Narration

Four hours south of Perth lies a small country town that was once the centre of an extraordinary experiment...

... a home-grown spiritual movement that for a brief time in the 70s was Australia's most successful alternative community.

Stephen Carthew

Some of these sheds are still there. Haven't been developed. It's not totally developed out.

Narration

Stephen Carthew was one of its founding fathers.

Stephen Carthew

Community Centre. They've even got a sign for it. We used to have big sign saying Universal Brotherhood, and some people just stopped at it and turned at that sign, wondering what is this? And then ended up living there. They shouldn't have stopped, but they did!

Narration

Thirty years ago, Stephen convinced nearly 200 young idealists...

...to give up everything and put their lives in the hands of their very own New Age guru ...and his wife.

Linda Moctezuma

And we really believed that it was a turning point for mankind. We honestly, honestly believed that. And there was no turning back.

Matt Taylor

To most people who've never been through anything like this, they'd look at us and say are you nuts or something?

Narration

They thought they could change the world.

What came of their dreams has haunted them ever since.

Susan Allwood

People allowed themselves to be controlled and manipulated. People who absolutely believed in what was happening have been lost ever since.

Anita Chauvin

If Mary had said to us: we've reached the right vibration, we don't need our bodies any more. We're all going to drink cyanide. I wonder if we'd done it.

Narration

Today the property that once housed the Universal Brotherhood is still run as a community...

A loose co-operative with no religious connections.

Only a handful of former members still live here.

Now, after many years, Stephen's finally come back.

Stephen Carthew

Wow! Quite different. Look at that - that's a lot of extra growth...The old homestead. Here we are. It's changed a bit because the house has been renovated. Still very much here, very much it.

Wow (laughs) Hey Marg. How are you?

Margie Miskimmini

It's nice to see you.

Does it look anything like you remember?

Stephen Carthew

Yeah - it's pretty much the same...

Narration

Stephen's here to write the definitive history of the Brotherhood...

... A final accounting of the paradise they built - and lost.

Stephen Carthew

So my path used to be up this line - and that used to be the driveway into Mary's house...

We had such a vision for what could be. And while the gardens were really growing really well like that, you could really feel um and see

how it was expanding and it was beautiful.

Unless somebody actually writes it down and gets it out there then they can't, there won't be a way of reflecting on it properly.

And this is the school. This is the old school house. And my place is just down, just down through here...

What you invoke you're responsible for. And what I invoked I still feel a sense of responsibility. And so that sense of responsibility's not involved with the community as such, but in getting the story straight. Getting the story out.

Narration

News of Stephen's visit has spread through the community, and he's been asked to speak about the little known days of the Brotherhood.

Stephen Carthew

There's a lot of things that weren't easy and a lot of mistakes that I made, or I can look back and see we made as a group and - But I can't say, I can't say I'm sorry that we tried. And we - And I'm actually really proud of the fact that we did create uh this community.

Narration

But in the audience are a handful of former followers...

... And they're about to take the meeting in a very different direction.

Susan Allwood

Really used to upset me about the fact that Mary used to have these dreams and say God spoke to her in dreams and then everyone used to have to do what Mary said because of some bloody dream she had. (Crowd laughs) That is weird stuff! Cos Stephen's here talking about it like he did 30 years ago, he's recreating it all over again, isn't he?

Stephen Carthew

Actually, that's really unfair. I went through a lot of the things that you're talking about and I can relate to some of it. But I'm trying to give a historical perspective not an emotional perspective to this although emotions are very much part of it.

Narration

But these emotions have been waiting 30 years for the chance to erupt.

Stephen Carthew

They came to the community and found healing. And found a new life there. And so - Bye Bye.

Susan Allwood

You can't shut me up Steven, and I don't care if I'm emotional. I'm allowed to be emotional, even if it's 30 years late. You can't stop me from talking like you did in the community. I was one of the outspoken people. Okay there's a lot of repressed stuff inside me because he tried to shut me up and control me the whole time. He separated me from my husband when I was pregnant, and I nearly had a breakdown, put me on a silence fast, and made me look after myself, you know. And I'm sorry, I'm here to get over all of that stuff and you are full of shit, Steven. And it was a lot of hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo. And don't you tell me to shut up anymore.

