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A Current Affair: Palm Beach Angel
Title:
A Current Affair: Palm Beach Angel
NFSA ID
53234
Year
1989
This story from a 1989 episode of the Nine Network program A Current Affair (ACA) focuses on Violet Dorothy Pryor, an elderly woman who convinced parishioners of a Sydney church that she was a living deity to extract money and services from them. In the segment, disillusioned members of her flock doorstep her Palm Beach mansion to demand explanations.
It’s classic ACA. The program attracted a steady stream of criticism (and lawsuits) for a sensationalist brand of journalism built on confrontation, corruption and recrimination. In the late '80s, 60 Minutes journalist Jana Wendt stepped in as host. Her cool-eyed, slightly stern affect added gravitas to a story like this one; she left in 1992 after an ACA story featured topless women.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.