HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
lhebert
()
Date: January 21, 2005 12:28PM
Please help me. My brother, James Rowe, went missing shortly after attending a weekend Landmark Forum in Denver Colorado in July, 2004. I am looking for any information on possible cults that take on Landmark philosophy as their base. My brother abandoned all material possessions, even his shoes before his disappearance, on July 30, 2004 from Crestone, Colorado.
He was deeply affected by the Landmark Forum, he called both myself and my mother urging us to look into attending a forum, he was both giddy and crying. He was overtaken by emotion, to say the least. He has no history of psychological problems.
More details of his disappearance can be seen on this website:
[p216.ezboard.com] click on James Rowe thread
We know he was psychologically effected, but we just don't know where he is and whether he's okay. He has not contacted -any- friends or family since his disappearance. Thanks for any help.
On a long shot, is anyone here from the Denver area and know of any Landmark "groupies"? I am tempted to force Landmark to post his missing persons flyer in their forums to not only let people know what can happen if you attend their seminar, but also to see if any regulars are in touch with him.
Laura Hebert
He was deeply affected by the Landmark Forum, he called both myself and my mother urging us to look into attending a forum, he was both giddy and crying. He was overtaken by emotion, to say the least. He has no history of psychological problems.
More details of his disappearance can be seen on this website:
[p216.ezboard.com] click on James Rowe thread
We know he was psychologically effected, but we just don't know where he is and whether he's okay. He has not contacted -any- friends or family since his disappearance. Thanks for any help.
On a long shot, is anyone here from the Denver area and know of any Landmark "groupies"? I am tempted to force Landmark to post his missing persons flyer in their forums to not only let people know what can happen if you attend their seminar, but also to see if any regulars are in touch with him.
Laura Hebert
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
elena
()
Date: January 27, 2005 05:58AM
So sorry to hear of your misforture.
Some people are particularly susceptible to the type of psychological manipulation that goes on in Landmark and similar groups.
The Landmark landscape is littered with "casualties" and has been for more than thirty years.
Landmark is not a traditional cult, though they use many of the same tactics to control and influence people. They may have "convinced" him that he was in danger if he associated with people outside the group, though they usually want people to go back to their own families and recruit them and go back to work and work hard so they can afford to pay for increasingly expensive "courses."
Good luck to you and please keep us informed. Is there a reporter in your area who might be interested in the story?
Ellen
Some people are particularly susceptible to the type of psychological manipulation that goes on in Landmark and similar groups.
The Landmark landscape is littered with "casualties" and has been for more than thirty years.
Landmark is not a traditional cult, though they use many of the same tactics to control and influence people. They may have "convinced" him that he was in danger if he associated with people outside the group, though they usually want people to go back to their own families and recruit them and go back to work and work hard so they can afford to pay for increasingly expensive "courses."
Good luck to you and please keep us informed. Is there a reporter in your area who might be interested in the story?
Ellen
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
Concerned Oz
()
Date: February 08, 2005 06:14AM
Hi Laura,
I am writing from Australia and have been following your case.
There was a missing person found in Australia last week who had been involved in a self empowerment cult called Kenja and this made me think of your situation and possibly other areas for you to look. I will convey the story below first and then share my thoughts.
In the last week here, a 39 year old woman called Cornelia Rau was found who was missing for 10 months. She had been incorrectly locked up in a jail in another Australian State called Queensland for 6 months and then sent to the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for a further 4 months where illegal immigrants are housed while their papers are being processed.
Here is a recent news article:
[au.news.yahoo.com]
About an hour ago on a top rating Sydney talk back Radio Station called 2GB, the announcer, Alan Jones, provided some background information to the story. Cornelia Rau became involved with a self empowerment cult in a inner city suburb of Sydney called Kenja:
[www.kenja.com.au]
Her family noted the changes in her and the affects of the cult triggered a reactive episode of Schizophrenia causing her to only speak her native German and become another person she called Anna Schmidt. Somehow in this condition she got involved with interstate police and then the immigration detention centre - a major stuff up! Additionally, the Queensland Police entered her image on the missing person's list and distributed this overseas but not to any other Australian States so her family never knew where she was.
