Russia sends Aussie to jail for fighting alongside Ukrainian forces
Russia has sentenced an Australian citizen to 13 years in a maximum-security prison for fighting alongside Ukrainian forces.
Oscar Jenkins, 33, was found guilty by a court for taking part in an armed conflict as a mercenary, a statement from prosecutors said on Friday.
The court had ruled he had taken part in combat operations against Russian troops between March and December 2024.
Australian media reported in 2024 that Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was serving alongside Ukraine's military when he was captured by Russian forces in December.
In January, Australia summoned the Russian ambassador over what turned out to be false reports that Jenkins had been killed after being captured by Russia before he was confirmed alive in Russian captivity a fortnight later.
That footage showed Mr Jenkins dressed in a heavy coat, beanie and army gear, answering questions - believed to be from a Russian captor.
He was asked to confirm his identity and the date in English, claiming it was January 17, 2025.
'Tell us about your health condition, about your mood. Are you okay?' the man filming asked.
'I would like more freedom,' Jenkins replied.
'I feel a bit weak. I've lost a lot of weight. I have a broken arm still, I think, and my hand is not good.'
The man behind the camera said Mr Jenkins was a prisoner of war from the 66th Mechanised Brigade of the armed forces of Ukraine.
'You are alive, so the information about your death is not right?' the cameraman asked.
'Correct,' Mr Jenkins answered.
In February, footage emerged that appeared to show Russian soldiers performing medical tests on Mr Jenkins' emaciated body and joking that he was 'not dead'.
The Russian joked that Mr Jenkins' blood pressure would be 'zero' if he was dead, according to a translation by the ABC.
He was then instructed to remove his beanie.
'Everything is okay. He is alive and I think he will [be] better,' the cameraman said.
News of his prisoner status first made headlines in December after footage emerged of the Australian being paraded in front of a Russian soldier.
Mr Jenkins at the time told the camera he'd been fighting with Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region.
Russian authorities confirmed Mr Jenkins would be trialled for his alleged role with Ukrainian forces in April.
'The Prosecutor's Office of the Lugansk People's Republic approved the indictment in the criminal case against 33-year-old citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia Oscar Charles Augustus Jenkins,' Russian authorities said.
Mr Jenkins was accused of entering Ukraine in February 2024 and engaging in combat against Russian forces from March to December, during which he allegedly received monthly payments ranging from $11,000 to $15,000, according to the indictment cited by local media.
Once the indictment was signed off, the case was escalated to the Supreme Court of the Lugansk People's Republic.
'A citizen of Australia, on his own initiative, in order to receive material remuneration, arrived on the territory of Ukraine to participate as a mercenary in an armed conflict with the Russian Federation on the side of enemy troops,' local Russian authorities alleged.
Ukrainian ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko has previously said his government added Jenkins to its list of prisoners of war and would negotiate for his release in an exchange.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said Australia has made representations to Ukraine, including a one-on-one discussion he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In March, British citizen James Scott Rhys Anderson was sentenced to 19 years in prison by a Russian court for fighting for Ukraine, after being captured in November in the Kursk region.
He was convicted on charges of terrorism and 'mercenary activities'.
Unlike prisoners of war, who are protected under the Geneva Convention, foreigners fighting for Ukraine are labeled 'mercenaries' by Moscow and can be prosecuted under Russian law.
