All language subtitles for Escaping.Utopia.S01E01.720p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN

Sometimes I used to have a shower at
night and get dressed for the next day,

including my head covering, because I knew
I was gonna be up in a few hours anyway.

I can't remember sleeping more
than four hours a night ― ever.

I didn't know it was a thing.

Off to work again.

We'd use newspaper
to start the fire.

It was our only insight
into the outside world.

Or if something that caught
my eye, I'd just rip it out.

Once they figured out that
the girls were doing that,

they put somebody on
checking the newspaper,

and they'd literally cut out anything
that they didn't want us to see.

It's just all about control.

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♪ When you come,

♪ I'll follow you.

♪ We'll make it through.

♪ When you come,

♪ I'll follow you.

♪ I'll follow you. ♪

So this is the
end of the road...

when it comes to
leaving Gloriavale.

It's like leaving the property.

That psychological thing ― if
you've left, you've left the church.

Cross this bridge, and you've lost
your soul. You're going to hell.

And that's the
psychological prison

that is

way more powerful
than a locked gate.

My dad was the
founder of Gloriavale.

So I have

a duty to do something about it.

It's just trying to help people
see through and break free.

See the buildings over there,
it's quite dark at the moment,

lots of lights turned off, um,
that's the main compound complex.

I'm just going to do a
drive around and out.

If we see another vehicle approaching or
someone else, just let the camera down.

I'm going to stop outside my family's,
where they live, just for a little bit.

This is my family's
bedroom right there.

Right up in there, those two windows
there, there's two rooms joined together.

I have 11 children. It's my
eldest boy's birthday today.

He will be 29 today.

The youngest is 7.

She was born after I left.

This is only one of my children's
births I wasn't able to be present at.

I cried a lot the first year.

Thinking is not
encouraged in Gloriavale.

The leaders tell you
how you should think.

So, what we're doing is I'm dropping
leaflets about the dangers of cults,

You know, where people don't
challenge one another's thinking.

I'm going to put some up
in the, um, kill shed here,

because one of my
boys works there.

It's a bit closer to my heart, so that's
one place that I always stick stuff.

There you go. Flick
the light switch a bit.

I'm just looking for
a name on overalls.

It's sometimes helpful to
know whose locker it is.

They put me out in
the end as a heretic.

My wife said to me 'I'm
not gonna lose my soul.'

I knew exactly what she meant. She meant,
'I'm not leaving. I'm not going with you.'

In a society where

women are taught
from a very young age

that they have no voice and have
got to submit and that's their lot,

she was like a puppet
with strings attached.

My love for her was...

being used as a weapon against
me, being used to destroy me.

The leaders have painted me
as a very evil, wicked person,

you know, full of the Devil.

But doing nothing is not the answer. If no one does
anything, these people aren't ever gonna get free.

♪ Amazing grace,

♪ how sweet

♪ the sound

♪ that saved

♪ a wretch

♪ like me.

My dad started the community and,
like a king would, wanted a kingdom,

and he wanted lots of
people in his kingdom,

and he decided he was gonna farm all these
people that would worship him and love him.

This picture has something
very special about it.

Well, if we live like
the rest of society,

we would have two
children per family.

They would never have been
born or been given life

so that they could have children if
we lived like the rest of society.

♪ 'Twas grace

♪ that taught...

And you wonder why
we're different.

♪ ...to fear.

♪ And grace...

We have the biggest
families in the world.

In other words, we got the biggest
population of children per head of adults.

We're also the fastest-growing
population in the world.

One, two, three.

Everybody smiling.

Put me amongst young people
that'll keep me alive.

How women love to be women,

and we got the most
wonderful women in the world.

They're so loving and kind.

Soft, gentle women...

they are.

The women are there to serve
the men ― work, have babies.

The women should be in
subjection to the men,

and wearing head
covering proves that.

You have to have no skin showing
other than your hands and your face.

You're not to talk
to the opposite sex.

You shouldn't ever be
alone with one of them.

Hopeful talked all the time about,
'You're showing off your ankles,

'and you're tempting the men,
and men get turned on by elbows.'