I have no experience with missing persons but on studying this case, the whole thing from start to finish is incredulous.
[b:9ed98b97fa]It makes me ask the questions:[/b:9ed98b97fa]
1. Has James Missing Person's file been distributed to all USA States;
2. Have the jails been checked;
3. Have all hospitals and psychiatric institutions and half way houses been checked;
4. Is there anything quite different in James' early childhood that would cause him to regress into? - Cornelia was originally German and her cult trauma caused her to regress into a German person again preventing her from being found. If this point is relivent, what characteristics and behaviours would James adopt now after possibly suffering from some form a psychological trauma through his Landmark participation?
5. James may be living under another name?
5. Is there a benefit in passing this story onto the police who are handling the case as it may assist in thinking outside of current thinking.
Please take this for what it is worth. I hope you find him in good health and my prayers are with you.
Oz
I am writing from Australia and have been following your case.
There was a missing person found in Australia last week who had been involved in a self empowerment cult called Kenja and this made me think of your situation and possibly other areas for you to look. I will convey the story below first and then share my thoughts.
In the last week here, a 39 year old woman called Cornelia Rau was found who was missing for 10 months. She had been incorrectly locked up in a jail in another Australian State called Queensland for 6 months and then sent to the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia for a further 4 months where illegal immigrants are housed while their papers are being processed.
Here is a recent news article:
[au.news.yahoo.com]
About an hour ago on a top rating Sydney talk back Radio Station called 2GB, the announcer, Alan Jones, provided some background information to the story. Cornelia Rau became involved with a self empowerment cult in a inner city suburb of Sydney called Kenja:
[www.kenja.com.au]
Her family noted the changes in her and the affects of the cult triggered a reactive episode of Schizophrenia causing her to only speak her native German and become another person she called Anna Schmidt. Somehow in this condition she got involved with interstate police and then the immigration detention centre - a major stuff up! Additionally, the Queensland Police entered her image on the missing person's list and distributed this overseas but not to any other Australian States so her family never knew where she was.
I have no experience with missing persons but on studying this case, the whole thing from start to finish is incredulous.
[b:9ed98b97fa]It makes me ask the questions:[/b:9ed98b97fa]
1. Has James Missing Person's file been distributed to all USA States;
2. Have the jails been checked;
3. Have all hospitals and psychiatric institutions and half way houses been checked;
4. Is there anything quite different in James' early childhood that would cause him to regress into? - Cornelia was originally German and her cult trauma caused her to regress into a German person again preventing her from being found. If this point is relivent, what characteristics and behaviours would James adopt now after possibly suffering from some form a psychological trauma through his Landmark participation?
5. James may be living under another name?
5. Is there a benefit in passing this story onto the police who are handling the case as it may assist in thinking outside of current thinking.
Please take this for what it is worth. I hope you find him in good health and my prayers are with you.
Oz
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
glam
()
Date: February 09, 2005 01:13AM
Looking up Kenja, I'm horrified at their approach to roping people in -- it all sounds so innocent. childlike and fun. Especially "Klowning," which sounds like it's just joking around but no doubt is meant to regress people into a childlike state of acceptance.
An article about cults in Australia:
An article about cults in Australia:
Quote
Sunday Age (Melbourne), Sun 03 Apr 1994
Inside the cults of mind control
by Gary Tippet
Louise Samways has spent the past decade investigating the many mind-control techniques of Australia's cults, gurus and personal development courses. She is also familiar with their tactics to keep critics quiet.
The brick that slammed through the psychologist's car windscreen recently was a reminder that there are other, older methods of persuasion.
She was frightened: "I'd like to hope it was just schoolkids playing stupid games, but when these things come one on top of the other, I don't think I'm being paranoid."
