Original subtitles

Belle Gibson was an Australian blogger

who wrote about being diagnosed with brain cancer.

Fraudster, Belle Gibson…

Cancer con woman Belle Gibson…

Fake wellness blogger…

A spectacular rise and fall in the age of the internet.

[man] She's made so much cash off it, it's disgusting.

[woman] I just think she's horrible

and she deserves to pay for what she's done.

[typing sound effect]

[tense music]

[typing sound effect]

I messaged Belle once I heard that the news had broke.

I just said to her, "Are you okay?

What's happening?"

You know, just break your silence.

And she just came back and stone-walled me, basically,

and just said, "Police have been here,

you know, they're worried about my safety.

I've had death threats.

You don't understand what it's like."

In response, Belle went to ground.

Suddenly this person who was really out there and updating her profile

and very much had a strong online presence just disappeared.

And it kind of left this void. If you were a follower of hers,

you'd been through all of the ups and downs, the seizures,

the new diagnoses and the heart-wrenching "I could die soon."

All these people who've had this passionate engagement with her,

just left in a complete quandary.

I went on to Instagram to have a look

and that's when she started deleting all of her posts.

You know, at first it was just one or two here and there

and then all of a sudden they all started going.

I kept refreshing the page and it was just, like, disappearing.

Posts were being deleted, like, literally right in front of me

and I'm thinking, "My gosh, she's doing this right now.

Like, it's all going.

You don't do that if your story's legit.

There's just no reason other than the fact that she's trying to hide something

and she's trying to remove all evidence.

[pensive music]

[Richard] When I first approached Belle for an interview,

I wanted to try and find her pre-"Whole Pantry" history.

When I started looking online, the first thing I noticed was

although she had massive presence on social media,

it all started in 2013.

Her entire social media history prior to 2013

just seemed to have been wiped.

So, I decided to do some deep dives into Google

to go back earlier.

And when I did that,

that's when I found stuff that just floored me.

I came across this skateboard chat forum

and to my surprise

there's this girl on there called Belle Gibson.

But this Belle Gibson on the skate forums

was completely different from the Earth mother, natural foods guru.

She was this kind of trash-talking chick

and she's got dark hair.

Really goth looking.

I just thought, "Well, that's weird because it can't be her."

A just completely different persona.

And then I saw this post that she'd put up

where she talked about this tattoo that she'd just had done

and it was the same tattoo

that Belle Gibson from The Whole Pantry has.

And so, there was a whole other side of her life

that she had kept out of public view.

And, of course, that really intrigued me.

And so, I started making calls, trying to find anybody

who had known her during her previous life.

[tense music]

[Shelby] Yeah, we were out one night in St. Kilda and, um,

pretty drunk, and we both got matching tattoos.

I first met Belle when I was 13 years old.

She was older than me.

Belle was very confident, outspoken, very sure of herself

and she had a personality that just drew you to her.

Everyone wanted to be her friend.

[tense music]

We were just out to have fun on most weekends and it…

Yeah, had a lot of it which was good.

[camera shutter clicks]

We were still quite young so I'm not gonna divulge too much.

[laughs]

Um…

She was my best friend back then.

And Belle was very much all about the internet.

I do remember her heavily into blogging and everything,

I didn't ever read it.

Um…

yeah, I just, I don't know,

I feel weird reading my friend's blog sometimes

when I can just talk to them.

Um, so no, I never really did that but yeah, she loved the internet.

She was into the skater scene.

Belle liked the skate scene more so for the culture of it.

Um, the guys were really sort of laid back, easy to get along with.

And yeah, they were just kind of fun to hang out with.

My name's Anthony.

I'm…

Should I say my age? I'm already stumped.

My name's Anthony, I'm 33 years old now.

[tense music]

I met Belle in February 2009.

First impressions were

she was very much a person at the front of the room, making friends,

you know, laughing, having a good time. Nothing ever really negative.

You know, very much the opposite of an advocate for healthy living.

She'd eat anything, drink anything.

You know, like, a lot of fast food.

You have beers, you have alcohol, you go to parties, you…

You might drink all night and not eat at all.

So, back then there wasn't too much social media around at all

so forums were, I guess, the place to go.

