Original subtitles

This programme deals with Eating Disorders

In August 2013, Belle Gibson launched The Whole Pantry,

a book, an app, and a website,

in which she claimed that healthy eating had cured her condition.

It was five years ago I was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

It's been hard.

Belle Gibson was the Queen Bee of Wellness.

People worshipped her.

I was deeply invested in what she was saying,

because it was just such an amazing story.

This is the story of the rise and fall of one of Instagram's first

super influencers, told by those she influenced...

Maybe SHE'S got the right idea, maybe I'M doing it all wrong.

I'm dying, and she's out there, living her best life.

...and those who sought the truth.

I just was immediately suspicious about her claim

about this brain tumour.

You just don't live with something like that for five years,

without having some kind of treatment.

I am not lying.

He definitely told me that my brain tumour is still present,

and that I have new and secondary cancers.

In 2013, the world first met wellness influencer Belle Gibson,

who attracted a huge global online following with her brave story.

A young, beautiful woman gets given the terrible news

she has inoperable brain cancer, and only four months to live.

The courageous Belle Gibson tries chemotherapy, but no luck,

so turns to alternative medicine to battle the disease.

Belle shared her incredible story,

of living for years with terminal cancer, on Instagram.

Her adoring audience was inspired by her every post.

It looked like, even if you weren't going through cancer treatment,

that you would still want to live that lifestyle.

Everything was bright and glossy. An amazing style about her

that was very engaging and very appealing.

It just all looked great.

I was in complete awe of this woman.

She was incredibly open and honest.

She was unafraid to be vulnerable

and be very explicit about her experience.

She had this incredible story that was something that I could perhaps

relate to, in a way, with my own health issues.

She took her own wellbeing into her hands, and it worked,

and she transformed her life from it.

When Maxine Ali began secondary school,

she was diagnosed with the chronic illness ulcerative colitis.

I got so unwell that, eventually,

I wasn't able to go to school any more,

I wasn't able to participate in the normal things

that most 12-year-olds are doing at that time.

Immediately after I was diagnosed,

I was put on a whole bunch of medication, including steroids.

I kind of experienced some of the physical side effects

that come from steroids, such as weight gain, erm,

bloating of the face,

and when I was eventually well enough to go back to school,

my physical appearance had changed quite considerably.

All of my friends no longer wanted to be seen with me,

or associated with me, because I was the weird one that stuck out.

The way I was being treated while I was on medication

was so unbearable for me that I decided to stop

using conventional medicine, and try and find a natural way

to heal myself.

Seeing someone like Belle heal themselves through food

made me feel hopeful, it made me feel like this was the answer

to everything that I had been looking for.

The foundations of Belle's radical approach,

healing illness through diet, were laid over 50 years ago.

There's a word you don't hear every day.

It means exactly what you might think it means -

the opposite of illness.

It's a movement that is catching on all over the country,

among doctors, nurses and others concerned with medical care.

Wellness is really the ultimate in something called self-care,

in which patients are taught to diagnose common illnesses,

and, where possible, to treat themselves.

Wellness was born in 1960s California, where a generation

of young Americans experimented with Eastern mysticism,

mind-expanding drugs, and back-to-nature living.

In wellness, you are the leader.

You're your own guru, and you're the perfect person

that is trying to make your life better and more full.

Before long, wellness shed its alternative roots,

growing with exercise fads, spa tourism and diet crazes.

Wellness had reached the mainstream.

Alongside attempts to encourage all of us to look after our health

a little better is a booming wellness industry,

claimed to be worth $4.2 trillion a year.

Wellness found a home on social media, encouraged by celebrities,

who posted their aspirational lifestyles,

full of wellness practices.

What if I told you the best place to begin is within?

It was at this point that Belle started posting

about her wellness journey.

I get out of bed for what we do.

We really believe that we're changing people's lives.

We just want to go, hey, maybe eat, you know, some more fruits

and vegetables, move your body a little more,

drink a little bit more water.

