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quantities of rotten food (Giese, 2001: 3). Typically, Behera cooked up large Indian meals
on the weekends for everyone, but if the followers did not finish the food, he apparently left
it un-refrigerated until the following weekend (Giese, 2001: 3). According to some
accounts, Behera subsequently heated the rotten food and forced members to consume it.
Often mass diarrhea episodes followed the weekend meals, most likely due to the fact that
the food had spoiled during the week (Giese, 2001: 3).
Former member Eugene Baugh writes that he shed critical amounts of weight while a
member in the Disciples of Jesus Christ group:
I was gradually literally starving. In a year I shed 60 pounds. At 6‘5‖ tall I
weighed 150 pounds. I had a 32‖ waist. My arms and legs were no more than
skin stretched tight over bone. I could count my ribs. Beyond this precipitous
loss of weight I also experienced the other physical effects of starvation. I
was disorientated, clinically depressed and overcame lethargy only by
expending large measures of psychic energy (Baugh, 2000: 39).
According to the Body Mass Index, a male who is 6‘5‖ and weighs 150 lbs has a BMI of
17.8, which is in the second percentile for body weight.9 Consequently, ninety-eight percent
of 6‘5‖ American males weigh more than Eugene Baugh did at the time.
Much like other ideological leaders who impose diet restrictions, Behera apparently did not
practice what he preached. In fact, Behera reputedly often ate extremely expensive
gourmet foods, which group members paid for. Behera demanded the best quality food at
all times, cooked to meet his particular specifications (Elliott Lane, 2001: 5). Behera
enforced dietary restrictions for his followers, but did not adhere to those nutritional
limitations himself. When he was fasting, however, he expected followers to also fast,
regardless of whether they needed to eat, or whether it was on weekends, when he usually
allowed them to eat (Baugh, 2000: 62).
Mediated Anorexia
Mediated anorexia is a situation in which a subordinate, acting on behalf of the leader,
restricts members‘ food intake. For example, Anne Hamilton-Byrne is an ideological group
leader who by-and-large used intermediaries to enforce food restrictions on group children,
since she spent extended periods away from her immediate followers. Anne Hamilton-
Byrne was the leader of a group in Australia called The Family or the Great White
Brotherhood. Anne adopted several children and attempted to groom them as future
‗inheritors of the earth‘ who would continue with her prophetic visions after the earth was
consumed by a holocaust (Hamilton-Byrne, 1995: 1). Anne was almost entirely physically
absent from raising her adopted children. She, however, directed adult members of the
group (aunties) to care for them. Anne spent about half of the year in Australia and even
then only saw ‗her‘ children on weekends. For all intents and purposes the aunties were
surrogate mothers to the children, because ―[t]he aunties taught us, fed us, supervised our
lives and enforced Anne‘s rules and the punishments she outlined‖ (Hamilton-Byrne, 1995:
14).
For the most part, Anne did not directly impose anorexia, but rather directed others to
implement her restrictive orders. In her book, Anne Hamilton-Byrne‘s adopted daughter,
Sarah Hamilton-Byrne,10 recounts her childhood growing up in a very controlled
environment. Sarah lived with other children from the group, who all believed that they
were Anne‘s flesh and blood children. They lived in a highly regulated and monitored home,
especially concerning food issues. According to Sarah, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was obsessed
with body image and weight. Once a week, sometimes more frequently, the aunties who
looked after the children would weigh them and pass on the information to Anne (Hamilton-
Byrne, 1995: 22). Sarah Hamilton-Byrne said of this experience:

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005, Page 32
Weighing was a very serious business—particularly serious for us because if it
was considered that we were putting on too much weight we would have our
food rations cut down and that was a dreadful proposition, food being the
most important thing in our lives. We girls viewed the scales with hatred.
They made our miserable lives even worse. Some of the girls would even try
to induce vomiting on weighing mornings in an attempt to seem lighter
(Hamilton-Byrne, 1995: 22).
(Self-induced vomiting is a characteristic of bulimia, and although my model is concerned
primarily with anorexic-like behaviour, it is worth noting these instances of other disordered
eating habits.) Weighing oneself obsessively, sometimes multiple times daily, is a common
trait of anorexics. It is interesting that Anne was not weighing herself, but her surrogate
bodies were those of her adoptive children.
The children‘s caregivers, acting on behalf of Anne, gave them extremely restrictive diets to
the extent that some of the younger children developed swollen and bloated stomachs due
to malnutrition and protein deficiency (Hamilton-Byrne, 1995: 78). Anne, however, saw her
children‘s bloated stomachs as a sign of obesity and further restricted food for them. The
aunties almost starved to death one little girl named Cassandra. At the time that officials
intervened in the group and removed the children to state care, Cassandra was 12 years old
and weighed the same amount as a 5 year old should (under 20 kilograms [Hamilton-Byrne,
1995: 182]).
Anouree Crawford, who was raised in the group, has come forward recently with allegations
of cruel and inhumane practices against Anne Hamilton-Byrne. Crawford supports Sarah
Hamilton-Byrne‘s allegations of dietary restriction and deprivation. Crawford situates the
food restriction that she experienced as a child in the context of control issues within the
group, saying, ―Basically food deprivation was a daily event. The reason for the deprivation
was to control us, to make us weak and to feed us the most minimal amount of protein…..
We were always hungry []we stole food everyday‖ (Crawford quoted in The Age, 2004).
According to Australian media, Crawford‘s case will most likely be tried in 2005 (The Age,
2004).
Sarah Hamilton-Byrne hypothesizes that her adoptive mother cast her own unhealthy body
images onto her adoptive children (Hamilton-Byrne, 1995: 101). This hypothesis supports
my imposed anorexia model, since Anne Hamilton-Byrne struggled with her own weight and
her own negative self-image. Instead of limiting her own food intake and dealing with her
own weight issues, she instead made her adopted children the outlet of her own self-
regimentation. She made her children‘s under-nourished and anorexic-looking bodies
surrogates of her own body, apparently which she could not regulate. Restricted eating in
‗the Family,‘ therefore, almost certainly interconnected with Anne‘s own body image and
psychological mindset in relation to food control issues.
Doctrinal Accepted Anorexia
A leader or intermediary does not impose doctrinally imposed anorexia, but rather group
doctrine or publications demand dietary restrictions. Although usually ideological leaders
write group doctrines, doctrinal imposition differs from direct or mediated imposition. In
doctrinally imposed anorexia, the essence of the group‘s doctrine is food restriction and
diet, rather than just a subset or small part of its doctrines and or publications.
Breatharianism, for example, imposes anorexia on followers doctrinally. In Breatharianism
the ideological leader does not subject followers to his or her demands, but rather to the
extremely high demands of a strict diet supposedly set out by spiritual gurus. To be a
practicing Breatharian it is not necessary to live in a communal group or to even have
contact with other Breatharians, since one can follow a Breatharian lifestyle on one‘s own.