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.
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meditation. Show all posts
4 Aug 2007
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
26 Jul 2007
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
