Billy Fitzsimons

speaker

650 appearances 14 recordings 3 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Billy Fitzsimons’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.

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The Daily Aus · The email that exposed cult survivors · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

And when we talk about coercive control in the context of those laws that have been introduced, we're usually talking about it in that context of intimate partner violence. matched

I will say with Hannah Clarke, I think that galvanised the nation, but it wasn't necessarily where it was first brought up. matched

I think a lot of people, survivors, had been talking about it, but... matched

I think that incident where a man killed Hannah Clarke, his wife, and their children is where it really galvanised the legal system. matched

I think that's where the law reform took place. matched

That is why the law did take place. matched

But yes, what this report is saying, is recommending to the Victorian government, is that group-based coercion also needs to be criminalised. matched

And that is how you deal with the cult. matched

So it's not making cults illegal because, again, it's really hard to legally define that. matched

And they say you shouldn't try to legally define that. matched

What you should criminalise is the behaviours that come from these large groups. matched

And one thing quickly to add is that some people might be listening and know cases where cult leaders have gone to jail. matched

And that's not because they have led a cult and that is illegal. matched

That's because they have done certain behaviour that is illegal. matched

For example, sexual assault, child abuse, financial abuse. matched

But it's not the overall extreme control of the group that was illegal. matched

No. matched

So Elliot brought to our attention that this report had been handed down, but in the email he received, matched

it had accidentally exposed the names of some of the survivors who had been part of this inquiry but had been hoping that their involvement had been anonymous. matched

So we are going to play a video to let Elliot explain how this unraveled himself. matched

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