories around him in the last couple of years weren't really a subject of gossip for people,'' Mr De Nett said.
"I had read some things in the paper that were a worry, but as a person I found him quite nice.''
In a March 2007 Kenja newsletter interview, Dyers explained his concept of double happiness.
"It's very hard to sit down and make yourself happy.
"I found that out a long time ago.
"People can only stand a certain amount of happiness before they flow it back to you.
"I call it double happy: I make you happy, and then you flow it back to me.''
http://www.theleader.com.au/2007/07/kenja_leader_found_dead_at_bun.php
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