February 19, 2025 • 50 mins
In 2015, Australian con woman Belle Gibson was living the dream. Her app The Whole Pantry was hugely popular and she was about to launch a book of the same name.
With hundreds of thousands of followers online, Belle had become a celebrated wellness influencer who'd overcome terminal cancer and had cured herself with healthy eating and holistic therapies. But it was all a lie.
The truth came to light when her friend, Chanelle McAuliffe, noticed gaps in Belle's story. The moment she exposed her deception is now the focus of the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar.
Today, Chanelle tells us what the show got right and wrong, the challenges she faced as a whistleblower, and how she feels about Belle and her crimes now, a decade on.
Very Special Kids is a non-profit organisation that provides holistic palliative care for children and young people with life-limiting conditions. You can find a link to donate here.
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CREDITS
Guest: Chanelle McAuliffe
Host: Gemma Bath
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and watars.
This podcast was recorded on it's early twenty fifteen and
single mum and entrepreneur Bell Gibson is living a life
of luxury and success. She has a widely popular recipe
app called The Whole Pantry, which features nourishing, plant based recipes,
(00:36):
and she's preparing to release a book of the same name.
Last year, she was named El Magazine's Most Aspiring Woman
You've Met This Year and was Cosmo Magazine's Fun Fearless
Female Recipient. Her app claimed the Apple title of Best
Food and Drink App of twenty thirteen, and a few
short years later, she's already enjoying over one million in sales.
(01:00):
Her empire is built on an inspiring story of triumph,
a harrowing and heartwarming story of survival. She first started
posting about her ignant brain cancer on Instagram in twenty thirteen.
Diagnosed in two thousand and nine at the age of twenty,
she was given just four months to live. Instead of
(01:20):
doing the usual chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Belle opted for
alternative remedies and as she shared with her growing fan base,
they worked, they healed her. She spoke of a healthy
diet free of gluten and sugar, of salt, vitamin and
oxygen treatments, of the power of colonics, and the benefits
(01:43):
of Arabatic medicine, an ancient Indian holistic healing system. She
encouraged her hundreds of thousands of followers to empower themselves
and reclaim their lives through wellness, to heal themselves like
she did naturally. But it was all a lie, all
of it, and it was one of her close friends
(02:06):
who first cottoned on to the truth. I'm Jemma Bath
and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast
exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
people who know the most about them. A brand new
(02:27):
series has just dropped on Netflix. I was diagnosed with
a stage four brain shimmer. That was four years ago.
Human beings are capable of anything.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I was on a quest to heal myself naturally. I flirt,
seek ours role and honest.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Applesider Vinegar follows the story of Belle Gibson's success, lies,
and demise and right Now It's the DV show everyone's
talking about. Her unraveling started because of a suspicious friend.
For Chanelle mccauloff, there were certain parts of her story
that weren't adding up, certain incidents and symptoms that raised
(03:09):
her eyebrow. Eventually, it would be Chanell that would first
confront the conwoman. She was the whistleblower that brought down
her web of lies and uncovered the damage she was
doing to sick, vulnerable people. In Apple Side of Vinegar,
the character of Chanell looks a little bit different to
real life. In real life, Chanelle had no relationship with
(03:30):
jess Ainsco, another wellness influencer who was actually living with
cancer whose story is best represented by the character of
Miller in the show. She wasn't working for Bell, just
a friend of Belle's, but she is the one who
confronted her in her house and went to the media.
As Belle's story is once again thrust before an international audience,
(03:52):
we got the chance to speak to Chanelle. Chanelle Bell
Gibson's name is once again everywhere. It's making headlines because
there's a Netflix series out about her life and her crimes.
Have you watched it?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I have seen this, so I did have to force
myself to watch it. I'm overall I'm not entirely a
huge fan of the show for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That we can chat about if you like.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But yes, it seems to be a very big story
in the media right now.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So originally you weren't going to watch it, were you?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
No, I wasn't. I'm not entirely comfortable with dramatization and
sensationalization of the story. The show has distorted the truth
a little bit as well, And I'm not that comfortable
with the capitalization of the harm that was caused to
people with cancer. So yeah, there's obviously Netflix and a
(04:54):
film studio and people profiting from that harm that was caused.
I've sort of been thinking a lot about the ethics
behind this kind of storytelling on that platform. I'm not
entirely comfortable with the way that these two characters Beal
and Miller, who Miller is based on a real life person,
(05:16):
jess Ainsco, who actually did have cancer and was trying
to heal her cancer naturally through wellness and natural remedies.
They've pitted these two women against each other in the show,
which actually didn't occur in real life, and I think
it's quite a cliche, unoriginal, stereotypical narrative to kind of
(05:39):
pit women against each other competitively as rivals, bitchy, gossipy,
which is kind of what was depicted in the show.
I just think it was really unnecessary, and I hope
that the core messages that are really important about this story,
about the harm that was cause to people, about how
we can easily be misled or consume misinformation online. I
(06:04):
just hope that those important messages aren't lost through the
glamorization of this show.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
About your character in the show, because they use your name,
but your character is kind of an amalgamation of you
and you know, other people in Bell's life. How did
you feel about the way they portrayed you.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I actually was pleasantly surprised how my character was portrayed.
I had no idea what they were going to do
with it. I mean, obviously there's many things about my
character and in the show that aren't accurate. For example,
I wasn't Bell's manager or jess ains Co's manager Miller's character.
I did know jess ains Co, but we weren't close friends. However,
(06:48):
the scenes where I confront Bell, which is now dubbed
the intervention where I am urging her to come forward
and tell the truth. There was a lot of main
parts of that scene that were really accurate, and I
found that scene to be really compelling, and I think
it's really important for me for the world to see
(07:10):
that I did urge Belle to come forward and tell
the truth. I never set out to expose Belle to
have Belle canceled. I actually went to her as her
friend and said, if you come forward and tell the truth,
I will help you. I'll support you with the fallout.
And she refused to and had she done that, things
(07:30):
could have played out so much differently for her.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I want to go back to the start of your
story because it is quite different to the Netflix show.
Tell us about how you met Belle.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Sure So, I was actually doing a writing internship for
a publication in Melbourne at the time, and they were
more just interested in doing a puff piece on her.
It was we were kind of interested in what she
was doing with food and technology and being innovative and
this kind.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Of startup space. So I reached out.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
To her and she invited me to the launch event
of the Whole Pantry app.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That night.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It was quite difficult for us to connect and chat.
She was hosting the event. There's so many people there
and so she was talking to a lot of people.
We just briefly kind of introduced ourselves, and then after
that event we met up for I think coffee, and
it was really difficult to kind of get any information
(08:32):
out of her, and so I just thought I'll just
build a bit of rupperhor with her. It turned out
we had some mutual friends. So then we went for
coffee again and then lunch and dinner, and we were
at similar events together and naturally just a friendship formed
from them.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
What did being friends with Bell look like? Was it
constant messaging? Was it hanging out all the time? Was
she a good friend?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Belle was really warm and charismatic. She actually had a
way of making you feel really special, And looking back,
I think this was part of kind of it was
quite calculated on her behalf, because she had to deflect
from herself so much, and if you've seen interviews with her,
(09:23):
especially this sixty minutes interviewer in the show, it's very
difficult to get a straight answer from her. So she
had a way of really making the attention about the
other person, so you always felt really kind of special
and important in her presence. Our friendship looked like going
out for lunch. It centered a lot around food. And
(09:46):
what was quite interesting is my partner at the time
actually had a traumatic brain injury, and Beao really connected
with him and developed a really close friendship with him
because she claimed that because of her brain tumor. That
also meant she had a traumatic brain injury as a
(10:06):
result of the brain tumor. What with no about Baal
is that she gravitated to people, especially you know, people
with cancer, to leverage them to her own advantage, to
learn about their symptoms and take them on as her own.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So she was actually doing that with my partner at
the time.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
However, you know, I wasn't aware of that, and so yes,
they they had a close friendship and and out friendship
circle kind of just grew as well from there.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What did you think of her success about the whole
pantry and everything she was doing in that space.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I was quite impressed by the business she was building.
