INTRODUCING — Dark Menace

Esther Rockett and top barrister Tom Molomby team up to take on cult leader Serge Benhayon in a high-stakes court battle that puts the "con man from Goonellabah" and his esoteric meditations on show to the public. Together they hatch a plan of attack, and when Serge takes the stand Molomby has a question Serge — and the courtroom — don't see coming.

To combat outside scrutiny from the "dark forces" of the media, Universal Medicine creates its own propaganda department. It's a red rag to a bull for the cult's arch critic, Esther Rockett. Inspired by WikiLeaks, she starts a blog lampooning Serge and exposing the cult's practices in forensic detail. As she's getting relentlessly attacked, and paid a visit by the police, she's ready to move on. That's before Serge decides to sue.

Helen doesn't know her psychologist is devoted to the cult of Universal Medicine. So when she finally seeks help for her childhood trauma, she thinks she can trust this registered health professional. Soon, she's been referred to spiritual healers, sent to a masseuse for "esoteric breast massage" and put on the path to meeting cult leader Serge Benhayon.

When Serge Benhayon had a spiritual epiphany sitting on the toilet nearly 30 years ago, he says he became possessed with all the knowledge of the universe. With these secrets at his fingertips, Serge invented four "esoteric" healing therapies and began to train up followers devoted to his way of life. That’s how the cult of Universal Medicine was born. 

Serge Benhayon has been leading a cult out of the Byron Bay hinterland — just south of the Queensland border — for more than a decade. He was found by a jury to be a charlatan who swindles cancer patients. Yet every time he comes under attack, his followers close ranks around him. 

Before police raided Mark Dennis’s Sydney terrace, two tradies saw something inside that left them rattled. At the front door, a doormat told visitors to “come back with a warrant”. But it was what covered the interior walls that stayed with them for years. 

As the founder of a famous Cambodian orphanage rubbed shoulders with Hollywood stars, like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, a Sydney barrister was quietly becoming one of the charity's most powerful backers. To staff, Mark Dennis SC was “the big boss”. Few dared to question him. Even when he made them feel afraid. 

He was a silk at Sydney's most prestigious criminal defence chambers. And the former chairman of a celebrated charity protecting vulnerable children, where some called him "godfather". But he went by the alias of "Dark Menace" — and was allegedly hiding a sinister double life. Within weeks of that becoming known, he was dead.  

When police raided a terrace in Sydney's inner west, they found an iPad with a note: if this device connects to the internet, its contents will delete. That house belonged to one of Sydney's top criminal barristers.  A driven man who moved through courtrooms and corridors of power with ease.  But the man had dark secrets too.  And so, when the truth about him surfaces, it sets off a reckoning that stretches from Sydney’s most prestigious criminal defence chambers to the neon-lit bars of Phnom Penh. alleged crimes were hidden for so long. 

It would be a game changer if it happened. But the challenges facing a proposed proton cancer treatment centre in Sydney are stacking up. It begs the question: why are an unpaid volunteer and private developer stepping in to provide a life-saving cancer treatment that Australian families have been demanding for years?