Stephen Carthew

Susan, I haven't told you.

Susan Allwood

You did. You put me down in front of everyone and you told me to shut up like you did all those years ago. And I'm sorry if I'm emotional if you're a socialist or social worker or something. That's me. And this was a load of mumbo jumbo. We had good will, but you were an arsehole!

Narration

It had all begun in an era of such peace, love

and harmony.

It was 1971 and hundreds of middle class kids were looking for a way out.

Turning their backs on jobs, mortgages and a safe life in the suburbs.

For many, it was the chance to experiment with alternative lifestyles, drugs and free love.

Stephen Carthew

Oh hello, my name's Stephen and I'm on holidays...

Narration

But a few were on a more serious path to enlightenment.

Stephen Carthew

Many of us had been involved in the drug culture and we realised that wasn't where we wanted to be.

Narration

Stephen Carthew came from a privileged upbringing on Sydney's north shore.

But like many others, he soon found himself on the hippy trail through India.

At just 23, he'd come back to start Sydney's first New Age environmental education centre.

Stephen Carthew

I was interested in the New Age. I'd been in touch with New Age communities in India, in Scotland and America...

For a long time I was speculating, wondering and so on, but now I don't have to believe that I breathe, I know I breathe, and it's got nothing to do with religion, it's just a cosmic point of view...

Narration

It wasn't long before he met Fred Robinson, Australia's grand old man of organic farming.

Eighty year-old Fred was a self-styled eco-prophet.

His mission: to guide the younger generation into a golden New Age.

Fred Robinson

The truth for the first time in the history of this planet is available to all who seek and ask. No matter what it is about. From pollution, from the point of view of organic gardening, from the point of view of anything, where from man can make this a heaven upon earth instead of a hell upon earth.

Stephen Carthew

He was a hippie of his generation talking to hippies of my generation. So he was one of the few that had pioneered a path that we already wanted to take.

Narration

So Stephen and Fred joined forces.

Stephen cashed in his inheritance and began selling Fred's message...

... Calling for volunteers to pioneer a model community that could save the planet, and mankind.

Fred Robinson

If we do not take constructive action in this direction, then the obvious, the obvious collapse of the whole world system, is becoming evident even to the man in the street.

Linda Moctezuma

He was convinced that the economy was about to go and that we needed to get away from the world so that we'd be economically protected. And I thought this is it. This is what I was meant to do with my life was to start a new society that would be the alternative society to mankind. And I really believed that.

Narration

Linda Ward was one of their first converts.

An intense teenager desperate to escape the insular world of Sydney's northern beaches.

Linda Moctezuma

I was young. I was only 18 and terribly idealistic I was finishing school, not knowing what I wanted to do. Didn't want to go to university, didn't want to go out and work. So I was lost and I was ripe for the picking basically.

Narration

And so were many others ... as Stephen and Fred's roadshow travelled to festivals around the country.

Their audience included impressionable sixteen year-olds like Anita Chauvin.

Anita Chauvin

My father was a yoga teacher. My mother had been taking me to yoga and Jung and theosophy and a whole lot of things since I was about twelve.

I left school. I'd been doing very well at school and I think my family had a collective faint.

Narration

By now, Stephen and Fred's campaign had reached the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne...

Their band of converts now included rock stars of the day.

Matt Taylor

You know we just had a number one record and everything like that. And so I just sold everything up. Because number one records weren't as important as finding out how the universe worked.

I think there's much more inspiration in the country, you know, just to walk out like here and just see beauty...

Narration

Before long a stream of young disciples were following Fred and Stephen west ...

They handed over all their savings to buy 300 acres of remote farmland four hours south of Perth.

This was to be the birthplace of a new utopia: the Universal Brotherhood.

Anita Chauvin

We arrived in our Kombie with the seagrass matting roof. These innocent young hippies. See-through clothes, free spirit floating as you do.

Stephen Carthew

It was a real buzz having all these people come together with so many ideas and so much that we could do. You never know who was going to turn up tomorrow and what skills they might have. One was always thinking and maybe praying for somebody to come that could do this. And then they'd turn up the next day and you'd go wow!

