Tara Brown to Belle Gibson: ‘You’re a pathological liar’

TARA Brown tore Belle Gibson to shreds during last night’s hard-hitting 60 Minutes interview but the so-called cancer survivor still maintains she’s the victim.

BELLE Gibson’s interview with Tara Brown took a tense turn last night, as the hard-hitting reporter confronted the disgraced wellness blogger with fresh evidence suggesting she knew all along that she didn’t have a brain tumour.

Brown hammered shamed health guru, asking, “Do you accept that you’re a pathological liar?”

Gibson replied: “No.”

Gibson, who, in April, was forced to admit that she lied about having brain cancer and cured it through natural means, was offered no reprieve from Brown who was clearly fed up with her storytelling.

“You don’t have a good record on telling the truth, do you?” Brown put to her.

Sitting face-to-face with Brown, Gibson teared up as she told how she “lost everything” after her cancer confession came to light.

But Gibson maintained that she didn’t deceive her followers or the public. She argued that she had been deceived. Gibson said she was told by an immunologist and neurologist, ‘Mark Johns’, that she had terminal brain cancer after he diagnosed her using a ‘frequency’ machine in her home several years ago.

“He went to my home and did a series of tests. There was a machine with lights on the front. There are two metal pads, one below the chair and one behind your back, measuring frequencies and then he said to me that I had a stage four brain tumour and that I had four months to live.

“At the time, I believed I was having radio therapy. When he gave me medication, I was told it was oral chemotherapy and I believed it.”

Belle Gibson had fooled many people for years with her cancer story.

As the hour-long interview continued, Gibson insisted she was telling the truth about “my reality”.

“I’ve not been intentionally untruthful. I’ve been completely open when speaking about what was my reality and what is my reality now,” she told Brown.

“It doesn’t match your normal or your reality.”

Gibson said she believed “Mark” for years that she was living with the burden of a terminal illness, however her evidence didn’t stack up with the evidence at all and 60 Minutes has not been able to find any record of a ‘Mark Johns’.

After the interview, Gibson handed over her medical records to 60 Minutes which showed that she had a brain scan at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne in 2011, two years before she started to market her sob story to the public for profit and adulation.

Gibson said that she had that brain scan because she started to doubt the diagnosis ‘Johns’ had given her but that the scans had been directly sent to ‘Johns’ from the hospital. Johns then showed her a scan with brain cancer.

However, her medical records from the Alfred stated that she had a 40-minute consultation with a neurologist there who told her that her brain scans were clear. But the reason she went to the Alfred for scans was not because of her brain cancer but because she believed she might have multiple sclerosis.

Belle Gibson told Tara Brown that she never intentionally tried to deceive anyone.

Brown put to Gibson that she had a history of claiming dramatic health problems and pointed out to her that she had previously said that in one year, 2009, she had three heart operations, two cardiac arrests, that she had died on the operating table and a stroke.

Gibson said she believed she had cancer until earlier this year. She said she uncovered the truth about her situation and was about to tell the media herself. The date she had picked for her own announcement, coincidentally, had been 10 days after the media broke the story about her deceptions.

She maintained that she is a victim and that she didn’t intentionally deceive anyone.

“I’m not trying to get away with anything. I’m not trying to smooth over anything. It’s not easy for me to be here.

“Once I figured out where I stood and I’d received the definitive ‘you don’t have cancer’ ... it was traumatising.”

Brown shot back: “Traumatising that you don’t have cancer?”

Gibson replied: “I was feeling a huge amount of grief. That I had been lied to and that I had been taken for a ride.”

Gibson says she had been deceived by a ‘Mark Johns’.

Brown asked her, “Do you take responsibility for driving any people away from conventional medicine?” Gibson responded: “I never intended on doing that ... I accept that might have happened.”

Gibson also wouldn’t accept that she might have Munchausen syndrome, a psychiatric disorder in which someone feigns illness for sympathy. She said she didn’t make it up because she truly believed that she had cancer.

In another shock revelation, Gibson, who has a four-year-old son called Olivier, finally admitted to having lied about her age after friends insisted she was older than her 23 years.

“I would be 26,” she said.

But this wasn’t a simple affair. Gibson said that she was two birth certificates and had changed her name four times but that the most recent deed poll certificate with her date of birth said that she was 23 but that she been raised to believe that she would now be 26.

Before going to air, Gibson’s 60 Minutes appearance sparked backlash on social media, with many criticising Nine’s decision to give the mother-of-one “a platform” to make even more excuses, along with a reported $45,000 payment to partake in the interview.

“I am totally incensed that 60 minutes [sic] is giving this charlatan’s story oxygen,” one social media user commented, among hundreds more firing up online.

An online petition was even started via Change.org, calling on Gibson to donate the reported money paid to cancer research.

But the tell-all, Gibson’s first televised interview since her cancer story was exposed, has been praised by viewers, impressed by Brown’s relentless questioning and not allowing Gibson to dodge any of the big questions.

Gibson took in over $1 million in profits from her cookbook and wellness app, The Whole Pantry. In April, it was revealed that she failed to donate $300,000 from the sales of the app to at least five charities as promised. Victoria Police later said they would not pursue criminal charges against her.

Gibson went into hiding as her story began to unravel. Her private and business social media accounts were all wiped clean and her Australian and overseas publishers pulled her cookbook from shelves. Gibson’s award-winning app was also pulled.