Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and watars.
Speaker 2: This podcast was recorded on it's early twenty fifteen and
Speaker 2: single mum and entrepreneur Bell Gibson is living a life
Speaker 2: of luxury and success. She has a widely popular recipe
Speaker 2: app called The Whole Pantry, which features nourishing, plant based recipes,
Speaker 2: and she's preparing to release a book of the same name.
Speaker 2: Last year, she was named El Magazine's Most Aspiring Woman
Speaker 2: You've Met This Year and was Cosmo Magazine's Fun Fearless
Speaker 2: Female Recipient. Her app claimed the Apple title of Best
Speaker 2: Food and Drink App of twenty thirteen, and a few
Speaker 2: short years later, she's already enjoying over one million in sales.
Speaker 2: Her empire is built on an inspiring story of triumph,
Speaker 2: a harrowing and heartwarming story of survival. She first started
Speaker 2: posting about her ignant brain cancer on Instagram in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Diagnosed in two thousand and nine at the age of twenty,
Speaker 2: she was given just four months to live. Instead of
Speaker 2: doing the usual chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Belle opted for
Speaker 2: alternative remedies and as she shared with her growing fan base,
Speaker 2: they worked, they healed her. She spoke of a healthy
Speaker 2: diet free of gluten and sugar, of salt, vitamin and
Speaker 2: oxygen treatments, of the power of colonics, and the benefits
Speaker 2: of Arabatic medicine, an ancient Indian holistic healing system. She
Speaker 2: encouraged her hundreds of thousands of followers to empower themselves
Speaker 2: and reclaim their lives through wellness, to heal themselves like
Speaker 2: she did naturally. But it was all a lie, all
Speaker 2: of it, and it was one of her close friends
Speaker 2: who first cottoned on to the truth. I'm Jemma Bath
Speaker 2: and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast
Speaker 2: exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
Speaker 2: people who know the most about them. A brand new
Speaker 2: series has just dropped on Netflix. I was diagnosed with
Speaker 2: a stage four brain shimmer. That was four years ago.
Speaker 2: Human beings are capable of anything.
Speaker 1: I was on a quest to heal myself naturally. I flirt,
Speaker 1: seek ours role and honest.
Speaker 2: Applesider Vinegar follows the story of Belle Gibson's success, lies,
Speaker 2: and demise and right Now It's the DV show everyone's
Speaker 2: talking about. Her unraveling started because of a suspicious friend.
Speaker 2: For Chanelle mccauloff, there were certain parts of her story
Speaker 2: that weren't adding up, certain incidents and symptoms that raised
Speaker 2: her eyebrow. Eventually, it would be Chanell that would first
Speaker 2: confront the conwoman. She was the whistleblower that brought down
Speaker 2: her web of lies and uncovered the damage she was
Speaker 2: doing to sick, vulnerable people. In Apple Side of Vinegar,
Speaker 2: the character of Chanell looks a little bit different to
Speaker 2: real life. In real life, Chanelle had no relationship with
Speaker 2: jess Ainsco, another wellness influencer who was actually living with
Speaker 2: cancer whose story is best represented by the character of
Speaker 2: Miller in the show. She wasn't working for Bell, just
Speaker 2: a friend of Belle's, but she is the one who
Speaker 2: confronted her in her house and went to the media.
Speaker 2: As Belle's story is once again thrust before an international audience,
Speaker 2: we got the chance to speak to Chanelle. Chanelle Bell
Speaker 2: Gibson's name is once again everywhere. It's making headlines because
Speaker 2: there's a Netflix series out about her life and her crimes.
Speaker 2: Have you watched it?
Speaker 3: I have seen this, so I did have to force
Speaker 3: myself to watch it. I'm overall I'm not entirely a
Speaker 3: huge fan of the show for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: That we can chat about if you like.
Speaker 3: But yes, it seems to be a very big story
Speaker 3: in the media right now.
Speaker 2: So originally you weren't going to watch it, were you?
Speaker 3: No, I wasn't. I'm not entirely comfortable with dramatization and
Speaker 3: sensationalization of the story. The show has distorted the truth
Speaker 3: a little bit as well, And I'm not that comfortable
Speaker 3: with the capitalization of the harm that was caused to
Speaker 3: people with cancer. So yeah, there's obviously Netflix and a
Speaker 3: film studio and people profiting from that harm that was caused.
Speaker 3: I've sort of been thinking a lot about the ethics
Speaker 3: behind this kind of storytelling on that platform. I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely comfortable with the way that these two characters Beal
Speaker 3: and Miller, who Miller is based on a real life person,
Speaker 3: jess Ainsco, who actually did have cancer and was trying
Speaker 3: to heal her cancer naturally through wellness and natural remedies.
Speaker 3: They've pitted these two women against each other in the show,
Speaker 3: which actually didn't occur in real life, and I think
Speaker 3: it's quite a cliche, unoriginal, stereotypical narrative to kind of
Speaker 3: pit women against each other competitively as rivals, bitchy, gossipy,
Speaker 3: which is kind of what was depicted in the show.
Speaker 3: I just think it was really unnecessary, and I hope
Speaker 3: that the core messages that are really important about this story,
Speaker 3: about the harm that was cause to people, about how
Speaker 3: we can easily be misled or consume misinformation online. I
Speaker 3: just hope that those important messages aren't lost through the
Speaker 3: glamorization of this show.