[uneasy music]

Belle, she was quite vocal on the forums.

She spoke a lot about different health issues and things she had.

Around mid-2009 she started to post crazy stories,

I guess we can call them stories.

About health things.

And it was very hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.

And there was a lot of people there that took her story very seriously.

I come across this post from 2009

and she's telling all these guys that she's having heart surgery in Perth.

And that's when,

really, the penny dropped because I thought,

you know, this--

this is another incredibly dramatic, unlikely medical drama story

that she's spun

about her apparently undergoing open-heart surgery.

"I just woke up out of a coma type thing and had no idea what was going on.

The nurse came in and said I was no longer code blue or something.

I went into cardiac arrest and died for just under three minutes."

"If one of you charming men don't send me flowers, you're all dead."

It just is total bullshit.

Like, who…

It's just, yeah, it's insane.

I would've liked to think that she would've told me

if she had a heart condition, seeing as we were friends, definitely.

[pensive music]

These are posts that are supposedly being sent in real time

while she's in the hospital.

I just immediately realized that you had someone here

who told stories of medical drama

and she'd been doing it since she was 17.

I discovered through this skateboarding chat forum

the story of a well-known figure in the Brisbane skate community

who had suffered a brain tumor,

and he in fact had posted on the skateboard chat forum

about his illness and his treatment

three or four months before Belle went onto the same forum

and first made her claim about having a malignant brain tumor.

Eventually that brain tumor killed him.

I remember at the time, like, it was, it was a very sad thing.

There was a lot of people that were really affected by it.

And, she could've very well taken influence from

what was happening in the local skateboarding community.

[Richard] And as I later discovered,

she had contacted him

and befriended him and spoken to him

about her own supposed illness.

And so, it appeared that she would appropriate other people's stories

and absorbing them into her narrative.

My name is Bryce Corbett,

I was the news editor of The Australian Women's Weekly,

the biggest selling magazine in Australia.

When Richard's story hit the newsstands,

every journalist in the country was hot on this story.

Every journalist was desperate for an interview with Belle Gibson.

We jumped at the opportunity to do the first interview with Belle

since she had been exposed as a fraud.

We were determined to get her to speak the truth.

Our chief reporter at the time was Clair Weaver

who has an amazing ability just to go down rabbit holes.

So we knew that she'd be perfect for this.

[Clair] I got this message

and suddenly I had an interview with the person that

it seemed like every journalist in the country was chasing.

And everyone in the country wanted to hear from.

[gentle upbeat music]

[Clair] Belle seemed like a nice young woman

but I think when I was interviewing her

she was on the back foot.

[camera flash whirrs]

During the photoshoot,

she seemed a little bit nervous and a little bit distrustful.

A little bit on edge.

My approach to start was I just wanted her to feel comfortable

because I wanted the truth.

[tape recorder clicks]

[Belle, tearfully] I don't know, it's just very scary to be honest.

'Cause you start to doubt the crux of things that make up who you are.

I'm blonde and I'm tall and I've got hazel eyes and, you know…

[camera flash whirs]

And I've got cancer, and all of a sudden you take away,

you know, some of those,

high level things.

I don't know, it's… It is just really daunting.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Clair] To be honest, I couldn't really get a read on Belle.

She doesn't answer a lot of questions

and she didn't have good explanations for things,

you know, really obvious gaps in her story.

And she would go blank on things,

um, so it was very frustrating.

[Belle] I don't actually remember really the detail or saying a lot of that stuff.

I know what was happening in my life

during that time.

-[Clair] Mm. -Um.

[Clair] These are my shorthand notes.

But even going through these,

I remember there was so much that was confusing

and unclear.

Here she says there were times growing up

when her safety was at risk.

Um…

But it was quite difficult to establish exactly why.

[Belle] It's hard because, um,

if I knew anybody was going to do what I have done,

or I have not done, or they think I might've done,

I would have personally driven to their house

and chaperoned them to the hospital.

You know, I'm really protective of people.

Um, especially those that need support.

[camera shutter clicks]

I would describe to people that it was like,

it was like trying to nail jelly to a wall

because it became obvious that there were elements of truth

to parts of her story but they were all intermixed.