Everything becomes sexualised.

And it's a culture that has bred

abusive behaviours.

Because we were born there,
we knew nothing else.

Follow the Evans River up, and through
that gap, that's where Gloriavale is.

Yeah, so if you hike through the
bush it's maybe two and a half hours;

from here around the
road, 20 minutes.

What a beautiful
part of the country,

and yet, they've destroyed
people just through that gap.

The very first time
I drove up there,

it was like driving into...

a wall of fear,

of oppression,

you felt it ― a
very spiritual...

heaviness.

I've never felt
anything like it.

Look at the personality on
that one, the face on it.

I don't think I ever started to
think I needed to help someone leave.

I just wanted to work with the
ones that were asking for help;

and if they come knocking on
my door, I need to help them.

I started to understand they were living
in a very controlling environment.

You could almost compare
it to a communist regime.

You couldn't trust anybody.

Any questioning of the leaders

was very, very dangerous.

So if you're gonna leave, you need this group
of people, an underground network, to catchyou

and then patch up any wounds
you've got trying to escape.

Oh, I actually have
a really sick feeling inside.

- Are we actually going to talk to him now?
- Yeah.

So we kind of try and visit someone in Gloriavale
who lives there that's made contact with me.

We have a network of people

who will support people

in the process

of moving out of Gloriavale.

Generally, we don't give out
names of people who are on that

sort of list because it's
too sensitive an issue.

So the general rule for anyone
attempting to leave Gloriavale

is you're not allowed to
talk about their names.

It's just a much safer thing to
just sort of keep it low key.

It's a pretty brave thing when
someone actually will reach out,

and that sort of means someone's
relatively desperate in a way.

I'm strictly off limits for anyone in Gloriavale to
have any sort of communication relationship with.

I think he said he'd be around the
side, so we'll have a wee look.

Oh, that might be him there.

I'm just gonna
pull up over here.

Just around behind the shed.

Gloriavale has been using fear as
the foundation for its religion.

Fear's a fundamental
human animal instinct,

and you can manipulate
that in people pretty well.

Gidday, bro. So, I've got a package here.
- Oh, thanks, mate.

It's got a phone. Stay safe,
and I'll talk to you later.

In Gloriavale, sometimes you have to just
jump off the edge of a cliff, so to speak,

if you're going to try and
escape out of that prison.

Dear Heavenly Father, you hear our conversations.
You are our God, our father, our leader.

Boaz is trying to stand
up for what is right.

Stand up for his family.

Lord, I pray that you
will give him wisdom.

Father, I just asked for
this in Jesus' name. Amen.

If they found out that I was
talking to anybody with a camera...

that would almost be
the epitome of evil.

Whoa.

My name is Boaz Benjamin,

and I'm 25 years old.

I'm married with three kids, and my
wife is pregnant with the fourth...

and we are concerned for
our children's safety.

And so I cannot sit back and just go on with my
head in the sand and say, 'Someone else will fixit.'

Hey, Boaz.

I had, uh, sexually...

abusive things happen
to me in times past.

To protect my children from that
sort of thing happening to them,

the best and safest way to
protect them would be to leave ―

but it goes way deeper
than just get up and leave,

because I was born and raised there.
My wife is born and raised there.

You are taught every day from the
moment you can understand English,

that this is a place
where you've got to be,

this is the place where God wants you; if
you leave, you're going against God's will.

So if you're going against God's will, then
you are sinning; if you sin, you go to hell.

That is just pounded and pounded and pounded
for years and years and years just ongoing,

and it's like it just builds something in your
mind that, here is something I cannot cross.

Icannotcross that.

Like, I... I just can't.

There is no way to
cross that line.

It's a psychological barrier.

You can't walk out that gate and feel
that you can still be a Christian.

Boaz, the first time I met him,
he sent me a message saying

that he wanted to come and
see me, but not at the house.

So he snuck up to
the back of my farm

so that there'd be no
chance of him being seen.

I don't know how, but they knew.

The next morning he was called into
a meeting, and they destroyed him.

You just walk into
that room, and boom.