Speaker 2: About your character in the show, because they use your name,
Speaker 2: but your character is kind of an amalgamation of you
Speaker 2: and you know, other people in Bell's life. How did
Speaker 2: you feel about the way they portrayed you.
Speaker 3: I actually was pleasantly surprised how my character was portrayed.
Speaker 3: I had no idea what they were going to do
Speaker 3: with it. I mean, obviously there's many things about my
Speaker 3: character and in the show that aren't accurate. For example,
Speaker 3: I wasn't Bell's manager or jess ains Co's manager Miller's character.
Speaker 3: I did know jess ains Co, but we weren't close friends. However,
Speaker 3: the scenes where I confront Bell, which is now dubbed
Speaker 3: the intervention where I am urging her to come forward
Speaker 3: and tell the truth. There was a lot of main
Speaker 3: parts of that scene that were really accurate, and I
Speaker 3: found that scene to be really compelling, and I think
Speaker 3: it's really important for me for the world to see
Speaker 3: that I did urge Belle to come forward and tell
Speaker 3: the truth. I never set out to expose Belle to
Speaker 3: have Belle canceled. I actually went to her as her
Speaker 3: friend and said, if you come forward and tell the truth,
Speaker 3: I will help you. I'll support you with the fallout.
Speaker 3: And she refused to and had she done that, things
Speaker 3: could have played out so much differently for her.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to the start of your
Speaker 2: story because it is quite different to the Netflix show.
Speaker 2: Tell us about how you met Belle.
Speaker 3: Sure So, I was actually doing a writing internship for
Speaker 3: a publication in Melbourne at the time, and they were
Speaker 3: more just interested in doing a puff piece on her.
Speaker 3: It was we were kind of interested in what she
Speaker 3: was doing with food and technology and being innovative and
Speaker 3: this kind.
Speaker 1: Of startup space. So I reached out.
Speaker 3: To her and she invited me to the launch event
Speaker 3: of the Whole Pantry app.
Speaker 1: That night.
Speaker 3: It was quite difficult for us to connect and chat.
Speaker 3: She was hosting the event. There's so many people there
Speaker 3: and so she was talking to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: We just briefly kind of introduced ourselves, and then after
Speaker 3: that event we met up for I think coffee, and
Speaker 3: it was really difficult to kind of get any information
Speaker 3: out of her, and so I just thought I'll just
Speaker 3: build a bit of rupperhor with her. It turned out
Speaker 3: we had some mutual friends. So then we went for
Speaker 3: coffee again and then lunch and dinner, and we were
Speaker 3: at similar events together and naturally just a friendship formed
Speaker 3: from them.
Speaker 2: What did being friends with Bell look like? Was it
Speaker 2: constant messaging? Was it hanging out all the time? Was
Speaker 2: she a good friend?
Speaker 3: Belle was really warm and charismatic. She actually had a
Speaker 3: way of making you feel really special, And looking back,
Speaker 3: I think this was part of kind of it was
Speaker 3: quite calculated on her behalf, because she had to deflect
Speaker 3: from herself so much, and if you've seen interviews with her,
Speaker 3: especially this sixty minutes interviewer in the show, it's very
Speaker 3: difficult to get a straight answer from her. So she
Speaker 3: had a way of really making the attention about the
Speaker 3: other person, so you always felt really kind of special
Speaker 3: and important in her presence. Our friendship looked like going
Speaker 3: out for lunch. It centered a lot around food. And
Speaker 3: what was quite interesting is my partner at the time
Speaker 3: actually had a traumatic brain injury, and Beao really connected
Speaker 3: with him and developed a really close friendship with him
Speaker 3: because she claimed that because of her brain tumor. That
Speaker 3: also meant she had a traumatic brain injury as a
Speaker 3: result of the brain tumor. What with no about Baal
Speaker 3: is that she gravitated to people, especially you know, people
Speaker 3: with cancer, to leverage them to her own advantage, to
Speaker 3: learn about their symptoms and take them on as her own.
Speaker 1: So she was actually doing that with my partner at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: However, you know, I wasn't aware of that, and so yes,
Speaker 3: they they had a close friendship and and out friendship
Speaker 3: circle kind of just grew as well from there.
Speaker 2: What did you think of her success about the whole
Speaker 2: pantry and everything she was doing in that space.
Speaker 3: I was quite impressed by the business she was building.
Speaker 3: She was quite innovative.
Speaker 1: For that era. It was really early.
Speaker 3: Days of social media, especially Instagram. Building an audience, connecting
Speaker 3: with an audience, getting on the Apple Watch. So that
Speaker 3: was compelling to me at the time. This, you know,
Speaker 3: regardless if she was sick or not, this young woman,
Speaker 3: this young single mother, pioneering you know, this this technology
Speaker 3: and this business.
Speaker 1: So that that was that side of it was compelling
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: When did you start getting a weird feeling? What were
Speaker 2: the first things that kind of struck you as odd?
Speaker 3: So behind the scenes, there would be things like we
Speaker 3: would go out drinking and one night, you know, she
Speaker 3: ordered shots and we were doing shots and I said, oh,
Speaker 3: should you really be drinking? Like, you know, she was
Speaker 3: obviously doing this very strict wellness natural protocol to heal
Speaker 3: herself from cancer, so drinking alcohol excessively was kind of
Speaker 3: really in conflict of that. So I said, you know,
Speaker 3: should you be drinking? And she said, well, I'm going
Speaker 3: to die anyway, so why not have some fun. And
Speaker 3: then there was a time where she also went to
Speaker 3: the solarium, which I thought was a bit odd given
Speaker 3: the risk of skin cancer with using solarium. And then
Speaker 3: the biggest thing for me, well, apart from that, she
Speaker 3: never appeared sick ever, never saw her sick. She was
Speaker 3: the epitome of wellness. Right, this beautiful, long, lush hair.