She was quite innovative.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
For that era. It was really early.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Days of social media, especially Instagram. Building an audience, connecting
with an audience, getting on the Apple Watch. So that
was compelling to me at the time. This, you know,
regardless if she was sick or not, this young woman,
this young single mother, pioneering you know, this this technology
(11:16):
and this business.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So that that was that side of it was compelling
at the time.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When did you start getting a weird feeling? What were
the first things that kind of struck you as odd?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So behind the scenes, there would be things like we
would go out drinking and one night, you know, she
ordered shots and we were doing shots and I said, oh,
should you really be drinking? Like, you know, she was
obviously doing this very strict wellness natural protocol to heal
herself from cancer, so drinking alcohol excessively was kind of
(11:54):
really in conflict of that. So I said, you know,
should you be drinking? And she said, well, I'm going
to die anyway, so why not have some fun. And
then there was a time where she also went to
the solarium, which I thought was a bit odd given
the risk of skin cancer with using solarium. And then
the biggest thing for me, well, apart from that, she
(12:17):
never appeared sick ever, never saw her sick. She was
the epitome of wellness. Right, this beautiful, long, lush hair.
She was glowing, she was active, happy, and then at
her son's fourth birthday party, she all of a sudden
(12:41):
collapsed to the floor and was having what appeared to
be quite a violent seizure. She was convulsing on the ground,
saliva was coming out of her mouth, and this went
on for a really long time, about forty minutes, and
about halfway through, I said, I'm calling an ambulance, and
(13:01):
all of a sudden she kind of comes out of
the seizure and says, no, I don't want Western medicine involved,
and so I said, okay, and then she kind of
went back into the seizure and then it kind of
tape it off, and there was just something about it
that just seems really performative to me. And Yeah, it
(13:23):
was that day I left that party that I just
knew in my gut that something was really wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Well, if I'm not mistaken, it was soon after that
birthday that she announced that her cancer was spreading. But
how did you find out about that?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yes, so she announced on Instagram that she now had
stage four cancer. It had spread from her brain to spleen,
her uterus, in her blood. It was basically a death sentence,
and myself and most of her close friends we all
found out by seeing it on her Instagram, which you
(14:01):
know it was.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
We thought was.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Quite odd that that's such serious diagnosis, and you know,
we were all so you know, caring for her and
concerned about her. So, yeah, it was really strange that
it wasn't something that she shared with anyone really directly.
It was just it was just kind of a press announcement.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Once you had this hunch, it's a big leap to
go from like having a feeling that something's not quite
right to actually like talking to someone about it. Did
you kind of mention it to friends and family, try
and get some other people involved in how you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, I did go to one of our mutual friends,
and I shared my concerns with him what I thought
regret flags and why things didn't add up for me,
and he started to see that, yeah, okay, some of
this doesn't make sense. So I asked him if he
(15:04):
would come with me to basically hold an intervention and
kind of confront vow and try and get some answers
from her. So he agreed to do that, and we
went over to Bell's house unannounced, and we sat her
down and I just straight out asked her if she
(15:26):
had cancer, and what did she say? She was acting
kind of very defensive. She was saying that I was
interrogating her. She started to slump down in her chair
and say that she felt sick and was acting kind
of faint, which at that point I kind of knew
(15:49):
was based on having scene the seizure, I kind of
knew that maybe this was another tactic of hers to
all of a sudden, you know, act sick or as
a way to deflect.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
She said that of course she was sick.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
to prove that she had cancer, any scanned, any hospital,
doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
those documents because it's negative energy in her house. And
so I asked her about this stage four diagnosis that
(16:24):
she had just announced, and I said, what hospital did
you go to to get that diagnosis? You know, I'm
sure that it was a major hospital in Melbourne, And
she said she didn't go to a hospital. She went
to some random doctor's house in the suburbs. He picked
her up and drove her there and gave her the diagnosis,
(16:45):
And I asked her who was that doctor?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's his name? And she said doctor Phil.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And at that point I actually thought it was so
comical that the story was her story was that ridiculous
and that so unplausible. So yeah, doctor Phil just had
me stumped. And so I said, if you if you've
(17:12):
not had a proper diagnosis at a hospital in some
random house by this doctor, you know, does that mean
you're your diagnosis is questionable? And she said, well, possibly
because doctor Phil's gone missing. He's gone to ground, and
none of his colleagues know where he is. And so
(17:34):
obviously that all just sounded even more suspicious and unbelievable.
So at this point she called Julie Gibbs, their editor
publisher at Penguin Books. And she's set asking Julie or
accusing Julie of speaking to her friends, and one of
(17:54):
her friends is jealous and accusing her of not being sick.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And did Julie put me up to this? Basically, And
from what I could tell, Julie must have.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I think Julie seemed really confused on the end the
other end of the phone. Well, then called someone else.
She phoned her acupuncturist and asked him to come over,
and when he arrived, she said to him, tell them
that I have cancer.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
And this was kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Her way to basically prove to us that she had cancer.
And he said, well, of course you have cancer. And
I said, well, how do you know that she has cancer?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And he said, because she told me so.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
It doesn't sound like it was a short conversation. It
was over a few hours or so if you had
all these different phone calls and visitors.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
And yes, it was quite a few hours. I mean
it seemed like forever at the time. I also went
upstairs at her house to try and find Clive, her partner,
who was somewhat involved in her business and the whole pantry.
And Clive was someone who was kind of really difficult
(19:04):
to figure out. He was kind of always in the background.
He was quite withdrawn, very quiet. So I went upstairs
and I found Clive and I said, Clive, you need
to tell me the truth. And he said she would
destroy anyone that tries to expose her, and that he
(19:26):
needs to protect her little boy. So it was kind
of a very cryptic, confronting answer I got from him.
He then came downstairs with me, and he sat down
with us and we were trying to make sense of
it all, and it kind of the penny didn't drop
for me until a little bit later on.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
But he made a comment that night.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Because I did say it about which you can see
in the show. I said to her, this is your
inner circle knocking at your door. This is where it starts,
and this is where it can end, and urging her
to come forward on her own terms and tell the truth.
And at that point when I was saying that, Clive
(20:12):
said to bow Belle, you need.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
To get the books in order.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And I think what that sort of meant later on
was in regards to the charity fraud that Belle was conducting.
So the books for her business, you know, weren't in order.
She needed to kind of start covering her tracks or
start paying the charities. So he was kind of hinting
to Bowl and basically just just putting it out there
(20:38):
that she needed to.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Tie up loose ends.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So I left that night just being absolutely gobsmacked that
it just had confirmed everything for me that it was
all a lie. There was at times for me where
there was one percent of me that felt what if
(21:02):
I've got this all wrong. What if I'm accusing this
poor young woman of not having canceled when.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
She really does.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
But but that night it just solidified everything for me,
and so I left there urging Bell again to come
forward and tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And then a few days later I.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Called her and I asked her if she was ready
to come forward, and again I was met with defensiveness,
some aggression. And then it was maybe a week or
a couple of weeks after that it was her book launch,
and we actually weren't really obviously kind of friends anymore
(21:45):
at this point on talking terms. There was a lot
of tension. She knew that I knew, but I still
rocked up to her book launch, and as you'll see
in the show, I stood there in the crowd and
just really stared at her and just made a point
of you know that there's someone here that knows and
is going to hold you accountable. And the book launch, yeah,
(22:07):
she just acted like nothing was going on.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Were you angry through all of this? Once you'd had
that kind of confrontation as they call it, and you
were kind of waiting for her to admit what were
the emotions? Was it anger?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I was very angry. My mother has battled cancer twice.