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BEN Shenton was just 18 months old when his mother gave him up to a well-spoken blonde woman who swore she'd give him the best life possible. Little did she know her decision would put Ben through years of abuse at the hands of a woman who believed she was Jesus Christ reborn. 9 9 9 Images of Ben show a happy young boy, but the reality was entirely different - as the youngster was forced to become part of a notorious cult known as 'The Family'. Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who Ben would grow up to know as his mother, became the leader of the cult based in Australia, which drugged and beat him. He had no idea of his life before Anne, as she went to great lengths to keep his adoption a secret, even bleaching his hair platinum blond like hers and his new 'siblings'. Despite abusing more than 20 children, including Ben, Anne and her husband and cult co-leader, Bill Hamilton-Byrne, never faced justice. 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Anne was able to rope people into the cult through yoga lessons, meetings at her house once a week, and then three times a week, until she built the compound on land near her house for them to move into. Inside a 'mind-controlling' CULT which 'forced mum and daughter to hit each other' and chose Fiji as the 'promised land' Anne came across as beautiful, well-spoken and nurturing, so it's no surprise Ben's mum was easily convinced he'd have a better life with her. Ben said Anne manipulated his mother into giving him up in 1970, convincing her that 'only she could give me the best life possible'. The pair consistently preyed on vulnerable people like Ben's mum, Joy, who had suffered a back injury and felt she could not look after him anymore. They also started recruiting people into their cult by approaching patients from Newhaven Hospital in Kew, a private psychiatric facility run and operated by various members of The Family, who targeted vulnerable patients, subjecting them to heavy doses of LSD and electroshock therapy. She and husband Hamilton-Byrne took children through illegal adoptions, allowing the cult to grow in numbers before imprisoning them in a strict home-schooling environment at a rural property near Eildon in Victoria. 9 Using lawyers, social workers, and doctors to forgo official channels, they were able to forge birth documents and raise over a dozen children to believe they were the birth children of the Hamilton-Byrnes. When children were born inside the compound to cult members, they were raised to believe their birth mothers were instead among a handful of 'aunts', who gave out brutal punishments for whatever they saw fit. PICTURE PERFECT FAMILY From the outside, the family looked picture-perfect as they lived on their compound in Victoria, Australia. Life at Kai Lama seemed healthy and even advanced for its years; it featured yoga, exercise, vegetarian meals, meditation and education. Ben lived on the remote property and was raised alongside dozens of other children for 13 years and recalls living with 28 other kids at one point. "Growing up, it was Anne and Bill, they were mum and dad; and then there were foster kids, and they were kids of other sect members, who would either come up on weekends or stay there for stints of a couple of years," Ben, told the BBC. "The greatest amount of kids at any given stage was 28," he added. Anne and Bill brought up the children as their own, even dressing them in matching outfits and dying their hair bleach blond to appear like a real family. I loved them in their little smocks and jeans and the long hair and ribbons. Anne Hamilton-Byrne cult leader "We were her children. We were different ages. We'd line up von Trapp style (like) The Sound of Music, which we'd watch, dressed in outfits that matched and that was just what we were asked to do," he told the True Crimes Conversation podcast. "You look back on that and you see it's choreographed. "It crafted a belief that she had these children, which she didn't. We were all either adopted or handed over." In an interview years after the children were finally taken from her, Anne said: 'I wanted them to look like brothers and sisters - I must admit this. 'I loved them in their little smocks and jeans and the long hair and ribbons. It was beautiful - it was lovely to see.' Asked why she imprisoned 28 children over two decades, she responded: 'I love children.' 9 9 UNDER WRAPS But in reality, the children were subjected to years of beatings, mind games, isolation, and forced to take drugs by the cult leader, who had convinced more than 500 people she was Jesus Christ. The couple had convinced their followers they were making a 'master race' while teaching a mixture of Christianity and Hinduism. Ben recalls one form of torture Anne liked to perform on the children was waterboarding. It's a method of torture that creates such horrific psychological pain that its use has even been banned in the US military. "We were all lined up. We were belted. Our head held under the bucket of water, interrogated," he said. "Held there until you thought you were suffocating, brought back out again. "Horrendous experience. It caused nightmares. "These things shape your personality." Ben recalls seeing his siblings being beaten with a belt, and says they were given LSD 'as part of an initiation ritual.' 