Original subtitles

-I'm Judith McIntyre.

The first diagnosis was breast cancer.

Yeah.

I began to see Serge Benhayon.

-Is it possible to eventually heal everything?

And the answer is yes.

-This is Serge Benhayon, the leader of Universal Medicine,

a controversial group selling unproven healing treatments

to desperate people.

-Universal Medicine advertises that

they're all about helping people

make healthy, self-loving choices.

-We've got more qualified health people in the world per capita

than we would have ever had,

and yet we are sicker.

Something is not making sense.

-I feel so alive...

and clear and well.

-These promotional videos give us a rare glimpse

inside the group's ultra-secretive world.

To its thousands of devoted followers,

it's a world that must seem harmless.

But behind the wellness seminars and dance parties...

-You re a cult leader,

and Universal Medicine is a money-making cult.

Let me ask you a few questions.

- lies a story of deception, devotion, and control...

-I've spoken to lots of people

that wouldn't go on the record with me.

He must have something over them.

He's got some sort of fear over them.

- created by a master of manipulation

and self-declared messiah figure...

-Have you ever said

that you were the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci?

- Yes, I did. - Serge claims

he's the chosen one of God,

the latest in a long line of great thinkers.

-All of the great figures,

people like Zoroaster,

Plato, Buddha, Jesus,

are all sort of crystallized into Serge Benhayon.

- whose promise of healing comes at a price.

-Serge supported me.

-I specifically predicted the rise of breast cancer

and actually gave the reason why.

-I've learned a great deal.

I had created the disease

by all my self-neglect, my choices.

♪♪

-I was referred to Serge Benhayon

by a friend who practiced acupuncture.

I was on holidays. I'd just completed a degree.

I was building my acupuncture business at the time.

And, yeah, I was just a little bit tired and rundown,

probably a bit grumpy.

-Esther Rockett is at a vulnerable moment in her life

when she first encounters

Universal Medicine and its leader.

-He was very friendly, and he was cheerful.

I lay on the table, and he just did this

very simple hands-on healing method

where he would stand near me,

and he put two hands on my shoulders,

and he kept them there for quite a long time.

♪♪

I was fully clothed.

There was nothing to be concerned about.

He deliberately gave me a false sense of security.

That was his grooming process.

It was the third session,

that's when everything changed in an instant.

♪♪

-Serge Benhayon is a

bankrupt former tennis coach turned new age guru

whom Esther's worked for years

to expose as a sham and cult leader.

But sounding the alarm hasn't halted

the spread of Universal Medicine's wellness centers,

where so-called healers use Serge's unusual ideas

to treat ailments ranging from back pain to cancer.

♪♪

-I'll just go ahead and talk about

some of his mad ideas, if you like.

Okay, look.

Serge believes...

...that he can heal any sickness.

-Fundamentally, he denies completely

that there could be germs that could cause disease,

genetic factors that could cause disease,

environmental factors that cause disease.

Universal Medicine suggests that their leader, Serge Benhayon,

is the most knowledgeable person that has ever existed,

that he knows everything about everything,

can answer any questions about any mysteries in the world

and indeed the universe.

-Under occult astrology, you could say,

Serge, I've been stuck in Gemini for 400 years.

That would be superbly scientific.

-I'd seen Serge on various news broadcasts.

-He has no medical qualifications at all.

- touting unproven treatments.

-I thought, "Ah, he's an interesting character."

He believes that he holds the salvation of the world.

-When you go into evolutionary energy,

you realize the world's not human anymore.

That's when you see spirits.

-One of Serge's core beliefs

is that evil spirits are leading humanity astray.

-That spirit has been exposed.

-Serge claims that he is both man and woman,

a being who has moved beyond gender

because his soul has been reincarnated

more than 2,000 times.

-I orgasm like a woman every time I orgasm,

as much as I do as a man,

and often more as a woman than I do as a man.

♪♪

-He also teaches that people with disabilities

are being punished for bad behavior in a previous life.

-If he tries one of his healing modalities and it doesn't work,

the fault is not his.

The fault is the person

who doesn't receive it or believe it.