Do you want to see your
family ever again?!

They just change
into pack mode...

...and they're gonna attack
you and rip you in half.

All they wanna hear is, 'I'm
sorry. I will do what you say.'

Say 'yes, sir'!

That's what you have to
do in a way to survive.

Don't question me!

I was told to inform

on people,

and if I did that, I could stay.

And if anybody spoke against them or
talked to people outside of the community,

I would come to them and tell them, and
then they would know that I was loyal.

If I want to stay here with my wife
and kids, it's, like, I have to do it.

He said, 'They broke me to the extent that
I do not remember the next 12 months.'

I didn't see him for...

18 months after that...

and he vowed and declared
that he would love to leave,

but he wasn't gonna leave until his
wife was ready to leave with him.

She fears the outside world.

Because the leaders there hold
this control over the women.

If you control the wife,
you control the husband.

If you control both them, then
you've got the whole family.

So you're working through, 'How
do I make a stand for myself?'

and confident enough that Tabatha is going to follow you.
- Yeah.

Are you ready to go?

If she said, 'I'm happy just to go with you,
' I'd be packing up and walking out tomorrow.

- Hello, Liz speaking.
- Yeah, gidday, Liz. Marcus.

- Hey, gidday, Marcus. How's things?
- Not too bad.

Hey, Boaz...

- Yeah.
- ...have you still got that house for them if they need it?

Uh, yes. There are two that have
popped up that are available ―

one that Pilgrim's looking at and
another one that has said definitely.

- OK, so it's still available.
- It is.

I'll text you the name of the
contact to make it nice and easy.

Um, they're familiar with it,
so I'll text you two names.

A GV van just drove past me.

Oh, wow, OK.

Did you duck, dive into a bush?

OK, if you can send
me that contact for Boaz...

- Yes. All right. Nice to chat.
- OK.

See you. Bye-bye.

Cool.

Now, the next one I gotta
take is inside. Gloriavale.

Well, I prefer to call
myself the Devil.

Well, that's the joke. We sort of get
called, you know, the Devil, and, um...

Look. I'm energetic, and, yeah, for
some reason, this has gripped me.

I feel like this is what
I've been called to do.

The Gloriavale Leavers' Support
Trust aims to help those

who have left Gloriavale and
those contemplating leaving.

Oh no, that's bullshit.
They go up to room...

We've had connection and contacts with at
least 250 leavers over the past 10 years.

You know, their community hasn't been set up for
the families to look after and school theirchildren.

They're tired. They're exhausted. I'd
say they would have been up really late.

And we have heard an awful lot.

The physical abuse, the
psychological, sexual, mental,

the emotional, the spiritual
abuse and the neglect.

And that leads to the driving force of
the work we're doing.

We are not going

to go away and pretend
like this is all OK.

We actually see this as an embarrassment,
a blight on the government in New Zealand.

Hey, Marcus. How you doing?

'Really, a legal solution

'is probably the only
way through this.

'This is the opportunity in history to get it right,
to get done what should have been done 45years ago.

'It shouldn't have been
allowed to develop this far.'

A large number
of the Gloriavale community

will be in the public gallery
in Greymouth this week.

Six former Gloriavale
women have taken action,

claiming to be employees in the
Christian community, not volunteers.

Six former Gloriavale
members are claiming they lived like

slaves at the West Coast commune, working
under a regime where they had no control.

If they refused to work,
there was corporal punishment,

food was withheld and they were
threatened with eternal damnation.

The main point is
accountability.

The leaders have got away with
treating people badly for a long time,

and it's time that things change and they do
things like the rest of New Zealand has to,

that the people in Gloriavale have the
same rights as every New Zealander.

All right. Let's go.

Unfortunately now, court's the only way to sort
it out, and really, they've done it to themselves.

- Please state your name for the record.
- It's Treasure Stedfast.

My name is Blessing Hopeful.

My name is Rapture Standtrue.

My name is Lovely Stedfast. I am a member
of the Gloriavale Christian Community.

I was 5 years old when I
gave my heart to the Lord.

I then chose to live a life that was to deny
myself and give my life for God in this church.