'I was watching her being belted with a buckle and she's being beaten to the point where she's wriggling out of her clothes,' he said of his sister, Sarah. 'Hearing her body smash across the balustrades - it was horrendous to know they had the power to do that and would do it,' he told the MailOnline. She had this ability to be able to be so warm, so loving, so caring, and yet at the same time so manipulative. Ben Shenton Ben says Anne's most effective tactic was to keep the children from forming bonds with each other to keep them all in line. To weed out misdeeds in the children, Anne would perform group interrogations by beating them until someone came clean. Ben said he stayed compliant to avoid punishment. "This was the evil genius of her. She understood that if she could separate us, isolate us, make it so that we couldn't build relationships with one another and punish us, then she could control us," he said. "Anyone who's lived under domestic violence will know the living with fear, the walking on eggshells, the currying favour of those in authority, or the absolute rejection of them, the hatred of them, the love-hate relationship. "It's domestic abuse on steroids," he said. Now, Ben believes Anne was a sociopath or psychopath. "She had this ability to be able to be so warm, so loving, so caring, and yet at the same time so manipulative," he said. 'The Family' Cult Timeline 1968 The Family begins to 'adopt' and acquire children to create a 'master race'. 1974 An official school is set up for the 'master race' children at the Lake Eildon property. 1978 Anne Hamilton marries William (Bill) Byrne and they take the surname Hamilton-Byrne. 1983 Police visit the Lake Eildon property to search for a missing girl. She is not found on the property. 1987 (14 August) Combined police raid on sect property at Lake Eildon. Anne is overseas. Bill is present at the raid but is not charged. The children are removed from the sect and placed into care. 1987 (Oct/Nov) Bill flees to Hawaii to meet Anne. 1987 (12 December) Detective Lex de Man is called to investigate. He learns about The Family. 1989 (about June) Lex de Man writes a report recommending Victoria Police commence a criminal investigation into The Family. 1989 (11 December) Operation Forest Task Force commences. 1993 (4 June) Anne and Bill are arrested in the Catskill Mountains, Upstate New York. 1993 (17 August) Anne and Bill are extradited to Australia. 1993 (31 August) Anne and Bill appear in the Victorian Magistrates' Court, charged with conspiracy to defraud and commit perjury by falsely registering the births of triplets. 1994 In the County Court, Anne and Bill avoid prison and are fined $5000 each. 2001 Bill dies, leaving Anne to lead a diminishing group of followers. 2019 At 97, Anne lives in the dementia wing of a suburban Melbourne nursing home. CAUGHT IN THE ACT It wasn't until 1987 that the cult was finally searched by 100 police officers and the children were rescued. At the time, a 15-year-old Ben was doing his scheduled yoga class when police stormed in. His sister, Sarah Moore, had managed to escape the cult at 17 and headed straight to the police to tell them what was going on. Not taking any chances, police stormed the property and rescued six children, including Ben. While he was reluctant to go with them at first, he soon realised this was his path to freedom. He recalls: 'I think I got this epiphanal moment, realising this is the ticket out of here. So I just I let go, and I went with them." It was only then that Ben found out he was not their biological son and was handed over by his mother Joy, who stayed in the cult as an 'aunt'. At the time, Anne was in Hawaii while Bill stayed on the compound, but he wasn't arrested. Later, he went to New York to meet Anne before the pair were arrested and extradited back to Australia. While many of the children came forward with claims of abuse, both Anne and Bill were only charged with conspiracy to defraud and perjury by falsely registering the birth of triplets. The pair were spared jail and fined just £2,300 each for the crime. Detective Lex de Man, who investigated the case, says evidence of abuse was unable to be taken to court despite multiple victims coming forward. Detective de Man recently told The Age: 'My only regret is she was never held totally to account for the misery she caused to the former cult children. 'I have no sympathy for the woman I consider the most evil person I ever met in my police career.' LIFE NOW Ben moved into foster care when he left the cult, and while lying on his bunk bed with fresh pyjamas and a meal in his tummy, he realised he'd never go back to The Family again "I realised then I (didn't) have to do this anymore, I'm free. I don't need to go back," he said. "That, to me, was when I shut the door." Four decades on, Ben is a proud husband to Rajes and a dad to Ellie and Callum, who live in Perth, Australia. He has written a book on his time in the cult, Life Behind the Wire, and runs the organisation, Rescue The Family, to raise awareness on cult manipulation. In 2019, Anne passed away while in a Melbourne care home at the age of 98 and Ben has reconnected with his biological mother. "What Anne did was evil. She used the name of Christ to give herself validity. She used a belief system," Ben said. "Justice was not done." 9