Matt Taylor

Well Fred used to get terribly upset. He'd say I wanted carpenters and plumbers - not musicians. And I'd say Fred, it's only the musicians that can understand what you're talking about - the carpenters and plumbers don't want to know about it.

Narration

But there were a few working class kids, like Jason Hart from Kalgoorlie, to help turn their dreams into reality.

Jason Hart

It was basically a collection of hippy type people. And for me, being an underground miner (laughs...) You know

Susan Allwood

And me? I walked straight out of Melbourne in my designer clothes with my leather jacket on and my Toorak hairdo and came over

Narration

Susan Allwood gave up a fashion career for the chance to be part of this new community.

Susan Allwood

I lost my father when I was 12, had fairly turbulent teenage years, and was looking for a group of people I could trust and a group of friends, family I could belong to. And I found that.

Matt Taylor

And what was lovely about them is that these weren't the talkers these were the doers. They weren't talking about creating a new world, they were doing it.

Narration

From a handful of pioneers, the Universal Brotherhood quickly grew to over 100 members.

Within a year, it had become an almost completely self-sufficient community...

... Putting into practise all its principles of biodynamic farming and wholistic living.

Those who still went out to work handed in their pay packets unopened.

In exchange the Brotherhood took care of everyone's food, shelter and clothing.

Everything was shared - and everyone ate, played and prayed together.

Anita Chauvin

What I liked about what Fred was offering was it wasn't just um abstract ideas, or one particular discipline, it was a package. So it wasn't just meditate and do yoga. It was the entire thing. It was grow the healthy vegetables, live a certain lifestyle, um, do these spiritual practices, be a community, get married, have the golden children, bring in the New Age.

Linda Moctezuma

And we really believed that it was a turning point for mankind. We honestly honestly believed that. And we were going to be the spearhead, the leaders of this new age. We were creating the model that the whole world was going to be built on. And so we had this great responsibility to do it properly.

Stephen Carthew

We call ourselves a Brotherhood, um, and the reason we do that is we're not an unorganised group of people come together just because we want to escape. We want to create a really pure alternative society in a world where there is a tremendous amount of pollution.

Stephen Carthew

We used to say it's down to earth and up to heaven, or back to the land and in tune with god. // Even though the environmental and the ecological and the physical things of growing things were all important. For me this personal relationship with a god that lived inside me, around me or however one wanted to look at it; this relationship with god was the most important aspect of it.

Jason Hart

Every morning we used to have a group meditation. And it was a very powerful and dynamic thing because the whole emphasis of the community was to follow your inner spirit. The spirit of limitless love and truth.

Narration

With Fred still on the road recruiting, Stephen now took on the role of preacher...

It was a mixed bag of mystical teachings, new age philosophies and old-fashioned Christian values.

Unlike other hippy communes, purity in the Brotherhood wasn't just a state of mind.

Matt Taylor

Well there's no drugs for a start. There's no unmarried sex. This, this is (laughs) a convent for married people.

Linda Moctezuma

You know we wore very conservative clothes covering us - making sure. No bikinis - girls couldn't wear bikinis. It was very modest.

Anita Chauvin

You had to find all your defects and polish your soul to become a better person. Help bring in the New Age.

Margie Miskimmini

We had meditations, we had prayers, we had exercises, we had yogas, we had disciplines

Narration

Margie Miskimmins was a veteran of San Francisco in the psychedelic sixties.

She'd been hitching round Australia with her daughter when she stumbled across the Brotherhood.

Margie Miskimmini

In a certain sense it was a refuge. And somehow events conspired to produce a place where, I don't know, for a moment in space and time a lot of things came together. You felt safe.

Narration

But if life in the Brotherhood was safe and pure, the world outside was increasingly seen as dangerously corrupt.

Linda Moctezuma

We were terrified of going out into the world, terrified. the truck had to go out sometimes to bring in supplies. And we'd have all these meditations before the truck went out and surround the truck in a ball of light so that the truck wouldn't get polluted by thoughts from the outside world.

Narration

TV and radio were banned.

Believing they had all the answers, the Brotherhood cut themselves off from the rest of society.