Downtrodden, subdued...

repressed, powerless...

oppressed, brainwashed ―

these words are not at all what I get treated like
and ever have felt as a woman living in Gloriavale.

The Bible teaches for godly women
to have meek and quiet spirits

and to be submitted
to their husbands.

All we want is to serve God to the
best of our ability and in peace.

So could you tell Your Honour at what age you
came and how you came to being at the community?

Um, well, I had been travelling around. I was
24. I'd moved from Australia to New Zealand.

I'd been looking for work.

I was stuck in
Christchurch with nothing,

and then two of the girls from
the community walked up to me

and started telling me about their
community and about salvation.

My dad was from Switzerland.

He was travelling the world as a young
person with a couple of his mates,

and, yeah, landed in
Christchurch with no plans,

knew nobody, couldn't
speak English very well,

and a minister picked him up, and
he introduced Dad to the community.

You don't join a cult.

You get recruited.

They were actively recruiting younger
people coming out on adventures.

And so a wandering backpacker from
Canada or America or Australia,

they'd get recruited into this group
and become some of your, you know,

original members who set up
the actual communal living.

Unfortunately, it had very early on
indicators of an unhealthy high-control group.

Original members from 50 years
ago, when they were beginning,

had never dreamed that when they joined, it
was going to look anything like it does now.

Yep, that tent, um, came
over to New Zealand.

And when I was a boy, up until maybe I was
12 years old, I helped put up that tent.

Goodness. That's Anne,
Roseanna's mother.

Mum was in university ― that's
where she met some of the members

who invited her along to their church
services, and that got her involved.

My mum's a go-getter, and there
was a lot of growth to begin with.

You know, we're doing things for
people, and energy, and it was exciting.

Have you got two houses?
Give to him that hath none.

The Bible says he that hath two
coats, give him that hath none.

So it's easy to give two
coats, but what about two cars?

And there was an attempt of some form of
social justice in the early stages of the community.

That's what attracted,
I think, the...

you know, the early people ― it was strongly
socialist, sort of Christian socialist.

The idea is people should be all having
the same access to material things.

They didn't call the things they possess their
own, but they used them for the good of everyone.

There was some noble ideas in the
utopian vision, there always is.

Are you prepared to die to give your whole
life to Christ, and you believe that he's God's son?

This is Australia,
definitely Australia.

My dad was born in
1926 in Queensland.

He had some sort of a...

If I was diagnosing it, he
came to a mental crisis.

He was 22. He had, like, an experience where
he believed he'd met God, and God spoke to him.

God called him to be a minister.

He did have an attempt at setting
up a commune in Australia.

He had a vision, and he couldn't find other
people who had the same vision as him.

So he moved to New Zealand
because that's where, you know,

he felt he could get this... this
idea that he had off the ground.

Thank you, Lord, for your mercy.

And I want to just give
you praise and glory.

Thank you, Lord, that one
day you shall come again.

All the creation that you created
in the beginning shall be destroyed.

And Lord, you will make a
new heaven and a new Earth.

Thank you,
Lord. I'm grateful.

Thank you.

I am

66 years old,

and I have lived...

in the Gloriavale Community...

over 50 years.

And I'm still
living there today.

I remember the first time
I met Neville Cooper.

I was 11.

He set up the Voice
of Deliverance tent...

and sitting in amongst the crowd is the first
time I ever heard someone preach like he preached.

Every child
that is bornwillsin!

Because it's got a sinful
nature that will sin.

We're slaves to it,
we're shackled to it!

We can't break it. It won't be
able to help itself from sin!

'Oh...

'he's talking about me. I've been born with
a sinful nature, and I didn't realise it.'

It was like God
was talking to me.

I joined the church...

because of my salvation.

I needed to be with people...

who believed the same.

♪ Well, we came here two by two,

♪ and he called on me and you.

♪ Love me true.

♪ You know not what you do.

In the beginning,

they were happy days.

But he was recruiting
people to row his ship.

♪ Hold back the tide.

He was the captain, and so in every
marriage of a husband and a wife,

they were his recruits...

to row

his legacy, his ideals.