And if people follow what he suggests and what he teaches,

he will be able to address all the issues of hunger,

violence, mendacity.

All of the evil behavior of human beings will disappear.

-Followers of Universal Medicine

are told that eating and drinking certain things

allows evil spirits to invade the body.

Alcohol, dairy, coffee,

even carrots and potatoes are off limits.

-People in the future will understand that...

we may not be needing three meals a day,

and they'll be understanding that there are some foods

that are not designed to be eaten.

-He'll say things like,

"Can anybody who eats dairy products

or chocolate really love you?"

And he said, "Carrots are as bad as heroin."

-But there is a way to fight back against the evil spirits...

Intimate, hands-on treatment,

ideally performed by Serge himself.

-At the third session, I laid down on the table,

and the first thing that Serge said to me was,

"Today, I think we'll do an ovarian reading."

I said to him, "No.

No, I don't want that."

He said, "I think it'll be good for you.

"It's not invasive.

"I'm just going to feel

any information that your ovaries can give me."

He kept on with this pressure.

Until I gave in eventually and just said, "Oh, alright."

I lay there, clothes on.

He put his hands on my lower abdomen,

just above my pubic bone, and the first thing he said was,

"When you were 5 years old,

a man in your life let you down."

And he said, "A man in your life tortured you."

I just lay there and waited for him to finish.

I didn't say anything, but he got impatient.

He said, "So, am I right?"

And I said, "No, not really."

But as soon as I left,

it occurred to me that the majority of his clientele

were women, and I became very concerned.

♪♪

-Anecdotally, we have the proof

that many people have improved their health exponentially

through the modalities that we're using.

-Serge has been in and out of controversy for 20 years.

-The whole thing is just based on stuff that's made up,

that Serge apparently got impressed upon him

when he was sitting on the toilet.

-I just gave myself a time to sit and feel that moment,

and I could feel something really, really beautiful.

-In the 1990s, Serge is a humble tennis coach in Australia

until he has an epiphany one day

telling him to go forth and heal the world.

-And from there, he started his healing business,

Universal Medicine.

-To a certain type of spiritual seeker,

Serge is magnetic,

and his healing classes are an immediate success.

Within five years,

he's opening his own wellness center in the city of Lismore

and treating people with serious problems.

-The first diagnosis was in June 2011,

breast cancer.

And initially they thought,

"Oh, that's fine. We'll just remove the lump."

And then they came back and said,

"We're going to have to take the breast."

-Reeling from her diagnosis,

Judith meets Serge Benhayon at a book festival.

He invites her to join a healing workshop

to complement her medical treatment.

-And when I went to see him, from the very first session,

my fear levels just went like that.

And I told him I didn't want to lose my breast,

and I'm always optimistic that

I'm not going to have to lose my breast.

And he said to me, "The soul

doesn't need the breast."

And it just opened up my perspective.

Every treatment that came up they suggested,

I don't want to do that.

Each time, Serge supported me.

♪♪

-After her brush with Serge,

Esther decides to infiltrate one of Universal Medicine's

secretive group healing rituals.

The healing workshop I went to

was very, very creepy and disturbing.

♪♪

There were about 60 people there.

We had enough treatment tables for the group to pair up.

One person would be the healer,

and the other person in the pair

would lie on the table as the patient.

Serge closed all of the curtains in the room

and turned out all of the lights.

The longer the practitioners held their hands on a person,

the more people would start to react

get the shakes and tremors and move around on the tables.

Some people started hyperventilating,

crying, screaming.

♪♪

Serge said that this was because of bad energy

leaving their bodies and evil spirits.

♪♪

He was telling people that they were angels,

archangels and angels in a past life,

that they'd been persecuted,

burnt at the stake,

that people had come along with swords

and hacked their wings off and disemboweled them

and cut them to pieces and raped them

and all sorts of horrible stuff.

It was at that point where I was thinking,

There's something really not right here.

This could be a cult.

-At these workshops,

we get an opportunity to really connect with each other

and feel that oneness.

-Their care and dedication is second to none.

-No brainwashing.