But with guru Fred at the helm, they soon found themselves in uncharted waters.

Fred was a farmer, who'd been bankrupted by the Great Depression

Since then he'd been developing his own cosmic vision of the future.

Stephen Carthew

Fred believed strongly that part of the New Age message was that we were coming in contact again with the rest of the galaxy.

Our elder brothers were linking up with us again, those of us that could understand and were preparing the planet for a graduation into a higher school of evolution, or a higher, to a higher consciousness.

Anita Chauvin

Fred used to talk about how we were raising our personal vibrations and perhaps one day we would even shed our physical bodies and not need them anymore and just function as a etheric spiritual beings.

Stephen Carthew

He saw the world as the Titanic about to hit the iceberg

Susan Allwood

And there'd be an increase in earthquakes, there would be a climate change, there'd be less water, there'd be catastrophes in the world. And eventually the UFO's would come with Christ and the flying saucers and take the people who believed and did good things away and save us.

Linda Moctezuma

And they even brought a property that had an airstrip on it so that the elder brothers would have somewhere to land, and come and take us and rescue us. Now there's only one thing more amazing than him saying that - and that's us believing it.

Stephen Carthew

I'm still really ambivalent about a lot of his flying saucer message. But it was sort of part of the package of Fred. I wanted to focus on what I could work with, and what I did appreciate in his message. And so that was my focus. If Fred wanted to focus on other things that was his freedom to do that.

Narration

Young Stephen took over the running of the place... under the direction of Fred's wife, Mary.

Mary had married Fred in 1963. She shared his New Age vision and soon found herself at the helm.

Stephen Carthew

Fred was never involved in the organisation. He was the prophet, giving the cosmic message. That was his job. Mary's job was to try and organise the rabble that had turned up on her front door. That's how she saw it.

Linda Moctezuma

She was the one who decided the rules of the place and the way everything was going to be run. And Mary's word was gospel. Mary had to be followed.

Matt Taylor

Basically you've got to realise it wasn't a democracy, it was a theocracy.

Narration

Power was now being concentrated in a few

select hands.

Mary and Stephen even created their own governing council - a small group of trusted advisers, known as the Centre Core...

They claimed an authority that was channelled straight from God.

Susan Allwood

Mary had her belief that she slept at night and she had dreams and God spoke to her, and we then had to follow what God had said to her.

Linda Moctezuma

Stephen's role was like the adviser. He was also a channel for God. We all had delusions of grandeur, but he had big ones.

Narration

And those delusions grew as the new converts just kept on coming.

Within 3 years, hundreds had come to visit and nearly 200 stayed.

Stephen Carthew

I thought in 1972 and 73, 74 that the whole social landscape would change. I thought there would be little communities springing up all over Australia and this was going to set the world on fire.

Narration

Stephen was on a roll ... feted by the press and visiting celebrities like American country music singer John Denver.

Meanwhile, out of the spotlight, the disciples kept up the hard work.

Matt Taylor

I wasn't there to teach, I was there to learn. And I was there to participate in a great group effort.

Once a week I'd empty every dunny in that place by hand. Would never complain. I was happy to do it because everyone had to do certain jobs, everything like that. Happy to do it.

Linda Moctezuma

You would have thought that Matt would have been a star recruit. He was a pop singer. But remember we'd rejected the world. So what happened out in the world didn't really mean anything to us.

Matt Taylor

The closer you were to the Centre Core the easier the life was. And Stephen had quite a nice life. I don't think he ever emptied a toilet.

Susan Allwood

Cos I had a friend who'd go and do the dishes for them. And I used to say, why can't they do their own dishes? Don't do them. And she used to say, but work is love, and I used to say, no - they're just lazy.

Linda Moctezuma

You can parallel the whole of 'Animal Farm' to characters in the Brotherhood. It worked perfectly. I had all the names of people. I knew exactly who was who. I knew who were the cows and who were the sheep and who were the pigs. Yeah, oh, I was like Boxer and his donkey I must work harder. I must work harder. Then of course you got the pigs and no prizes for guessing who the pigs were

Stephen Carthew

Problems would come when those people that had just arrived all of a sudden wanted to run the place because they saw a better way of doing it, and life doesn't work that way.

