Speaker 1: Yoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special of
Speaker 2: The Front Page, the Enzid Herald's daily news podcast. While
Speaker 2: the Front Page is on summer break, we're taking a
Speaker 2: look back at some of the biggest news stories and
Speaker 2: top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: New episodes will return on January thirteenth. For over fifty.
Speaker 3: Years, the secretive Christian community of Gloria Vale has fascinated
Speaker 3: New Zealanders. While the community has long been discussed by
Speaker 3: former members who have left Gloria Vale behind, in the
Speaker 3: last few years, multiple official investigations and employment court proceedings
Speaker 3: have shone more light on what's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: In March, a new TV and Z documentary Escaping Utopia premiered,
Speaker 3: looking back at the community's check in history and its
Speaker 3: recent problems. We spoke with co director Justin Pemberton, who
Speaker 3: explained his fresh look at historic concerns. Justin, can you
Speaker 3: start by telling us how exactly did you come up
Speaker 3: with the name of the series.
Speaker 1: Well, it relates really to the idea that people born
Speaker 1: inside Glory Vale are told that they are living in
Speaker 1: the utopian vision on Earth, that this is the place
Speaker 1: God wants them, This is the place.
Speaker 4: That they will be saved.
Speaker 1: If they ever leave here, they'll be damning themselves to
Speaker 1: a term oblamnation. So what was really interesting for me
Speaker 1: was this idea that when you're born into this community,
Speaker 1: you don't even realize that you're living in a very strange,
Speaker 1: very alternative.
Speaker 5: Way of life.
Speaker 1: And as they grow up they have to start different
Speaker 1: people put things together and start questioning and start looking
Speaker 1: at the outside world and realize just how strange the
Speaker 1: way they love is. And then that journey that comes
Speaker 1: for some people that the idea that I don't like
Speaker 1: it here, I'm not living here. I want to be
Speaker 1: out there, So they have to, you know, find a
Speaker 1: way to escape essentially. And what's so sort of traumatic
Speaker 1: is that when you leave Glorabille, they have this rule
Speaker 1: that you basically had cut off. You're not allowed to
Speaker 1: have any contact evering in with your family. So you
Speaker 1: feel born there. This is everybody you know, this is
Speaker 1: your entire world. Every single person you know in the
Speaker 1: world is going to be cut off from you. So
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, So that escaping utopia concept is putting
Speaker 1: it all together and realizing that that this is not
Speaker 1: what you've been told, and that you are going to
Speaker 1: sacrifice everything to leave.
Speaker 6: What ye's newspaper to start the fire. It was the
Speaker 6: only inside into the outside.
Speaker 1: Rule or something that caught my eye, or just rip
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 7: Once they figured out that the girls were doing that,
Speaker 7: they put somebody on checking the newspaper.
Speaker 6: And they'd literally cut out anything that they didn't want
Speaker 6: us to see.
Speaker 7: Can you run me through some of the recent legal
Speaker 7: woes that have been faced by Gloria Bell and that
Speaker 7: get covered in your series.
Speaker 1: The court case that was playing out while we were filming,
Speaker 1: which we follow was the employment case that a group
Speaker 1: of women who are leaders who have left took against
Speaker 1: the crown.
Speaker 5: And the immunity.
Speaker 1: They were arguing and have successfully as you find out
Speaker 1: as the serious continues. They argued that they were employees,
Speaker 1: they weren't volunteers.
Speaker 4: Some of them claim they were slaves.
Speaker 1: Essentially, they were told what to do, they were made
Speaker 1: to do a particular kind of work, they weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to choose or have any other option, and.
Speaker 5: Then wed, which is all part of the trap.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea that you don't own anything, that
Speaker 1: you don't have any money, you don't have anything, you
Speaker 1: don't have any any means of leaving, You don't have
Speaker 1: anything to leave with, which is one of the ways
Speaker 1: that you get trapped.
Speaker 5: So the court case that we follow.