In the 12 months since she began writing 'Dangerous Persuaders' (released this months), Ms Samways, 42, has been harassed, followed and threatened with legal action and physical injury. Prowlers have been at her home, cultists have masqueraded as patients and she believes there was an attempt this month to set her up for a criminal offence.
"Personal development courses alone are attracting a turnover of $1 billion annually in Australia," she says. "Nobody knows exactly what the financial turnover of cults is worth. But the more they push me, the more threatened I know they are and the more determined I become."
Ms Samways says she has seen the effects of contact with such organisations - marriage and family breakdown, job loss, suicidal depression and psychotic episodes - for much of the 20 years she has been practising, but a multi-national "healing" cult known as Reiki turned a concerned interest into an obsession.
A woman in her late 60s was brought by a neighbor to Ms Samways' rooms. "She said: 'My friend insisted I talk to you before I mortgage my house ... A Reiki master told me that if I pay him $10,000 I can become a Reiki master too and I'll be able to do Reiki on my grandson who has leukemia - and cure him'.
"I was livid. It was just sick. You can't sit by and watch people being emotionally bashed up without doing something, you have to do something. They are emotionally and spiritually mugging people. They are thugs, real thugs."
Louise Samways is more concerned, though, by their use of psychological tricks and hypnotic mass persuasion and mind control - without the informed consent of their "clients".
These, she says, grew from studies by western and Soviet secret services into how Hitler so successfully manipulated the German people, as well as from discoveries in changing human behavior.
In the early 1960s, numerous cults using techniques such as group hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming, which manipulates people through subtle language tricks, subliminal messages and body language tricks, began to emerge in America. Ms Samways says these methods are now used by nearly all cults, personal development and even fortune tellers and white witches.
"Some groups or self-styled gurus have just copied things that they've seen to be successful, but others have studied in a very systematic way. A lot are doing courses, in things like neuro-linguistic programming, which is widely used in marketing and sales to find out how to tap into a person and access that person's beliefs. That's a very deliberate, sophisticated process to use and their motivation is money and power."
In Australia, she says, cults that have used these techniques include Hare Krishna, the Children of God (now known as the Family), the Church of Scientology, Sannyassins (formerly the Rajneesh Movement or Orange People) and Kenja. The personal development courses she considers the most dangerous are Landmark Education, EST, Forum, Money and You and Hoffman Process. All, she says, are "misusing the psychological techniques allied to hypnosis in order to make behavioral changes".
Increasingly, she claims, similar strategies are being used by direct marketing organisations, particularly Amway. "Amway is adopting similar techniques to many cults in order to attract recruits, then to keep them involved and committed to the cause," she says. "The approach ... is usually quite evangelical. It asks if there is something missing in your life and offers all sorts of emotional inducements: 'reach your full potential', 'find the real you' ...
"In many ways Amway is more like a fundamentalist religion than a direct marketing business, with money as the god ... The 'upline' distributor - who has recruited others and therefore takes a percentage of their sales - functions as a priest, to whom failures to fulfil Amway commitments and expectations can be confessed and absolved, and further commitments made as a way of paying penance."
Marriage and personal problems are dealt with by going "upline" to an Amway superior. There is a strict dress code, jacket and tie for men, smart dresses and jackets for women - no slacks. Large regular meetings are held employing cult-like techniques such as confessions, success-sharing and singing.
"In the present economic climate, people who have been retrenched are turning desperately to Amway to find some kind of income. Because of their situation they are often extremely vulnerable emotionally and Amway uses this mercilessly."
The most powerful weapon in the armory of these cults, gurus, direct marketing giants and personal development courses, according to Ms Samways, is mass hypnosis.
"Hypnosis is not a state resembling sleep in any way," she says. "It is a special, altered state of mind, subjectively different from the natural alert state, where the subject's beliefs and perceptions ... (even their most fundamental values) can be changed." If people are not informed hypnosis is being used and the right conditions are created, hypnotising a subject or even a group is extremely easy, she says.
Cult-like groups create these conditions using techniques that dampen a subject's critical faculties and arouse emotional responses.