It's about empowering people so they can be discerning.

-I've got very little time.

And... the truth is, I feel excited.

♪♪

-By the spring of 2014,

conventional medicine has failed to stop

Judith McIntyre's cancer.

-I'll die very soon. The body will die.

And I feel so alive.

-But Universal Medicine's

regimen of chakra-puncture treatments

isn't working either.

Neither for Judith

nor the other patients seeking help at the wellness center

in Lismore.

-My name's Jane Hansen.

I'm a journalist with the "Sunday Telegraph" newspaper

in Australia.

I started talking to people who had complained about

Universal Medicine.

I wrote about a woman who'd had a cough,

and she'd gone to a lung specialist

or respiratory specialist

who was in the same Universal Medicine compound in Lismore.

And she was unaware of Universal Medicine before this.

She just was going to see a lung specialist.

She was misdiagnosed,

and not only misdiagnosed,

she was sent off to do all these esoteric treatments,

like a lung massage,

which had no efficacy whatsoever.

-One of Serge's strategies for taking his philosophy into

the mainstream is to recruit new believers...

who also happen to be qualified medical doctors.

-It's surprising and disturbing that

Serge Benhayon has been able to attract numerous doctors,

medically qualified doctors, into the cult

and have them change the way they practice medicine

to come into line with the philosophies

and the suggestions that Benhayon propagates.

-Modern medicine cannot detect every disease early.

We have to do that. We are the medicine.

-Dr. Samuel Kim,

who is a well-trained respiratory physician,

would treat patients

and tell patients that he was able to offer them

the best of both worlds because he could offer them

the benefits of conventional medicine

but as perfected through the adherence to the concepts

being put forward by Universal Medicine.

Off you'd go for a lung massage.

This consisted of the person from Universal Medicine

telling you about the principles of Universal Medicine

while they simply stroked your back up and down

and then, $70, please.

The treatment they're getting is cruel,

dangerous, ignorant nonsense.

-She thought it was very weird and also a conflict of interest

because it turned out that the doctor was a member of

Universal Medicine.

She complained to the Health Care Complaints Commission.

-And he was severely reprimanded by the medical board,

but not deregistered.

He was able to continue to practice.

-Though Dr. Kim continues his work for Universal Medicine,

the complaint raises some eyebrows in the local press,

prompting Serge to fight back.

-He announced that he was going

to refute all the claims of the press.

-Though Universal Medicine is notoriously secretive,

David Millikan sees an opportunity.

-So I said, "Serge, my name is David Millikan.

I write and I make television programs about cults."

You've got to come out in the open

and you have got to declare your case.

And he said, "I know who you are, David.

Am I a cult leader?"

I said, "If you let me talk to you

"and have access to your movement,

I'll tell you in three weeks."

-David is the only outsider ever permitted to observe the group

and its leader at close quarters.

-I attended several of his big meetings,

up to 700 people

in some large premises.

Inside his group,

he bestrides those people like a colossus.

They believe everything he says.

They watch him with adoring eyes.

He dictates what they read,

what they eat, what they wear,

who they have sex with,

how they have sex,

who they talk with outside the group.

If he can exercise that sort of control over people,

then he does it always

at the loss of autonomy for that person themselves.

♪♪

I want to get in there and go face-to-face with Serge

because I want to get up on that stage

and tell his group and him the truth.

♪♪

There, in front of 700 of his people,

he invited me up on the stage.

I turned to Serge, and I said,

I'm answering the question you put to me when we first met.

I said, "I don't know you,"

and I said, "Ask me in a couple of weeks."

Well, I'm giving you the answer.

You asked me, "Am I a cult leader?"

Serge, you are.

This is a cult.

And that man is a cult leader.

At which stage, Serge's hands went up to his face like this,

he squealed, and he ran off the stage.

♪♪

Why won't you address these issues?

This man claims that he is

a lord of the cosmos.

I said, "Look at him. He's a frightened schoolboy."

I was able to say that in his own group.

Mind you, I was lucky to get out of the hall that night.

I've just been thrown out of there.

Look, what's happening in there is actually quite tragic.