I was married...

aged 17 years old.

I want to submit myself to you
and to obey you, to love you...

and to satisfy your desires and
your needs, and never to refuse you.

The women submit, the women
be quiet, you don't speak.

You just do as you're told.

Now we will love God and keep his
commandments not as individuals, but together.

When God joins you together,
you become one flesh.

It was a slow coercion...

of slow change...

a little bit here,
a little bit there.

You actually

lost your identity

of who you are...

and it felt like you
were giving it willingly.

Let yourselves listen.

Let yourselves

be led to Christ.

Over time, Dad started feeling more
and more confident about his connection withGod.

You need the living Christ to
come into your heart and life!

Yield to him and obey him
completely in all things!

He definitely believed that he
was God's advocate on Earth,

and so he changed his
name to Hopeful Christian.

...are sanctified.

As he got more power, it took him into the
corruption that power causes to people.

So he ended up with
a godlike status.

I can remember going from wearing the clothes Mum
made us ― our pretty dresses, as we calledthem ―

to the uniform...

and not being too keen on it.

As a child. I can remember, um, that it was
about being modest and about being in unity.

'Unity' is what they call it.

I'll go ahead and
call it uniformity.

They expect everybody to just be the same,
do the same, dress the same, obviously.

And if anybody is
individualistic in any way,

then they are
breaking that unity.

Being different in any way
is just not acceptable.

To cause division ― that
is a huge sin in there.

But in hindsight, it's
just all about control.

You've
got a real enemy...

the very Devil himself,

because he's after your soul!

You've been told your whole life that if you
leave Gloriavale, you go to hell for eternity.

That's your consequence ― there'll
be eternal damnation when you die.

And the more you've sinned, the hotter the
flames are, the deeper in hell you are,

You might have somebody stabbing you
as well as you're getting burnt alive.

But the burning never
stops, because you're alive.

I was just always terrified.

The end is upon us, and
we do need to be ready.

Now is the day of
salvation, now is the time!

If the end times have happened
and you are still here,

if you haven't been taken off
this earth when the Lord returns,

you are going to be persecuted like
nothing you've ever heard about before.

You're gonna be murdered or dipped
in hot oil or burnt at the stake.

I just lived in constant
fear of not making it.

Hopeful would be preaching about, are
you ready? You know, 'Are you ready?

'If the Lord returned right now, where would
you be? Would you be in hell or heaven?'

And then he'd say,
'Everybody just be quiet.

'Can you hear the trumpet?'

'Can you hear it?

'Are you ready? What did you do
today that's gonna send you to hell?'

I'd be up and my team-mate, who was meant to
start with me, hadn't showed up, and I'd think,

'Oh, I'm left behind.

'I am the only person here.'

So I would just be terrified.

I couldn't even move.

The other side to that is,
if you leave Gloriavale,

then you're most likely to be
punished in this life as well,

in this evil wicked world.

My perception of the outside world
was that it was a very dangerous...

...destitute...

wicked...

...evil place.

Even if I could find any joy
in living in the outside world,

that would be the Devil
making me feel good.

We were told, 'This is what
we are protecting you from.

'You've got such
a good life here.

'We've done this for you. We've taken
you out of this evil wicked world.'

By the left, quick march.

Left, left,

left, right, left.

Left, left, left, left.

- Good morning, Mrs Valor.
- Good morning.

My name is Purity Valor.

I'm 48 years old.

I have lived in the church

and community in its
varying forms my whole life.

Purity, share with
us what Christ means to you.

When I was baptised,
I just felt so free.

I was so happy.

Praise God.

Praise God.

Praise God.

Everything changed.

And now I'm so happy that I'm
free, and I can go to heaven.

Amen.

For me to stop believing that Gloriavale
is the place where God wants me to live,

I would have to stop believing a lot
of other things that I believe now.

Everybody needs to have the same
mind, speak the same things,

believe the same things...

and live in common
unity together.

It's very difficult for someone to live in that
common unity who doesn't believe the same things,

speak the same things
or have the same mind.