It would've been a really easy story to write

if Belle had just been the villain,

the sociopath who had tricked all these people

to get a lot of money and then, oh, she'd been found out.

But I got more of a sense that there was something going on,

she was troubled.

[Bryce] So a large part of her story was that she had, you know,

she'd come from a broken home,

some sort of, kinda Cinderella existence, you know,

doing all the cooking and cleaning.

She told us that her mother had multiple sclerosis and as a result,

she'd given up her childhood

for the care of her brother and her mother.

[Clair] Belle gave the impression that she didn't have a relationship at all

with any of her family members

and she refused to give us any details

as they were excommunicated as far as Belle was concerned.

So, this is the May 2015 issue of The Australian Women's Weekly.

This is the first Belle Gibson story.

We've got "Belle Gibson: The girl who conned us all" here on the cover.

"Belle Gibson: My life-long struggle with the truth"

And this is Belle's first interview after her empire came crashing down

where she admits that she doesn't have brain cancer.

[Bryce] It was the first time,

possibly the only time, that she has admitted

that none of her story was true.

And that was explosive.

[dramatic music]

[Bryce] So, I guess not long after that article came out

I was at my desk and the phone rang.

[phone rings]

I took the call and it was just, like, verbal assault.

It started as a torrent of abuse.

It was threats of legal action, it was angry shouting, screaming.

And I had to say to her, "I'm sorry, madam.

Sorry, who are you and what are you talking about?"

It turns out it was Belle's mom, Natalie, calling.

Um, and her husband, Andrew, who turned out to be Belle's stepdad.

Yes, we saw the article featured in Women's Weekly about Belle

and that's what Natalie was ready to have her say after that.

She said, "Andrea, get on the phone and tell 'em how it is."

I go, "Right."

So I look up Women's Weekly's number, and I call.

When Natalie saw the article, she burst into tears.

It became very overwhelming for her. Yeah.

Ah, Natalie was beside herself.

She said, "Andrea, first thing tomorrow,

as soon as the-- as soon as you get out of bed

I want you to ring The Women's Weekly straight away and have a chat

and tell 'em what goes."

"Oh right, I'll do it."

We'd gone from her wanting to sue the magazine

to where she was just pouring out her entire life to me

and how, "All of the lies that she's told you in that magazine article

about her background, none of it's true.

She talks about me and my illness.

She talks about her brother being sick but that's not true."

No one had heard from Belle's mother and stepfather.

No one had found them.

Here they were, it dropped into our lap.

They wanted to meet with us and, and set the record straight.

Give us their version of events.

[Andrew] I think Natalie mainly wanted to apologize for the people that got hurt

and also to, um, verify a few things that, um…

What Belle was saying about "unfunctional home."

That really got her mad.

[Bryce] And so, Clair and myself went with Andrew and Natalie to dinner.

You know, it started out pleasantly enough.

But the more wine that was imbibed, the crazier the night became.

[Clair] I was most interested in hearing about Belle's childhood

and checking off the claims that she'd made about her upbringing.

Natalie would deny some things

but there were things that checked out

like she had multiple sclerosis which Belle had talked about and was true.

Natalie's story was that

she had given Belle everything she possibly could growing up

but that she'd found her impossible to handle.

After that, things had broken down.

Natalie did struggle with parenting, definitely.

She really lost control, I believe.

[Bryce] What became quite clear was that

hers probably had been quite an unconventional

and probably quite a challenging childhood.

And the truth to that part of, of her story was far murkier

and-- and actually quite troubling.

I met Natalie round about June 2011.

But her health became worse over a period of time and, um,

eventually in 2017, Natalie passed away.

I would say that they probably was very close in the early part

but there's always been issues in their relationship.

Yeah.

And also with Nick and Belle, definitely.

Um, I'm Nick Gibson.

Belle is my baby sister.

It was very shocking. She said a lot of hurtful things

about the family.

I'm not autistic, she made all that up

because when I was growing up, I may have been a little bit slower

or I was a little bit shyer

and quiet and unusual, like a normal child would.

But that's who I was.

What she said about me and the stuff about my mom…

I felt pretty upset and angry.

[suspenseful music]

[camera roll clicking]

We had a perfect relationship when we were growing up.