These include being made to focus for long periods on some idea, symbolic sound or object. Mantras - simple sounds repeated over and over - are a favourite device. Lighting, sometimes patterns of different colors of varying intensity, is used to disorientate and to distort time. Stirring music is used to increase arousal and, Ms Samways says, "slow music, of about 60 beats per minute, can induce decreased arousal and trance-like states very quickly".
The way newcomers are seated at meetings is manipulative. "Followers" often surround newcomers to inhibit them from asking questions, and restrictive or uncomfortable seating is used to deliberately produce fatigue. A highly charged emotional atmosphere - from intensely loving to hostile and bullying - is created to inhibit critical thinking. "Advertisers have known for years that the most effective advertising causes an emotional, not a logical response," Ms Samways says.
Live-in courses are potentially extremely dangerous, she says, "Isolated from all the usual reference points, such as family, friends and normal responsibilities, it is much easier to shed old beliefs."
Much more insidious, though, is neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), the use of "language and body clues". Psychologists developed it in the 1970s to change behavior and beliefs. Cults and similar groups now use it to arouse emotions or even as post hypnotic triggers to control behavior.
As well, people are manipulated to reveal secrets about themselves, usually as a sign of "trust" or "honesty", to be used as emotional blackmail - and sometimes much less subtly.
"I have had people coming to see me who are in a real mess after even just going to one weekend seminar ... I have seen suicidal depression, distress within the marriage, alienation from families, loss of employment. I have knowledge of three cases where rebirthing has triggered schizophrenia. There are also strong undertones of racism and sexism."
[photo] Louise Samways: "They (cults, gurus and personal development courses) are emotionally and spiritually mugging people." Picture: CRAIG SILLITOE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Study 1
Annette Stephens still winces at the memory of her first session with Kenja, an Australian cult. She remembers everyone revealing personal secrets, the confronting eye-contact exercises and "flugging" - the cult's code word for hugging.
"It ended up being quite emotionally violent," she says. "A whole lot of people ended up in tears."
But somehow Ms Stephens was converted to the cause. She devoted the next 10 years and an estimated $80,000 to the cult, recruiting converts and subjecting them to the same techniques she had undergone.
Ms Stephens, 50, a former primary school teacher, now understands the powerful techniques used to hook her. Disassociation, confusion, isolation, dependence, group pressure. Energy conversion courses with one hour of confessing your deepest secrets and another hour of hypnotising eye contact.
"They're extremely dangerous because they're not honest about what they're doing. Their motivation is to make money. Money and power. And I think they are as high on power as on making money."
Ms Stephens left the group two years ago and is trying to rebuild her life and her relationship with her children, but the effects of her dalliance with the cult linger.
"I still have nightmares, always about trying to rescue people from Kenja. But I have no illusions that I can really do it."
[photo] Annette Stephens: "They're extremely dangerous because they're not honest about what they're doing."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Study 2
Between late 1990 and 1992, an unemployed musician called "Joseph" was sucked into a cycle during which he gave more than $15,000 - three-quarters of his life savings - to the Church of Scientology.
Suffering from a hypersensitivity to noise, Joseph approached the Melbourne Church of Scientology after other forms of treatment had failed. He was keen to see if "engrams", the Scientologists' name for the scars of past experiences, were the cause of his problems.
"I was aware that Scientology was a bit dicey. But I trusted my own discrimination, that I wouldn't get sucked in more than I could handle," he says. "I was gradually to find out the very elaborate, carefully worked out scheme they have to handle precisely that type of person."
For 12 months, on and off, Joseph was processed through tests and expensive courses. He took an IQ test, used the infamous E-meter (a type of primitive biofeedback machine) and was taken to an initial stage called "clear". When it was learned he had used marijuana and prescription drugs, he was told he would have to go through a "purification run-down", but only after paying for other courses to prepare him.
Joseph left the church when a session of purification triggered a massive infection in his leg, but not before paying $7000 for a 12-week "Auditing" course.
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
glam
()
Date: February 09, 2005 01:19AM
An article today about the missing woman:
Transcript
This is a transcript from PM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio.