I mean, they're good people, you know?

They are well-intentioned.

And what I see on their faces

is hunger to grasp

some sort of salvation in this world,

and they believe that Serge will give it.

But what I see is that is a cult,

and Serge is a cult leader.

I'm answering the question you put to me when we first met.

-When Reverend Dr. David Millikan

calls out Universal Medicine in 2012...

-You asked me, "Am I a cult leader?" Serge, you are.

- the controversy does little to stop its growth.

-I've seen over 10,000 people in the last 16 years,

well over 10,000 people.

-Universal Medicine's seminars don't seem too cult-like.

There are no ceremonial robes or chanting,

just a guy who looks like he bounced in off

the nearest golf course.

But this unassuming front is no accident.

Serge wants to insinuate his ideas into the mainstream

and recruit more people into his flock.

♪♪

-The more that you looked at Universal Medicine,

the more that you could see

that they were spreading their tentacles everywhere.

-My name's Jenny Dowell.

I was mayor of Lismore from 2008 to 2016.

There were adherents and followers

in virtually every sector of our community,

and it was obvious that it was gaining some traction,

say, in the Lismore Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

-Followers of Universal Medicine

start embedding themselves into local civic groups.

It's a tactic to win power, credibility,

and public funding for its services.

-I also have had contact from parents

whose children were involved in Universal Medicine.

A number of Universal Medicine devotees

have worked in this office.

The ABCs been told of efforts to recruit staff on the inside.

A post on the group's website

says its practitioners have attended staff meetings

and run staff development workshops.

-In 2018, a bombshell report

reveals that a surprising new demographic

is being targeted by Serge's recruiters.

-A child protection worker was

promoting Universal Medicine events to vulnerable children.

The ABC has obtained documents from FACS in 2016

which endorsed Universal Medicine

in parenting plans for two girls in its care.

-Some staff were being influenced,

and that was actually influencing

the decisions made about the children.

-The documents instruct that each girl needs to be supported

to maintain her connection with

the teachings of Universal Medicine.

One will listen to her music and meditations,

while the other will have access

to readings and meditations from the Universal Medicine website.

-Universal Medicine has nothing to offer children.

It's just harm

because of the diet, because of the belief system,

because of the restrictions.

It was very concerning that

the local Child Protection office has UM members in it,

and they're still there.

-The Universal Medicine therapies touted by

the CPS employees aren't just for children.

They're specifically aimed at young girls.

-Both girls will participate in Universal Medicine activities

as deemed suitable,

such as the Girl to Woman Festival.

-In 2014, Universal Medicine also launched

what it called its Girl to Woman Festival,

which was marketed to families, marketed to children.

And the idea was celebrating girls and women,

trying to bring the younger generation into the group.

♪♪

-It all seemed very user-friendly

and very female-friendly.

And to no surprise, a lot of women were actually

part of the cult.

♪♪

-There were these retreats for teenage girls,

seminars for tracking your menstrual cycle.

-They were also trying to bring in mothers

and introduce them to Universal Medicine therapies,

these esoteric healings, like esoteric breast massage.

So to me, it was a recruitment event

and also, in some senses, a grooming event.

-This is the resurrection of women.

That's why in 2000,

I was the first champion of introducing energetic integrity,

energetic responsibility,

but mainly aimed at women.

-Serge Benhayon has a pretty unhealthy fixation

with women's health.

He is obsessed with women's health disorders and diseases

and the female anatomy.

-Look down.

Have you got a vagina? Yeah. Have you got breasts? Yeah.

You have the particles that are rejuvenated

thanks to the periods.

-The breasts apparently attract lots of negative energy.

-He sees the female body as a site for disease.

He sees women as victims,

people who should submit to him.

-Universal Medicine's unconventional ideas about women

and children are mirrored in Serge's private life.

-Serge first met Miranda when she was 13.

She was one of his tennis pupils.

She moved into his home when she was about 14

to take part in what he called his elite coaching program.

That was a live-in program.

She moved in with him and his family.

-At the time, Serge is married with four children.

He divorces shortly after.