Anita Chauvin

You were told if you're feeling down or you had doubts come and speak to the Centre Core. Because they're more spiritually evolved and they will be in a position to help you. Don't speak to your peers because you'd be a negative influence on them.

Narration

The ruling Centre Core was growing more hardline.

They made sure everyone was pure enough for the New Age by constantly scrutinising their behaviour and polishing their souls.

For earnest young followers like Linda this meant being summoned in for criticism at any time.

Linda Moctezuma

I remember walking to Stephen's to be interviewed thinking what was it. What have I done? What have I done? Wracking my brains to wonder what I'd done wrong. And I'd get in there and it was always a shock. Something that I hadn't even thought of that he'd bring up.

Stephen Carthew

I think that when people care enough to try and tell you you've got this weakness and you've got to work on it, you say yeah okay and I will. And you try and say, thanks very much for thinking so much about me that I'm now polishing my soul.

Linda Moctezuma

Sometimes it was terribly harsh. I remember feeling it in my heart sometimes, walking out of that room just feeling just so worthless and so awful.

Narration

And the humiliations weren't just verbal.

Linda and others were punished with menial jobs and cut off from community life.

Threatened with expulsion, they also endured 'silence fasts', sometimes for weeks on end.

Anita Chauvin

Because the community was such a closed nurturing nest, if you were isolated, as an exercise in polishing your soul that was pretty intense.

Linda Moctezuma

It sounds like we were stupid for believing all this and swallowing it all, but the thing is we wanted so desperately to form a new society. We wanted to be together, we wanted to fulfil this dream. And we were little by little willing to do anything to stay within that group. The group became our world, and to be rejected from the group would be to lose our whole identity.

Narration

Meanwhile, on the surface at least, life in the Brotherhood was all smiles and positive vibrations.

There was no room in Fred's new "heaven on earth" for any unhappiness.

Linda Moctezuma

A child died while we were there. A little baby, it was a cot death. And I was just inconsolably crying. I was crying and crying and crying. And everyone else was singing and dancing. And I was called in afterwards and told that how dare I display such emotions. It's not part of the consciousness. That child's soul had gone to God. What on earth was I crying about? And I ended up apologising for crying about the death of a baby!

Narration

Few dared confess to any doubt, anger or distress...

Those who did were demonised and shunned.

Anita Chauvin

Mary told me when I talked about the black moods I was having and images in my head that were frightening me. Mary told me that I had been taken possession of by negative beings from the astral plane and she isolated me from most of the community.

Susan Allwood

But I defied it. I found some people and I said to them, I can't go on like this any longer I'll go crazy so will you talk to me? And they said yes. And I'd sneak down to their caravan every night and have a chat to them and they saved my sanity.

Matt Taylor

It was like Nazi Germany. You knew what the rules were and so you just kept your mouth shut. If you lived in Soviet Russia you didn't say Stalin's a bastard, or the next day you're out of the consciousness. So you just play the game and at that time I still completely and utterly believed in what we were doing; we were going to build just a whole new society, build it on love, love of nature, on love of each other, you know the whole nine yards. And a few rules? Yeah, what's it matter?

Linda Moctezuma

this was going on but at the same time we were still having a really good time. We were still having our fun nights and our gardening and our group things and our games and all this was still going on and we still loved it.

Narration

And people were still falling in love and getting married within the community... including young Anita.

She'd become a Brotherhood celebrity after her mother kidnapped her...

... Bringing her back to Sydney to get her deprogrammed.

Anita Chauvin

I was canny enough to present well to the psychologist. The psychologist decided that I was very well adjusted young woman and decided that my poor mum might have some anxiety issues. Where in fact she probably was right on the money.

What happened then was the community banded together and raised the funds to fly me back. And turned me into some sort of hero. And from that day I did not receive, I was not allowed to receive a letter from my mother. Well she tried writing letters, signing off with my dog's names so that I'd recognise them. And people filtering them wouldn't. But I was so inculcated that I actually handed them back unopened.

Narration

The Brotherhood's utopian dream was only six years old ... but the rot was already spreading from within.