Speaker 3: She was glowing, she was active, happy, and then at
Speaker 3: her son's fourth birthday party, she all of a sudden
Speaker 3: collapsed to the floor and was having what appeared to
Speaker 3: be quite a violent seizure. She was convulsing on the ground,
Speaker 3: saliva was coming out of her mouth, and this went
Speaker 3: on for a really long time, about forty minutes, and
Speaker 3: about halfway through, I said, I'm calling an ambulance, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden she kind of comes out of
Speaker 3: the seizure and says, no, I don't want Western medicine involved,
Speaker 3: and so I said, okay, and then she kind of
Speaker 3: went back into the seizure and then it kind of
Speaker 3: tape it off, and there was just something about it
Speaker 3: that just seems really performative to me. And Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was that day I left that party that I just
Speaker 3: knew in my gut that something was really wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, if I'm not mistaken, it was soon after that
Speaker 2: birthday that she announced that her cancer was spreading. But
Speaker 2: how did you find out about that?
Speaker 3: Yes, so she announced on Instagram that she now had
Speaker 3: stage four cancer. It had spread from her brain to spleen,
Speaker 3: her uterus, in her blood. It was basically a death sentence,
Speaker 3: and myself and most of her close friends we all
Speaker 3: found out by seeing it on her Instagram, which you
Speaker 3: know it was.
Speaker 1: We thought was.
Speaker 3: Quite odd that that's such serious diagnosis, and you know,
Speaker 3: we were all so you know, caring for her and
Speaker 3: concerned about her. So, yeah, it was really strange that
Speaker 3: it wasn't something that she shared with anyone really directly.
Speaker 3: It was just it was just kind of a press announcement.
Speaker 2: Once you had this hunch, it's a big leap to
Speaker 2: go from like having a feeling that something's not quite
Speaker 2: right to actually like talking to someone about it. Did
Speaker 2: you kind of mention it to friends and family, try
Speaker 2: and get some other people involved in how you're feeling.
Speaker 3: Yes, I did go to one of our mutual friends,
Speaker 3: and I shared my concerns with him what I thought
Speaker 3: regret flags and why things didn't add up for me,
Speaker 3: and he started to see that, yeah, okay, some of
Speaker 3: this doesn't make sense. So I asked him if he
Speaker 3: would come with me to basically hold an intervention and
Speaker 3: kind of confront vow and try and get some answers
Speaker 3: from her. So he agreed to do that, and we
Speaker 3: went over to Bell's house unannounced, and we sat her
Speaker 3: down and I just straight out asked her if she
Speaker 3: had cancer, and what did she say? She was acting
Speaker 3: kind of very defensive. She was saying that I was
Speaker 3: interrogating her. She started to slump down in her chair
Speaker 3: and say that she felt sick and was acting kind
Speaker 3: of faint, which at that point I kind of knew
Speaker 3: was based on having scene the seizure, I kind of
Speaker 3: knew that maybe this was another tactic of hers to
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you know, act sick or as
Speaker 3: a way to deflect.
Speaker 1: She said that of course she was sick.
Speaker 3: I basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
Speaker 3: to prove that she had cancer, any scanned, any hospital,
Speaker 3: doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
Speaker 3: those documents because it's negative energy in her house. And
Speaker 3: so I asked her about this stage four diagnosis that
Speaker 3: she had just announced, and I said, what hospital did
Speaker 3: you go to to get that diagnosis? You know, I'm
Speaker 3: sure that it was a major hospital in Melbourne, And
Speaker 3: she said she didn't go to a hospital. She went
Speaker 3: to some random doctor's house in the suburbs. He picked
Speaker 3: her up and drove her there and gave her the diagnosis,
Speaker 3: And I asked her who was that doctor?
Speaker 1: What's his name? And she said doctor Phil.
Speaker 3: And at that point I actually thought it was so
Speaker 3: comical that the story was her story was that ridiculous
Speaker 3: and that so unplausible. So yeah, doctor Phil just had
Speaker 3: me stumped. And so I said, if you if you've
Speaker 3: not had a proper diagnosis at a hospital in some
Speaker 3: random house by this doctor, you know, does that mean
Speaker 3: you're your diagnosis is questionable? And she said, well, possibly
Speaker 3: because doctor Phil's gone missing. He's gone to ground, and
Speaker 3: none of his colleagues know where he is. And so
Speaker 3: obviously that all just sounded even more suspicious and unbelievable.
Speaker 3: So at this point she called Julie Gibbs, their editor
Speaker 3: publisher at Penguin Books. And she's set asking Julie or
Speaker 3: accusing Julie of speaking to her friends, and one of
Speaker 3: her friends is jealous and accusing her of not being sick.
Speaker 1: And did Julie put me up to this? Basically, And
Speaker 1: from what I could tell, Julie must have.
Speaker 3: I think Julie seemed really confused on the end the
Speaker 3: other end of the phone. Well, then called someone else.
Speaker 3: She phoned her acupuncturist and asked him to come over,
Speaker 3: and when he arrived, she said to him, tell them
Speaker 3: that I have cancer.