The expectation of the community

is that everybody will
live in unity, isn't it?

Behold how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity.

That's what the Bible says.

Unity comes from each member being
surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ.

How would you understand...

use of the word submission...

in the outside community?

I would automatically
think of a power imbalance.

The power structure in Gloriavale
goes from the overseeing shepherd.

So the Overseeing Shepherd has
the final say in everything,

and then under him
is the Shepherds,

and then under them
is the Servants.

The idea was to have 12 leaders,
like in the Bible, the 12 disciples.

They'll watch everybody,
they'll chase up stuff.

They enforce what's going on, and the
men have authority over the women.

Then the women, in general,
kind of bottom of the heap.

It states in the word of God
clearly that women should not teach

or preach or usurp
authority over men.

I've submitted to my husband.
It's a choice that I make.

I submit myself to the men in
authority as a choice that I make.

Do you know how the
leaders are chosen?

With a lot of prayer.

- By whom? Who's doing that?
- By the leaders.

So the leaders pray, decide upon someone
and announce it to the community?

Yep.

I think a mistake is made when
thinking about Gloriavale,

that the leaders are skimming off money, living
in fancy houses and have yachts and cars.

No, money's not their
currency for that.

Power and control
is their currency.

For the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven with a shout.

In Gloriavale, you've got Servants
and Shepherds and the leavers,

and people in there called them the SS,
and that's referring to the level of power

and control that this group
of men had over people.

The time to get right
with God is now.

We have...

an enemy.

Satan is against you!

Satan is against the church!

For a while, we were resistant.

This isn't a war. We're,
like, trying to help people,

but Gloriavale framed it in the
terms of a war. So let's go with it.

There's hurt, there's tears, and it's not pretty,
but you've gotta look to the peace in the future.

We can't be here doing
this in 30 years.

So, in this shed...

it's a bit embarrassing.

There's a filing
cabinet in here,

which basically hasn't been
opened since the mid-'90s.

I'll just move
these surfboards...

in here.

Oh my God.

Look at this. This was our
filing system back in the '90s.

Here it is.

I was in my late 20s. I had been
reporting for about four years,

and I heard about all these
people being indoctrinated...

about them being almost,
like, under a spell.

It was starting to all
feel a bit 'secty',

and also this was
starting to look like

have we got a cult
in New Zealand?

I discovered that half of
Neville Cooper's children

were outside of the
community, and half were in.

And so I would spend quite a bit of time
trying to get my head around all of that,

and I spent quite a bit of time
with them all outside of work hours.

They were troubled.

The Cooper family were troubled.

How can they be so damaged?

What the hell happens to people

for them to be so,
so, so damaged?

When Phil Cooper
reached his late 20s,

he started to seriously doubt

whether life in the community
was right for him and his family.

A rift began to develop between
Phil Cooper and his father,

and eventually he left to live in the outside
world while he thought things through.

At this point, Phil Cooper says the
religious leaders made it difficult

for him to maintain
contact with his family.

Once you left, it was over.

You were out.

You were dead to them because
you had betrayed them.

You had gone out into 'the
world'. You were nothing.

You were gone, and you were going to hell
in a hand basket like everybody else.

We're gonna
go down into the water,

and we're gonna baptise
these boys, bury them.

Yep, that looks like
me. Surely, it's me.

- Hallelujah.
- Hallelujah.

Praise the lord.

I'm the 15th child of
16 born to Mum and Dad.

Some of them I hardly even know.

There's four out of 16 that
are still in the community

and the rest have left.

My dad believed that he had
to sacrifice his children...

to his god, his vision.

Who shouldn't you sacrifice if
you're gonna have heaven on Earth?

My mum, Gloria, was a very
interesting person in that

I've never met anyone
ever who has ever said

that they've been
hurt by my mum.

I mean, she may have been
naive in a way as well,

cos so much of life
just didn't bother her.

You know, maybe you could say, well,
there's something that she had missing.

It may be true, but no
one sort of blames her.

I mean, she sort of did
what my dad expected of her.

What about this business
of fleeing youthful lusts?

What are these lusts?