In 1977 Linda was brought before the Centre Core for the last time.

She'd been reported for flirting with Anita's new husband.

Matt Taylor

Like Linda would have obviously been informed on. Who? Doesn't matter. It would have been someone who was sharing a secret with someone.

Linda Moctezuma

I really felt like I was on trial for my life. And I knew I was going to get the death sentence. I could feel it. I could feel that behind me, about to fall. And then it came. All this stuff came and it was the worst. It was like a 5-year culmination of everything I'd ever done, and every good thing that I've ever done was denigrated and put down and interpreted as evil. And they said we had a meeting. We've had a meeting with all of your friends and your family and we put it to the vote. We don't put many things to the vote here but we've put it to the vote and the vote was almost unanimous that you have to go. And I couldn't believe it. I said everyone said I should go? All your friends said you should go.

Matt Taylor

No one wanted Linda to leave. She was as I said a vivacious young girl and we needed that energy there.

Linda Moctezuma

And they said you've got 24 hours to leave.

Matt Taylor

I think she might have been one of those ones where they got rid of really fast then told everybody: Linda's decided to leave. She was a bit out of the consciousness. I can't remember. But that's how they would have done it.

Stephen Carthew

At a certain point when someone seems to be causing a lot of difficulties you just want to get them out of your hair in a sense. Out of the community hair was all that could be done.

Linda Moctezuma

I just came back to Sydney shell-shocked. And I knew there was no one I could talk to about this. I felt like a complete failure. And when I look back now I think I actually think I had a breakdown. I actually think I had a nervous breakdown.

Narration

Even Matt found himself in the firing line.

A few months later, he was ordered to stop playing his own music.

Stephen told him he could only play from Brotherhood sanctioned songbooks.

Matt Taylor

And I'm just sitting there thinking this is wrong, this is wrong. This is not what we're here for. This is just power out of control. Trying to control each individual. Because that's what it was. If I would have said, yes, I'll learn the 1000 Songs from the - they've got me.

I've given everything to be part of this. And they want to take the one thing that is truly mine; and the one thing that will always be mine. And then it pretty much hit me. Wait a second. If I accept this then I'm just going to lose myself. I'm just going to turn into something I've always disliked. You know just a mouthpiece for other people's thoughts.

Narration

Matt defied his rulers. He spoke out at the next morning service.

Matt Taylor

I talked about being out of the consciousness - the whole works. I just pull the whole thing - just said what was happening there.

Stephen Carthew

It was a huge surprise. It felt like a huge betrayal, that's how it felt to me as an individual at the time. That some of the people all of a sudden came out with this diatribe of things that were so terrible. And I didn't know really what they were talking about.

Matt Taylor

The genie was out of the bottle, you couldn't argue with this one. And even as the meeting finished, people were walking out and saying, Did you know Steve came to me and he told me to do this? Oh, you're joking! And I wasn't supposed to talk to you, that's why I've been ignoring you. It wasn't that I didn't like you. All of this sort of thing began to hit the fan. All the manipulation that was going on

Anita Chauvin

And it started a ripple where people, the only thing that happened that blew the community apart was for the first time people started saying to each other, how are you feeling?

Margie Miskimmini

We went to bed one night as a community, we woke up in the next morning and everything was different. It was that extreme.

Anita Chauvin

And within a week, 40 of us I think, around that number, packed up our children and our homes and left. Without a penny, nothing. We just left. We left our little caravans, we left our dreams and we walked back into a world that we just didn't understand at all.

Susan Allwood

Being the cheeky person that I am, I wrote on the community noticeboard God, Has Told Me To Leave. And I thought, well, everyone will think that's right, they won't question me. And I got on the bus and came to Perth with my son.

Anita Chauvin

And I think some of the people who were left behind must have been bewildered. Because if they didn't participate in any of those few days of conversation about how are you feeling, I'm not happy, they'd have had absolutely no idea.

Margie Miskimmini

It was as if a magic wand had been waved and everything had changed and all location points had disappeared and some people weren't able to balance in that situation, you know.

Anita Chauvin

One person was running up and down the hill with his toothbrush because he thought the elder brothers were going to come and take us now. Yeah, I think there was probably a lot of suffering for some people.

