Original subtitles

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. ♪