A former detective who investigated one of Australia's most infamous cult leaders has revealed why she was never convicted.
Anne Hamilton-Byrne who ran a cult known as The Family in the 1970s and 80s died on Thursday never seeing the inside of a prison cell despite claims of child abuse.
She along with her husband raised children on a rural Victorian property that they had obtained through adoption scams and cult followers handing their own children over.
'Unfortunately, we couldn't really bring the evidence to the court,' former detective Lex De Man told Weekend Today.
Scroll down for video
Hamilton-Byrne spent her final years leaving in a Melbourne nursing home with dementia
She gathered young boys and girls and raised them as her own in the 1970s and 1980s
'There were a number of reasons for that. In the case of the allegations of the administration of LSD to children we didn't have the drugs so we couldn't physically present that.'
He also said there were concerns a trial would further damage the children's mental health after so many years being held in the cult.
'The children were held in captivity. They were ill-treated and beaten and there heads were put into water when they misbehaved,' he said.
Anne Hamilton-Byrne died on Thursday night aged 98, following a 12 year battle with dementia.
She ran the cult in central Victoria from the early 1970s until 1987, when two children managed to escape and alert police.
Identically dressed with bleached blonde hair shaped into the same bob, the children were bashed, starved and injected with LSD by Hamilton-Byrne and other cult leaders in terrifying sect initiation rituals.
Anne Hamilton-Byrne (pictured with cat Tiffany) was the glamorous, charismatic and delusional leader of notorious Australian sect dubbed The Family. She has died aged 98
'You wouldn't normally say that about a 98-year-old woman … From my perspective upon hearing the news of her death, no-one is sad,' Mr De Man said.
'Those who survived, some justice has been served. Today is not a sad day but a day to celebrate … may she rot.'
He hopes her death will mark a fresh start for survivors and said his one regret was that she never faced justice for the serious crimes.
'She left a trail of broken lives, ruined people and the one good thing I've seen is that the former children who were victims of some horrible things have moved on with their lives and they're good people,' Mr De Man told AAP
'I think of them today and what they went through.'
Identically dressed, the children were allegedly bashed, starved and injected with LSD by Hamilton-Byrne and other cult leaders
Survivor Ben Shenton, who was just 18-months-old when he went to the cult, was relieved to hear about Hamilton-Byrne's death.
'I feel for the many families and people who suffered at her hands over the years and I'm just glad that a chapter's closed,' Mr Shenton told The Australian.
He was horrified to discover devotees were visiting her when he visited Hamilton-Byrne in her nursing home in 2012.
'To see that perpetrated and to see the damage that it caused in people's lives is more of an issue to me. Her death closes a chapter on that,' Mr Shenton said.
Hamilton-Byrne convinced herself and up to 500 followers she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
Under the influence of LSD, she believed an apocalyptic war was imminent and that she had a duty to collect children from birth in preparation for a new world.
She gathered young boys and girls and raised them as her own on a property in Lake Eildon in central Victoria in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some children were obtained through questionable adoptions, others were born to cult members and some were even handed over by compliant sect parents.
Survivor Ben Shenton has expressed his relief over the death of the notorious cult leader
Anne Hamilton-Byrne (pictured) convinced herself and up to 500 followers she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
Victims have attempted to pursue Hamilton-Byrne through the Supreme Court in recent years to get justice for the abuse of more than 20 children.
Despite police raids on the Lake Eildon property and a massive investigation, the only penalties ever imposed on Hamilton-Byrne and her husband and sect co-founder Bill Hamilton-Byrne were $5000 fines for falsifying a statutory declaration.
In a chilling
