The Unknown Story of Cornelia Rau
By Robert Manne
In May 1998, while taking a four-month holiday from her job at Qantas, with time on her hands and
showing the first signs of mental illness, Cornelia Rau had the misfortune of becoming involved with a
Sydney sect called Kenja. This marked the turning point in her life, the disaster from which all else
flowed. No one can know whether disaster would have come anyhow, some other way.
Cornelia was the younger daughter of Edgar and Veronika, a solid middle-class German couple from
the Baltic city of Hamburg. Edgar Rau first brought his family to Sydney in 1967 to establish an
Australian branch office of the pharmaceutical company for which he worked. In 1979 the family
returned to Hamburg. After two years Edgar took his wife and Cornelia, by now in her mid-teens, on
company business to Indonesia. In 1983, after Edgar left the company, the Raus settled, this time
permanently, in Sydney. Cornelia was a warm and vivacious but troubled and restless young woman.
She completed a diploma in leisure and recreation and began work as a flight attendant in 1993. She
remained close to the family.
The sect which attracted Cornelia was established in 1982 by a charismatic World War II veteran, Ken
Dyers, and a failed actress, Jan Hamilton. Kenja was formed from the first letters of their Christian
names; they later discovered that in Japanese it meant wisdom. At the core of Kenja was a piece of
Scientology-derived pseudo-psychological hocus-pocus called Energy Conversion. It embraced the
idea of combating inner blockages to spontaneity through participation, on a regular basis and at a
considerable cost (presently $130 a session), in two-way meditations. Dyers, or a “meditation
consultant”, would lock into prolonged eye contact with a client – called “holding a person still” – and,
after listening to their secrets, supposedly reach and unwrap the deepest recesses of the soul. In
addition to the Energy Conversion sessions, members were expected to attend expensive workshops
(about $50). They took part in eisteddfods and sporting events, in singing, dancing and – in order to
renew contact with the spirit of the innocent child in all of us – what Jan called Klowning.
Kenja created for its members an ersatz community. The state of mind to which all aspired was called
“havingness”. Nothing said in Kenja was confidential; information was centrally controlled. Those who
left were thought of as failures and known as “security risks”. Inside Kenja, despite the leader’s
occasional bursts of rage and his mania for control, Ken Dyers’ wisdom, authority and goodness were
the unquestionable postulates. No one dared ask where the money went.
By the time of Cornelia’s involvement, Kenja had already attained considerable notoriety. In Nov-
ember 1992, a Liberal parliamentarian in the New South Wales upper house, Stephen Mutch, brought
the sect to public attention after two constituents came to him with the story of their daughter’s
recruitment. Mutch described Kenja as “a sinister organisation designed to fill the pockets and stroke
the egos” of Dyers and Hamilton. Kenja promised to offer its followers “unique insights into the
meaning of life”. Dyers claimed, Mutch said, to possess “God-like knowledge”. In reality he was a
“seedy conman” and “a liar, a cheat and a bully”. Having raised the question of Kenja in the NSW
parliament, Mutch now became the recipient of a great deal of testimony about Kenja from the already
long list of its victims. In April 1993 he returned to his theme, on this occasion speaking for more than
three hours.
Mutch claimed that “recruits are required to confess and write down their darkest secrets” which were
later “used to blackmail them if they attempt to leave the group”. He claimed that former Kenja
members saw Dyers as a threatening presence who “promotes himself as [an] … expert in the use of
violence”. The sect, he claimed, preyed upon psychologically vulnerable young people, especially from
the educated middle class. He read into Hansard written evidence from former members who claimed
that Kenja deliberately and systematically severed links between members and their families and
required them to deliver sizeable parts of their income to the sect. One former member described the
one-on-one Energy Conversion sessions like this: “His eyes would be looking into your eyes … you’d
think he’s reading your mind and he knows what your thoughts are.” Several wrote about the unhealthy
dependency relationship that had developed with “Ken”.
One young man, Michael Beaver, who had been inside Kenja between 1988 and 1990, informed
Mutch that he was now “a diagnosed schizophrenic who had been hospitalised five times due to
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