Speaker 1: And this was kind of.
Speaker 3: Her way to basically prove to us that she had cancer.
Speaker 3: And he said, well, of course you have cancer. And
Speaker 3: I said, well, how do you know that she has cancer?
Speaker 1: And he said, because she told me so.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like it was a short conversation. It
Speaker 2: was over a few hours or so if you had
Speaker 2: all these different phone calls and visitors.
Speaker 3: And yes, it was quite a few hours. I mean
Speaker 3: it seemed like forever at the time. I also went
Speaker 3: upstairs at her house to try and find Clive, her partner,
Speaker 3: who was somewhat involved in her business and the whole pantry.
Speaker 3: And Clive was someone who was kind of really difficult
Speaker 3: to figure out. He was kind of always in the background.
Speaker 3: He was quite withdrawn, very quiet. So I went upstairs
Speaker 3: and I found Clive and I said, Clive, you need
Speaker 3: to tell me the truth. And he said she would
Speaker 3: destroy anyone that tries to expose her, and that he
Speaker 3: needs to protect her little boy. So it was kind
Speaker 3: of a very cryptic, confronting answer I got from him.
Speaker 3: He then came downstairs with me, and he sat down
Speaker 3: with us and we were trying to make sense of
Speaker 3: it all, and it kind of the penny didn't drop
Speaker 3: for me until a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: But he made a comment that night.
Speaker 3: Because I did say it about which you can see
Speaker 3: in the show. I said to her, this is your
Speaker 3: inner circle knocking at your door. This is where it starts,
Speaker 3: and this is where it can end, and urging her
Speaker 3: to come forward on her own terms and tell the truth.
Speaker 3: And at that point when I was saying that, Clive
Speaker 3: said to bow Belle, you need.
Speaker 1: To get the books in order.
Speaker 3: And I think what that sort of meant later on
Speaker 3: was in regards to the charity fraud that Belle was conducting.
Speaker 3: So the books for her business, you know, weren't in order.
Speaker 3: She needed to kind of start covering her tracks or
Speaker 3: start paying the charities. So he was kind of hinting
Speaker 3: to Bowl and basically just just putting it out there
Speaker 3: that she needed to.
Speaker 1: Tie up loose ends.
Speaker 3: So I left that night just being absolutely gobsmacked that
Speaker 3: it just had confirmed everything for me that it was
Speaker 3: all a lie. There was at times for me where
Speaker 3: there was one percent of me that felt what if
Speaker 3: I've got this all wrong. What if I'm accusing this
Speaker 3: poor young woman of not having canceled when.
Speaker 1: She really does.
Speaker 3: But but that night it just solidified everything for me,
Speaker 3: and so I left there urging Bell again to come
Speaker 3: forward and tell the truth.
Speaker 1: And then a few days later I.
Speaker 3: Called her and I asked her if she was ready
Speaker 3: to come forward, and again I was met with defensiveness,
Speaker 3: some aggression. And then it was maybe a week or
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks after that it was her book launch,
Speaker 3: and we actually weren't really obviously kind of friends anymore
Speaker 3: at this point on talking terms. There was a lot
Speaker 3: of tension. She knew that I knew, but I still
Speaker 3: rocked up to her book launch, and as you'll see
Speaker 3: in the show, I stood there in the crowd and
Speaker 3: just really stared at her and just made a point
Speaker 3: of you know that there's someone here that knows and
Speaker 3: is going to hold you accountable. And the book launch, yeah,
Speaker 3: she just acted like nothing was going on.
Speaker 2: Were you angry through all of this? Once you'd had
Speaker 2: that kind of confrontation as they call it, and you
Speaker 2: were kind of waiting for her to admit what were
Speaker 2: the emotions? Was it anger?
Speaker 3: I was very angry. My mother has battled cancer twice.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean we all, we all have a
Speaker 3: connection to someone who's had cancer, or we know of
Speaker 3: someone that have someone close to them who's been touched
Speaker 3: by cancer. So yeah, it made me very angry at
Speaker 3: What was so alarming is that the message she was
Speaker 3: putting out was so dangerous because really vulnerable people, people
Speaker 3: with cancer, were making really serious decisions about their life
Speaker 3: and about their health. So yeah, it made my blood boil,
Speaker 3: especially because now I knew that I made her aware
Speaker 3: of how serious the situation was. There's been speculation and
Speaker 3: kind of this narrative about it was just this young
Speaker 3: woman who was very naive, this lie got away with
Speaker 3: her and it snowballed. However, that's not what I experienced
Speaker 3: When I went to her and you know, made her
Speaker 3: really aware of how serious this wasn't and urged her
Speaker 3: to come forward, she just doubled down.
Speaker 2: I think the part of it that gets to me
Speaker 2: as well is, and I'd love your insight on this,
Speaker 2: is how she would gravitate towards people that were sick
Speaker 2: and then kind of be a bit of a chameleon
Speaker 2: and emulate the things that she was seeing that's a
Speaker 2: very calculated thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's what's also very tragic about this
Speaker 3: story is there were very sick, vulnerable people that she
Speaker 3: got very close to. One was a little boy who
Speaker 3: did have brain cancer, and she was fund raising on
Speaker 3: behalf of him and his family to pay for him
Speaker 3: to potentially have life saving surgery, and that money was
Speaker 3: never handed over, and unfortunately that little boy has passed away.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he passed away.
