Fabic Behaviour Specialists Universal Medicine cult connection on ABC 730

NDIS provider Fabic Behaviour Specialists remains closely connected with the Universal Medicine cult despite Supreme Court findings that UM’s leader, Serge Benhayon, vilifies people with disabilities.

Links: Clinic associated with cult that teaches that people with disability are experiencing ‘karma’ receives thousands in NDIS funds

ABC 730 VIDEO: NDIS funding links to a cult that teaches that disabilities are ‘karma’

That was just one of thirty-six damning allegations proven against Serge Benhayon at the defamation trial of Benhayon v Rockett in 2018. Serge spent five days in the witness box diligently proving he’s an ableist and a charlatan, and that it’s true to say that Universal Medicine is a healing fraud that harms people, and that he has indecently touched healing clients, has an indecent interest in juvenile girls, and is the leader of an exploitative cult.

Fabic was going to headline my Universal Medicine cult Naming Names update blog earlier this year, but I held off when national current affairs programme ABC 730 took an interest.

Fabic Behaviour Specialists is a business owned by Tanya Curtis and based at Carrara on the Gold Coast. It has grown substantially since providing services to recipients of the taxpayer funded National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and operates at several locations including the Benhayon owned Unimed Brisbane premises at Brougham Street, Fairfield.

Fabic is mostly staffed by longterm Benhayon acolytes, including five AHPRA registered health professionals: psychologist, Sarah Broome; provisional psychologists Emily Rutherford and Joss Ferguson; occupational therapist Annie Tran; and speech therapist Kathryn Maroney. Tanya Curtis and ‘Behaviour counsellor’ Julie Ferguson were advertising their services at Unimed Brisbane up until recently — Ferguson as a practitioner of Benhayon’s bogus healing modalities.

Co-owner, with Serge Benhayon, of Unimed Brisbane, Susan Scully, is listed on the Fabic website as the enterprise’s accountant. Scully is also on the board of the bent charity Benhayon founded, the College of Universal Medicine, that ran afoul of the Australian Tax Office and had its endorsement to receive tax deductible donations revoked.

The College of Universal Medicine ran courses training cult members to become carers. As I told the ABC: ‘This was clear to me when I began blogging about them, that this group operated as a cartel with a system of internal referrals… They would bring in vulnerable clients from the outside and funnel them into Universal Medicine businesses.’

Fabic has operated from UniMed Brisbane for at least eight years, and continues to do so despite failing to disclose that location in recent publicity.

The Benhayon and Scully owned Unimed Brisbane premises is currently on the market. Scully and co. appealed to fellow followers to fund its purchase for $1.8 million in 2010, and in court Benhayon admitted that his worshippers contributed over a quarter of a million dollars to its mortgage up to 2016. We’re looking forward to finding out how much he profits from its multimillion dollar sale, and whether he’ll refund followers’ contributions.

Fabic psychologist Sarah Broome (nee Davis) also deserves special mention. We know her as a long-term promoter and defender of the Benhayons and their shonky businesses — founding the now defunct anti-media front ‘Real Media Real Change’; as a founding member of the UM FACTS Team behind defamatory attacks on critics; as an organiser of UM’s Girl to Woman Festival who told Tenterfield citizens to call the cops if they heard from me; and as a promoter of UM’s bogus therapies to a breast cancer support group among others. Sarah Broome was listed on the Fabic website until weeks ago.

She has chosen, as a registered psychologist, to associate with a healing fraud and this kind of non evidence-based claptrap from Fabic and Serge Benhayon.

Tanya Curtis has removed that quote in the past weeks, but has been chipped by the press in 2018 and 2019 for her Benhayon promos.

Adding to my comments in the ABC reports, Benhayon’s views on the ‘karma’ of disability are vile and offensive. He has vilified disabled people by preaching that their disabilities are punishment for past life sins, clearly depicting them as lesser human beings. He has also used the threat of future disability against followers he reckons aren’t insufficiently committed to his perverse religious racket. He has openly likened them to the apostle Judas, who he says was punished for betraying Christ with many reincarnations with disabilities. The Supreme Court also found that he ‘promotes fraudulent ideas of karma for self-gain’.

The lot listed above have chosen to continue their allegiance to this proven charlatan, and they’ve continued their commercial connection to his profit-making healing fraud — operating at a cult premises alongside practitioners of bogus therapies. It calls into question their ethics and their competence to provide taxpayer funded services to vulnerable clients.

As I said to the ABC: ‘It’s just grim that this is another hurdle for disabled people, that they have to be wary of operators who could lure them into a group like this and could bring them to a premises of somebody who has these views and get government funding for it.’

None of us should have to warn people with disabilities and their loved ones to be on the lookout for unscrupulous operators seeking to exploit them for their NDIS funds. The agency should be ensuring that funds are achieving maximum value for clients, and are never misused. I’m sorry to say to consumers of health or support services, if you happen to fall into the clutches of a substandard provider, you’re on your own. If you’re not feeling that services are worth the funds, I suggest ditching the provider and asking around for a better one.

It’s also bloody irritating that I’m doing more, as an individual, at my own expense, to protect the public from what I proved, comprehensively, is a dangerous and exploitative cult, than any of this country’s authorities. UM needs to be officially monitored to make sure that the vulnerable are kept safe from this enterprise. Thankfully the press helps, but the fact that regulators are doing little to nothing to protect the public here is simply wrong.

The federal government is inviting public feedback until 25 August 2023 on the operation of the NDIS. You can make a submission at this link.