9 August 2007

To Melissa Maclean,

On Sunday August 5, we attended the screening of Beyond Our Ken the film which you entered into the Australian section of the Melbourne International Film Festival as a Documentary. Beyond Our Ken purports to be a documentary about Ken Dyers and the organisation he co-founded, Kenja Communication (Kenja).

Far from being a documentary, this film is filled with blatant lies and baseless allegations, and seeks to vilify a decent man and a wholesome Australian organisation.

Please forgive the length of this letter, but an account of facts deliberately omitted by you in this film will show you how deeply dishonest the film is and how seriously you should be concerned.

By way of reinforcing what you have already been made aware of, the attack against Ken Dyers and Kenja perpetuated by your film originated with a small group of fanatics associated with an organisation called Cult Awareness Network (CAN) in 1992–1993. Shortly before CAN’s demise in America, a group called Cult Aware started up in Australia which we believe now goes under the name Cult Information and Family Support group. We shall use the shorthand of “Cult Aware” for the Australian group from this point on. Cult Aware operates a referral system for ‘deprogramming’ (the forcible changing of someone’s belief system to a desired belief system – for a fee, paid to the deprogrammer by the person seeking the change another’s belief).
In March 1993, Cult Aware’s campaign of malicious allegations culminated in numerous charges of child sexual abuse being made against Mr Dyers, none of which were upheld in court.

You know this and you are quite clearly marching to the beat of Cult Aware’s drum. You used your film to support their activities. Your association with Cult Aware is evidenced by the fact that the protagonists you used to make vile allegations against Kenja are all persons closely involved in the 1993 Cult Aware attack. A silhouetted figure whose identity is not disclosed also makes similar claims, apparently from the same time period.
The film employs a sensationalist style of reporting in linking the suicide of Michael Beaver with Kenja. You had full access to comprehensive documentary evidence which in fact confirmed that:

Around October 1992, about two years after he ceased Kenja activities because he was asked to do so, Michael was being treated at the St George psychiatric hospital for serious drug addiction. He was also diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Subpoenaed documents show he was coming to terms with his condition and making progress through appropriate medication and treatment.

Then his mother became involved with Annette Stephens, Stephen Mutch, and other fanatics from Cult Aware who convinced her that Michael was not a paranoid schizophrenic, that he did not have a drug problem, and that he simply needed ‘deprogramming’ to cure his condition. Mr Beaver’s doctors considered this viewpoint to be delusional.

Over the Christmas period in 1992, Michael, in the company of his mother and Annette Stephens, and others (the girls who later brought sex abuse allegations against Ken Dyers) was deprogrammed in the company of Cult Aware personnel. They took him off his medication.
After his deprogramming and re-admittance in an even more serious state to a psychiatric hospital, Michael repeatedly denied his paranoid schizophrenia saying he needed more deprogramming and hypnosis to ‘cure’ him of his ailment.

So, the real story, revealed by documents obtained years after the event under subpoena, and of which you were made well aware, is a horrific one of Cult Aware abducting a mentally disturbed man, deprogramming him, taking him off his medication and convincing him that he did not have a mental condition, with the tragic end being his suicide. Had the police known of the circumstances surrounding Michael Beaver’s abuse at the hands of Cult Aware we presume they would have investigated further. However at the time, true to their modus operandi, the Cult Aware fanatics pointed the blame at Kenja for Michael’s suicide that became the story line for the sensationalist commentary on A Current Affair, so avidly included in your film.

Your film treats the suicide of Michael Beaver with complete disregard for the evidence you have seen of the insidious involvement of the very people you used as key witnesses in your ‘documentary’.

Apart from the Cult Aware people whom you used to give so-called evidence, you used an unknown figure in silhouette. He features more often as the film proceeds, and makes increasingly degraded sexual accusations. This individual is known to many people associated with Kenja as someone who was asked to leave the organisation, precisely because of his inability to control his sexual deviance. You cynically use increasing coverage of his compulsive obsession with matters sexual as a cheap tool in your movie. This is clearly intended to leave even the most open-minded viewer with a truly disgusting impression. 
You are well aware of the strength with which the accounts of your so-called witnesses are rejected by Kenja. However you gave no time in the film to questioning their assertions, nor to allowing Kenja to challenge or counter them. Rather, you chose to concoct a deliberately one-sided, emotionally charged story loaded with sexual innuendo and present it as documentary work.

Jan Hamilton (the other co-founder of Kenja) repeatedly asked you during close to 30 hours of filming to question the people speaking ill of Kenja about their associations with Cult Aware and to ask them if they had been deprogrammed. There is no evidence of you having done this.

Ken and Jan and Kenja were completely open with you and you had access to every aspect of Kenja and to Ken and Jan’s home. You questioned Ken on film for hours at a time in his home. This 84 year old man, very sick, with a heart much bigger than his body, answered your barrage of questions regardless of how aggressively you treated him. He opened himself to you and trusted you to be honest in your account of your dealings with him and with Kenja. You were not.

As the film progresses you increasingly use footage from times at the end of a working day where Ken was exhausted, making him look worse and worse. Ken’s anguish in the final interview shown in the film, plain for all to see if you look at the full footage rather than your dishonest cut, is the anguish of a man unjustly accused, severely harassed by you, who is innocent, who has already proven his innocence in court, but who is deeply frustrated at having to face the same malicious allegations that were shown to be rubbish, in courts of law, so many years before.

Hearing people in the audience laughing and jeering in the cinema, it was clear that you have achieved your aim of provoking a reactive, bigoted response through dishonest and emotionally manipulative film techniques. Is this what you want for your film? That an audience so reactive and emotionally stirred up that they would cheer a man to his suicide?

The film rehashes old, discredited allegations and then used a silhouetted figure to continue the allegations – saying "Ken moved on from people to 10–12-year-olds". The emotional response which the film creates is the result of classic manipulative techniques:

Start by giving the audience hope with positive portrayal of Kenja,
Slowly erode that positive portrayal,
Introduce increasingly degraded sexual innuendo to draw the audience into a carefully constructed sordid picture of the organisation.
When they are becoming confused about what to think, hit them with quick, fast overwhelmingly disgusting sexual allegations so they are left with the impression abuse was being perpetrated everywhere.

The fact that the accusers have no credibility whatsoever is deliberately hidden throughout the film so the audience is left with nowhere to go but to conclude that the alleged atrocities have taken place.

This is also true in the final moments of the film, at which time certain assertions are made in respect of Marti Pels. In keeping with the rest of the film, Marti was not consulted to comment on those assertions, which are factually incorrect.

Beyond Our Ken is salacious tabloid propaganda, and is exactly the sort of harassment which led to the recent death of Mr Dyers.

Do you consider there are any ethical standards which should govern this work? Is there some sort of code of practice which needs to be observed?
How did this film come to be included in this festival? Why did those assessing it make no effort to assess its veracity, let alone its appalling bad quality? This was hardly a documentary worthy of the name, let alone of international standard.

Finally, to what degree did you edit the film after it had been accepted for showing? A serious assertion, we know, but you left a recorded message on the voicemail at the Kenja Sydney centre on Wednesday August 1 at 2.20pm – the day of Mr Dyers’ funeral – your only contact about the film. Among other things the message from you stated that you had been “busy in the editing suite”.

If there were changes made to the film, what were they and were the Festival organisers advised of the changes?

We request that you or your representatives make immediate contact with Kenja Communication and arrange for us to be given a copy of this film.

Kenja Communication National Executive

We have never received a reply to this letter, from Melissa Maclean Back