Kenja”. Beaver had heard of four other people who suffered severe psychological difficulties following
time inside. “What right has this unqualified man, Ken Dyers, got to screw people’s minds up the way
he does?” Shortly after writing this letter Beaver killed himself. A number of ex-Kenja women spoke of
Dyers’ sexual predations. Bev Garlick sent Mutch a diary entry containing details of Dyers’ fondling of
breasts during a collective workshop. Another anonymous informant wrote of her seduction. “During
our weekly sessions, Ken became more and more interested in exploring the sexual hang-ups he felt I
had. This involved more touching in the genital area, mutually … This escalated to oral sex on my part
…” Dyers suggested Energy Conversion lying down. “This led to sex and he thanked me for it.”
Shortly after Mutch had presented his evidence, Dyers was charged with sexual offences against four
girls between the ages of eight and 15, including unlawful sexual intercourse and digital penetration. At
his first trial – where one of the accusers claimed Dyers had offered her cough lollies after oral sex to
destroy the germs, and another that he had offered to solve the problem of her virginity – he was
acquitted of some charges while others remained unresolved. At his second trial he was found guilty of
indecent assault. An appeal in 2000 failed. A second appeal to the High Court in 2002 succeeded on
technical grounds. The director of public prosecutions decided against a third trial. By now the case
had dragged through the courts for almost ten years.
It seems clear that some of those involved with Kenja were equipped to survive the mind games, the
creation of dependency, the undertone of violence and the sometimes sexually charged meditation
therapy. It is equally clear that others, including Cornelia Rau, were not.
Cornelia was closely involved with Kenja for five months in 1998. During that time her family watched
Cornelia grow both moody and remote. As her sister Christine explained to me, their parents became
increasingly concerned about the amount of time Cornelia was spending with Kenja and the money it
cost. Kenja members moved into Cornelia’s flat. Cornelia became infatuated with a Kenja man,
Michael. She became obsessed about the threat to her wellbeing posed by a female friend of
Michael’s known as Alison. (Four years later Cornelia actually moved out of her Rose Bay flat to get
away from the evil spirit Alison had cast.) Cornelia attended a Kenja eisteddfod held in Melbourne on
October 3 and 4. On October 6 she was picked up in Sydney by the police, driving erratically. She was
taken to a hospital where the first diagnosis of psychosis was made. When the family visited her in
hospital a physical scuffle took place. Cornelia tried to flush her mother’s handbag down the toilet.
What precisely had taken place inside Kenja and on that fateful Melbourne weekend of October 1998?
In April 2005, when the case of Cornelia Rau had moved from the privacy of family tragedy to the
centre of the national stage, an anonymous letter was sent to a large number of interested parties. It
was written by a well-informed former senior member of Kenja, who had witnessed Cornelia’s
experiences at first hand.
On arrival at Kenja, Cornelia was, according to the anonymous correspondent, “a functioning human
being with difficulties”. On departure, she was “a seriously troubled non-functioning human being”. At
first she was afforded “special attention and plenty of acknowledgment”. Like all others she
participated in Kenja’s meditation sessions. At this time Cornelia was also deeply affected by the
courtship of a young man, which she took to be a love affair and which led her to believe in the
existence of a “three-way love tryst”. The courtship was, the correspondent claimed, standard Kenja
technique, designed to keep sexually insecure and romantically lonely young people coming back. For
the typical recruit, such as Cornelia, who lacked what was called “self-validation”, all this attention was
like a “fairy tale”. It bound her to the group. It “intoxicated” her with the feeling of “importance”.
Cornelia, at this stage, did not know how the fairy tale would end.
Another standard Kenja technique was known as the “confront”. These “confronts” involved “unveiling
an individual’s innermost secrets and feelings in a public forum without prior warning”. The purpose
was to make the member even more psychologically reliant on the approval of the leader or the group.
At Melbourne, on the basis of the secrets he had discovered during the one-on-one meditation
sessions, Dyers “publicly berated her for failing to come up to his expectations”. Others remembered
that she was described as artistically untalented, for Cornelia a particularly bitter blow, or burdened by
an evil spirit. It was during this “confront” that Cornelia’s mind broke apart. “After the humiliation she
actually walked out of her life. Over the following day she became an embarrassment to the leadership
as she was talking incoherently and staring into middle space. On the evening of the ballroom dancing
night, she was transported to an airplane at Tullamarine … and told not to come back to Kenja … She
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