You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA formats.
Chris Rau disappointed inquiry will be held in privatePRINT FRIENDLYEMAIL STORY
PM - Tuesday, 8 February , 2005 18:14:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
PAUL LOCKYER: To the family reaction.
Cornelia Rau's sister, Chris, is disappointed that the inquiry will be held in private and that Mick Palmer won't have powers to compel people to give evidence. For now though, Chris Rau says the family wants to focus on supporting Cornelia in any way they can.
Cornelia Rau is now being cared for at a psychiatric hospital in Adelaide, after she was lost for 10 months in the Immigration detention system.
Her family has sent photographs hoping to stimulate positive memories, but nurses have told her family that Cornelia Rau is still refusing to acknowledge her true identity.
Chris Rau spoke to Alison Caldwell a short time ago.
ALISON CALDWELL: Christine Rau, you've spoken to staff there at Glenside Hospital in Adelaide. How is your sister?
CHRISTINE RAU: She is very far removed from reality, but she is calm. She's … sometimes she sits in the garden with the other patients, but she's not really talking to anybody.
When she does talk she says she is Anna Schmidt and she's a person who's overstayed her tourist visa and her passport is in Baxter, and she'd like to go back to Germany when she picks this passport up.
So she's still very much out of touch with reality.
ALISON CALDWELL: You believe that, or you've said that you believe that her spiral downwards mentally began some time after she joined this so-called self development group, or cult, known as Kenja. Is that right?
CHRISTINE RAU: Yes. That is what we thought at the time. This was in about May 1998 that she joined the group, and we were a bit concerned about her behaviour. She became a lot more paranoid after that, and secretive, and started imagining things that obviously were not true about various Kenja members that, I don't really want to go too much into that, because I don't know enough about it.
She kept that very much a private part of her life and didn't include us in that part at all.
I know from psychiatrists and psychologists I've talked to that they get quite a few patients coming in through these groups, including Kenja or Scientology, who prey on vulnerable people.
ALISON CALDWELL: What have the nurses told you about, say, contact with relatives? How would that, would that help your sister now?
CHRISTINE RAU: Well it's been a bit upsetting, because Mum and I both have been ringing each day and clinically the doctors have told us they feel at the moment it would be counterproductive because they think that she might even become a bit more agitated if she sess us, and we're just hoping that, every day we hope that it'll be the day to go and see her.
ALISON CALDWELL: Were you surprised to hear that psychologists, GPs, psychiatrists, failed to diagnose her condition? That she could hide it so well?
CHRISTINE RAU: Well I'm very puzzled by that because it was pretty obvious to many people that she was unwell and it wasn't just a mild behavioural eccentricity either. It was things like fixed stares, long silences, inappropriate social behaviour, things that would have been recognised by, I would have thought, a trained professional, but it's very hard to say.
I wasn't there. I didn't see how she behaved during the assessment. Perhaps she put on a very good front. Cornelia was able to do that at times, and I find it hard to imagine she could do that for a whole week, but it might be possible. We don't know enough. Maybe the inquiry will bring this to light.
ALISON CALDWELL: Specifically now, that inquiry will be a private investigation conducted by the former Federal Police commissioner, Mick Palmer. What's your reaction to that?
CHRISTINE RAU: We would have preferred an open inquiry, which could hear Cornelia's psychiatric history in camera. You know, we've already been so exposed in this whole affair, and poor Cornelia, her entire illness has been on every media outlet in the country.
Our privacy has already been sacrificed now. So we would prefer, seeing that it's gone this far already, we would prefer to have the inquiry open to take it to its full conclusion, just as a question of logic.
Not only that, we feel the Commissioner should have the power to compel witnesses and to make sure that people who do give eyewitness accounts aren't somehow punished in the future.
Our main hopes are that perhaps some reforms can come out of this. If that can happen, and Australian, you know, some of the bureaucratic structures are changed for the better, then perhaps all of the horrible experiences that Cornelia went through perhaps will not have been in vain, and perhaps we can prevent anybody else from going through that again too.