We were like…

We were really close, we looked the same,

we had the same hair color.

You know, same figure.

So, for years a lot of people though we were twins and

we were, like, stuck like glue.

We had a very strong bond.

We always did everything together.

I think it got harder when

me and Belle got older and we drifted apart from each other.

It was probably a couple years before high school started

we did have a lot of falling out.

Looking back on it, I think it would've been pretty hard times

for Nick and Belle because Natalie was

dating people that, uh…

you and I perhaps wouldn't date, if you know what I mean.

Took advantage of Natalie and didn't really give a lot

but took a lot.

And also,

some of them also, uh, did physical harm to Natalie.

It was, it was pretty tough times, you know.

Belle said when she was growing up that her name got changed several times

and that her age would be changed

and they sometimes seemed to be hiding from something.

When we checked with Natalie,

Natalie confirmed that they'd moved around a lot.

[Shelby] So when Belle was a bit younger,

when we first met, there were things that she used to

tell us and talk to us about that just didn't make sense

where she was, um, in the Witness Protection Program.

She also told us that Annabelle wasn't her real name

and at that age, you don't question, you don't…

Well, I didn't. I didn't question it.

I didn't look into it, I was just like, "Belle's just being Belle" sort of thing.

[producer] Belle and your mom, what was their relationship like?

It was on and off for a long time, like, their…

their relationship wasn't the best,

I'll be honest.

There was a lot to do with, um, a lot of money.

Mainly just whatever teenage girls wanted,

like makeup and going to the movies and whatever.

But the minute Mom turned around to Belle and said, "Sorry,

you know, we don't, we don't have that kind of money",

you know, Belle will get all offensive and really upset about it

and take it out on Mom.

No, I didn't like the way Mom was getting treated as well.

It was really, you know, not nice at all.

Belle can be very aggressive and very…

violent with her words.

It wasn't pleasant at all.

It was, it was very hard on myself and my mom.

[Andrew] Eventually, Belle moved out of home.

It was a pretty young age. I'm probably thinking around 13 to 15.

According to Natalie, she moved in with an old man

not far from where Belle was living.

[Nick] Yeah, he just took Belle in.

Personally, I-- I didn't like the guy from day dot.

I don't know. It was…

I don't know. There was something odd.

We didn't really know him that well. Like,

Mom should've really got to know the guy a bit better before her daughter moved in.

But it wasn't done that way.

Well, that has always been on my mind as well.

Why would you be letting

a 12 or 15-year-old go and live with a man down the road?

An old man around a young girl doesn't look too good to me.

Not the sort of thing that I would've been doing, there's no way.

[Clair] I was very surprised.

That was the one thing Natalie said that surprised me more than anything else.

[Richard] After the news stories appeared,

the word leaked out that Belle was looking to do a TV interview

so there was a bidding war going on and the word was the 60 Minutes had won it.

It turns out that they paid her $75,000 to do that interview.

And so, this was going to be the first time that you saw her

explaining herself on television after her exposure.

She seemed to think that she could go on television and redeem herself.

That she could do it in her own words, and this was an opportunity for her.

Clair, um, during the course of the interviews that she did with Belle

said it's just a very bad idea on every level.

Don't do it.

To have taken money to tell her story after she had ripped off so many people,

it was just the ultimate insult.

It was a silly, silly thing for her to do.

Um, so sure enough, she did it.

["60 Minutes" intro music]

Belle, are you prepared to tell the truth today?

-Yeah. Absolutely. -The whole truth? No half truths,

no gobbledygook.

I thought the 60 Minutes interview was really strong.

Tara Brown, the reporter, absolutely held her to account.

You claimed also in your book

that you underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy for two months.

-Yeah. -True or false?

-At the time-- -True or false?

True because at the time I believed I was having radiotherapy.

So, false.

They were asking the questions

and they weren't gonna let her get away with not answering them properly.

Um, and it was very compelling viewing.

[Tara] You're 23, right?

Well, actually, how old are you?

Um, I've always been raised,

um, as being currently a 26-year-old.

-Um, I-- -This is a really, really simple question.

How old are you?

-I believe that I'm 26. -And--

I have two bir-- two birth certificates

and I've had my name changed four times.