Narration

Many never recovered ...

Some like Jason wound up in hospital, needing psychiatric treatment for years to come.

Jason Hart

I started having these intensely profound spiritual experiences. And because I experienced it so profoundly I lost the plot. For example whether you can really understand this or not my physical body started spinning like a top.

Narration

Their world had crumbled - but the elder brothers in their space ships never came.

Even Fred had stopped believing in a golden future for the Universal Brotherhood.

Matt Taylor

When it collapsed, he somehow knew what was going on. He wasn't upset about what I'd done. He was thankful that someone had actually stood up to them. Because he couldn't any more. He was so marginalised by this stage that at the end. // At the end even Fred wasn't allowed to talk.

Narration

By 1978 the New Age dream was over.

Fred died of pneumonia soon after.

Mary persisted with her God-given mission until her death a decade later.

But the mood of the times had changed, as the world woke up to the danger of religious cults.

Anita Chauvin

I think Jonestown happened not long after we'd left the Brotherhood. And I sometimes wondered you know with Fred's theory that we were raising our vibrations and one day we wouldn't need our physical bodies and we'd only need our etheric bodies. When Jonestown happened there was a moment where I thought, if Mary had said to us: we've reached the right vibration, we don't need our bodies any more. We're all going to drink cyanide. I wonder if we'd done it. I'd like to think that we wouldn't have, because by that time we'd left. But I wonder. And we had come to it in such innocence and good will, and had been led to it by innocence and good will - but extraordinary deluded thinking.

Matt Taylor

I don't think even Mary was capable of that. It was on a mental level, it would never have come to physical harm. I never saw any physical harm the whole time I was there. Mental harm's just as nasty, but you can walk away from it.

Narration

Thirty years later Stephen Carthew is still trying to come to terms with his part in it all.

Stephen Carthew

It was a trauma to realise that I'd been part of bringing about a cult. It was traumatic. There was a while there after leaving the community, coming back into the world as we used to call it umm in which I found I was almost stuttering and I wasn't able to speak coherently. It was a challenging time working out how I could come back into society, having been in a pretty privileged position

Narration

Back in suburban Sydney, Linda too is searching for resolution.

Now a teacher, and married with children, she's ready to look back on 6 years of her life - that till now she's kept hidden.

Linda Moctezuma

I felt like I had wanted to forget about the Brotherhood for the last 30 years and I don't know what happened. I just woke up one morning, I guess it's time and I thought I shouldn't be forgetting about this, I should be remembering.

Narration

So Linda is planning a reunion, a last chance to heal old wounds.

Linda Moctezuma

And I'm hoping a lot of other people will be keen to join the reunion and discuss old times, learn about where each of us has gone in the last 30 years, and see what we've gained from the experience.

Narration

For Anita, now a Brisbane social worker, news of the upcoming reunion has brought back emotions she thought she'd long since left behind.

Anita Chauvin

My marriage exploded apart after leaving the Brotherhood. I didn't know what to believe anymore. I was frightened that it meant I was mad or maybe I would still go mad

When I was first asked if I'd come to the reunion, I threw the letter out. And then a number of people rang and said we'd love you to go, and I became curious about my level of anger and realised that maybe I hadn't worked through my reactions to the Brotherhood at all and in fact began to realise that as a 19 year-old I had in fact buried it.

Matt Taylor

I went to the Universal Brotherhood to find God. I went there to find out how the universe works. I went there to find the truth. And I found me.

Narration

Like many other ex-devotees, Matt Taylor simply slammed the door on his Brotherhood days and threw himself back into his music.

For him, like the others, this reunion will be his first meeting with his former Brothers since it all fell apart.

Matt Taylor

If you hold grudges you only hurt yourself, you're not hurting anybody else. And I think I will see him. We'll have a nice conversation and have a bit of a laugh. I'd like to meet that Stephen who I first went with Fred who hired the Myer Bowl.

Susan Allwood

Gosh, you look exactly the same! Look at you! Wow.

Linda Moctezuma

Aren't you gorgeous!

Susan Allwood

So are you. Look at you! You were a little girl when I knew you.

