MARRIED to the CULT
The Australian Women's Weekly|March 2023
At 14, Stefanie Hinrichs was forced to marry a cult leader. At 22 she fled with her child, and brought one of Australia's most dangerous sexual predators to justice. Now she talks exclusively to The Weekly.
MEGAN NORRIS
MARRIED to the CULT

In the summer of 1993, while other teenagers were making plans for the six-week school holidays, 14-year-old Stefanie Hinrichs sat alone in her bedroom wanting to die. For months her cries for help had gone unnoticed in her deeply religious community where her unravelling depression had been blamed on Satan for trying to tempt her from the ‘true’ path The Lord had chosen for her.

Disturbingly, the ‘true path’ involved marrying her paunchy, middle-aged brother-in-law, William Kamm, the bizarre and charismatic leader of a controversial doomsday cult whose disciples were prepping for the end of the world at his fortified compound on the NSW south coast.

For two years, Stefanie’s German family had lived a life of piety and prayer in the reclusive Roman Catholic Order of St Charbel outside Nowra, where Kamm – also known as ‘Little Pebble’ – was revered as a God.

From his “promised land” in Cambewarra, the self-proclaimed prophet had seduced a global following of half a million with his sensational claims that he spoke to God through the Holy Mother, who appeared to him in miraculous monthly apparitions.

Among the many divine directions Mary delivered was the revelation that Kamm, 44, had been chosen to save his flock from the end of the world and lead them into a ‘new era’ in paradise. But in 1993, Kamm’s messages had taken a more sinister turn when he claimed he’d been told to choose 84 “mystical spouses” to bring forth a new race for his new “Garden of Eden”.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2023 من The Australian Women's Weekly.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2023 من The Australian Women's Weekly.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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