I mean, I mean we all, we all have a
connection to someone who's had cancer, or we know of
someone that have someone close to them who's been touched
by cancer. So yeah, it made me very angry at
(22:46):
What was so alarming is that the message she was
putting out was so dangerous because really vulnerable people, people
with cancer, were making really serious decisions about their life
and about their health. So yeah, it made my blood boil,
especially because now I knew that I made her aware
(23:09):
of how serious the situation was. There's been speculation and
kind of this narrative about it was just this young
woman who was very naive, this lie got away with
her and it snowballed. However, that's not what I experienced
When I went to her and you know, made her
(23:30):
really aware of how serious this wasn't and urged her
to come forward, she just doubled down.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I think the part of it that gets to me
as well is, and I'd love your insight on this,
is how she would gravitate towards people that were sick
and then kind of be a bit of a chameleon
and emulate the things that she was seeing that's a
very calculated thing to do.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's what's also very tragic about this
story is there were very sick, vulnerable people that she
got very close to. One was a little boy who
did have brain cancer, and she was fund raising on
behalf of him and his family to pay for him
(24:19):
to potentially have life saving surgery, and that money was
never handed over, and unfortunately that little boy has passed away.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I'm not saying he passed away.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Because of his association with Belle, but also he was
at the birthday party that day that she faked the seizure,
so that little boy Bell's son, they had to witness
this lie sort of firsthand as well. So the impact
it had on, you know, really vulnerable people is actually
(24:55):
it is so shocking.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
After the break, Chanelle tells us about how she approached
the journalists who would help her expose Belle Gibson's lies
to the world. What did you do next? Obviously you
could see that book launch, she wasn't admitting anything. Do
you go to the police, do you go straight to
(25:21):
the journalists? What are your next steps?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, so the first step I took was going to
the police, and the police said that I didn't have
any evidence, which I didn't, and it's obviously very difficult
to get access to someone's medical records. So yeah, the
police basically turned me away. I went to a very
high profile lawyer and he accused me of basically defamation
(25:51):
and slander. He happened to have a very close friend
who had cancer, and he was telling me that he
can't even fathom the thought of someone going around accusing,
you know, someone of cancer, of lying and faking. So yeah,
(26:11):
for some reason that the lawyer, he kind of took
it quite personally, and yeah, it made me feel very
uncomfortable and didn't help me. I then went to Australia's
top investigative journalist at the time hadn't heard of Bell before.
He said he might look into it, he might not,
(26:32):
and I never heard back from him again. This ended
up being over a period of sort of kind of
weeks two months, and yeah, I was talking to people
I knew. I was trying to leverage my network to
see if anyone could put me in touch with someone
credible who would believe me, who could vouch for me
(26:53):
that I was telling the truth. And yeah, so it
took quite a long time. To get to that point,
and during that period I started to feel very powerless
and realized how challenging and difficult it is to essentially
kind of be a whistleblower and come forward with the
(27:14):
truth and have people look into it and fact check
it and stop people from causing harm. So that was
really disheartening. So then eventually my former boss spoke to
the editor or someone high up at the AGE and
they got one of their journalists to get in touch
(27:36):
with me, and that journalist was Bo Donnelly, who with
Nick Tuscano, they have published the book The Woman Who
Fooled the World, which the Netflix show has been adapted from. So,
as Bo tells the story, he just thought that this
was just some random tip off that he had to
(27:59):
check off his list, that maybe it was a jealous
friend with an axe to grind, or you know, they
get tip offs come into the newsroom all the time,
and most of them don't really go anywhere. So he
actually just called me on his lunch break. He was
at a cafe. He was very noisy. I just started
to tell him what I knew, what I experienced, and
(28:22):
what my motivation was for coming forward, which was just
for Bale to stop causing harm to vulnerable people and
spreading this misinformation.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Bo very quickly from that call felt that I was
very credible and started to look into the case straight away.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
In the Netflix show, the first article that they release
is that money fraud angle, you know, the charities that
weren't getting the donations that Belle promised. Is that what
happened in real life? Is that the only angle they
could put out to start with.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yes, that's right. The Age also couldn't run.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
A story that they were just suspecting that this woman
didn't have cancer. The lawyers of the Age shut it
down very quickly because again the Age couldn't get access
to her medical records. There was no way to verify
the status of her health. And so the journalists Boe
(29:23):
and Nick they thought, well, if she's lying about something
as big as this, as big as having cancer, and
broadcasting that to the world, then what else is she
lying about? And I shared with them that comment that
Clive had made the night that I had confronted Belle
(29:44):
about the state of the business books, and so they
started looking into whether she had actually made any donations
to the charities that she had been fundraising on behalf
of and they all said they never received a cent
from her.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So once that angle is out there, that's obviously a
huge hit to Bell and that's the start, that's how
it starts to kind of unravel more publicly. Were they
then able to verify the cancer claims? How did they
manage to get that part of the investigation out sure?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So coincidentally, around this time that I had gone to
the journalists at that age and they had reported on
her charity fraud, there was actually a journalist at the Australian,
Richard Gilliot, who had started to look into Boo and
he'd think he'd written some stories about Jessain's Coe, who
(30:47):
in the Netflix show is the character Miller. His wife
actually had cancer and I think she had looked into
natural remedies and she'd kind of come across jess And
then as a result of that Richard it was actually
from Richard's own personal experience with his wife that he
(31:07):
started then sort of looking into these people, and then
he actually at the same time was starting to unravel
at all. And then it was very shortly after the
Age had broken the charity fraud story. I think it
was within a few days that Richard Gilliot The Australian
broke the story that Belle didn't have cancer, he met
(31:29):
with her and she said the same thing to her
to him, that her diagnosis was questionable and she herself
actually didn't know for certain if she had cancer or not.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Once these stories and investigations started to get published, did
any of it shock you? Was there any kind of
revelations that came out that you didn't realize?
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Nothing was really shocking to me at that point anymore.
When it came to bell I feel like I kind
of seen the worst of it, especially with that seizure.
It's just it's something I'll never i don't know, be
able to get out of my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
And the way the children reacted that day.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So yeah, nothing, nothing really surprised me or shocked me
about bal anymore. There were things that came out people
from her past, her childhood, things like she had gone
to acting school and things like that, which I mean
kind of made sense to me. I don't know if
that's true or not. Yeah, I mean it was it. Yeah,
(32:40):
I mean, it didn't surprise me that it came out
that she had been doing this for a long time.
She had been in this skating forum, in this skating
community where she was telling all these people that she'd
had heart surgeries and she died on the operating table
and had been brought back to life and had all
(33:01):
these life threatening diseases, and as a result of that,
people in that community were sending her flowers and give
her lots of attention. So, I mean, it was interesting
to see kind of some of the origin of where
this all began for her and why, and that this
was obviously a pattern.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Did you have any contact with her during that time
as it was all unraveling.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
The day the first story broke, I did send her
a text message that that's the final communication I've had
with her, and I haven't heard from her since then.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
What did you say in the text message?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I said that so Belle always had this saying that
she would say, and for example, she posted it on
this stage four cancer diagnosis on her Instagram when she
announced that, and she should always say, you know, I've
now got stage four cancer, but don't worry, I've got this,
(34:02):
or I'm fundraising all this money to help this boy,
you know, get life saving surgery. I've got this, and
so yeah, I sent her a text message that day
as soon as the first article broke, and I said,
you should check the news, but you've got this right.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
It was a bit of a job, a fair enough job.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I mean I've done a lot of soul searching in
the last ten years and have tried to forgive Bao,
which I can't and I'm not sure I ever can.
But at that point, you know, I was really relieved
that she couldn't keep spreading the lies that she was
and I was doing. And I was so frustrated and
(34:50):
really angry that it took so long for the truth
to come out, and that she was, you know, so
combative to come out and tell the truth herself. So yeah,
that's why I sent the text message. I was kind
of kind of just at my wits end with it all.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Well at all. Obviously really unraveled quickly once you know,
the charity stuff had been exposed, the cancer was fake.
There's this sixty minutes interview that's really famous. She's in
a pink turtleneck and she's kind of been forced to,
I guess, kind of admit, but she doesn't really. She
(35:29):
kind of does this evasive kind of around the questions,
even though all the truth is already out there by then.
You had three heart operations, you suffered two cardiac arrests,
you died twice on the operating table, you had a stroke,
and you were diagnosed with inoprople brain shimmer and given
four months to live correct and I just happened. I
(35:50):
still have the heart condition and I was supposed to
have surgery for that. You were supposed to have surgery
and I didn't. How did you feel watching that interview?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That interview was really difficult to watch, but it was
validating in a way for the world to finally see
what I was up against in terms of trying to
get the truth from trying to get a straight answer
from her, which obviously in that interview Tara Brown could
not get one straight answer from her. And yeah, it
(36:21):
was kind of validating in a way. But at the
same time, it was really sad to see that her
community and the people she took advantage of were getting
no accountability, no apology, no real genuine apology, and no closure.