Speaker 1: Through the series is the journey of the women who
Speaker 1: are taking Glorobale and the crown to coord What's particularly
Speaker 1: interesting for me was the actually was the ability that
Speaker 1: the court case there was the ability to hear from
Speaker 1: the women on the inside who are who do claim
Speaker 1: that they are happy, that they do want this world,
Speaker 1: that this is their choice. Actually, interestingly, they don't always
Speaker 1: claim they are happy. Most of them on the standards
Speaker 1: say that they had struggled a lot, but they eventually
Speaker 1: came to accept, with the guidance of the leaders, that
Speaker 1: this was where they needed to be and this is
Speaker 1: what God wanted for them, and that they were sacrificing
Speaker 1: happiness and their individuality and their own dreams to serve God.
Speaker 1: So that's the court case that we find of courses,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of court cases going on,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them revolve around sexual abuse as well,
Speaker 1: and we cover that and other ways in the series,
Speaker 1: and we talk to people about their experiences, but we
Speaker 1: didn't actually follow those court cases, and then just as
Speaker 1: we were wrapping.
Speaker 5: Up filming, the new leader.
Speaker 1: Who took over from Hopeful Christian was charged with some
Speaker 1: the sexual abuse charges as well.
Speaker 7: I think what we all found fascinating about that particular
Speaker 7: employment case, right was speaking listening to those twenty odd
Speaker 7: women who actually came out in support of Gloria Vale.
Speaker 7: And it's not often that we hear from them, I guess,
Speaker 7: and it's incredible to see that in the series. I
Speaker 7: was five years old when I gave my heart to
Speaker 7: the Lord.
Speaker 6: I then chose to live a life there was to
Speaker 6: deny myself and give my life for God in this church. Downtrodden, subdued, repressed, powerless, oppressed,
Speaker 6: grain washed. These words are not at all what I
Speaker 6: get treated like and either have felt as a woman
Speaker 6: living in Gloria Belle.
Speaker 7: What was the motivation behind creating this documentary?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 7: Was it because of those court cases? Or is it
Speaker 7: something that you've been working on for a week while? So?
Speaker 5: I think was we Hopeful Christian died?
Speaker 4: Who was the founder of Brought About?
Speaker 1: We founded it in the early seventies mine sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Depending on what day people choose, is the actual beginning
Speaker 1: of it. He died in twenty eighteen, and at that
Speaker 1: point me and Natalie, who was the producer and the
Speaker 1: code director of the series, were finishing up one off
Speaker 1: docudrama on the Center Point Holt and it just really
Speaker 1: sort of struck us that what's going to happen now?
Speaker 1: You know, like in Center Point, Burt Cotta didn't die,
Speaker 1: he ended up going to prison, and the place eventually imploded.
Speaker 1: Gloravale's leader held it together for over fifty years and
Speaker 1: then died. He had left a succession plan, So that
Speaker 1: was twenty eighteen, So thinking about it, they didn't.
Speaker 5: Get funded until I think twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: By the time we actually were getting into production nearly
Speaker 1: mid twenty twenty two, and at that point there had
Speaker 1: been quite a few court cases and you could get
Speaker 1: a sense that the place was imploding. It's very much
Speaker 1: a live story. It isn't something that has resolved. It's
Speaker 1: not clear what's going to happen.
Speaker 5: But also we looked through you looked of all the
Speaker 5: material that have been done.