Does it mean childish?

It certainly doesn't
mean 'manly', does it?

Manly desires.

My dad, as he got more power,

it took him into perverting
it in sexual ways.

He thought the Christian
strictly religious barriers

around sex were too tight and
sex wasn't such this bad thing.

So he decided married couples

are gonna get rid of
some of their inhibitions

and so they're gonna enjoy their
sex lives better, etc., etc.

And that went quite
a bit off track.

Here's a statement
from somebody.

It's a bit grim
reading this actually.

I found out about some of this weird
sexual activity that was going on.

What became apparent was it was this
kind of 'spiritual sexual teaching',

where he would teach
the boys to masturbate.

He would teach them how
to masturbate women.

It all started to snowball

about what was actually
really going on in there

under the kind of
guise of this kind of,

you know, kingdom of God.

Neville first started to talk about man and his wife
should be much closer, and then he started to preach

that they had to
be closer sexually,

and then he started to have demonstration
sexual sessions in front of the big open fires.

They all used to spread out on
the floor covered with blankets,

and they would virtually
all have sex together.

You sleep with your
parents when they have sex.

You sleep with your
grandparents when they have sex.

I've seen them video tape a young couple,
you know, on the first wedding night,

making love for the first time,
having sex. I've seen them.

And then of course,
they built a spa pool.

First, Mum and Dad were encouraged
to go naked into the spa pool,

but then the teenage
girls and boys

were encouraged to go
naked with Mum and Dad,

and then multiple families,

with Neville supposedly training
young girls of 13 and 14.

I just said to him,
'You've lost it, mate.

'You haven't got a church here;
you've got a glorified brothel.'

♪ Round and round
the floor I go!

Before we were married,
he would invite us over

and show us how sex was done

by just him and Mum
having sex together.

Then there was
post-marital therapy.

He would undress her,

lower her on the bed and
proceed to massage her all over,

fondle her all over.

- In front of you?
- Yeah.

- In front of your mother?
- Yep.

- So this went on for weeks, months?
- Oh, years.

Did you have to have
sex with your wife

so your father would watch?

Yeah, he would instruct other
couples over the years too.

My dad with his sexual abuse

that he was doing
under the guise

of teaching them how to
have sex, being involved,

just live porn really.

But he was just getting
sexual gratification out of

he had that power to do it,

and he could justify
it with a religious...

good intention, that he's
helping these people.

♪ Round and round
the cages I go. ♪

Sadly, he took upon himself

to come right into my
marriage situation.

He was right there in our space.

He was participating
with his wife.

Everything that I was doing with my own
husband, he could hear it, he could see it.

He carried on...

till I had...

seven children.

I was just confused.
I was frozen.

I was, 'Oh no, not this again.

'Uh... I'm a mother,
can't you see?

'Just let me be a mother.

'I'm not really your... toy.'

They were very
troublesome times for me.

I actually felt like I
was a sinner before God

and that I'd lost my soul.

It was just horror story
after horror story.

How can this be happening? How
can nobody be doing anything?

So I came up with this plan

that because they had a
floating herringbone cow shed,

it was the only one
in the South Island,

I rang the community and said that I was
on my holidays from Lincoln University

and said that I wanted to
come and do work experience,

but in particular with them because of
their floating herringbone cow shed.

I then went every
day before work,

and I milked cows every day at, like,
4 in the morning before I went to work.

So that when I went in there, I
actually knew what I was doing.

I'm a pretty straight-up person,

but I really did
bullshit to get in there.

I had another name, Nelly.

OK, so I've got my name.

I could milk a cow, I could do the Lord's
Prayer, I knew the 10 Commandments.

So now this is just like, 'Right,
I'm going in, I'm going undercover.

'I'm gonna be able to explain exactly
what the hell is happening here,

'because I'm gonna go
and live in there.'

You're meant to be a Christian.

I'll show you.

Captions were made with
the support of NZ On Air.

www.able.co.nz
Copyright Able 2024

♪ Oh, mothers tell your children

♪ not to do

♪ what I have done

♪ in the house of
the rising sun. ♪