Speaker 3: Because of his association with Belle, but also he was
Speaker 3: at the birthday party that day that she faked the seizure,
Speaker 3: so that little boy Bell's son, they had to witness
Speaker 3: this lie sort of firsthand as well. So the impact
Speaker 3: it had on, you know, really vulnerable people is actually
Speaker 3: it is so shocking.
Speaker 2: After the break, Chanelle tells us about how she approached
Speaker 2: the journalists who would help her expose Belle Gibson's lies
Speaker 2: to the world. What did you do next? Obviously you
Speaker 2: could see that book launch, she wasn't admitting anything. Do
Speaker 2: you go to the police, do you go straight to
Speaker 2: the journalists? What are your next steps?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the first step I took was going to
Speaker 3: the police, and the police said that I didn't have
Speaker 3: any evidence, which I didn't, and it's obviously very difficult
Speaker 3: to get access to someone's medical records. So yeah, the
Speaker 3: police basically turned me away. I went to a very
Speaker 3: high profile lawyer and he accused me of basically defamation
Speaker 3: and slander. He happened to have a very close friend
Speaker 3: who had cancer, and he was telling me that he
Speaker 3: can't even fathom the thought of someone going around accusing,
Speaker 3: you know, someone of cancer, of lying and faking. So yeah,
Speaker 3: for some reason that the lawyer, he kind of took
Speaker 3: it quite personally, and yeah, it made me feel very
Speaker 3: uncomfortable and didn't help me. I then went to Australia's
Speaker 3: top investigative journalist at the time hadn't heard of Bell before.
Speaker 3: He said he might look into it, he might not,
Speaker 3: and I never heard back from him again. This ended
Speaker 3: up being over a period of sort of kind of
Speaker 3: weeks two months, and yeah, I was talking to people
Speaker 3: I knew. I was trying to leverage my network to
Speaker 3: see if anyone could put me in touch with someone
Speaker 3: credible who would believe me, who could vouch for me
Speaker 3: that I was telling the truth. And yeah, so it
Speaker 3: took quite a long time. To get to that point,
Speaker 3: and during that period I started to feel very powerless
Speaker 3: and realized how challenging and difficult it is to essentially
Speaker 3: kind of be a whistleblower and come forward with the
Speaker 3: truth and have people look into it and fact check
Speaker 3: it and stop people from causing harm. So that was
Speaker 3: really disheartening. So then eventually my former boss spoke to
Speaker 3: the editor or someone high up at the AGE and
Speaker 3: they got one of their journalists to get in touch
Speaker 3: with me, and that journalist was Bo Donnelly, who with
Speaker 3: Nick Tuscano, they have published the book The Woman Who
Speaker 3: Fooled the World, which the Netflix show has been adapted from. So,
Speaker 3: as Bo tells the story, he just thought that this
Speaker 3: was just some random tip off that he had to
Speaker 3: check off his list, that maybe it was a jealous
Speaker 3: friend with an axe to grind, or you know, they
Speaker 3: get tip offs come into the newsroom all the time,
Speaker 3: and most of them don't really go anywhere. So he
Speaker 3: actually just called me on his lunch break. He was
Speaker 3: at a cafe. He was very noisy. I just started
Speaker 3: to tell him what I knew, what I experienced, and
Speaker 3: what my motivation was for coming forward, which was just
Speaker 3: for Bale to stop causing harm to vulnerable people and
Speaker 3: spreading this misinformation.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 3: Bo very quickly from that call felt that I was
Speaker 3: very credible and started to look into the case straight away.
Speaker 2: In the Netflix show, the first article that they release
Speaker 2: is that money fraud angle, you know, the charities that
Speaker 2: weren't getting the donations that Belle promised. Is that what
Speaker 2: happened in real life? Is that the only angle they
Speaker 2: could put out to start with.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. The Age also couldn't run.
Speaker 3: A story that they were just suspecting that this woman
Speaker 3: didn't have cancer. The lawyers of the Age shut it
Speaker 3: down very quickly because again the Age couldn't get access
Speaker 3: to her medical records. There was no way to verify
Speaker 3: the status of her health. And so the journalists Boe
Speaker 3: and Nick they thought, well, if she's lying about something
Speaker 3: as big as this, as big as having cancer, and
Speaker 3: broadcasting that to the world, then what else is she
Speaker 3: lying about? And I shared with them that comment that
Speaker 3: Clive had made the night that I had confronted Belle
Speaker 3: about the state of the business books, and so they
Speaker 3: started looking into whether she had actually made any donations
Speaker 3: to the charities that she had been fundraising on behalf
Speaker 3: of and they all said they never received a cent
Speaker 3: from her.
Speaker 2: So once that angle is out there, that's obviously a
Speaker 2: huge hit to Bell and that's the start, that's how
Speaker 2: it starts to kind of unravel more publicly. Were they
Speaker 2: then able to verify the cancer claims? How did they
Speaker 2: manage to get that part of the investigation out sure?