The identity crisis there is big,

but that was my normal when I was growing up.

That was probably one of the most brutal interviews

that I think I've ever watched on TV.

It was pretty overwhelming to, uh, to watch, to be honest. Yeah.

I was thinking, "In a way, I really hope these people who are watching this

will work out it's not true."

Um, for a long time I was afraid to even walk out my front door because

she, you know, mentioned about me.

She said everything about me was awful and wasn't true, none of it was true.

It was just all fake.

I've been openly conveying

and speaking about what was my reality and what is my reality today.

And will you accept that your reality does not actually match reality?

It does match your normal or your reality.

Would you accept that you're a pathological liar?

No.

Ah, I think the most interesting thing is who doesn't like to hear a story?

A story about people, about understanding behavior.

I've been a psychologist for over 25 years.

I think it's fascinating hearing and trying to understand,

why do people lie?

Pathological lying is someone who's really lost touch with reality

and has immersed themselves in a story that they really believe.

Often, the lies have become their reality.

Part of lying is to create a life that they didn't have

to be cared for, to be loved,

to create an image or a personhood

that they otherwise wouldn't be able to experience.

It boosts their ego, it boosts their internal need to be loved and accepted

and it perpetuates the lies.

There might be a little element of truth in their stories that they create

and so it's really difficult

for them to then distinguish even further between truth and fantasy.

And if the audience is accepting and believing,

well, off we go.

It's like a great big, you know, tumbleweed

getting bigger and bigger in the desert

as their lies take on a whole life of their own.

He comes to your home and he does some tests on you?

-Mm-hmm. He does. -How d-- What sort of tests?

It was a box, a machine with lights on the front

and that machine was apparently German technology.

There's, uh, two pads, two metal pads.

One that goes below the chair one that goes behind your back.

And then that measures…

what I believe or remember to be frequencies.

And what was the results?

[exhales heavily]

Belle was still insisting that she had honestly believed she had brain cancer

and that there had been this doctor early on,

a Dr. Mark Johns, who had diagnosed her with brain cancer

and then subsequently, another…

practitioner called Phil who had told her her cancer had spread

and that she genuinely believed this to be the case.

Given the nature of everything Belle had told us

and some surprising things being true,

I really hunted hard for Mark Johns.

Uh, he certainly wasn't a medical doctor, he wasn't registered.

We couldn't find trace of even an alternative health practitioner

called Mark Johns.

[producer] Who's Dr. Phil?

He's not a doctor, we can drop the doctor bit.

Um, Phil was an alternative health practitioner

who did treat Belle.

He existed and it was another example

of something I found to be surprising in this Alice in Wonderland tale.

I mean, 2009 was a really bad year for you, wasn't it?

-Mm-hmm. -You had three heart operations,

you suffered two cardiac arrests, you died twice on the operating table,

-you had a stroke… -Mm-hmm.

…and you were diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor

-and given four months to live. -Correct.

It was, it was like seeing a different person.

Like she'd gone from this well rounded, well spoken,

intelligent woman

that was, like, kind of untouchable, to, like…

an idiot.

[pensive music]

[Bryce] So, after the 60 Minutes interview, I mean,

there was no coming back from that.

It was a spectacular own goal on her part

because she just came across as a-- as shifty

and somebody with a very, very loose relationship with the truth.

The reaction was huge.

She was public enemy number one so there was a lot of vitriol

and people hated her.

[Bella] I was gobsmacked.

I was just in shock.

How could this be real?

How can someone go to that level of deceit?

[Bryce] You know, there were people who

came out of the woodwork who talked about their own cancer journeys

and how they had been sucked in by Belle.

How could you possibly betray these people who are at their most vulnerable?

It's devastating. Honestly, it's devastating.

Like, I just think about anyone who had cancer and listened to her

and maybe didn't make it.

Sorry, getting a bit emotional.

[laughs sadly]

Sorry.

[Clair] I think they wanted her to be held to account.

What she did was awful and I absolutely think that

anyone who does what she did should be held to account.

But at the same time,

I didn't think it was necessarily fair that she was just being

this kind of witch on the stake.

There was more to the story than that.