Inspired by Belle,

Pixie Turner took to Instagram to spread the wellness message.

Everyone was using overhead shots, so I did the same...

...and the more I did that, the more it paid off.

And then I'd spend the next hour just refreshing

and refreshing Instagram, watching the likes come in.

I loved getting all those likes.

The first time I got over a thousand likes on a picture,

I was so happy.

Pixie's wellness journey began when she was advised to see

a cardiologist, following a health scare in the family.

When I was 19 years old,

I was told that my cholesterol was too high,

I should follow some lifestyle changes, if I wanted to,

and come back in a year.

If it was still high, I would have to go on statins

for the rest of my life.

I did not want to do that.

I went and did the most obvious thing to me, at the time.

I went straight to Dr Google, started typing.

I found Belle Gibson, and this wellness community,

that was very focused on taking charge of your own health.

It was very empowering,

and on top of that, it was very visually appealing.

And in between that, there were these pictures of these people

who looked so healthy, and happy, and shiny,

and if I need to eat that food to look like that,

I'm going to do it.

Like hundreds of thousands of others, Pixie and Maxine

started using the first wellness app in the world, The Whole Pantry,

designed by Belle Gibson.

It was offering this kind of tool kit for people

to follow her lifestyle.

So there were these really, really stunning recipes.

There was something very serene about the app.

I hadn't seen anyone do anything like that,

and, to me, I saw that as just a continuation of her wanting

to share something with the world that was valuable,

and that people wanted.

I saw it as very selfless for her to share all of this with people.

I thought she must be a really kind person.

Belle Gibson is a mother, a businesswoman,

and she's also living with brain cancer.

I mean, why this app?

When Belle went on breakfast TV to promote the app,

she was admired by the hosts.

And you're quite inspirational.

I wouldn't mind betting that that's a fair bit behind all of this,

as well...

They were visibly moved by her seemingly inspiring story.

We really believe that we've revolutionised, erm, something

that people are becoming increasingly interested

and invested in, which is health and wellness.

For a person living with brain cancer,

might I add, you look incredibly healthy.

Having funded the award-winning app herself,

now Apple invited Belle to California.

They wanted to adapt The Whole Pantry for their

soon-to-be-launched Apple Watch.

It was five years ago I was diagnosed with terminal cancer,

and we launched The Whole Pantry a year ago.

That evolution came through my community.

They kept reaching out to me, saying, you know,

how are we going to, you know, live the whole life

without resources, or without something pulling that all together?

So that was my responsibility.

The Whole Pantry was about more than just healthy living.

It was also about giving back.

A portion of each app sale was donated to charitable causes

Belle was passionate about.

We really believe that we're changing people's lives,

and we have a giving-back end of the company as well,

with your app download transfers into community donation,

so that's everything from funding medical support for children

that are living with cancer, to building schools in Sierra Leone.

It just reinforced what I already knew about her,

which is that she is selfless,

she's not doing this for her own personal gain,

she's trying to help people,

and this was just another way of her doing that.

In Belle's hometown of Melbourne, mum-of-three Kylie Wyllie

had a successful personal training business.

I was getting ready for my best friend's wedding.

I was maid of honour,

so there was lots of excitement around that.

I had had some chest pain, which was unusual.

My husband and friend talked me into going to the doctor,

to have it investigated.

So I went down to the local centre, and I had a scan,

and the first one was just an ultrasound of my armpits,

and I had MRIs and CT scans.

I was driving to the rehearsal dinner, and the doctor called me,

and she said, "I need you to come in to, come in to the clinic

"and see me". I said, "Well, it's just not possible,

"I'll have to see you on Monday. I can't come in".

And she said, "Well, I hate to do this over the phone,

"but you have lymphoma.

"You have cancer".

We got through the wedding, and the whole time, I just remember

being in this surreal, like, "Holy shit!"

Like, "How is this, like, my, my life right now?

"Like, what, what's going to happen?"

And that night, on the Sunday,

the lymph nodes had enlarged so much,

I was having trouble breathing,

cos they were pushing up pressure on my neck.