Speaker 3: So coincidentally, around this time that I had gone to
Speaker 3: the journalists at that age and they had reported on
Speaker 3: her charity fraud, there was actually a journalist at the Australian,
Speaker 3: Richard Gilliot, who had started to look into Boo and
Speaker 3: he'd think he'd written some stories about Jessain's Coe, who
Speaker 3: in the Netflix show is the character Miller. His wife
Speaker 3: actually had cancer and I think she had looked into
Speaker 3: natural remedies and she'd kind of come across jess And
Speaker 3: then as a result of that Richard it was actually
Speaker 3: from Richard's own personal experience with his wife that he
Speaker 3: started then sort of looking into these people, and then
Speaker 3: he actually at the same time was starting to unravel
Speaker 3: at all. And then it was very shortly after the
Speaker 3: Age had broken the charity fraud story. I think it
Speaker 3: was within a few days that Richard Gilliot The Australian
Speaker 3: broke the story that Belle didn't have cancer, he met
Speaker 3: with her and she said the same thing to her
Speaker 3: to him, that her diagnosis was questionable and she herself
Speaker 3: actually didn't know for certain if she had cancer or not.
Speaker 2: Once these stories and investigations started to get published, did
Speaker 2: any of it shock you? Was there any kind of
Speaker 2: revelations that came out that you didn't realize?
Speaker 3: Nothing was really shocking to me at that point anymore.
Speaker 3: When it came to bell I feel like I kind
Speaker 3: of seen the worst of it, especially with that seizure.
Speaker 3: It's just it's something I'll never i don't know, be
Speaker 3: able to get out of my mind.
Speaker 1: And the way the children reacted that day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, nothing, nothing really surprised me or shocked me
Speaker 3: about bal anymore. There were things that came out people
Speaker 3: from her past, her childhood, things like she had gone
Speaker 3: to acting school and things like that, which I mean
Speaker 3: kind of made sense to me. I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's true or not. Yeah, I mean it was it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, it didn't surprise me that it came out
Speaker 3: that she had been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 3: She had been in this skating forum, in this skating
Speaker 3: community where she was telling all these people that she'd
Speaker 3: had heart surgeries and she died on the operating table
Speaker 3: and had been brought back to life and had all
Speaker 3: these life threatening diseases, and as a result of that,
Speaker 3: people in that community were sending her flowers and give
Speaker 3: her lots of attention. So, I mean, it was interesting
Speaker 3: to see kind of some of the origin of where
Speaker 3: this all began for her and why, and that this
Speaker 3: was obviously a pattern.
Speaker 2: Did you have any contact with her during that time
Speaker 2: as it was all unraveling.
Speaker 3: The day the first story broke, I did send her
Speaker 3: a text message that that's the final communication I've had
Speaker 3: with her, and I haven't heard from her since then.
Speaker 2: What did you say in the text message?
Speaker 3: I said that so Belle always had this saying that
Speaker 3: she would say, and for example, she posted it on
Speaker 3: this stage four cancer diagnosis on her Instagram when she
Speaker 3: announced that, and she should always say, you know, I've
Speaker 3: now got stage four cancer, but don't worry, I've got this,
Speaker 3: or I'm fundraising all this money to help this boy,
Speaker 3: you know, get life saving surgery. I've got this, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, I sent her a text message that day
Speaker 3: as soon as the first article broke, and I said,
Speaker 3: you should check the news, but you've got this right.
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a job, a fair enough job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I've done a lot of soul searching in
Speaker 3: the last ten years and have tried to forgive Bao,
Speaker 3: which I can't and I'm not sure I ever can.
Speaker 3: But at that point, you know, I was really relieved
Speaker 3: that she couldn't keep spreading the lies that she was
Speaker 3: and I was doing. And I was so frustrated and
Speaker 3: really angry that it took so long for the truth
Speaker 3: to come out, and that she was, you know, so
Speaker 3: combative to come out and tell the truth herself. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's why I sent the text message. I was kind
Speaker 3: of kind of just at my wits end with it all.
Speaker 2: Well at all. Obviously really unraveled quickly once you know,
Speaker 2: the charity stuff had been exposed, the cancer was fake.
Speaker 2: There's this sixty minutes interview that's really famous. She's in
Speaker 2: a pink turtleneck and she's kind of been forced to,
Speaker 2: I guess, kind of admit, but she doesn't really. She
Speaker 2: kind of does this evasive kind of around the questions,
Speaker 2: even though all the truth is already out there by then.
Speaker 2: You had three heart operations, you suffered two cardiac arrests,
Speaker 2: you died twice on the operating table, you had a stroke,
Speaker 2: and you were diagnosed with inoprople brain shimmer and given
Speaker 2: four months to live correct and I just happened. I
Speaker 2: still have the heart condition and I was supposed to
Speaker 2: have surgery for that. You were supposed to have surgery
Speaker 2: and I didn't. How did you feel watching that interview?
Speaker 3: That interview was really difficult to watch, but it was
Speaker 3: validating in a way for the world to finally see
Speaker 3: what I was up against in terms of trying to
Speaker 3: get the truth from trying to get a straight answer
Speaker 3: from her, which obviously in that interview Tara Brown could
Speaker 3: not get one straight answer from her. And yeah, it
Speaker 3: was kind of validating in a way. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, it was really sad to see that her
Speaker 3: community and the people she took advantage of were getting
Speaker 3: no accountability, no apology, no real genuine apology, and no closure.
Speaker 3: So that was the hardest part about watching it.
Speaker 2: Do you have any idea where this kind of compulsive
Speaker 2: lying and scamming comes from? In Bell. Do you think
Speaker 2: it's malice trauma? Like, do you have a theory?