There's also shared accountability because

there were plenty of people who came along for the ride

and there would have been countless opportunities

for Belle's story to be picked up and potentially found out earlier.

[Richard] She was in business with

major corporations,

Penguin and Apple, obviously,

and I just don't believe

that those people could have been oblivious to the holes in her story.

And I think if you look at the media training video that Penguin did with her

around the time of the book's publication,

I think it's quite clear that they had concerns

about the veracity of what she was saying,

but they were kind of in too deep at that point.

So the Penguin press video showed rehearsals of Belle giving interviews.

Showed Belle…

answering questions not in a very convincing manner.

She didn't present as a young woman with brain cancer

who was taking her, her condition very seriously.

At no point did anybody go, "But, hang on, is the story true?

Because the entire story is underpinned by this idea that you've cured

or at least delayed the inevitable with respect to your brain cancer

by drinking green juices?"

It was irresistible.

At a certain point, the adults in the room should have stepped in and said,

"Hang on a minute, this is… This doesn't stack up."

It's just, you don't just believe somebody

when they tell you something.

If you're gonna publish someone, you need to have facts behind you

and it just doesn't look like anyone did that.

There would have been countless opportunities

for Belle's story to be picked up and-- and potentially found out earlier.

A lot of people who were involved in publishing that book and devising the app

and being involved in the business have never spoken about it.

They cashed in on the story of a young girl's cancer

without engaging in due diligence.

It-- it was an enormous crisis for both of those organizations.

Apple and Penguin just left her there

to cop the brunt of this, this phenomena that she had created.

[Clair] People felt really ripped off and really angry

and they wanted her to go to jail.

They wanted their money back, a refund for anything of hers that they'd bought

whether it was the book or the app.

And as pressure grew and the story continued to grow,

it was clear they needed to take action.

[Bryce] And there were, you know, there were people who

were baying for blood.

There was this deep sense of hurt,

a deep sense that there needed to be retribution

and there needed to be a reckoning.

The self-cured miracle woman, Belle Gibson, is still making waves

and not of the good variety.

The latest family hit by her cancer cures are…

In quotes, "cancer cures", of course,

are the parents of a seven-year-old boy, Joshua Schwarz.

He's terminally ill, really terminally ill from brain cancer

and Penny and Wolfgang Schwarz now think that Belle befriended them

so she could steal Joshua's symptoms and claim they were her own.

[Bryce] So back in 2013, 2014,

Belle did some fundraising on behalf of the Schwarz family.

The Schwarz family had a son, Joshua.

He was seven years old, he had brain cancer and it was terminal

and Belle attached herself to that family.

So, this post is about a little boy who's got brain cancer

like Belle, allegedly.

Um, she says it's the same type of brain tumor

and she says that she feels the boy's pain.

The greatest ache and pain in her heart.

And she's gonna donate all the money from the app sales

for this week to help them.

And, um, they never saw a cent of it.

[typing sound effect]

And this was just another example of

the, you know, collateral damage that the Belle Gibson story took along its way.

[reporters clamoring]

[woman] All those cancer sufferers, they're waiting for an answer. What is it?

[cameras clicking]

Isn't it about time that the truth came out?

So, she did find herself subject to a civil lawsuit

because she represented she was gonna give X amount of dollars to this charity

and X amount to that charity.

-[dramatic music] -Do you feel ashamed, Belle?

So, eventually the Consumer Affairs Department in Victoria

decided to bring proceedings against Belle

and she was fined $410,000.

And then she just refused to pay the fine and…

I just think this fueled

the anger of a lot of people

that not only had she never really been brought to account

but she kind of just ignored the whole thing and just seemed to be

snubbing the whole process and just refusing to even engage with it.

I suspect Belle was in denial,

that she didn't want to face this new reality

where instead of being this social media star

and loved by everyone, it was the complete opposite.

It's not like she's rotting in a jail cell or anything.

It's been clear that, you know, in the period since

that she's traveled to Africa, she's traveled to Bali.

She's still moving around Melbourne, uh, with, with freedom

which is amazing in and of itself.

I-- I think Belle should be, um, told to pay the money back, um,

to all those families who got damaged by it all.