I couldn't lift my arms up,

and so I was taken via ambulance to the Alfred Hospital,

where I started treatment.

I guess the reality really set in about the severity of the diagnosis

is when the doctor said to me,

"You need to get your affairs in order".

And I remember looking at him, thinking, you have to be kidding.

I was diagnosed, like, five seconds ago.

How are you even, how am I down for the count already?

Like, give me a chance to fight it first.

After six months of treatment in hospital,

Kylie's health wasn't improving.

I was having daily chemo, I had no hair,

and I'd had 17 lumbar punctures.

I was like, you're not making me better, you're making me worse.

You're killing me. Like, why am I even doing this?

My beautiful girlfriend, Suzy, came to visit me, and she said to me,

"Have you heard about this girl, Belle Gibson?"

"She's got brain cancer, and, you know, she's doing really well".

OK, this is interesting.

Maybe SHE'S got the right idea, maybe I'M doing it all wrong.

I'm dying on the inside, getting worse with every single treatment,

I look horrendous,

and she's out there, living her best life.

Interested in finding out more about her lifestyle,

Kylie bought Belle's newly released wellness book.

So, in the front page of the book, Belle writes about her own story.

"I pulled myself out of chemo and radiotherapy.

"My doctors freaked out, but they couldn't stop me.

"I was empowering myself to save my own life

"through nutrition, patience, determination and love".

I wanted to be just like Belle, beautiful,

and she was successful,

she was inspiring to so many people.

She was what the ultimate goal was,

to be like Belle Gibson.

Now, we've forgiven the avocado for its high fat content,

and deemed it a superfood.

But can the food we eat really clean our bodies

and make us feel well?

With her book and app, Belle advocated clean eating

to help heal the body, which meant restricting your diet.

Clean eating was a phrase that the wellness community

really latched on to, and really used a lot,

the idea that we needed to clean up the way that we were eating.

I mean, everyone knows that vegetables are good for you,

fruit is good for you, plants are good for you.

It made sense, the idea that all these processed foods,

and these various ingredients that we were eating

were not good for us.

It was so simple and it made so much sense.

In pursuit of clean eating,

Pixie's diet became more and more restricted.

So in my fridge now, I've got various animal products,

things that I definitely would not have eaten,

anything with any kind of meat in it.

Definitely not. Er, we've got pasta, that's got gluten.

Hell no. That's not allowed. No way.

Anything with dairy, so, you know, whether that is, that's cream,

it's cheese, cream cheese, hard cheese, soft cheese.

None of this is OK. All of this has gone.

I mean, it seems harmless, but because it's prepared,

and it's in a package, I would not have eaten this.

Also this one has cream in it, so definitely a big no-no.

And, on paper, someone might say, you know, that seems really healthy,

like, that, to me, is the epitome of, like, a healthy thing.

It's got more than five ingredients.

That means it's processed, and you're not allowed it.

And what's the idea behind that?

Someone on the internet made it up, and it became a thing.

Because the idea is, if it has five or more ingredients,

it's probably a processed food, and therefore it's a bad food,

because it's processed.

And, finally,

we have wine.

Alcohol wasn't really a thing of wellness,

because it's completely devoid of nutrients,

and also, when you drink wine, or you drink alcohol,

it doesn't allow you to wake up feeling fresh the next morning,

ready to have your, you know, your spin class,

and your smoothie for breakfast.

I mean, I was at the end of my first year of uni

when I got into wellness,

so whilst a lot of my friends and colleagues were going out

and drinking, I was only, only very occasionally

going along with them, and I wouldn't drink that much.

Usually something really simple, not wine.

After nine months of chemotherapy,

Kylie was struggling to cope with treatment for her lymphoma.

I'd had enough of all of the poking and prodding and the constant scans.

I wasn't getting any better.

I was getting worse.

I was done and...

...I can remember my husband, you know, waking me up

to take me to The Alfred and he would get up before me.