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously Belle is a very deeply troubled person,
Speaker 3: and there seems to be, you know, maybe a number
Speaker 3: of reasons for that. She looked she did have, I
Speaker 3: think a difficult childhood, but you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: people experience difficult childhoods, trauma in their childhoods, and they
Speaker 3: don't go on to you know, become a con artist
Speaker 3: and take advantage of society's most vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: So I do.
Speaker 3: Sometimes think that that's kind of maybe an easy way
Speaker 3: to explain maybe why.
Speaker 1: She did what she did.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's important to look at and she
Speaker 3: had been doing this for quite a long time as well.
Speaker 1: She had her.
Speaker 3: Other people, other people had kind of caught her out
Speaker 3: on other lies, and so she had already experienced the
Speaker 3: impact that that causes on people, and obviously has not
Speaker 3: really experienced much remorse maybe from that. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to comment on her state of mind or her mental health,
Speaker 3: but from what I witnessed and experienced with Ball, what
Speaker 3: I saw was that she was using it basically as
Speaker 3: a business strategy to make money and to be in
Speaker 3: the limelight, to be adored, to, you know, to build
Speaker 3: a business, and to change her life. She was, you know,
Speaker 3: just I guess, quite an ordinary person. And when she
Speaker 3: started bringing in this money, her lifestyle changed a lot.
Speaker 3: She transitioned to more of kind of a lavish lifestyle.
Speaker 3: She started renting a multimillion dollar beach house, renting a BMW,
Speaker 3: flying first class on holidays overseas, buying designer things. So,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, that's what I witnessed and experienced, is
Speaker 3: that she saw that her life was benefiting her financially
Speaker 3: and she ran with that.
Speaker 2: You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bath.
Speaker 2: I'm speaking with the woman who exposed Belle Gibson's lies,
Speaker 2: Chanelle mccauliffe. Up next, we hear more about the court
Speaker 2: proceedings and where Bell Gibson is now nearly ten years on.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about the court proceedings that happened
Speaker 2: after everything came out because she went to court, she
Speaker 2: was fined four hundred and ten thousand dollars. There's no
Speaker 2: jail time or anything like that. Do you think that
Speaker 2: was a fitting punishment?
Speaker 3: It was good to see that there was some justice brought,
Speaker 3: but it has come out recently that it's maybe not
Speaker 3: possible for the court to enforce that penalty, and she
Speaker 3: hasn't paid any of that penalty. And actually one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand dollars of that penalty was to go
Speaker 3: to the family of the little boy that had brain
Speaker 3: cancer that she took advantage of as compensation for their suffering.
Speaker 3: So it's really it's really upsetting that potentially that family
Speaker 3: won't see that money. And you know, it's been quite
Speaker 3: a long time. There's been many years since she was
Speaker 3: fined and bell I know that Belle has earned some
Speaker 3: type of income over the last few years, and Belle
Speaker 3: could take it upon herself to start contributing to that fine,
Speaker 3: to start making amends, to take accountability and make things right.
Speaker 3: So that's disappointing that she's not coming to the table
Speaker 3: and doing that.
Speaker 1: Overall, the.
Speaker 3: Justice system, I guess, is quite broken in that sense
Speaker 3: that there hasn't really been real justice.
Speaker 2: She has managed to lay pretty low since everything happened.
Speaker 2: We do know there was a story about five years
Speaker 2: ago that came out that she was trying to integrate
Speaker 2: herself into the Ethiopian community in Melbourne and trying to
Speaker 2: raise funds for them, almost kind of going down the
Speaker 2: same kind of route of fundraising, and they found out
Speaker 2: cut her out. It all kind of ended. But what
Speaker 2: did you make of that? Of her kind of trying
Speaker 2: to reinvent herself in that way.
Speaker 1: I knew she would.
Speaker 3: Again, nothing that Bell does anymore is shocking or surprising
Speaker 3: to me. This has been a pattern she's been repeating
Speaker 3: basically her whole life, and I'm yeah, it was really
Speaker 3: sad to see, especially for that community, that she was infiltrating.
Speaker 3: And I think there's also been this narrative that bel
Speaker 3: really wants to kind of be accepted by a community
Speaker 3: she wants to fit in. But like she could go
Speaker 3: join a book club, you know, like there are spaces,
Speaker 3: you know, she could go join a sporting team. There
Speaker 3: are spaces that you can go to to be a
Speaker 3: part of a community and feel accepted and feel like
Speaker 3: you're part of something without having to take advantage of people.
Speaker 2: Do you know much about what she's doing nowadays?
Speaker 1: I don't know what she's up to.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I hear little roomors, but I don't really pay
Speaker 3: much attention to it.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure she's looking at what her next hustle is.
Speaker 2: You were the original whistleblower in this story, and the
Speaker 2: reality is if you have tried to do what you
Speaker 2: did in any other kind of environment, corporate, government, political,
Speaker 2: you could have been prosecuted. That's something that you thought
Speaker 2: about at the time.
Speaker 3: There wasn't any kind of scenario where I wasn't going
Speaker 3: to follow through with what I did if and this
Speaker 3: actually hasn't been the first time I've been a whistleblower.
Speaker 3: If I see something that's wrong, I can't turn a
Speaker 3: blind eye to it. It's very discouraging for a lot
Speaker 3: of I know a lot of people have struggled to
Speaker 3: come forward and tell the truth on different things because
Speaker 3: people have been reprimanded and prosecuted for speaking up and
Speaker 3: telling the truth. It is a very challenging thing to do,
Speaker 3: and it it can be a scary thing to do,
Speaker 3: especially you know, when there's other interests at play, if
Speaker 3: companies are profiting. So, yeah, whistleblowers can easily be silenced
Speaker 3: and be scared away from trying to come forward and
Speaker 3: tell the truth. Yeah, it just wasn't in my nature
Speaker 3: to not do that, to not align with my values,
Speaker 3: to just stand by and let something bad happen.