(36:42):
So that was the hardest part about watching it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Do you have any idea where this kind of compulsive
lying and scamming comes from? In Bell. Do you think
it's malice trauma? Like, do you have a theory?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I mean, obviously Belle is a very deeply troubled person,
and there seems to be, you know, maybe a number
of reasons for that. She looked she did have, I
think a difficult childhood, but you know, a lot of
people experience difficult childhoods, trauma in their childhoods, and they
(37:23):
don't go on to you know, become a con artist
and take advantage of society's most vulnerable people.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So I do.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Sometimes think that that's kind of maybe an easy way
to explain maybe why.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
She did what she did.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I think it's it's important to look at and she
had been doing this for quite a long time as well.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
She had her.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Other people, other people had kind of caught her out
on other lies, and so she had already experienced the
impact that that causes on people, and obviously has not
really experienced much remorse maybe from that. I'm not going
to comment on her state of mind or her mental health,
(38:10):
but from what I witnessed and experienced with Ball, what
I saw was that she was using it basically as
a business strategy to make money and to be in
the limelight, to be adored, to, you know, to build
a business, and to change her life. She was, you know,
(38:31):
just I guess, quite an ordinary person. And when she
started bringing in this money, her lifestyle changed a lot.
She transitioned to more of kind of a lavish lifestyle.
She started renting a multimillion dollar beach house, renting a BMW,
flying first class on holidays overseas, buying designer things. So,
(38:55):
in my opinion, that's what I witnessed and experienced, is
that she saw that her life was benefiting her financially
and she ran with that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with the woman who exposed Belle Gibson's lies,
Chanelle mccauliffe. Up next, we hear more about the court
proceedings and where Bell Gibson is now nearly ten years on.
How do you feel about the court proceedings that happened
(39:34):
after everything came out because she went to court, she
was fined four hundred and ten thousand dollars. There's no
jail time or anything like that. Do you think that
was a fitting punishment?
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It was good to see that there was some justice brought,
but it has come out recently that it's maybe not
possible for the court to enforce that penalty, and she
hasn't paid any of that penalty. And actually one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars of that penalty was to go
to the family of the little boy that had brain
(40:11):
cancer that she took advantage of as compensation for their suffering.
So it's really it's really upsetting that potentially that family
won't see that money. And you know, it's been quite
a long time. There's been many years since she was
(40:32):
fined and bell I know that Belle has earned some
type of income over the last few years, and Belle
could take it upon herself to start contributing to that fine,
to start making amends, to take accountability and make things right.
So that's disappointing that she's not coming to the table
(40:55):
and doing that.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Overall, the.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Justice system, I guess, is quite broken in that sense
that there hasn't really been real justice.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
She has managed to lay pretty low since everything happened.
We do know there was a story about five years
ago that came out that she was trying to integrate
herself into the Ethiopian community in Melbourne and trying to
raise funds for them, almost kind of going down the
same kind of route of fundraising, and they found out
(41:32):
cut her out. It all kind of ended. But what
did you make of that? Of her kind of trying
to reinvent herself in that way.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I knew she would.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Again, nothing that Bell does anymore is shocking or surprising
to me. This has been a pattern she's been repeating
basically her whole life, and I'm yeah, it was really
sad to see, especially for that community, that she was infiltrating.
(42:01):
And I think there's also been this narrative that bel
really wants to kind of be accepted by a community
she wants to fit in. But like she could go
join a book club, you know, like there are spaces,
you know, she could go join a sporting team. There
(42:23):
are spaces that you can go to to be a
part of a community and feel accepted and feel like
you're part of something without having to take advantage of people.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Do you know much about what she's doing nowadays?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I don't know what she's up to.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Sometimes I hear little roomors, but I don't really pay
much attention to it.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
But I'm sure she's looking at what her next hustle is.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You were the original whistleblower in this story, and the
reality is if you have tried to do what you
did in any other kind of environment, corporate, government, political,
you could have been prosecuted. That's something that you thought
about at the time.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
There wasn't any kind of scenario where I wasn't going
to follow through with what I did if and this
actually hasn't been the first time I've been a whistleblower.
If I see something that's wrong, I can't turn a
blind eye to it. It's very discouraging for a lot
(43:36):
of I know a lot of people have struggled to
come forward and tell the truth on different things because
people have been reprimanded and prosecuted for speaking up and
telling the truth. It is a very challenging thing to do,
and it it can be a scary thing to do,
especially you know, when there's other interests at play, if
(43:59):
companies are profiting. So, yeah, whistleblowers can easily be silenced
and be scared away from trying to come forward and
tell the truth. Yeah, it just wasn't in my nature
to not do that, to not align with my values,
to just stand by and let something bad happen.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Are there any protections in place for whistle blowers in Australia?
I know it's an area that you feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, there have been legislation come into effect in the
last few years to protect whistle blowers, especially in the workplace,
from retaliation. But it's only legislation and regulation and law
only can go so far when people are or the
law or governments or what places are willing to enforce
(44:56):
it and make sure there's people really are protected.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
For me, it feels like whistle blowing should be something
that we support because if there's wrongdoing going on in
certain institutions, surely we should know about it. The fact
that it's something that people might be scared about doing
because they could potentially face criminal charges is insane.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, it is. I think. I think a lot more
work can be done in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
This space to protect people coming forward and telling the truth.
And it is a very Yeah, it is a very
scary thing to take on. Like I said earlier, there
was one percent of me that was still questioning myself, God,
what if she doesn't have cancer and I've got this
all wrong?
Speaker 1 (45:45):
And that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Right, Like that you see in the media and you
see in cases that people haven't been protected and then
so that makes you question yourself in many ways. It
makes you question do I really know the truth or
am I going to be safe to come forward?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
What are you doing with your life now? Being involved
in this, in whistle blowing, in uncovering kind of the
scam that was Bell Gibson, Has that changed your life
and your kind of goals in life in terms of
what you want to give back?
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah, it definitely led me down a path that I
may not have gone down if I hadn't gone through
what I did with Belle. I ended up moving and
working in the outback with remote Indigenous communities, working on
policy and as a financial counselor preventing economic abuse against
(46:47):
Indigenous people in the outback because unfortunately, those communities are
actually targeted a lot by scams. So while I was
out there doing that work, I was doing financial literacy education,
working with regulators to tighten regulation and laws around predatory
(47:10):
payday lenders that we're targeting Indigenous people. Since then, I've
gone on to work for basically one of own Australia's
only social impact finance fund that provides capital to indigenous
people wanting to start a business or grow their business,
because they have a lot of challenges accessing capital, especially
(47:33):
from mainstream banks. They can be yes, discouraged from accessing
capital from those avenues. So yeah, it's it's something that's
very important to me to do, to do work that's
that's very meaningful and impactful and that can help people,
and I especially, Yeah, I especially love to do work
(47:56):
where I can give people a voice that aren't able
to necessarily use their own voice, and especially prevent or
stop people being taken advantage of, because that's just it's think,
I really really can't stand.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
I know there's a lot of buzz right now everyone's
talking about Bell, but it was nearly a decade ago
that all this happened. Do you think about it often anymore?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
No, I haven't. Over the years, I don't really think
about it too much. I've already given so much energy
and mental capacity to all of this. I did film
for a documentary that's coming out in Netflix in a
few weeks, so I was.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Involved with that.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
I mean, I mean, I have reflected on it at times,
I especially right now with how big the story has gotten. Again, well,
it's actually gotten even bigger than ever before. And as
much as I can't forgive Belle, I can't help but
think that this would maybe be quite difficult for her,
(49:12):
And given you know she is a troubled person, I
do wonder about her mental health at this time and
the whole time, actually, and I do hope that she
is okay at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
So you do still have empathy for her in amongst
all of the younger.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
I mean, yeah, like Belle is still human at the
end of the day, a very complex, complicated, troubled human,
and I actually just hope that she can eventually learn
from all this and evolve from it and make amends.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
So yeah, I mean that is what I hope for.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Do you think she can though, Do you think she
can actually redeem herself?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I think it will be difficult in the public eye.
I think the public will probably have a different cool
time for giving her, and that's understandable. But I hope
she can redeem herself, just for herself, even in her
personal life. I hope she can evolve and learn from
this and not do something like this again in any capacity.