He would put my pillow in the car, my blanket,

then he would wake me last minute and take me.

And I sat at the door of the house.

I'm just like, "I'm done. I'm not doing it.

"I'm not going any more. I do not want another lumbar puncture.

"I don't want it. We need to talk about other treatments.

"I can't do this any more."

The chemo wasn't for me. It wasn't working for me

that I should come off it and try, you know, the clean eating.

I was desperate. My life had totally changed

and she appeared to be doing everything right.

And I felt like I was doing everything wrong.

I felt like I was sucked into this process

that wasn't working for me.

So I felt like,

"No, I need to give this a go to see if this works."

She was saying that what she was doing was curing her cancer.

It was making it better and...

...I had her there to look at.

I had her on my phone and she was in magazines

and she was on the news and she was being reported, so...

...I trusted her.

I trusted everybody that supported her.

Wanting to follow Belle's eating regime,

Kylie began messaging her directly on Instagram.

When I sent her a message, it was after she'd had another procedure

and I remember just, you know, sending her good wishes

and, you know, "I hope you're going to be OK",

and, "My thoughts and hopes are with you,"

"Sending all, you know, positive vibes",

and she replied, thanking me for my kind wishes.

I was telling people, "I spoke to Belle Gibson."

"She replied to my message",

like, and I'd be all that.

I felt like we were probably opening,

you know, the lines of communication and probably would chat more about,

you know, her journey and my journey and...

...yeah, I was pretty chuffed at the fact that she replied to my message.

I wanted to be her friend.

In July 2014, Belle posted this picture on Instagram,

with a caption explaining how her cancer had spread

and it wasn't a good prognosis.

With frustration and ache in my heart,

my beautiful game-changing community.

It hurts me to find space tonight, to let you all know,

with love and strength,

that I've been diagnosed with a third and fourth cancer.

I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus and liver.

I am hurting.

I can still see it so clearly in my mind, that post and that caption,

because I just remember feeling so devastated for her.

Like, how can this happen to somebody who's worked so hard,

who's achieved all of this, who's such a great person?

It just seemed really unfair.

If brain cancer wasn't bad enough, and now, she's copping this

and this poor, beautiful woman that,

you know, was just trying to live her best life and...

...I felt so sad for her.

Belle's devoted followers poured out their love and support

for her on social media,

but her claims were so extraordinary

that some had started to doubt her story.

Around 2005, my wife Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer,

and I recall very vividly...

...the feeling of powerlessness that we both had

and you want to have some sense of control over this illness

and not it just being in the hands of a doctor

and how desperate you can feel...

So desperate that you'll go down the Google rabbit hole

and look into all sorts of alternative practices

and you get into this bewildering kind of situation of who do I trust?

INTERVIEWER: What's the first thing that comes into your mind

when you hear the name, "Belle Gibson"?

The first thing that comes into my mind is...

...my meeting with Belle Gibson in February 2015,

when I sat down to interview her in a cafe.

I had been writing about the wellness phenomenon since 2012,

and then, I came across Belle Gibson's claims online

and I was just immediately intrigued by them.

Because I'd written about the wellness industry

and had interviewed a range of cancer specialists,

I just was immediately suspicious

about her claim about this brain tumour.

You just don't live with something like that for five years

without having some kind of treatment.

As far as I could tell in the mainstream media

no-one had really thought to raise any questions

about this narrative that she had put forward.

I said to my editor, "Look, there's something that just doesn't add up.

"I mean, she's claiming that she's got this malignant brain tumour

"and four other cancers and she looks like a million dollars.

"I think we just dig into this a bit."

One of the first things I noticed

when I began delving into Belle's story was that on social media

she'd had enormous attention for the past 18 months,

but prior to that, it was almost as if she didn't exist.

It appeared that she had erased

parts of her online history prior to 2014.

That just really intrigued me because the obvious question is,

why would you do that?

And so, I began doing intensive searches of Google

to try and find any trace of her before 2014.