[camera shutter clicks]

[reporter] It's not known if anything valuable

was taken from the property this morning

but Consumer Affairs has vowed to continue to pursue Gibson for payment

until the substantial debt is paid.

So, it gets to the point where,

you know, sheriffs are turning up at her home,

uh, to kind of take possession of items

towards this fine that she's never paid.

She's still living her life and

there haven't been really any repercussions or consequences

served on Belle.

[tense music]

So, everything was relatively quiet with Belle,

she went back to ground and we forgot about her.

Then out of the blue, the weirdest thing

that you could-- you could never have even imagined.

Hiya, today we met in Melbourne, Australia.

Our diaspora community, Oromo community of Australia,

met to discuss, uh, the current situation of Ethiopia,

specifically Oromia.

There was a video that surfaced of her,

um, dressed in Ethiopian attire,

speaking about her part within the Ethiopian community.

She pops up and she's been going to meetings

and calling herself Sabontu.

[speaking Ethiopian]

[chuckles]

And speaking in sort of broken Ethiopian dialect of some kind.

[speaking Ethiopian]

Hold yourself. Don't make it worse for our people at this time.

Defend yourselves and defend your honor, defend your identity.

She's also doing fundraising for them.

And…

I don't know, like, if I was fundraising for a project,

Belle Gibson is probably not the first person I'd have on my team.

It's really bizarre.

Um, so, I honestly couldn't tell you what's next.

They're shocked, of course, to find out who she is

and she ends up, by all reports, being rejected by that community.

[pensive music]

The last conversations I had with her,

I've been coming to realize that Belle's a pretty sad and depressed person, also.

There's no winners here.

I mean, it's hurt a lot of people and also,

I feel that it's also ruined Belle's life for the rest of her life also.

She is a very intelligent young lady, honestly, and, uh,

you know, she could, uh, she could've really went places

instead of actually ruining her life, yeah.

Yeah, she definitely could've been successful if she didn't lie.

She was a great cook, there was no questions about that.

You could still release a cookbook,

you don't have to lie about being sick to get you there.

Yeah, I think in another world, in another universe,

that she would have been…

She probably would have been a really, really good CEO.

You've got to be a little bit pathological

to run a business and to run it successfully.

Um, and I think she certainly ticks the boxes in that respect.

She, um, honestly thought that she was changing the world.

I wish that she apologized.

Yeah. Especially to people like myself

and, you know, other cancer survivors that…

like, took her book like the bible, like, you know,

you played with a really vulnerable community,

and you profited off a really vulnerable community.

That's the worst part about what you did.

I don't think there's a punishment that would be

sufficient in what she's done.

I don't understand how she's been able to get away with it.

[Nick] To be honest, after all that happened, like,

her words don't matter to me anymore.

She's left a big scar on me. Like, it's never gonna leave me.

She's never gonna be forgiven by me and that's the truth.

You know, I will always love her.

Why did you do it? Please explain.

I'm, I'm here, you know. Talk to me. Um…

I'm here to listen.

I just think she seems like someone who's…

sort of, to some extent, damaged,

um, and there's probably a lot of reasons for that,

um, going back into her childhood.

And, you know, I don't know that going to prison is going to…

fix that.

You do get the sense that Belle just wants to belong somewhere

and she's trying out all these different personalities,

these different identities,

in the hope of finding the right place where she belongs, she's accepted,

and she's got this community of people around her.

Perhaps she'll spend her entire life moving from one group to the next.

Um, and shape-shifting as she goes.

Being whomever it is that she thinks they want her to be.

[Chanelle] Have we seen the last of Belle Gibson?

She is capable of reinventing herself probably time and time again, so…

I'm not sure.

[dramatic music]

[Richard] There's a part of me that would like to see her get some kind of hell.

I think ultimately, her exposure has done something valuable

which is to alert people to bogus ideas on the web

and the fact that people who appear to be altruistic

and well-meaning and admirable

can be exactly the opposite.

I reflect back on my own personal experience.

My wife's been cancer-free for 18 years after seeking conventional treatment

and I think that if this story did anything

to make people wary of

people spruiking untested and un-backed up wellness ideas about serious illness,

I'll be very happy about that.

But I, I don't think this is the first or last time

you're gonna see something like this happen.

[dramatic music continues]