-And then some years later, he began dating Miranda,

and they married in about 2009.

-I have an amazing connection with my four adult children,

three grandchildren,

with my wife, with my ex-wife.

They're best friends.

-Ever since Miranda moved into his home when she was 13,

there's been a series of girls go and stay in his home.

We've never really had a satisfactory reason

for all of these girls going to stay in his house.

♪♪

-There are no proven allegations of abuse against Serge,

but there are complaints about

the unusual devotion he inspires in his female followers.

-There are men out there who are

throwing these accusations at you

that you're a homewrecker, effectively.

Why do you think these men are throwing that out at you?

-It's outrageous, and it's just simply not fair.

-She came home one day,

and she was burping all over the place.

[Makes belching noises]

What on Earth are you doing?

And she said she was getting rid of evil spirits.

Okay. Well, if you must.

-By 2012, the fringe beliefs of Universal Medicine

are quietly infiltrating families across the globe.

-We'd been together, my wife and I, for a number of years.

We had two young children.

I thought it was just getting better and better.

-Robin's wife, Anita,

is one of the first to join a new chapter of the group

in Frome, England.

-She was extremely vulnerable.

Her parents died within two years of each other.

I think it had a profound effect on her.

It was a gradual decline in our relationship.

It got to a point where I was not allowed to cuddle her

or give her a hug.

I thought to myself, okay, we've got to sort this out.

We've got to straighten it out.

And I said to her, "Do you really believe

"that Serge Benhayon is the reincarnation of

Leonardo da Vinci?"

I never had a reply.

All I got was this sort of smug smile.

That was my epiphany, actually, because I suddenly realized

that I was dealing with something

that I could not handle.

♪♪

-Some families have told us that they've lost loved ones

to a bizarre cult called Universal Medicine.

It began in Australia,

but it has its European headquarters in a village

in the West Country.

-Nestled near the picturesque town of Frome,

a hotel with a conference center and swimming pool

acts as Universal Medicine's European headquarters.

Members can stay here

until they are able to get a foothold

on some choice property

in the neighboring town of Upper Vobster.

-They are slowly but surely building a retreat

for the followers of Universal Medicine

that's expanding

and slowly expanding across our village.

-That's the beginning of Upper Vobster Farm.

And then all the other houses, which you can see some of them,

meeting rooms, dormitories, are all behind that tree.

And then that house there belongs to them.

Four of the houses up there on the skyline belong to them.

And another one down there.

-We live close to some thing that is growing around us

that is connected to an abusive cult.

It's a thing that makes all of this really sinister.

♪♪

-If you have a family member

or someone close to you has got caught up in a group like this,

you've got to be careful the way you treat that situation.

They will have been taught that the family and their friends

are probably the most seductive agents of Satan to woo them away

from the prize of belief.

♪♪

-You're in this situation where you're trying desperately to be

loving and looking after the family and what have you,

but nothing was right.

-By 2014, Robin and Anita are divorced,

as she leaves to devote more time to Serge's group.

-When I think back to those times

and how desperately I was trying to avoid any problems

with the kids,

I don't think they really understood what was happening.

When she left,

they had the opportunity to go with their mother.

They both chose to stay with me.

♪♪

-For every member of Universal Medicine,

there are loved ones, husbands, wives, sons,

daughters, friends, who are left behind.

-So these are the cottages that

they're trying to take one by one.

This is a house that they've just bought,

and this has got lots of planning applications

in at the moment that the village is fighting.

-In Somerset, Universal Medicine is winning hearts and minds...

and taking over a town.

-It feels like bindweed going over your flowers,

like, slowly, just really slowly

moving its way through the space.

There aren't many houses left. He wants all of them.

I know he's approached pretty much everybody in those houses.

There's a sense of that they just have limitless cash.

-Universal Medicine's deep pockets come largely from

wealthy members paying as much as $140

for a single lecture by Serge.

♪♪

-I've learned a great deal about how disease is actually

a form of healing.

-As Judith's disease progressed

and she continued to have esoteric healings,

in the final stages of her cancer,

in the months before she died,

Serge organized palliative care at her home,

and it was delivered by Universal Medicine members.