And that's when I came across this skateboard chat forum from 2009,

where there was this young woman called Belle Gibson,

who was nothing like the Belle Gibson of The Whole Pantry.

She was this 17-year-old trash-talking skater girl.

And to be honest, initially, I thought,

"Well, this can't possibly be Belle Gibson."

You know, there must be just two Belle Gibsons

because apart from anything else,

Belle Gibson was supposedly 20 years old in 2009, not 17.

I came across this post,

where she talked about how she'd had this tattoo done.

And I suddenly realised, like, this is her,

because the tattoo she described

is the tattoo that Belle Gibson has on her arm.

Not only had Belle been lying about her age,

as Richard continued to research her past,

he found further worrying inconsistencies.

In the course of burrowing into this skateboarding chat forum,

I came across these posts where she claimed to be...

...writing from a hospital bed in Hollywood Private Hospital in Perth,

and to be recovering from open-heart surgery.

And she was claiming that she'd died on the operating table

and been resuscitated.

I mean, it was supposedly written in real time,

while she was in hospital.

She was describing the chapel that she went to pray in.

And as with her Whole Pantry Facebook page,

the reaction from all of these people on the skate forum

was one of, you know, extraordinary drama and, you know,

"My God, Belle! Are you OK?"

And, you know, "That's terrible!"

And, you know, "Should I send you some flowers?"

It was kind of a mirror image of what was on the Whole Pantry page

but it was five years earlier and a younger incarnation of her

making these extraordinary, and frankly, highly unlikely claims

about a medical emergency.

The other thing was there was no mention on this skateboarding forum

about this malignant brain tumour that she supposedly had.

Richard wasn't the only person sceptical about Belle's story.

Online, others were raising doubts too.

Penguin, the publishers of Belle's book,

had also started to notice discrepancies in her story.

Marie Claire said today, um...

"You really have changed the whole market for food apps,

"Because now, it's like a trend. Everyone wants to do one."

I'm like, I know.

To prepare Belle for journalists and their probing questions,

they gave her media coaching.

What we suspect might happen now

is that because you are the success story of the moment,

you know what journalists do,

they want to start scratch, scratch, scratching away.

They already are. Yeah, exactly.

And we're concerned about that.

Well, that's what the publicist at Apple also said.

It's like, what story do you want to be?

So I'm going to ask you some of these questions,

and some of them you won't like, but...

...but that's OK cos it's just us. Yeah.

You've said that the cancer is now in your blood and your spleen

and your brain and your uterus and your liver, that's really...

It's... it's serious now, isn't it?

Yeah.

Um...

I'm going to get tested for ovarian cancer.

I no longer have cancer in my uterus.

Woohoo! That's great news. Really amazing.

Um... When were you told that?

Um... Not long ago.

Yeah, that's great news. Yeah, but...

...it still all feels like it sucks down there.

Do you think you're dying? Yeah.

Do you feel like you're dying? Yeah, and I'm fine with that.

And it's conflicting for a lot of people.

Like, I don't think I'm going to die tomorrow but my body is dying.

Like, of course it is.

But I don't want them to know every nitty-gritty detail.

After a year of following a strict clean eating diet,

Maxine wasn't seeing the results promised by wellness.

My health started deteriorating.

I was starting to feel a lot more run-down.

I had lost my period,

and physically, I just wasn't feeling that good any more.

I would often find myself hungry a lot of the time,

creating the sort of binge cycle at night.

I'd eat like maybe half a jar of peanut butter

or something like that, and then, call my mum and be like,

"I don't know why I can't stop eating.

"I don't know what's wrong with me."

And she'd say, "Are you thinking maybe it's the diet that you're on?"

I'd be like, "No, no, the diet's fine, it's me."

I did see a doctor. And of course,

one of the first things they'll say is,

"You need to eat more and exercise less."

But of course, that is the opposite of what society always tells you

you need to do in order to be healthy,

so I was like, "They're talking nonsense.

"Of course, I don't need to exercise less and eat more.

