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'Cult' fights claims of child sacrifice

Barney Zwartz

November 22, 2006

AN ANTI-CHILD-SEX campaigner accused an occult religious group of hosting parties at which naked children acted as waiters and at which members had sex with and murdered children, a tribunal was told yesterday.

The obscure group Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) claims Dr Reina Michaelson and the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program described it in a website article as a satanic cult that sacrificed children and ate their organs and blood.

It has complained under Victoria's religious hatred law that Dr Michaelson and her organisation vilified OTO members, causing revulsion, ridicule, hatred and contempt.

According to OTO's statement of complaint, Dr Michaelson said it was not a religion but a child pornography and pedophile ring, that its members practised trauma-based mind control, sexual abuse and satanic rituals to discourage its victims from complaining to the authorities, and that it condoned kidnapping street children and babies and children from orphanages for sex and sacrifice in religious rituals.

The case began at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday, but was adjourned to today to allow a last-ditch attempt to settle out of court.

The article, still accessible on a website run from NSW, suggests senior politicians and television celebrities are part of a top-level pedophile ring and have been protected by some police. It says some members of the ring pretended to support Dr Michaelson's campaign and became board members of her group to subvert it from within.

Adam Paszkowski, for Dr Michaelson, who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1997 for founding the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program, said the article was published on the website "without her knowledge or consent or authority".

Dr Michaelson last year called for a royal commission to investigate her claims that Victoria Police did not properly investigate pedophile ring allegations.

Earlier complaints led to a report by the police ombudsman in 2004 that was highly critical of two senior detectives.

OTO members follow a religion known as Thelema, founded by occultist Aleister Crowley.