(50:29):
So yeah, it's very wishful thinking to think that there
could be some redemption.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Thanks to Chanelle for telling us her story. True Crime
Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by
me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by
Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
next week with a very interesting true crime conversation with
the anonymous host of case File.
You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and watars.
This podcast was recorded on it's early twenty fifteen and
single mum and entrepreneur Bell Gibson is living a life
of luxury and success. She has a widely popular recipe
app called The Whole Pantry, which features nourishing, plant based recipes,
(00:36):
and she's preparing to release a book of the same name.
Last year, she was named El Magazine's Most Aspiring Woman
You've Met This Year and was Cosmo Magazine's Fun Fearless
Female Recipient. Her app claimed the Apple title of Best
Food and Drink App of twenty thirteen, and a few
short years later, she's already enjoying over one million in sales.
(01:00):
Her empire is built on an inspiring story of triumph,
a harrowing and heartwarming story of survival. She first started
posting about her ignant brain cancer on Instagram in twenty thirteen.
Diagnosed in two thousand and nine at the age of twenty,
she was given just four months to live. Instead of
(01:20):
doing the usual chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Belle opted for
alternative remedies and as she shared with her growing fan base,
they worked, they healed her. She spoke of a healthy
diet free of gluten and sugar, of salt, vitamin and
oxygen treatments, of the power of colonics, and the benefits
(01:43):
of Arabatic medicine, an ancient Indian holistic healing system. She
encouraged her hundreds of thousands of followers to empower themselves
and reclaim their lives through wellness, to heal themselves like
she did naturally. But it was all a lie, all
of it, and it was one of her close friends
(02:06):
who first cottoned on to the truth. I'm Jemma Bath
and this is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast
exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
people who know the most about them. A brand new
(02:27):
series has just dropped on Netflix. I was diagnosed with
a stage four brain shimmer. That was four years ago.
Human beings are capable of anything.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I was on a quest to heal myself naturally. I flirt,
seek ours role and honest.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Applesider Vinegar follows the story of Belle Gibson's success, lies,
and demise and right Now It's the DV show everyone's
talking about. Her unraveling started because of a suspicious friend.
For Chanelle mccauloff, there were certain parts of her story
that weren't adding up, certain incidents and symptoms that raised
(03:09):
her eyebrow. Eventually, it would be Chanell that would first
confront the conwoman. She was the whistleblower that brought down
her web of lies and uncovered the damage she was
doing to sick, vulnerable people. In Apple Side of Vinegar,
the character of Chanell looks a little bit different to
real life. In real life, Chanelle had no relationship with
(03:30):
jess Ainsco, another wellness influencer who was actually living with
cancer whose story is best represented by the character of
Miller in the show. She wasn't working for Bell, just
a friend of Belle's, but she is the one who
confronted her in her house and went to the media.
As Belle's story is once again thrust before an international audience,
(03:52):
we got the chance to speak to Chanelle. Chanelle Bell
Gibson's name is once again everywhere. It's making headlines because
there's a Netflix series out about her life and her crimes.
Have you watched it?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I have seen this, so I did have to force
myself to watch it. I'm overall I'm not entirely a
huge fan of the show for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
That we can chat about if you like.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But yes, it seems to be a very big story
in the media right now.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So originally you weren't going to watch it, were you?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
No, I wasn't. I'm not entirely comfortable with dramatization and
sensationalization of the story. The show has distorted the truth
a little bit as well, And I'm not that comfortable
with the capitalization of the harm that was caused to
people with cancer. So yeah, there's obviously Netflix and a
(04:54):
film studio and people profiting from that harm that was caused.
I've sort of been thinking a lot about the ethics
behind this kind of storytelling on that platform. I'm not
entirely comfortable with the way that these two characters Beal
and Miller, who Miller is based on a real life person,
(05:16):
jess Ainsco, who actually did have cancer and was trying
to heal her cancer naturally through wellness and natural remedies.
They've pitted these two women against each other in the show,
which actually didn't occur in real life, and I think
it's quite a cliche, unoriginal, stereotypical narrative to kind of
(05:39):
pit women against each other competitively as rivals, bitchy, gossipy,
which is kind of what was depicted in the show.
I just think it was really unnecessary, and I hope
that the core messages that are really important about this story,
about the harm that was cause to people, about how
we can easily be misled or consume misinformation online. I
(06:04):
just hope that those important messages aren't lost through the
glamorization of this show.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
About your character in the show, because they use your name,
but your character is kind of an amalgamation of you
and you know, other people in Bell's life. How did
you feel about the way they portrayed you.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I actually was pleasantly surprised how my character was portrayed.
I had no idea what they were going to do
with it. I mean, obviously there's many things about my
character and in the show that aren't accurate. For example,
I wasn't Bell's manager or jess ains Co's manager Miller's character.
I did know jess ains Co, but we weren't close friends. However,
(06:48):
the scenes where I confront Bell, which is now dubbed
the intervention where I am urging her to come forward
and tell the truth. There was a lot of main
parts of that scene that were really accurate, and I
found that scene to be really compelling, and I think
it's really important for me for the world to see
(07:10):
that I did urge Belle to come forward and tell
the truth. I never set out to expose Belle to
have Belle canceled. I actually went to her as her
friend and said, if you come forward and tell the truth,
I will help you. I'll support you with the fallout.
And she refused to and had she done that, things
(07:30):
could have played out so much differently for her.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I want to go back to the start of your
story because it is quite different to the Netflix show.
Tell us about how you met Belle.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Sure So, I was actually doing a writing internship for
a publication in Melbourne at the time, and they were
more just interested in doing a puff piece on her.
It was we were kind of interested in what she
was doing with food and technology and being innovative and
this kind.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Of startup space. So I reached out.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
To her and she invited me to the launch event
of the Whole Pantry app.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That night.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
It was quite difficult for us to connect and chat.
She was hosting the event. There's so many people there
and so she was talking to a lot of people.
We just briefly kind of introduced ourselves, and then after
that event we met up for I think coffee, and
it was really difficult to kind of get any information
(08:32):
out of her, and so I just thought I'll just
build a bit of rupperhor with her. It turned out
we had some mutual friends. So then we went for
coffee again and then lunch and dinner, and we were
at similar events together and naturally just a friendship formed
from them.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
What did being friends with Bell look like? Was it
constant messaging? Was it hanging out all the time? Was
she a good friend?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Belle was really warm and charismatic. She actually had a
way of making you feel really special, And looking back,
I think this was part of kind of it was
quite calculated on her behalf, because she had to deflect
from herself so much, and if you've seen interviews with her,
(09:23):
especially this sixty minutes interviewer in the show, it's very
difficult to get a straight answer from her. So she
had a way of really making the attention about the
other person, so you always felt really kind of special
and important in her presence. Our friendship looked like going
out for lunch. It centered a lot around food. And
(09:46):
what was quite interesting is my partner at the time
actually had a traumatic brain injury, and Beao really connected
with him and developed a really close friendship with him
because she claimed that because of her brain tumor. That
also meant she had a traumatic brain injury as a
(10:06):
result of the brain tumor. What with no about Baal
is that she gravitated to people, especially you know, people
with cancer, to leverage them to her own advantage, to
learn about their symptoms and take them on as her own.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So she was actually doing that with my partner at
the time.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
However, you know, I wasn't aware of that, and so yes,
they they had a close friendship and and out friendship
circle kind of just grew as well from there.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What did you think of her success about the whole
pantry and everything she was doing in that space.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
I was quite impressed by the business she was building.
She was quite innovative.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
For that era. It was really early.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Days of social media, especially Instagram. Building an audience, connecting
with an audience, getting on the Apple Watch. So that
was compelling to me at the time. This, you know,
regardless if she was sick or not, this young woman,
this young single mother, pioneering you know, this this technology
(11:16):
and this business.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So that that was that side of it was compelling
at the time.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When did you start getting a weird feeling? What were
the first things that kind of struck you as odd?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So behind the scenes, there would be things like we
would go out drinking and one night, you know, she
ordered shots and we were doing shots and I said, oh,
should you really be drinking? Like, you know, she was
obviously doing this very strict wellness natural protocol to heal
herself from cancer, so drinking alcohol excessively was kind of
(11:54):
really in conflict of that. So I said, you know,
should you be drinking? And she said, well, I'm going
to die anyway, so why not have some fun. And
then there was a time where she also went to
the solarium, which I thought was a bit odd given
the risk of skin cancer with using solarium. And then
the biggest thing for me, well, apart from that, she
(12:17):
never appeared sick ever, never saw her sick. She was
the epitome of wellness. Right, this beautiful, long, lush hair.
