Self-Help Guru and Wife Charged with Child Abuse Offenses
A self-help guru and his wife have been charged with child abuse offenses almost two months after they went missing in Queensland. Wolfgang Raven Wildgrace, 58, and Sonya Maria Lindley-Jones, 51, were the subject of an appeal on February 28 after last being seen leaving their home in Jindalee, Brisbane’s west. The appeal raised concerns for their safety given they had ‘not contacted family’ since their disappearance, urging people with information on their whereabouts to contact police. They were believed to be travelling in an orange Mitsubishi Triton with the Queensland number plate GROWTH.
The couple were later found by police some 1700km away, at Kuranda, near Cairns in the state’s far north. Police have revealed they have been the subject of a child protection investigation over allegations of ‘offending … at multiple locations in the north coast region between 2010 and 2013′, a Queensland Police Service statement to 7NEWS.com.au said. The north coast region refers to the coastal areas north of Brisbane of Moreton, Sunshine Coast and Wide Bay-Burnett.
Wildgrace has been charged with 32 counts of indecent treatment and one count of rape. Lindley-Jones has been charged with one count of indecent treatment of a child aged under 16. Specific details about the allegations against the couple were not revealed by police. They both remain in custody ahead of an appearance in Cairns Magistrates Court on May 24.
The couple are the operators of the Jindalee-based Wildgrace Counselling and Therapies, which spruiked online its ’emotional fitness personal training’, as well as sand play therapy, relationship and life counselling, and a pseudoscience called systemic family constellations. It was also claimed Wildgrace was trained and certified in several therapeutic and guidance fields.
It was through these self-help services Wildgrace became involved in designing and providing a program at a preseason training camp for the Adelaide Crows in 2018, the year after their grand final loss to Richmond. He was reportedly a co-architect of one program at the camp that was designed to build resilience among the playing group. The camp was instead subject to complaints, including by now-retired star forward Eddie Betts, who wrote in his autobiography that camp activities were culturally insensitive, distressing and ‘weird’.
‘There was all sorts of weird s*** that was disrespectful to many cultures, but particularly and extremely disrespectful to my culture,’ Betts wrote in his 2022 book The Boy from Boomerang Crescent. ‘I felt like I’d lost the drive to play footy, and to be honest, I’m not sure I ever had the same energy I did before that camp.’
The camp failed to have the desired effect of giving the Crows the hard edge they needed to secure a premiership, instead leading to a period of mediocrity. The club finishing 12th, 11th and 18th respectively in the following seasons, and have not since made finals as the playing list undergoes a rebuild. The South Australian workplace safety watchdog, SafeWork SA, found the camp did not breach any workplace health and safety laws, while an AFL investigation in October 2018 concluded there was no violation of industry rules.