Speaker 1: I mean, you feel like it's been a lot made
Speaker 1: about Gloravale, but nothing really seemed to trace the beginning
Speaker 1: of the community. You know, the origins of it right
Speaker 1: through to where it ends out. And for me, that's
Speaker 1: the fascinating thing is to track that journey. In some ways,
Speaker 1: they did have some utopian ideas at the beginning, you know,
Speaker 1: were there were people get seduced by an ideology and
Speaker 1: hopeful Christian was talking about sharing communities, a compassionate way
Speaker 1: of life, you know, rejecting individualism and the commercialized world
Speaker 1: that was starting to appear in the early seventies, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these people were happies and travelers and
Speaker 1: people were wanting an alternative way of life. That's so
Speaker 1: interesting to see that beginning. And you know, they were
Speaker 1: doing things like they were doing finding old cars in
Speaker 1: the community and doing them up and making them run
Speaker 1: them and gifting them to people, you know, in the
Speaker 1: community who didn't have things, and there was something quite
Speaker 1: generous and appealing, I think. But as the group evolved,
Speaker 1: this sort of charismatic leader becomes very cult like, very controlling,
Speaker 1: and starts indulging himself and creating rules that you know,
Speaker 1: really are just to cement his authority, his power and
Speaker 1: his control over everybody, and there blows astray. What's something
Speaker 1: that glory about to me. I think it was also
Speaker 1: the fact that they cut themselves off from the world
Speaker 1: at that time in the early seventies, and they attract
Speaker 1: the frozen in that kind of time and the rest
Speaker 1: of us, the rest of the world has moved on,
Speaker 1: and they're so out of step with contemporary thinking.
Speaker 5: And that's whether that's about.
Speaker 1: Gender roles, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, physical punishment, even food,
Speaker 1: you know, even their diet.
Speaker 4: You know, there's very much.
Speaker 5: Back in that early seventies kind of period.
Speaker 7: Gloria Olle has obviously been a point of fascination and
Speaker 7: speculation for some decades now amongst New Zealanders. I think
Speaker 7: it's an interesting point you make as well, that this
Speaker 7: is a New Zealand's dirty secret. People don't really like
Speaker 7: talking about glory of Owe, maybe in a sense of
Speaker 7: people on the outside thinking, well, how did everyone let
Speaker 7: this continue and go on and snowball into what it
Speaker 7: is today?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think it turns into a bit of a early
Speaker 1: secret around the time that hopeful Christian goes to prison
Speaker 1: in the early nineties for sexual abuse and doesn't serve
Speaker 1: his full time somehow, which we've not been able to
Speaker 1: find any real satisfactory explanation for why his sentence was
Speaker 1: so dramatically reduced from five years to eighteen months and
Speaker 1: then is released back into the community where he was
Speaker 1: the abuser and where he is in charge. It's extraordinary.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't quite believe this happened. And you know,
Speaker 1: the authorities, the media, the public. I mean, all it
Speaker 1: plays out and it's not kind of challenged or stopped.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I think there were probation offices that were visiting, but
Speaker 1: he befriended them. He's charismatic, right, so he would invite
Speaker 1: them to lunch and that put on a show and
Speaker 1: everyone goes, oh, well, there's nothing to see here. And actually,
Speaker 1: what we now know is he wasn't the only offender.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just he was teaching this offending, and it
Speaker 1: had become endemic and generational, you know, where young boys
Speaker 1: were abused and then grew up to become the abusers.
Speaker 8: I had sexually abusive things happened to me in times past.
Speaker 8: To protect my children from that sort of thing happening
Speaker 8: to them, the best and safest way to protect them
Speaker 8: would be to leave.
Speaker 1: It's really quite surprising that this was able to just
Speaker 1: be left like this. Part of it, of course, was
Speaker 1: that he moved them way out into the most remote
Speaker 1: parts of the West Coast where you know, there's no
Speaker 1: neighbors that are within any kind of walking distance, there's
Speaker 1: no cell phone coverage. They are cut off from the media,
Speaker 1: so they are put off, but also sort of out
Speaker 1: of mind, out of sight.
Speaker 5: So it's taken a long time for the.
Speaker 1: Dirty secret, the under barrier of Gloria Belle to really
Speaker 1: come out.
Speaker 4: And it is the bravery and the courage of the
Speaker 4: people who have left. They're inspiring.
Speaker 1: You know, That's the big thing that for me, it's
Speaker 1: not a tragic story ultimately because the people some of
Speaker 1: these people and the people in the series, and the
Speaker 1: people who tell their stories, they are inspiring and I
Speaker 1: think you will feel inspired live.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: One of those people is Pilgrim Christian. He's actually the
Speaker 7: son of the Glory of our founder. It opens with
Speaker 7: driving to the commune late at night and we'll see
Speaker 7: him going into the property distributing anti cult leaflets. I mean,
Speaker 7: that must take an incredible amount of bravery for him
Speaker 7: to do that, especially growing up the way he did.
