Social media well-being entrepreneur and blogger Belle Gibson has indicated her cancer diagnosis may have been a mistake, following a series of discoveries casting doubt on the veracity of her claims, and the revelations that she may have been misappropriating funds she claimed were going to charity.
Gibson launched an Instagram blog in 2009, claiming to be a young mum who had moved to Melbourne after a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. At the time, she explained she had been told she had four months to live.
‘Healing Belle’ quickly gained a large following and started chronicling her chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments. After just two months of treatment, she announced she was abandoning conventional medicine to focus on natural health and wellness remedies.
Over the six years since, she has repeatedly claimed these natural remedies cured her of her aggressive “stage two” brain cancer, as well as several other cancers she said she had been diagnosed with over the years.
She said she was 20 at the time of her initial diagnosis, but information provided to ASIC shows she was only 17 in 2009.
Last year, Gibson announced she had been diagnosed with cancers of the liver, uterus, spleen and blood. Since an investigation by The Australian cast doubt on the truth of her claims about her illness, she has announced it possible that those four cancers were a “misdiagnosis”.
Oncology experts have told Fairfax Media that her initial story of a brain cancer diagnosis “doesn’t add up”. Apart from the fact that she referred to a “stage two” diagnosis when brain cancers are measured by grades, rather than stages, experts also said that a grade two brain cancer diagnosis would not lead to a four month life expectancy.
Close friends of Gibson have said they have questioned the veracity of her claims in the past. Some reportedly confronted her about their concerns last year and she admitted that her diagnoses were questionable.
She was asked by The Australian to provide documentary evidence of her diagnoses and her treatment, but she declined.
Her story of surviving five aggressive cancers by exclusively using natural remedies has earned her 200,000 followers on social media. It also resulted in her developing an app called The WholePantry, promoting recipes that helped her fight the cancers. The app, which costs $3.79 to download, has now been downloaded 300,000 times.
Last year, the app was turned into a recipe book, published by Penguin. Penguin representatives have since admitted they did not request proof of her diagnosis or treatment before commissioning the book.
The investigation by The Australian follows evidence uncovered by Fairfax Media on Sunday that Gibson may have also been misdirecting funds she collected in the name of various charities.
Since her popularity has grown on social media, she has been holding fundraisers to collect money for cancer charities as well as a range of others, including organisations assisting asylum seekers and organisations providing birthing kits and school scholarships to developing countries.
On at least two occasions, it is reported that Gibson failed to hand over any money to the charities named as beneficiaries of the fundraising she had organised. Four of the five charities named in one fundraiser had no knowledge of the event and received no donation from Gibson.
The Whole Pantry has since released a statement saying the missing funds were a result of cashflow problems, and that the money would be forwarded to the charities as soon as it becomes available.
There was another fundraising drive in 2013 from which no funds appear to have been donated to charity, however Gibson now says it was not a fundraiser, but a launch event for her app. All promotional material for the event did, however, encourage donations to four separate charities.
Social media posts about the fundraisers have now been deleted. A series of posts about Gibson’s illness, including posts on Facebook, Instagram and a chat forum with details about various diagnoses and surgeries, have also been deleted since these reports have emerged.
On top of questions about misappropriation of charibtable funds, reports have also emerged that neither Gibson nor her organisation are registered fundraisers. Consumer Affairs Victoria is expected to launch an investigation into Gibson’s fundraising activities. The penalty for unregistered fundraising activities is a fine of up to $28,000 for the organisation and $12,000 for the individual as well as 12 months’ jail time.