Linda Moctezuma

I was I know.

Susan Allwood

I brought a diary with me.

Linda Moctezuma

Fabulous.

Susan Allwood

Yeah, I kept diaries.

Narration

Susan's come all the way from Perth to make sure this reunion calls Stephen to account.

Linda Moctezuma

the first week, you should have known. Why didn't you turn and run there and then.

Susan Allwood

I should have. I was idealistic...

Linda Moctezuma

Oh! Hello Matt!

Matt Taylor

Still got the big red hair.

Linda Moctezuma

Look at you!

Narration

But out of all of them, Stephen Carthew has the most at stake ...He knows he has a lot to answer for.

Stephen Carthew

I'm turning embarrassment into an art form in a lot of ways. It's very strange because I'm not the same person I was then. But it's still very important because it did shape me. It did shape my life and I have to admit that. I can't escape it. And I think it's much better to have these things out and being talked about then there to be smoulderings.

Narration

The reunion is already underway at Linda's home in Sydney.

And Stephen knows fifty of his former followers are waiting inside.

Anita Chauvin

I'm a bit of a stunned mullet.

Matt Taylor

You'll be even more stunned the more you walk through there.

Stephen Carthew

It's amazing.

Anita Chauvin

Hi Stephen. How are you. I don't know whether to hug you or not.

Stephen Carthew

You can, it's all right.

Linda Moctezuma

I just want to say welcome everybody to my home...

Narration

The pleasantries are soon over...

The Time has come to answer for the past

Stephen Carthew

Personally I want to apologise for my fanaticism. Something born out of a sincere but misguided enthusiasm for the project we were undertaking. The line between enthusiasm and fanaticism can be thin and I believed I crossed that line too often to used to the power and influence bestowed on me as a co-founder and vice principal of the Universal Brotherhood to try and keep people in the community when they were deliberating whether to stay or go, and that's one of the saddest things for me is that in my enthusiasm I tried to interfere with people's personal decision making process to be too much involved in snooping into others private lives was not helpful. Fred did not have beliefs as we know, just truths (laughter) and Mary really was a mixed-up mystic in many ways but she was sincere and she was my teacher for many years and I just don't want to demonise a person I spent...so that's that really

Matt Taylor

I think Stephen's more a victim of this than anyone because he just gave himself to her completely. And he started doing her dirty work. And when he's lost his temper that's the little part of Stephen that wants to come back. No you're not. Okay, be more harsh.

Susan Allwood

I could see that there were people at the community down at Balingup who were spoilt, protected, had servants. Played these power games. Got people to shut up by silence fasts, banned from the community. Verne wasn't allowed to communicate with his family. People went crazy. And they were dumped in the psychiatric department. Doctor Jones got another one. If I could see that - and attempted suicides apparently - how come you couldn't see it. Why couldn't you see it as I saw it?

Stephen Carthew

Because I wasn't you, I was me and I was obviously misguided in many ways. But - and there's no real but;

Susan Allwood

Well I have to try and find compassion in my heart for you because you hurt a lot of people.

Stephen Carthew

I appreciate it. Thanks Susan.

Linda to Stephen

What people don't realise is we actually like each other;

Stephen to Susan

I'm tempted to put my arm around you.

Susan Allwood

No don't please. I'm trying to be forgiving...

Susan Allwood

He's not to blame for everything that happened. We were a bunch of young kids who were trying to find an ideal lifestyle and a way forward and we were clumsy. And everyone was trying to do their best. And we stumbled and we fumbled along the way. And we did some stupid things. And we had some great times.

Matt Taylor

Good people can do some terrible things. In fact people who think they're morally superior, or good, or better than others, can treat the others despicably as we saw

Linda Moctezuma

He's admitted to all that. What more can he do? You can't change the past. Stephen's selling roses. He's no big deal any more. He's not going to do it again.

Stephen Carthew

Look selling is selling is selling is selling. I've sold insurance. I've sold financial advice since um since I was selling my religious wares in the community. And so selling roses is much the same in a way. It's just a relationship between myself and the people I'm selling with.

If I could sell Fred Robinson, I could sell roses...