Speaker 7: Were you surprised that you were just able to drive
Speaker 7: on to the property. I guess a lot of New
Speaker 7: Zealanders might think that it's just high gates and barking
Speaker 7: dogs and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is brave, and he is brave,
Speaker 1: and he is and now he is conflicted as well.
Speaker 1: At different times He's found different ways about how the
Speaker 1: best to interact. He still has family living in there,
Speaker 1: and family that he wants to have a good relationship with,
Speaker 1: particularly his children. His ex wife is still I think
Speaker 1: actually she might still be his wife that's separated, she's
Speaker 1: still there and ultimately I know that he has hoped
Speaker 1: for reconciliation and to have the whole family together would
Speaker 1: be a dream. But on the outside, but on the
Speaker 1: other part of that Christiania, in terms of being able
Speaker 1: to just drive her, I mean, there's an intimidating place.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's not a place that I would
Speaker 1: feel comfortable to driving up. It's down a long road
Speaker 1: where there is nothing else at the end of this road,
Speaker 1: but this community.
Speaker 5: You'll see it on Google.
Speaker 1: Maps, you know, as a road, but it is at
Speaker 1: some point it does turn into their road.
Speaker 5: I believe they have taken control of that road. So
Speaker 5: me and.
Speaker 1: Natalie, co director and producer of it. We did go
Speaker 1: to Glory about ourselves. We drove to drive during the day.
Speaker 1: We drove in to go and talk to them and
Speaker 1: talk to them about what we're doing and talking about
Speaker 1: what kind of involvement, if any, they might be comfortable
Speaker 1: playing in it. And we had a tour and ad
Speaker 1: a look around. We met Howard, the current leader, and
Speaker 1: it does feel I don't know, you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to separate, you know, because it's a place that has
Speaker 1: become almost mythical in the New Zealand store now and
Speaker 1: we've all seen it, we've seen what it looks like.
Speaker 4: But then when you're there, it did feel a little.
Speaker 1: Bit like, you know, going somewhere for me that felt
Speaker 1: repressive and you know, a.
Speaker 5: Place that's under some sort of thought police.
Speaker 1: It felt scary. But you know, he was Howard was
Speaker 1: very free man. He showed us around and you know,
Speaker 1: we saw some young girls waking in the kitchen and
Speaker 1: saw the extent of just how big the commercialized sort
Speaker 1: of the nature of it. You know, like the kitchen
Speaker 1: is huge, you know, and there's big vats. People were
Speaker 1: making butter and cheese, and there was some mints being made.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably for the evening meal. It
Speaker 1: was quite remarkable to walk around and experience it. He
Speaker 1: then they then did decline to directly be involved in
Speaker 1: the series, not sped away. He said he had to
Speaker 1: talk to the men and he would get back to us.
Speaker 7: And you mentioned how people actually escape from the communit
Speaker 7: and there's a bit of a clandestine operation going on there.
Speaker 7: Were you surprised at how kind of organized that aspect
Speaker 7: of it was, hopefully?
Speaker 1: I mean that's the other thing that is so interesting
Speaker 1: is that there is an underground network. We do not
Speaker 1: at the door of our leaders trust, but you know
Speaker 1: they're in Timuru, but they have a network.
Speaker 4: So there are people nearby.
Speaker 1: Marcus who you need in episode one and we'll see
Speaker 1: him again through the series.
Speaker 4: He is one of the nearest farmers and.
Speaker 1: He is known as a sort of a farm that
Speaker 1: you can that you can escape to and go up
Speaker 1: his drive and knock on his law and ask for help.
Speaker 8: I don't think I ever started to think I needed
Speaker 8: to help someone leave.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to work with the ones that were
Speaker 1: asking for help, and if they come knocking on my
Speaker 1: or I need to help them. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to leave, you need this group of people, an underground
Speaker 1: network to catch you and then patch up any wounds
Speaker 1: you've got trying to escape. But people are very scared,
Speaker 1: you know, because once people know that you're thinking of leaving,
Speaker 1: and once the secret's out, you get targeted.