PAUL LOCKYER: Cornelia Rau's sister Chris Rau, speaking there with Alison Caldwell.
© 2005 ABC
[/quote]
I wonder if it would help for Rick Ross to get in touch with the folks who are treating her?
Transcript
This is a transcript from PM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio.
You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA formats.
Chris Rau disappointed inquiry will be held in privatePRINT FRIENDLYEMAIL STORY
PM - Tuesday, 8 February , 2005 18:14:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
PAUL LOCKYER: To the family reaction.
Cornelia Rau's sister, Chris, is disappointed that the inquiry will be held in private and that Mick Palmer won't have powers to compel people to give evidence. For now though, Chris Rau says the family wants to focus on supporting Cornelia in any way they can.
Cornelia Rau is now being cared for at a psychiatric hospital in Adelaide, after she was lost for 10 months in the Immigration detention system.
Her family has sent photographs hoping to stimulate positive memories, but nurses have told her family that Cornelia Rau is still refusing to acknowledge her true identity.
Chris Rau spoke to Alison Caldwell a short time ago.
ALISON CALDWELL: Christine Rau, you've spoken to staff there at Glenside Hospital in Adelaide. How is your sister?
CHRISTINE RAU: She is very far removed from reality, but she is calm. She's … sometimes she sits in the garden with the other patients, but she's not really talking to anybody.
When she does talk she says she is Anna Schmidt and she's a person who's overstayed her tourist visa and her passport is in Baxter, and she'd like to go back to Germany when she picks this passport up.
So she's still very much out of touch with reality.
ALISON CALDWELL: You believe that, or you've said that you believe that her spiral downwards mentally began some time after she joined this so-called self development group, or cult, known as Kenja. Is that right?
CHRISTINE RAU: Yes. That is what we thought at the time. This was in about May 1998 that she joined the group, and we were a bit concerned about her behaviour. She became a lot more paranoid after that, and secretive, and started imagining things that obviously were not true about various Kenja members that, I don't really want to go too much into that, because I don't know enough about it.
She kept that very much a private part of her life and didn't include us in that part at all.
I know from psychiatrists and psychologists I've talked to that they get quite a few patients coming in through these groups, including Kenja or Scientology, who prey on vulnerable people.
ALISON CALDWELL: What have the nurses told you about, say, contact with relatives? How would that, would that help your sister now?
CHRISTINE RAU: Well it's been a bit upsetting, because Mum and I both have been ringing each day and clinically the doctors have told us they feel at the moment it would be counterproductive because they think that she might even become a bit more agitated if she sess us, and we're just hoping that, every day we hope that it'll be the day to go and see her.
ALISON CALDWELL: Were you surprised to hear that psychologists, GPs, psychiatrists, failed to diagnose her condition? That she could hide it so well?
CHRISTINE RAU: Well I'm very puzzled by that because it was pretty obvious to many people that she was unwell and it wasn't just a mild behavioural eccentricity either. It was things like fixed stares, long silences, inappropriate social behaviour, things that would have been recognised by, I would have thought, a trained professional, but it's very hard to say.
I wasn't there. I didn't see how she behaved during the assessment. Perhaps she put on a very good front. Cornelia was able to do that at times, and I find it hard to imagine she could do that for a whole week, but it might be possible. We don't know enough. Maybe the inquiry will bring this to light.
ALISON CALDWELL: Specifically now, that inquiry will be a private investigation conducted by the former Federal Police commissioner, Mick Palmer. What's your reaction to that?
CHRISTINE RAU: We would have preferred an open inquiry, which could hear Cornelia's psychiatric history in camera. You know, we've already been so exposed in this whole affair, and poor Cornelia, her entire illness has been on every media outlet in the country.
Our privacy has already been sacrificed now. So we would prefer, seeing that it's gone this far already, we would prefer to have the inquiry open to take it to its full conclusion, just as a question of logic.