"What I'm doing is perfectly healthy.

"I'm taking care of my health, so that's definitely not it."

And I just ignored their advice.

I definitely think there was a frustration that I...

...I was doing everything -

I was following all the rules,

I had the books that all these wellness influencers were selling

that would help me transform my life.

And my life didn't look like that.

It didn't look that glamorous or exciting.

I just felt like a complete failure.

In February 2015, Richard flew to Melbourne to meet Belle,

who was doing interviews to publicise her new book,

The Whole Pantry.

There was a certain sense of anticipation

when I sat down opposite her at this cafe of what is she going to say

and how much am I going to be able to glean from her?

The thing that you first notice about Belle Gibson

is that she just doesn't look sick at all,

like she's the picture of glowing health.

And the second thing you notice about her is

she acts much younger than you expect her to act.

I kept thinking to myself,

"This is the woman who's reduced roomfuls of people to tears

"and has generated this almost messianic following online."

And I was sitting there thinking,

"I just don't find you convincing."

I just didn't buy it.

As we went on, it became clear that it was very difficult

to get any kind of specificity out of her.

You know, she would apologise -

her memory was affected by her medical condition.

The impression I got was that she thinks on her feet

and she shifts her position as she goes.

And she creates this confusion in your mind

as to what it is that she's saying.

You're trying to pin her down, but she keeps shifting position.

So, about halfway through the interview,

I framed a question, which was something along the lines of,

"What about these other four cancers

"that you were recently diagnosed with?"

And she started this answer that...

...just seemed to go around in circles.

And she was talking about the difficulty she was having.

She was going to tell me something

that she hadn't said publicly before.

It was very difficult and upsetting for her.

And I was just sitting there thinking,

"What... what is... Where is this going?

"Like, what is she talking about?"

And she started telling me that the doctor

who diagnosed her with these other four cancers the previous year,

had shot through on her and she was no longer seeing him.

And she now had doubts about his bona fides.

And so I said to her, "Well, what are you telling me?

"Are you saying that you're now not sure...

"..that you've got these other four cancers?"

And she said, "No."

I was just completely stunned that she would backtrack

from this extraordinary claim that she'd made only seven months earlier.

I just walked away from that interview

with, really, my head spinning.

I remember calling my editor from the car and saying,

"You know, I just can't believe this has happened.

"Belle Gibson just recanted to me, on the record."

Belle had changed her story about having secondary cancers.

But before he could safely go to press,

Richard had to prove his theory that Belle never had brain cancer.

So, I'm at my desk one day at the office.

At this point, I'd been ringing just about anybody I can

who knows Belle Gibson,

and my phone rings and it's Belle Gibson on the phone.

I knew straight away that she was really unhappy

about the fact that I was digging around, as I expected she would be.

She, in her circuitous way, started talking about how damaging...

...media stories can be for people and that people who are, um...

...vulnerable can even, you know, commit suicide sometimes,

if stories of a damaging nature are published.

I just got off the phone and thought, "Oh, man!", you know,

"She's just sort of suggested that, if I publish this story,

"she's going to top herself."

Other journalists were on Belle's trail, too.

They found that she dropped out of school aged 15,

and two years later, she settled in Melbourne just before having a son.

They also made a shocking discovery about Belle's business.

Doubts were raised when she failed to deliver

a promised $300,000 to charity.

The reason that Nick Toscano and I started looking into it

was because we were tipped off.

We had around half a dozen people in Belle Gibson's inner circle

telling us that they didn't believe she was sick.

But that's a very difficult story for a journalist to write.

We don't have access to people's medical records.

So, we started probing her other claims

and these centred around her charitable donations.

So, you were effectively following the money? That's right.

The news that Belle hadn't paid the promised share of her profits

to charity rocked the online wellness world,

attracting loyal defenders and fierce critics.

Belle took to the internet to defend her reputation.

I knew we had to publish immediately,

we couldn't sit on what we had any more,

and so I went to the news desk and we got legal advice

and we went straight to the press that day under the headline,

Mega-Blogger Casts Doubt On Cancer Claims.