She was glowing, she was active, happy, and then at
her son's fourth birthday party, she all of a sudden
(12:41):
collapsed to the floor and was having what appeared to
be quite a violent seizure. She was convulsing on the ground,
saliva was coming out of her mouth, and this went
on for a really long time, about forty minutes, and
about halfway through, I said, I'm calling an ambulance, and
(13:01):
all of a sudden she kind of comes out of
the seizure and says, no, I don't want Western medicine involved,
and so I said, okay, and then she kind of
went back into the seizure and then it kind of
tape it off, and there was just something about it
that just seems really performative to me. And Yeah, it
(13:23):
was that day I left that party that I just
knew in my gut that something was really wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Well, if I'm not mistaken, it was soon after that
birthday that she announced that her cancer was spreading. But
how did you find out about that?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yes, so she announced on Instagram that she now had
stage four cancer. It had spread from her brain to spleen,
her uterus, in her blood. It was basically a death sentence,
and myself and most of her close friends we all
found out by seeing it on her Instagram, which you
(14:01):
know it was.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
We thought was.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Quite odd that that's such serious diagnosis, and you know,
we were all so you know, caring for her and
concerned about her. So, yeah, it was really strange that
it wasn't something that she shared with anyone really directly.
It was just it was just kind of a press announcement.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Once you had this hunch, it's a big leap to
go from like having a feeling that something's not quite
right to actually like talking to someone about it. Did
you kind of mention it to friends and family, try
and get some other people involved in how you're feeling.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yes, I did go to one of our mutual friends,
and I shared my concerns with him what I thought
regret flags and why things didn't add up for me,
and he started to see that, yeah, okay, some of
this doesn't make sense. So I asked him if he
(15:04):
would come with me to basically hold an intervention and
kind of confront vow and try and get some answers
from her. So he agreed to do that, and we
went over to Bell's house unannounced, and we sat her
down and I just straight out asked her if she
(15:26):
had cancer, and what did she say? She was acting
kind of very defensive. She was saying that I was
interrogating her. She started to slump down in her chair
and say that she felt sick and was acting kind
of faint, which at that point I kind of knew
(15:49):
was based on having scene the seizure, I kind of
knew that maybe this was another tactic of hers to
all of a sudden, you know, act sick or as
a way to deflect.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
She said that of course she was sick.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I basically demanded her to go get any medical evidence
to prove that she had cancer, any scanned, any hospital,
doctor reports. She said that she didn't like to keep
those documents because it's negative energy in her house. And
so I asked her about this stage four diagnosis that
(16:24):
she had just announced, and I said, what hospital did
you go to to get that diagnosis? You know, I'm
sure that it was a major hospital in Melbourne, And
she said she didn't go to a hospital. She went
to some random doctor's house in the suburbs. He picked
her up and drove her there and gave her the diagnosis,
(16:45):
And I asked her who was that doctor?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
What's his name? And she said doctor Phil.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And at that point I actually thought it was so
comical that the story was her story was that ridiculous
and that so unplausible. So yeah, doctor Phil just had
me stumped. And so I said, if you if you've
(17:12):
not had a proper diagnosis at a hospital in some
random house by this doctor, you know, does that mean
you're your diagnosis is questionable? And she said, well, possibly
because doctor Phil's gone missing. He's gone to ground, and
none of his colleagues know where he is. And so
(17:34):
obviously that all just sounded even more suspicious and unbelievable.
So at this point she called Julie Gibbs, their editor
publisher at Penguin Books. And she's set asking Julie or
accusing Julie of speaking to her friends, and one of
(17:54):
her friends is jealous and accusing her of not being sick.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And did Julie put me up to this? Basically, And
from what I could tell, Julie must have.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I think Julie seemed really confused on the end the
other end of the phone. Well, then called someone else.
She phoned her acupuncturist and asked him to come over,
and when he arrived, she said to him, tell them
that I have cancer.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
And this was kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Her way to basically prove to us that she had cancer.
And he said, well, of course you have cancer. And
I said, well, how do you know that she has cancer?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And he said, because she told me so.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
It doesn't sound like it was a short conversation. It
was over a few hours or so if you had
all these different phone calls and visitors.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
And yes, it was quite a few hours. I mean
it seemed like forever at the time. I also went
upstairs at her house to try and find Clive, her partner,
who was somewhat involved in her business and the whole pantry.
And Clive was someone who was kind of really difficult
(19:04):
to figure out. He was kind of always in the background.
He was quite withdrawn, very quiet. So I went upstairs
and I found Clive and I said, Clive, you need
to tell me the truth. And he said she would
destroy anyone that tries to expose her, and that he
(19:26):
needs to protect her little boy. So it was kind
of a very cryptic, confronting answer I got from him.
He then came downstairs with me, and he sat down
with us and we were trying to make sense of
it all, and it kind of the penny didn't drop
for me until a little bit later on.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
But he made a comment that night.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Because I did say it about which you can see
in the show. I said to her, this is your
inner circle knocking at your door. This is where it starts,
and this is where it can end, and urging her
to come forward on her own terms and tell the truth.
And at that point when I was saying that, Clive
(20:12):
said to bow Belle, you need.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
To get the books in order.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And I think what that sort of meant later on
was in regards to the charity fraud that Belle was conducting.
So the books for her business, you know, weren't in order.
She needed to kind of start covering her tracks or
start paying the charities. So he was kind of hinting
to Bowl and basically just just putting it out there
(20:38):
that she needed to.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Tie up loose ends.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So I left that night just being absolutely gobsmacked that
it just had confirmed everything for me that it was
all a lie. There was at times for me where
there was one percent of me that felt what if
(21:02):
I've got this all wrong. What if I'm accusing this
poor young woman of not having canceled when.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
She really does.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
But but that night it just solidified everything for me,
and so I left there urging Bell again to come
forward and tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And then a few days later I.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Called her and I asked her if she was ready
to come forward, and again I was met with defensiveness,
some aggression. And then it was maybe a week or
a couple of weeks after that it was her book launch,
and we actually weren't really obviously kind of friends anymore
(21:45):
at this point on talking terms. There was a lot
of tension. She knew that I knew, but I still
rocked up to her book launch, and as you'll see
in the show, I stood there in the crowd and
just really stared at her and just made a point
of you know that there's someone here that knows and
is going to hold you accountable. And the book launch, yeah,
(22:07):
she just acted like nothing was going on.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Were you angry through all of this? Once you'd had
that kind of confrontation as they call it, and you
were kind of waiting for her to admit what were
the emotions? Was it anger?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I was very angry. My mother has battled cancer twice.