Speaker 2: Are there any protections in place for whistle blowers in Australia?
Speaker 2: I know it's an area that you feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there have been legislation come into effect in the
Speaker 3: last few years to protect whistle blowers, especially in the workplace,
Speaker 3: from retaliation. But it's only legislation and regulation and law
Speaker 3: only can go so far when people are or the
Speaker 3: law or governments or what places are willing to enforce
Speaker 3: it and make sure there's people really are protected.
Speaker 2: For me, it feels like whistle blowing should be something
Speaker 2: that we support because if there's wrongdoing going on in
Speaker 2: certain institutions, surely we should know about it. The fact
Speaker 2: that it's something that people might be scared about doing
Speaker 2: because they could potentially face criminal charges is insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. I think. I think a lot more
Speaker 1: work can be done in.
Speaker 3: This space to protect people coming forward and telling the truth.
Speaker 3: And it is a very Yeah, it is a very
Speaker 3: scary thing to take on. Like I said earlier, there
Speaker 3: was one percent of me that was still questioning myself, God,
Speaker 3: what if she doesn't have cancer and I've got this
Speaker 3: all wrong?
Speaker 1: And that's part of it.
Speaker 3: Right, Like that you see in the media and you
Speaker 3: see in cases that people haven't been protected and then
Speaker 3: so that makes you question yourself in many ways. It
Speaker 3: makes you question do I really know the truth or
Speaker 3: am I going to be safe to come forward?
Speaker 2: What are you doing with your life now? Being involved
Speaker 2: in this, in whistle blowing, in uncovering kind of the
Speaker 2: scam that was Bell Gibson, Has that changed your life
Speaker 2: and your kind of goals in life in terms of
Speaker 2: what you want to give back?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely led me down a path that I
Speaker 3: may not have gone down if I hadn't gone through
Speaker 3: what I did with Belle. I ended up moving and
Speaker 3: working in the outback with remote Indigenous communities, working on
Speaker 3: policy and as a financial counselor preventing economic abuse against
Speaker 3: Indigenous people in the outback because unfortunately, those communities are
Speaker 3: actually targeted a lot by scams. So while I was
Speaker 3: out there doing that work, I was doing financial literacy education,
Speaker 3: working with regulators to tighten regulation and laws around predatory
Speaker 3: payday lenders that we're targeting Indigenous people. Since then, I've
Speaker 3: gone on to work for basically one of own Australia's
Speaker 3: only social impact finance fund that provides capital to indigenous
Speaker 3: people wanting to start a business or grow their business,
Speaker 3: because they have a lot of challenges accessing capital, especially
Speaker 3: from mainstream banks. They can be yes, discouraged from accessing
Speaker 3: capital from those avenues. So yeah, it's it's something that's
Speaker 3: very important to me to do, to do work that's
Speaker 3: that's very meaningful and impactful and that can help people,
Speaker 3: and I especially, Yeah, I especially love to do work
Speaker 3: where I can give people a voice that aren't able
Speaker 3: to necessarily use their own voice, and especially prevent or
Speaker 3: stop people being taken advantage of, because that's just it's think,
Speaker 3: I really really can't stand.
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of buzz right now everyone's
Speaker 2: talking about Bell, but it was nearly a decade ago
Speaker 2: that all this happened. Do you think about it often anymore?
Speaker 3: No, I haven't. Over the years, I don't really think
Speaker 3: about it too much. I've already given so much energy
Speaker 3: and mental capacity to all of this. I did film
Speaker 3: for a documentary that's coming out in Netflix in a
Speaker 3: few weeks, so I was.
Speaker 1: Involved with that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, I have reflected on it at times,
Speaker 3: I especially right now with how big the story has gotten. Again, well,
Speaker 3: it's actually gotten even bigger than ever before. And as
Speaker 3: much as I can't forgive Belle, I can't help but
Speaker 3: think that this would maybe be quite difficult for her,
Speaker 3: And given you know she is a troubled person, I
Speaker 3: do wonder about her mental health at this time and
Speaker 3: the whole time, actually, and I do hope that she
Speaker 3: is okay at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: So you do still have empathy for her in amongst
Speaker 2: all of the younger.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, like Belle is still human at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, a very complex, complicated, troubled human,
Speaker 3: and I actually just hope that she can eventually learn
Speaker 3: from all this and evolve from it and make amends.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean that is what I hope for.
Speaker 2: Do you think she can though, Do you think she
Speaker 2: can actually redeem herself?
Speaker 3: I think it will be difficult in the public eye.
Speaker 3: I think the public will probably have a different cool
Speaker 3: time for giving her, and that's understandable. But I hope
Speaker 3: she can redeem herself, just for herself, even in her
Speaker 3: personal life. I hope she can evolve and learn from
Speaker 3: this and not do something like this again in any capacity.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's very wishful thinking to think that there
Speaker 3: could be some redemption.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Chanelle for telling us her story. True Crime
Speaker 2: Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by
Speaker 2: Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
Speaker 2: next week with a very interesting true crime conversation with
Speaker 2: the anonymous host of case File.