And he treated her for free.

She couldn't believe his generosity.

She made a final will.

That will was prepared by Benhayon's own lawyer.

Even her financial adviser

was a long-term follower of Serge Benhayon.

-In her will, Judith bequeaths the majority of her estate,

1.4 million Australian dollars

to Universal Medicine,

to the shock of her children.

-He teaches that if you leave assets to your children

in your will

and your children are not leading an esoteric life,

then that inheritance will

damage you in your next lifetime,

and it will also damage the beneficiaries of

that inheritance.

-So, the only way to ensure you have an improved reincarnation

is to leave your money to Serge.

-Hello, I'm Esther.

I'm going to be talking about Universal Medicine. What is it?

Serge Benhayon has a very low opinion of me

and has for a very long time,

ever since I started blogging about him.

In my blogs, I published a lot of allegations about Serge.

I didn't hold back.

I published that this is inappropriate touching,

that this is not healing.

It's molestation...

putting his hands on their genital areas, their backsides,

even their breasts.

And I raised all sorts of concerns about his behavior

with children.

I called him a cult leader from the outset.

They were never going to let me get away with it.

-By 2015, Universal Medicine is embedded on two continents

but exists almost entirely under the radar.

♪♪

-I'd just done a couple of stories

about Universal Medicine,

questioning are these people legit or not?

I'd given Serge every right of reply that any journalist would.

-For the few who dare to speak out against Serge Benhayon,

retribution is swift.

-All of a sudden, there was this hate blog that

was written about me,

and it was a dirt file, basically.

And the headline was,

"Jane Hansen has a murky past."

And you think, "Oh, well, it's just a blog.

"It's just a blog, and these people, you know, in my opinion,

"are kind of crazy.

What harm could it do?"

They also targeted my child,

who died at eight months of age.

They basically said,

"Oh, well, she's been through this terrible, terrible loss.

How does she not have the heart to see what we're about?"

And I found that so manipulative,

and for anybody to use somebody's deceased child

as ammunition against them,

it just told me that, one, they're not normal people,

two, no moral compass whatsoever.

And it was designed as payback.

It was designed to hurt me and to undermine my reputation.

♪♪

-I published hundreds of articles

exposing Universal Medicine.

Serge Benhayon and his followers

attempted various forms of intimidation.

They tried to get me deregistered from my profession.

They tried to have me prosecuted for harassment.

None of that deterred me from continuing the exposure.

-Serge had enough,

and he tried to bludgeon her into submission by suing her.

Esther was persistent.

She went through his writings, and she kept at him.

-Universal Medicine has a number of professionals

inside the group, including lawyers, so...

And they're prepared to use those people

to advance their interests.

-The defamation suit goes to trial in October of 2018.

-If I didn't win that case,

I was going to be in a lot of trouble.

In a sense, Universal Medicine would own me.

-But the trial brings Universal Medicine

into the light.

Serge's testimony publicly reveals the bizarre world

he's created for the first time.

-At that court case,

I was asked to be the expert witness.

♪♪

We went through many of the more dangerous things

that Benhayon put forward to his advocates.

♪♪

The basic tenet he preaches

is that all illness is related to emotions,

and the fact that psychiatric illness

is caused by the infiltration of evil spirits,

that he has a conversation with a woman's ovaries,

and in particular, the technique that he was using

with women who were suffering

from sexual attack or rape, even.

The techniques that he was using,

which were quite shocking

in terms of the fact they couldn't possibly help.

♪♪

-My assets were all gone within a few months,

just trying to fund the legal services that I got,

and eventually I was bankrupted.

♪♪

-He used a very expensive legal firm

to put all manner of expensive processes in front of her,

which in the end sent her broke.

She ended up homeless, but she never gave up.

♪♪

-I'm just a simple man. I'm a simple man

presenting the wisdom that we already have inside us.

It's been smeared by a small group of detractors.

-It was readily obvious to the jury

that the claims being made

could not possibly be accurate and supported.

-At the defamation trial,

Serge Benhayon attempts to silence one of

his most vocal critics, Esther Rockett.