I mean, I mean we all, we all have a
connection to someone who's had cancer, or we know of
someone that have someone close to them who's been touched
by cancer. So yeah, it made me very angry at
(22:46):
What was so alarming is that the message she was
putting out was so dangerous because really vulnerable people, people
with cancer, were making really serious decisions about their life
and about their health. So yeah, it made my blood boil,
especially because now I knew that I made her aware
(23:09):
of how serious the situation was. There's been speculation and
kind of this narrative about it was just this young
woman who was very naive, this lie got away with
her and it snowballed. However, that's not what I experienced
When I went to her and you know, made her
(23:30):
really aware of how serious this wasn't and urged her
to come forward, she just doubled down.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I think the part of it that gets to me
as well is, and I'd love your insight on this,
is how she would gravitate towards people that were sick
and then kind of be a bit of a chameleon
and emulate the things that she was seeing that's a
very calculated thing to do.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, I mean, that's what's also very tragic about this
story is there were very sick, vulnerable people that she
got very close to. One was a little boy who
did have brain cancer, and she was fund raising on
behalf of him and his family to pay for him
(24:19):
to potentially have life saving surgery, and that money was
never handed over, and unfortunately that little boy has passed away.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I'm not saying he passed away.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Because of his association with Belle, but also he was
at the birthday party that day that she faked the seizure,
so that little boy Bell's son, they had to witness
this lie sort of firsthand as well. So the impact
it had on, you know, really vulnerable people is actually
(24:55):
it is so shocking.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
After the break, Chanelle tells us about how she approached
the journalists who would help her expose Belle Gibson's lies
to the world. What did you do next? Obviously you
could see that book launch, she wasn't admitting anything. Do
you go to the police, do you go straight to
(25:21):
the journalists? What are your next steps?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, so the first step I took was going to
the police, and the police said that I didn't have
any evidence, which I didn't, and it's obviously very difficult
to get access to someone's medical records. So yeah, the
police basically turned me away. I went to a very
high profile lawyer and he accused me of basically defamation
(25:51):
and slander. He happened to have a very close friend
who had cancer, and he was telling me that he
can't even fathom the thought of someone going around accusing,
you know, someone of cancer, of lying and faking. So yeah,
(26:11):
for some reason that the lawyer, he kind of took
it quite personally, and yeah, it made me feel very
uncomfortable and didn't help me. I then went to Australia's
top investigative journalist at the time hadn't heard of Bell before.
He said he might look into it, he might not,
(26:32):
and I never heard back from him again. This ended
up being over a period of sort of kind of
weeks two months, and yeah, I was talking to people
I knew. I was trying to leverage my network to
see if anyone could put me in touch with someone
credible who would believe me, who could vouch for me
(26:53):
that I was telling the truth. And yeah, so it
took quite a long time. To get to that point,
and during that period I started to feel very powerless
and realized how challenging and difficult it is to essentially
kind of be a whistleblower and come forward with the
(27:14):
truth and have people look into it and fact check
it and stop people from causing harm. So that was
really disheartening. So then eventually my former boss spoke to
the editor or someone high up at the AGE and
they got one of their journalists to get in touch
(27:36):
with me, and that journalist was Bo Donnelly, who with
Nick Tuscano, they have published the book The Woman Who
Fooled the World, which the Netflix show has been adapted from. So,
as Bo tells the story, he just thought that this
was just some random tip off that he had to
(27:59):
check off his list, that maybe it was a jealous
friend with an axe to grind, or you know, they
get tip offs come into the newsroom all the time,
and most of them don't really go anywhere. So he
actually just called me on his lunch break. He was
at a cafe. He was very noisy. I just started
to tell him what I knew, what I experienced, and
(28:22):
what my motivation was for coming forward, which was just
for Bale to stop causing harm to vulnerable people and
spreading this misinformation.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Bo very quickly from that call felt that I was
very credible and started to look into the case straight away.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
In the Netflix show, the first article that they release
is that money fraud angle, you know, the charities that
weren't getting the donations that Belle promised. Is that what
happened in real life? Is that the only angle they
could put out to start with.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yes, that's right. The Age also couldn't run.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
A story that they were just suspecting that this woman
didn't have cancer. The lawyers of the Age shut it
down very quickly because again the Age couldn't get access
to her medical records. There was no way to verify
the status of her health. And so the journalists Boe
(29:23):
and Nick they thought, well, if she's lying about something
as big as this, as big as having cancer, and
broadcasting that to the world, then what else is she
lying about? And I shared with them that comment that
Clive had made the night that I had confronted Belle
(29:44):
about the state of the business books, and so they
started looking into whether she had actually made any donations
to the charities that she had been fundraising on behalf
of and they all said they never received a cent
from her.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
So once that angle is out there, that's obviously a
huge hit to Bell and that's the start, that's how
it starts to kind of unravel more publicly. Were they
then able to verify the cancer claims? How did they
manage to get that part of the investigation out sure?
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So coincidentally, around this time that I had gone to
the journalists at that age and they had reported on
her charity fraud, there was actually a journalist at the Australian,
Richard Gilliot, who had started to look into Boo and
he'd think he'd written some stories about Jessain's Coe, who
(30:47):
in the Netflix show is the character Miller. His wife
actually had cancer and I think she had looked into
natural remedies and she'd kind of come across jess And
then as a result of that Richard it was actually
from Richard's own personal experience with his wife that he
(31:07):
started then sort of looking into these people, and then
he actually at the same time was starting to unravel
at all. And then it was very shortly after the
Age had broken the charity fraud story. I think it
was within a few days that Richard Gilliot The Australian
broke the story that Belle didn't have cancer, he met
(31:29):
with her and she said the same thing to her
to him, that her diagnosis was questionable and she herself
actually didn't know for certain if she had cancer or not.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Once these stories and investigations started to get published, did
any of it shock you? Was there any kind of
revelations that came out that you didn't realize?
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Nothing was really shocking to me at that point anymore.
When it came to bell I feel like I kind
of seen the worst of it, especially with that seizure.
It's just it's something I'll never i don't know, be
able to get out of my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
And the way the children reacted that day.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
So yeah, nothing, nothing really surprised me or shocked me
about bal anymore. There were things that came out people
from her past, her childhood, things like she had gone
to acting school and things like that, which I mean
kind of made sense to me. I don't know if
that's true or not. Yeah, I mean it was it. Yeah,
(32:40):
I mean, it didn't surprise me that it came out
that she had been doing this for a long time.
She had been in this skating forum, in this skating
community where she was telling all these people that she'd
had heart surgeries and she died on the operating table
and had been brought back to life and had all
(33:01):
these life threatening diseases, and as a result of that,
people in that community were sending her flowers and give
her lots of attention. So, I mean, it was interesting
to see kind of some of the origin of where
this all began for her and why, and that this
was obviously a pattern.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Did you have any contact with her during that time
as it was all unraveling.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
The day the first story broke, I did send her
a text message that that's the final communication I've had
with her, and I haven't heard from her since then.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
What did you say in the text message?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I said that so Belle always had this saying that
she would say, and for example, she posted it on
this stage four cancer diagnosis on her Instagram when she
announced that, and she should always say, you know, I've
now got stage four cancer, but don't worry, I've got this,
(34:02):
or I'm fundraising all this money to help this boy,
you know, get life saving surgery. I've got this, and
so yeah, I sent her a text message that day
as soon as the first article broke, and I said,
you should check the news, but you've got this right.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
It was a bit of a job, a fair enough job.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I mean I've done a lot of soul searching in
the last ten years and have tried to forgive Bao,
which I can't and I'm not sure I ever can.
But at that point, you know, I was really relieved
that she couldn't keep spreading the lies that she was
and I was doing. And I was so frustrated and
(34:50):
really angry that it took so long for the truth
to come out, and that she was, you know, so
combative to come out and tell the truth herself. So yeah,
that's why I sent the text message. I was kind
of kind of just at my wits end with it all.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Well at all. Obviously really unraveled quickly once you know,
the charity stuff had been exposed, the cancer was fake.
There's this sixty minutes interview that's really famous. She's in
a pink turtleneck and she's kind of been forced to,
I guess, kind of admit, but she doesn't really. She
(35:29):
kind of does this evasive kind of around the questions,
even though all the truth is already out there by then.
You had three heart operations, you suffered two cardiac arrests,
you died twice on the operating table, you had a stroke,
and you were diagnosed with inoprople brain shimmer and given
four months to live correct and I just happened. I
(35:50):
still have the heart condition and I was supposed to
have surgery for that. You were supposed to have surgery
and I didn't. How did you feel watching that interview?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That interview was really difficult to watch, but it was
validating in a way for the world to finally see
what I was up against in terms of trying to
get the truth from trying to get a straight answer
from her, which obviously in that interview Tara Brown could
not get one straight answer from her. And yeah, it
(36:21):
was kind of validating in a way. But at the
same time, it was really sad to see that her
community and the people she took advantage of were getting
no accountability, no apology, no real genuine apology, and no closure.