Belle's story exploded into the public sphere,

and as news of her cancer fraud spread fast,

it garnered a furious backlash.

Overnight, some of her most loyal fans became her biggest critics.

I was at my girlfriend's hair salon

and it flicked up on my social media that Belle Gibson had lied.

I just burst out straight away, saying,

"Oh, my God, Belle Gibson is a liar!"

I don't know, I felt betrayed and a little bit let down by her,

and then, the absolute mind-blowing, why the hell would you do that?

Why would you pretend to have cancer?

Like...

...what the hell?

I felt like it made me look like an idiot.

When the story broke,

those closest to Belle were reluctant to go on the record,

afraid of the backlash for being associated with her.

Even Belle's parents didn't publicly support her.

Now, one of Belle's friends has agreed to speak out

as long as she isn't identified.

It extremely quickly became this very toxic story

and I kind of didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole

because of how toxic it appeared from day one.

Belle grew up in Wynnum, a working-class suburb of Brisbane.

She claimed to have left home at age 12,

spending her teens living with friends.

I remember the first time I ever met Belle,

she looked me right in the eye

and she really tried to connect with me very deeply.

For a 14-year-old girl, you know,

that was something that was really lovely.

And I definitely enjoyed my time with Belle.

The only catch with Belle was that you knew that

there was nothing that she could say that you could take at face value.

When she came to class in an arm sling,

there was no chance it was actually a broken arm.

And, you know, the next week told us that she was a test tube baby.

We all kind of went, "Oh, yeah, sure. OK, Belle."

We kind of all knew from the beginning that Belle likes to lie.

I remember a few years ago now, opening up Facebook

and seeing a video and I recognised the face.

It was Belle talking about some app that she was creating.

And instantly, I kind of had alarm bells ringing

in the back of my mind.

I kind of sat there going,

"Has she done it again but on a massive scale now?"

People's immediate reaction was denial.

This can't be real, surely not.

And then, as I think it started to sink in,

that's when the doubt creeped in and people thought,

"OK, maybe she actually did lie."

It was five years ago I was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

I don't think I'm going to die tomorrow, but my body is dying.

For a person living with brain cancer, might I add,

you look incredibly healthy.

I felt incredibly gullible that I had fallen for something

that could so easily have been disproven and was disproven.

How could I be so stupid?

It's so devastating for the industry.

She was such an important figure.

It blows all trust out the water with everyone's stories.

I felt really disappointed in myself...

...for having been tricked by her.

I became a lot more cynical that day.

It was clear that wellness was never going to be the same.

Belle disappeared, purging all traces of herself from social media.

A Facebook group called Belle Gibson Uncovered sprang to life,

where people shared stories about Belle

and examined her every post for inconsistencies.

It was driven by a lot of people

whose family had gone through cancer,

whether it be directly or indirectly,

and people that had lost people

because they didn't go through conventional treatment.

So, they were really angry.

They were angry about the influence that she had on people.

They blamed her.

A lot of people blamed her for things that had gone wrong.

There was a lot of pictures from her past

that were contradictory to the image that she was selling, you know.

It was, you know, images of her drinking or smoking

and not living that amazing, healthy lifestyle that she promoted.

If only we had done that before we gave her the platform to...

...be the person that she was.

Within two weeks of the story breaking,

Penguin had withdrawn Belle's book

and Apple had removed any mention of The Whole Pantry

from their website and App Store.

Welcome back to The Life And Lies Of Belle Gibson,

the woman who pretended to have cancer,

and to this day, still won't tell the truth

that she knew she didn't.

Three months after the scandal broke,

Belle appeared on the Australian current affairs show, 60 Minutes.

You go on Instagram in 2013 -

"I have been healing a severe and malignant brain cancer

"for the past few years, with natural medicine,

"Gerson Therapy, and foods.

"It's working for me."

It is and if any...

Except you didn't have brain cancer.

No, I didn't.

