Police charge cult's self-proclaimed saviour with sex offences

Sydney Morning Herald/August 10, 2002
By Philip Cornford

Two girls, aged 14 and 15 at the time, are the alleged victims of sexual assault by outcast Catholic cult leader William Kamm - aka Little Pebble - who claims he will be the pope who leads mankind into the Apocalypse.

A sister of one of the girls, then aged 13, is the alleged victim of Kamm's chief disciple, James Duffy, 73, who has been charged with aggravated indecent assault.

The offences are said to have occurred in 1993 and 1994, when the girls were living with their parents, members of Kamm's Order of St Charbel, in a closed community on a rural property at Cambewarra, south of Nowra.

Kamm declined any interviews yesterday. One of his 200 followers said his lawyers had advised him to say nothing.

The gate into the property was closed and guarded by a follower in the brown monk's habit worn by Kamm's closest attendants, who are also his bodyguards.

Nearby, about 30 children enjoyed the brief 11am recess from the community school, playing on a football field in the shadow of a three-metre-high white cross.

Kamm, 52, who says he began talking to God and the Virgin Mary when he was 18, faces nine charges after 40 police, led by the Child Protection Enforcement Agency, raided the community on Thursday.

He is charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault and inciting an act of indecency against the 14-year-old, and with one count of aggravated sexual assault and four counts of aggravated indecent assault against the 15-year-old.

Kamm and Duffy were bailed to appear in Nowra Local Court on September 9. Police said they also found weapons and ammunition, but no charges had yet been laid over these.

A charismatic doomsayer who has married twice and is the father of several children, Kamm recently predicted that a comet would soon crash into the Earth, wiping out a quarter of humanity and causing tidal waves that will inundate most of Australia.

He has convinced his followers that he has been chosen by God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary to become the final pope, Peter II, who will be anointed after the destruction of the Antichrist, who will succeed Pope John Paul II.

Kamm's Web site says he will lead "the Church through the great apostasy and into the Glorious Reign of Christ at His Second Coming at the end of time".

He was given the name Little Pebble, he says, by the Mother of God.

The Catholic Church issued a decree six weeks ago repudiating Kamm's "absurd pretensions" and saying: "There is nothing supernatural about the alleged visions."