But this plan backfires in a big way.

-I watched Benhayon and his wife

burying their heads further into their papers.

I think they must have realized

that the jury's reaction was certainly not favorable

in terms of their hopes that

they were going to win a lot of money

from Esther Rockett for daring to defame him.

-Serge lost the case.

-The jury's verdict was unanimous.

[ Cameras clicking ]

-It's a winner.

-The most damaging thing about the case was

that the imputations that Serge said had defamed him,

they were held by the New South Wales Supreme Court to be true.

-Mr Benhayon is a cult leader and charlatan

who exploits cancer patients

by targeting them to leave him bequests.

-In the end, I proved 36 very damaging allegations

about Serge.

-Serge Benhayon

has an indecent interest in young girls as young as 10.

Serge Benhayon engages in bizarre sexual manipulation

to make money for his business.

Serge Benhayon engages in bizarre sexual practices

to finance his business.

It goes on and on.

-Benhayon's core group of followers,

it galvanized them in a sense.

-What do you make of the allegations

that Universal Medicine is a cult?

-Oh, well, I find it patently ridiculous.

It's a little bit ignorant.

-But some members are beginning to express private concerns

about Serge's motives.

♪♪

-Although we were very involved

and invested in being part of the group,

it became more and more obvious

that there were many double standards

set for the leaders of the group,

mainly involving Serge and his family.

-Though they are too afraid to appear on camera,

two senior ex-members of Universal Medicine

share this statement.

-We became aware of Serge's never-ending hunger for money.

Any donations, wills left to him

were encouraged with the promise of a better life or status.

-A flood of media attention

reveals the explosive details of one such donation.

-Two months before Judith McIntyre's death,

Mr. Benhayon wrote her children were trying to destabilize her

and trying to evoke her sympathy.

This was all an attack on the funds

that will help the hierarchy's work on Earth.

-Judith's children discover emails sent to

their dying mother by Serge.

They show how, in her final days,

he was attempting to separate Judith from her family

and her money.

-She looked like a perfectly nice lady

who was a real searcher after truth

and after a sort of holy way of life, really.

And the tragedy is that for a while, just before she died,

she thought she'd found that in Serge,

and he played mercilessly upon that.

-Back in Somerset, construction is now complete

on a brand-new Universal Medicine wellness complex.

Universal Medicine remains highly secretive.

It's impossible to know for sure

what goes on inside its UK facilities.

But building plans submitted by the group in 2011

indicate the complex is intended as a cancer sanctuary,

a place to treat more seriously

ill patients like Judith McIntyre.

-The big change was 2011,

when they put in this planning application

to attract people suffering from cancer

so that they could offer them sanctuary.

Well, it's their sort of business model, really.

♪♪

-For the few who manage to sever ties with Universal Medicine,

reconciliation with the outside world does not come easy.

-Serge's magnetic presence and our seeking further guidance

and teachings to discover our own inner knowing

drew us into his world.

We still find ourselves amazed by how it was possible

to blindly follow and accept these imposed rules,

offer up our way of being, and lock out the outside world.

♪♪

-For Serge, it's all about control and power.

And that's when all organizations go bad,

is when they try and capture a person

and refuse to allow them to examine

the nature of what it is that they believe.

♪♪

-Three years after that court case,

Universal Medicine continues its work in Australia,

its damage in Australia,

and Serge Benhayon is not the slightest bit repentant,

hasn't changed any of his concepts,

still has this unbelievable self-belief.

-Universal Medicine is not liked in this community

because we have standards they cannot meet,

and they hate the fact that we are reflecting true charity,

true social services, true family, a true community.

♪♪

-If Serge Benhayon sees this film, he'll be hopping mad.

I'm sure of it.

He takes everything personally, so he won't be happy.

But I'm very happy that the exposure continues

and to see him being criticized for what he really is.

-He may strike you as smooth-talking and somehow wise,

but let me tell you, he's a terrible person,

and he's driven.

He's a true believer with a bunch of followers around him

who believe that he is the savior of the world.

And men like him are dangerous.