She wasn't at all how I expected her to be.

She just came across as devoid of emotions,

lacking in any empathy or even recognition

of the people that she hurt.

How can we believe anything you say now?

Tara, I have lost everything.

Would you accept that you're a pathological liar?

No.

I never quite could sort out my feelings about Belle Gibson,

because even though what she did was...

...reprehensible and dangerous,

she personally, I thought, was a very fragile person,

whose grip on reality was a bit tenuous.

And so, I was constantly in this dilemma about

whether I felt sympathy for or I loathed her.

She's definitely not well because you don't...

A well person doesn't do what she's done and believe in her own lies.

But she's also highly intelligent.

She thinks we're all stupid.

That's what annoys me about her.

She is the type of person that thinks

that she's smarter than the rest of us and we're all fools,

maybe we were there for a little bit,

and that she can do and say whatever she likes without any consequence.

BELLE'S FRIEND: On the internet it is so much easier

to prioritise anger than it is to prioritise compassion.

I see people still with so much hatred and anger

in their hearts at her,

and I kind of wish that they knew the 14-year-old Belle

and understood the full context of this.

I hope that Belle took some really hard lessons

and can... Not have to deal with being public enemy number one.

Pixie and Maxine had become friends through wellness,

but after years of restrictive dieting,

it had taken a toll on their health.

When I look back now on my time in wellness,

I had an unhealthy relationship with food.

It was obsessive. It was anxiety-inducing.

It was classic signs of orthorexia.

Orthorexia is an eating disorder

characterised by having an unsafe obsession with healthy food.

When I was in the midst of it, there was so much denial... Yeah.

...in terms of the idea that this might actually not be helpful.

This is actually harming me and wasn't making me feel good.

No, no, I blocked that out.

I couldn't possibly face that idea.

I would've been like, "Everything's great, everything's wonderful."

There was so much denial, which I guess is quite...

...classic for disordered eating,

is that there is that kind of denial that can often be there.

Yeah, and I think it's almost disordered eating is so normalised

within wellness that, you know,

when you are so immersed within that culture,

in your view, there's nothing disordered about it.

I just wanted to have a normal uni experience

after years and years of being in and out of school

and never really having a sense of stability.

I just desperately needed something to cling on to for dear life.

Yeah. And that's what wellness presented itself as.

Yeah, we were vulnerable. Wellness came along and said,

"Hi, we can help."

When you look at our story,

it very much shows that wellness is seductive.

It is intriguing.

And...

...the worst part about it is that you are never good enough.

You can never reach peak wellness.

You can never be good enough for wellness.

And that is to somebody who's going into that already vulnerable

and probably with low self-esteem,

probably not feeling too great about themselves

because of whatever's going on,

it just pushes you down further and just makes you feel worthless

and that is shit.

Belle was fined £230,000 for making false claims

about her donations to charity.

A fine she's never paid.

The people of Australia want to know why you haven't paid that fine.

Today, it's rumoured that she's working in a Melbourne school

and that she's converted to Islam.

As the dust settles on her story,

some wonder how she'd been allowed to achieve such success,

and if Belle was the only guilty party.

I don't feel anger towards Belle

in the same way that I do towards the industry as a whole.

I feel angry at social media for creating this space

where misinformation can spread unchecked.

I feel angry at the publishers who gave Belle a platform

to profit from people's vulnerability.

KYLIE: You didn't even for a second question her

because of who supported her, who was backing her.

It wasn't just Apple, it was Penguin Books.

It was Cosmopolitan that had,

you know, endorsed her and stood behind her,

so I wouldn't have thought

it was ever my responsibility to fact-check her.

The biggest publishing company in the world

and the biggest computer company in the world had apparently

completely failed to do any due diligence on her claims.

I mean, Penguin admitted to me that they didn't really do

any proper fact-checking on her medical history.

And Apple, when I finally got someone to talk to me,

effectively said, well...

...they didn't care about the questions that were being raised

about her cancer claim, as long as her app worked.