Tillie CRAIG
Tillie CRAIG
A woman who allegedly beat her 2-year-old daughter to death at a cult 30 years ago has landed in Australia this afternoon.
Ellen Craig, a New Zealand citizen, was ordered to be extradited to Australia to face charges of murdering her daughter Tillie Craig while living at the Ministry of God cult near Sydney in 1987.
The cult's leader, Alexander Wilon, who ran the sect under the name Alfio Nicolosi, is also facing charges of accessory to murder and misconduct in regard to corpses.
Judge Ian Carter ordered Craig be extradited to Australia at a hearing in the Palmerston North District Court in March.
Judge Carter gave her 15 days to appeal against that decision, which lapsed without Craig making an appeal.
A court date is yet to be set for Craig but her co-offender is due to appear in the Bathurst Local Court again in mid-June. Craig was arrested in late 2021 by New Zealand Police at her home in Palmerston North. She'd been living in the city for the better part of 34 years and had spent some of that time working with survivors of domestic abuse at the Women's Refuge.
According to a summary of facts presented to the Palmerston North District Court in late March, police allege Craig beat her daughter Tillie to death with a piece of PVC piping. Craig and Wilon then allegedly burnt the body, which has to this day never been found.
The cult was known as the Ministry of God and according to a former member called Margaret* the abuse of children was encouraged.
"I witnessed extreme abuse of Tillie principally by Alfio. Almost every day Tillie was repeatedly dragged into the bathroom by Alfio who would then proceed to hit her with a wooden-backed brush," Margaret said.
"I'd also seen him smack her across the face so hard she got a black eye."
Tillie was never officially reported as a missing person and authorities were only made aware of her disappearance when a witness came forward in 2019.
After the alleged murder, Craig was expelled from the cult and moved home to New Zealand where she used the name Jowelle Smith for three years, before changing it again and working at the Palmerston North Women's Refuge under the name "Erena Craig".
Her former colleagues and neighbours described Craig as paranoid, elusive and erratic and she was let go from her role at Women's Refuge for those reasons. Australian Police received a tip-off in 2019 that Tillie was missing and claim it was the first time it had known about her disappearance. However, Tillie's father Gerard Stanhope had been searching for his daughter for years, including leaving messages for her on an Australian missing persons page long after Tillie was presumed to have died.
"I spent years looking for you. It almost consumed me," he wrote.
Stanhope told Open Justice his former partner changed her name when she moved to New Zealand in what he believes was an effort to elude him.
"Right now, I'm trusting that the New South Wales Police have their ducks in a row and that some kind of justice will be served."
Craig was at her Kāinga Ora home when police came knocking on her door last November as part of a joint operation with NSW Police.
Wilon was arrested at an address in rural Sydney at the same time.
Craig has been in custody since, appearing via video link several times this year as she fought to remain in New Zealand.
Craig argued she's too unwell to travel but the lawyer acting on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia, Guy Carter, told the court this month there was no reason Australia couldn't manage those health conditions.
"Why should the fact that Ms Craig left Australia, changed her name and never returned, why should that grant her an advantage in avoiding trial for murder?" he said.
A woman who beat her young daughter to death while in a NSW cult has received a maximum nine-year manslaughter sentence, after telling a court she will never forgive herself.
Warning: This story contains graphic details of assault.
"My actions were horrible, terrible, horrific," Ellen Rachel Craig wrote in a letter to the judge.
"I am sorry that my terrible decisions as a mother exposed her to so much danger in that place."
The 62-year-old's arrest in New Zealand and extradition in May 2022 followed decades of secrecy about what happened to her daughter, Tillie, at the cult's Porters Retreat property near Oberon in 1987.
There, members lived regimented lives under self-styled religious leader Alexander Wilon, who had control over finances and kept followers isolated.
Craig pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the NSW Supreme Court in June.
According to a statement of agreed facts in her case, followers were "disciplined" by Mr Wilon for perceived failures to follow rules, allegedly including beatings with fists and plastic pipes.
That document outlines how members of "The Family" were required to physically discipline their children and alleges Mr Wilon personally disciplined Tillie with a long wooden brush "almost daily".
In July 1987, Craig yelled at and repeatedly hit Tillie with a length of plastic irrigation tubing, unhappy with the two-year-old's efforts to sweep a pathway.
"Oh no, no she's gone," Craig said when she realised her daughter was unresponsive.
That beating constituted excessive discipline and was both unlawful and dangerous, according to the prosecution's case.
"To say that the circumstances of Tillie's death are tragic would be a gross understatement," Justice Natalie Adams said today in sentencing.
"She died at the hands of someone whose role it was to protect her."
Tillie's body was placed in a 44-gallon drum, allegedly by Mr Wilon, and burned before her ashes were scattered in a river at the back of the property, the agreed facts say.
"I will never forgive myself for what I have done," she wrote in her letter.
"All I can try to do is live with it and atone for it however I can."
Justice Adams said Craig's motive was to discipline her child in an environment where "significant corporal punishment was normalised", assessing the seriousness of the case as being above the mid range.
The judge handed her a maximum nine-year sentence and a non-parole period of six, making a finding of special circumstances.
Justice Adams was satisfied Craig has reasonable prospects of rehabilitation and is genuinely remorseful.
"It is regrettable that this remorse came so late," she added.
In Craig's letter to the court, she had difficulty explaining a "sense of detachment" from her daughter while at the cult.
"Something happened to me as a mother when I was at Porters Retreat,"she said.
Craig accepted that she "completely let her down".
"I want justice for Tillie through this process," she wrote.
"That is frightening to me but I now understand and I am at peace with the purpose of my imprisonment."
Tillie's father, Gerard Stanhope, searched for her for years and obtained court orders prohibiting Craig from leaving NSW with the girl. At one point he was granted custody.
He told the court in a victim impact statement that losing his daughter was "a wound that never heals".
Craig was expelled from the cult and flew to New Zealand, where she changed her name.
Mr Stanhope continued his search, but Craig claimed to have given Tillie to a South African couple.
She was arrested after a former cult member attended a workshop for survivors and then went to authorities.
She is likely to be deported to New Zealand at the expiration of her non-parole period in 2027.
Mr Wilon was charged with accessory after the fact to murder, but in June this year he was found unfit to be tried under mental health and cognitive impairment legislation.