Speaker 4: And there's stories of people going through.
Speaker 1: Such incredible psychological abuse and also having privileges removed, and
Speaker 1: you know, the family being turned against them. You know,
Speaker 1: they certainly don't want people to leave. So even that
Speaker 1: aspect of her it feels you know, people try to
Speaker 1: escape East Germany, you know, it has that sense of
Speaker 1: it and bone drops at night and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That community is in a very transitional phase right now,
Speaker 1: so who knows where it's going and what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: There are lots of court cases that potentially are going
Speaker 1: to challenge them of their wealth.
Speaker 4: There is the current leader.
Speaker 1: Who's currently got charges against them as well, sexual abuse charges.
Speaker 5: So there is.
Speaker 1: Another leader that hopeful Christian already has he I mean,
Speaker 1: he had a succession plan, so not only did he
Speaker 1: have Howard, he's also got already pre chosen the one
Speaker 1: that comes after Howard, And I think that's the other
Speaker 1: really interesting thing for me. I mean, to a point,
Speaker 1: you could argue that everybody there is a victim who's
Speaker 1: been indoctrinated from hopeful Christian and they're still trying to
Speaker 1: carry out hopeful Christian stream. Some people obviously botmore in
Speaker 1: a privileged position and a position of power, and other
Speaker 1: people are completely lacking any kind of agency. But it
Speaker 1: is unclear where it's going to go, what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So it's a particularly interesting time to look at the
Speaker 1: community and go right back to the beginning and see
Speaker 1: where it started, where and off the rails, what actually
Speaker 1: is the lived experience of people in there and people
Speaker 1: who have left, and to start to consider where it
Speaker 1: goes from here.
Speaker 7: And justin while making this series, what did you learn
Speaker 7: about Glory Vale that shocked you the most?
Speaker 1: Know, we kind of had an idea about all the
Speaker 1: abuse and the sexual abuse and all of that, so
Speaker 1: hearing the details and knowing more about it is shocking,
Speaker 1: and it certainly is as bad as you feared. I
Speaker 1: actually think one of the things that has surprised me
Speaker 1: is the character that the people and I don't know
Speaker 1: how to quite describe it, but it's the resolve the
Speaker 1: compassionate nature. And this is even the people that have left,
Speaker 1: you know, like one of the women that's in the series,
Speaker 1: her name's Pearl, and she was in an earlier series
Speaker 1: that Cloribelle actually made, that they helped author, that was
Speaker 1: played years ago.
Speaker 5: She didn't ever agree to be in that series. She
Speaker 5: was just told she had to be in it.
Speaker 1: And she's had a horrible, horrible time, you know, through
Speaker 1: the air. She's now left, she's only been out a
Speaker 1: couple of years, but she still has so much compassion
Speaker 1: for the people in there because she you know, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the surprising things.
Speaker 5: You know, she still says there are incredible, loving people.
Speaker 1: Even though she had been beaten up on, you know,
Speaker 1: psychologically and abuse, she can find compassion for the people
Speaker 1: that are there and for the community. And I think
Speaker 1: there has been a surprising thing and actually the inspirational thing,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly in a world where there is so
Speaker 1: much out here, you know, conflict and tribal political that's
Speaker 1: what's going on, and perhaps more of a lack of compassion.
Speaker 1: So I've found the people that we talked to anyway
Speaker 1: to be quite inspiring.
Speaker 4: And that was a surprise.
Speaker 1: I didn't really expect to be quite so moved by
Speaker 1: their nature.
Speaker 7: Thanks for joining us, Justin, and of course anyone listening
Speaker 7: can watch Escaping Utopia on TVNZED one or on TV
Speaker 7: and Z Plus. Thanks again. That said, for this episode
Speaker 7: of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
Speaker 7: stories and extensive news coverage at NZ Herald dot co
Speaker 7: dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells
Speaker 7: with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to
Speaker 7: the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 7: and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.