Not only that, we feel the Commissioner should have the power to compel witnesses and to make sure that people who do give eyewitness accounts aren't somehow punished in the future.
Our main hopes are that perhaps some reforms can come out of this. If that can happen, and Australian, you know, some of the bureaucratic structures are changed for the better, then perhaps all of the horrible experiences that Cornelia went through perhaps will not have been in vain, and perhaps we can prevent anybody else from going through that again too.
PAUL LOCKYER: Cornelia Rau's sister Chris Rau, speaking there with Alison Caldwell.
© 2005 ABC
[/quote]
I wonder if it would help for Rick Ross to get in touch with the folks who are treating her?
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
glam
()
Date: February 09, 2005 01:47AM
Another article:
Cornelia and the cult ofpower
By LISA DAVIES, BRYAN LITTLELY ansd PAUL STARICK
08feb05
THE mentally ill woman wrongly locked up in Baxter Detention Centre slid into schizophrenia while a member of a religious cult.
German-born former Qantas flight attendant Cornelia Rau became an initiate of a secretive Sydney group which practises self-empowerment.
Today, The Advertiser can reveal the extraordinary story behind the 39-year-old's mental decline and her membership of the inner-city cult.
The name Ms Rau was using when arrested by police – Anna Schmidt – is a composite of the names of two other cult members.
Last night, Ms Rau's sister Christine said: "It was while she was with them (the cult) that she started getting sick. We couldn't figure out how she got so ill."
As Prime Minister John Howard ordered an inquiry into the mix-up, The Advertiser identified the cult Ms Rau joined as the Kenja Communications group, run by its guru Ken Dyers.
Ms Rau spent time as a follower of the cult during the early stages of her mental illness in 1997. It is understood she took one of her pseudonyms, Anna Schmidt, from two fellow members of the cult.
Ms Rau's family has sent pictures of her life before she was mistakenly detained to her in Glenside Hospital in an attempt to "retrieve her from the fog" she is living in.
Christine said psychiatrists believed the family photographs might help jolt memories of her former life. "She is still saying she is Anna Schmidt and she comes from Germany," she said.
"We're keeping every day open at the moment. We don't know for sure what we are doing or when it is likely that seeing us might help her."
Christine said that rather than racing to Adelaide to see her sister – who has refused to be visited – she is working on the logistics of her future care and transfer to Sydney.
She said psychiatrists believed her sister's mental illness could have been worsened by being forcibly locked up.
"Our greatest fear is that her condition could have been compounded," Christine said.
She said the family wanted reform of the mental health and immigration systems, rather than compensation for Ms Rau's improper detention.
Queensland Police yesterday confirmed Ms Rau had given three names – Anna Schmidt, Anna Sue Schmidt and Anna Brotmeyer – after her first contact with police at Coen in March last year.
An Immigration Department official asked Queensland Police to detain her on March 31 because there was no record of a person with the name Anna Brotmeyer having entered the country.
She was taken to the Cairns Watchhouse later that day after telling police she had entered the country illegally but refusing to give more details.
After she was transferred to Brisbane on April 5, police on April 29 checked missing person records for the three names she had given but found no match.
Yesterday, Mr Howard reacted to the controversy by questioning the adequacy of Australia's immigration and mental health polices.
"This case raises questions of not only the immigration detention system, which has attracted all the critical attention, but it also raises some questions about the mental health policies this country has followed for a long time," Mr Howard said.
But he again refused to apologise for the incident. "I am not going to just, without knowing all the circumstances, issue an apology," he said.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said it was understandable authorities thought Ms Rau was an illegal immigrant, given that she had claimed to be German and spoke German.
While no one knew about her pre-existing mental condition, Ms Rau was found to be carrying a stolen passport.
Senator Vanstone said Ms Rau was assessed in Brisbane by doctors, who thought she behaved oddly but did not have a mental illness.
She underwent another assessment a month after she arrived at Baxter, and South Australian mental health authorities were then notified.