(36:42):
So that was the hardest part about watching it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Do you have any idea where this kind of compulsive
lying and scamming comes from? In Bell. Do you think
it's malice trauma? Like, do you have a theory?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
I mean, obviously Belle is a very deeply troubled person,
and there seems to be, you know, maybe a number
of reasons for that. She looked she did have, I
think a difficult childhood, but you know, a lot of
people experience difficult childhoods, trauma in their childhoods, and they
(37:23):
don't go on to you know, become a con artist
and take advantage of society's most vulnerable people.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
So I do.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Sometimes think that that's kind of maybe an easy way
to explain maybe why.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
She did what she did.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
I think it's it's important to look at and she
had been doing this for quite a long time as well.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
She had her.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Other people, other people had kind of caught her out
on other lies, and so she had already experienced the
impact that that causes on people, and obviously has not
really experienced much remorse maybe from that. I'm not going
to comment on her state of mind or her mental health,
(38:10):
but from what I witnessed and experienced with Ball, what
I saw was that she was using it basically as
a business strategy to make money and to be in
the limelight, to be adored, to, you know, to build
a business, and to change her life. She was, you know,
(38:31):
just I guess, quite an ordinary person. And when she
started bringing in this money, her lifestyle changed a lot.
She transitioned to more of kind of a lavish lifestyle.
She started renting a multimillion dollar beach house, renting a BMW,
flying first class on holidays overseas, buying designer things. So,
(38:55):
in my opinion, that's what I witnessed and experienced, is
that she saw that her life was benefiting her financially
and she ran with that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me, Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with the woman who exposed Belle Gibson's lies,
Chanelle mccauliffe. Up next, we hear more about the court
proceedings and where Bell Gibson is now nearly ten years on.
How do you feel about the court proceedings that happened
(39:34):
after everything came out because she went to court, she
was fined four hundred and ten thousand dollars. There's no
jail time or anything like that. Do you think that
was a fitting punishment?
Speaker 3 (39:48):
It was good to see that there was some justice brought,
but it has come out recently that it's maybe not
possible for the court to enforce that penalty, and she
hasn't paid any of that penalty. And actually one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars of that penalty was to go
to the family of the little boy that had brain
(40:11):
cancer that she took advantage of as compensation for their suffering.
So it's really it's really upsetting that potentially that family
won't see that money. And you know, it's been quite
a long time. There's been many years since she was
(40:32):
fined and bell I know that Belle has earned some
type of income over the last few years, and Belle
could take it upon herself to start contributing to that fine,
to start making amends, to take accountability and make things right.
So that's disappointing that she's not coming to the table
(40:55):
and doing that.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Overall, the.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Justice system, I guess, is quite broken in that sense
that there hasn't really been real justice.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
She has managed to lay pretty low since everything happened.
We do know there was a story about five years
ago that came out that she was trying to integrate
herself into the Ethiopian community in Melbourne and trying to
raise funds for them, almost kind of going down the
same kind of route of fundraising, and they found out
(41:32):
cut her out. It all kind of ended. But what
did you make of that? Of her kind of trying
to reinvent herself in that way.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I knew she would.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Again, nothing that Bell does anymore is shocking or surprising
to me. This has been a pattern she's been repeating
basically her whole life, and I'm yeah, it was really
sad to see, especially for that community, that she was infiltrating.
(42:01):
And I think there's also been this narrative that bel
really wants to kind of be accepted by a community
she wants to fit in. But like she could go
join a book club, you know, like there are spaces,
you know, she could go join a sporting team. There
(42:23):
are spaces that you can go to to be a
part of a community and feel accepted and feel like
you're part of something without having to take advantage of people.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Do you know much about what she's doing nowadays?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I don't know what she's up to.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Sometimes I hear little roomors, but I don't really pay
much attention to it.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
But I'm sure she's looking at what her next hustle is.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
You were the original whistleblower in this story, and the
reality is if you have tried to do what you
did in any other kind of environment, corporate, government, political,
you could have been prosecuted. That's something that you thought
about at the time.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
There wasn't any kind of scenario where I wasn't going
to follow through with what I did if and this
actually hasn't been the first time I've been a whistleblower.
If I see something that's wrong, I can't turn a
blind eye to it. It's very discouraging for a lot
(43:36):
of I know a lot of people have struggled to
come forward and tell the truth on different things because
people have been reprimanded and prosecuted for speaking up and
telling the truth. It is a very challenging thing to do,
and it it can be a scary thing to do,
especially you know, when there's other interests at play, if
(43:59):
companies are profiting. So, yeah, whistleblowers can easily be silenced
and be scared away from trying to come forward and
tell the truth. Yeah, it just wasn't in my nature
to not do that, to not align with my values,
to just stand by and let something bad happen.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Are there any protections in place for whistle blowers in Australia?
I know it's an area that you feel quite passionately about.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, there have been legislation come into effect in the
last few years to protect whistle blowers, especially in the workplace,
from retaliation. But it's only legislation and regulation and law
only can go so far when people are or the
law or governments or what places are willing to enforce
(44:56):
it and make sure there's people really are protected.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
For me, it feels like whistle blowing should be something
that we support because if there's wrongdoing going on in
certain institutions, surely we should know about it. The fact
that it's something that people might be scared about doing
because they could potentially face criminal charges is insane.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, it is. I think. I think a lot more
work can be done in.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
This space to protect people coming forward and telling the truth.
And it is a very Yeah, it is a very
scary thing to take on. Like I said earlier, there
was one percent of me that was still questioning myself, God,
what if she doesn't have cancer and I've got this
all wrong?
Speaker 1 (45:45):
And that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Right, Like that you see in the media and you
see in cases that people haven't been protected and then
so that makes you question yourself in many ways. It
makes you question do I really know the truth or
am I going to be safe to come forward?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
What are you doing with your life now? Being involved
in this, in whistle blowing, in uncovering kind of the
scam that was Bell Gibson, Has that changed your life
and your kind of goals in life in terms of
what you want to give back?
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah, it definitely led me down a path that I
may not have gone down if I hadn't gone through
what I did with Belle. I ended up moving and
working in the outback with remote Indigenous communities, working on
policy and as a financial counselor preventing economic abuse against
(46:47):
Indigenous people in the outback because unfortunately, those communities are
actually targeted a lot by scams. So while I was
out there doing that work, I was doing financial literacy education,
working with regulators to tighten regulation and laws around predatory
(47:10):
payday lenders that we're targeting Indigenous people. Since then, I've
gone on to work for basically one of own Australia's
only social impact finance fund that provides capital to indigenous
people wanting to start a business or grow their business,
because they have a lot of challenges accessing capital, especially
(47:33):
from mainstream banks. They can be yes, discouraged from accessing
capital from those avenues. So yeah, it's it's something that's
very important to me to do, to do work that's
that's very meaningful and impactful and that can help people,
and I especially, Yeah, I especially love to do work
(47:56):
where I can give people a voice that aren't able
to necessarily use their own voice, and especially prevent or
stop people being taken advantage of, because that's just it's think,
I really really can't stand.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
I know there's a lot of buzz right now everyone's
talking about Bell, but it was nearly a decade ago
that all this happened. Do you think about it often anymore?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
No, I haven't. Over the years, I don't really think
about it too much. I've already given so much energy
and mental capacity to all of this. I did film
for a documentary that's coming out in Netflix in a
few weeks, so I was.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
Involved with that.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
I mean, I mean, I have reflected on it at times,
I especially right now with how big the story has gotten. Again, well,
it's actually gotten even bigger than ever before. And as
much as I can't forgive Belle, I can't help but
think that this would maybe be quite difficult for her,
(49:12):
And given you know she is a troubled person, I
do wonder about her mental health at this time and
the whole time, actually, and I do hope that she
is okay at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
So you do still have empathy for her in amongst
all of the younger.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
I mean, yeah, like Belle is still human at the
end of the day, a very complex, complicated, troubled human,
and I actually just hope that she can eventually learn
from all this and evolve from it and make amends.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
So yeah, I mean that is what I hope for.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Do you think she can though, Do you think she
can actually redeem herself?
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I think it will be difficult in the public eye.
I think the public will probably have a different cool
time for giving her, and that's understandable. But I hope
she can redeem herself, just for herself, even in her
personal life. I hope she can evolve and learn from
this and not do something like this again in any capacity.
(50:29):
So yeah, it's very wishful thinking to think that there
could be some redemption.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Thanks to Chanelle for telling us her story. True Crime
Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by
me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by
Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back
next week with a very interesting true crime conversation with
the anonymous host of case File.
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