How a panicked phone call to the ABC newsroom led to a Four Corners investigation and the dismantling of an alleged sex slave cult

It started with a panicked call to the ABC switchboard asking to speak to someone in the newsroom.

The desperate voice on the other end of the line was begging for help.

That initial conversation was the first of dozens that followed a similar pattern — describing how a sex cult was allegedly harming vulnerable young women and despairing that authorities seemed unable or unwilling to intervene.

Weeks later, producer Kyle Taylor and I found ourselves at a dodgy regional New South Wales pub being heckled by the locals who had no idea what was going on as we frantically photographed hundreds of pages of tattered “slave journal” entries.

They were brought to us in a black bum bag by a woman who alleged she was enslaved, forced into sex work,…