Cornelia and the cult ofpower
By LISA DAVIES, BRYAN LITTLELY ansd PAUL STARICK
08feb05
THE mentally ill woman wrongly locked up in Baxter Detention Centre slid into schizophrenia while a member of a religious cult.
German-born former Qantas flight attendant Cornelia Rau became an initiate of a secretive Sydney group which practises self-empowerment.
Today, The Advertiser can reveal the extraordinary story behind the 39-year-old's mental decline and her membership of the inner-city cult.
The name Ms Rau was using when arrested by police – Anna Schmidt – is a composite of the names of two other cult members.
Last night, Ms Rau's sister Christine said: "It was while she was with them (the cult) that she started getting sick. We couldn't figure out how she got so ill."
As Prime Minister John Howard ordered an inquiry into the mix-up, The Advertiser identified the cult Ms Rau joined as the Kenja Communications group, run by its guru Ken Dyers.
Ms Rau spent time as a follower of the cult during the early stages of her mental illness in 1997. It is understood she took one of her pseudonyms, Anna Schmidt, from two fellow members of the cult.
Ms Rau's family has sent pictures of her life before she was mistakenly detained to her in Glenside Hospital in an attempt to "retrieve her from the fog" she is living in.
Christine said psychiatrists believed the family photographs might help jolt memories of her former life. "She is still saying she is Anna Schmidt and she comes from Germany," she said.
"We're keeping every day open at the moment. We don't know for sure what we are doing or when it is likely that seeing us might help her."
Christine said that rather than racing to Adelaide to see her sister – who has refused to be visited – she is working on the logistics of her future care and transfer to Sydney.
She said psychiatrists believed her sister's mental illness could have been worsened by being forcibly locked up.
"Our greatest fear is that her condition could have been compounded," Christine said.
She said the family wanted reform of the mental health and immigration systems, rather than compensation for Ms Rau's improper detention.
Queensland Police yesterday confirmed Ms Rau had given three names – Anna Schmidt, Anna Sue Schmidt and Anna Brotmeyer – after her first contact with police at Coen in March last year.
An Immigration Department official asked Queensland Police to detain her on March 31 because there was no record of a person with the name Anna Brotmeyer having entered the country.
She was taken to the Cairns Watchhouse later that day after telling police she had entered the country illegally but refusing to give more details.
After she was transferred to Brisbane on April 5, police on April 29 checked missing person records for the three names she had given but found no match.
Yesterday, Mr Howard reacted to the controversy by questioning the adequacy of Australia's immigration and mental health polices.
"This case raises questions of not only the immigration detention system, which has attracted all the critical attention, but it also raises some questions about the mental health policies this country has followed for a long time," Mr Howard said.
But he again refused to apologise for the incident. "I am not going to just, without knowing all the circumstances, issue an apology," he said.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said it was understandable authorities thought Ms Rau was an illegal immigrant, given that she had claimed to be German and spoke German.
While no one knew about her pre-existing mental condition, Ms Rau was found to be carrying a stolen passport.
Senator Vanstone said Ms Rau was assessed in Brisbane by doctors, who thought she behaved oddly but did not have a mental illness.
She underwent another assessment a month after she arrived at Baxter, and South Australian mental health authorities were then notified.
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
peggyroche
()
Date: July 11, 2005 06:58AM
I am a volunteer active in trying to help folks find their missing loved ones. James has been one of my "pets" since shortly after his disappearance. It will soon be one year since he attended a Landmark seminar in Denver and disappeared almost immediately thereafter. I just wanted to bring his situation back up to see if anyone had any further Landmark "news" Thanks :?:
HELP-My brother is missing thanks to Landmark
Posted by:
midonov123
()
Date: July 12, 2005 10:53PM
Quote
lhebert
More details of his disappearance can be seen on this website:
[p216.ezboard.com] click on James Rowe thread
The link is dead but information about James Rowe's disapearance can be found here:
[www.rinokids.com]
It is said he had been in an empowerment seminar (i.e. Landmark) and he was never seen again. Another sad day for all Landmark victims! How many more causualties do we need?
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