Name Faithful Disciple
Hometown Cust, Haupiri Valley, Mayfield
Age when entered care From birth
Year of birth 1986
Time in care 1986–2021
Type of care facility Faith-based communities – Springbank, Gloriavale.
Ethnicity NZ European
Whānau background Faithful is the sixth of 10 children. His father passed away at Gloriavale and his mother and eight of his siblings still live there.
Currently Faithful and his wife live with their eight children in Canterbury, where he is employed as a farm manager. They homeschool their children and have settled into their new life.

“Perpetrators are forgiven, and victims are required to forgive”

I lived, learned, worshipped and worked in the Springbank and Gloriavale Christian communities until I was 35.

I have personally been subject to, witnessed or learned from trusted sources about abuse and neglect in the community.

In the community, every aspect of your life is controlled. Leaders exercise complete power and demand submission and subjugation. Their power is ordained by God, which opens the opportunity for broad-ranging neglect and abuse.

My mother’s family joined the community when she was 14, and she still lives there. My father joined when he was 18. He briefly left before I was born and was only allowed to return if he did not set a foot wrong. He spent his whole life trying to prove his loyalty and worked long hours.

The community’s class system means that if anything goes wrong, blame is first placed on those who have left, then those lower in the hierarchy, such as children, women and troublemakers. Life there does not build self-esteem or confidence. It is based on systemic and institutionalised bullying, where perpetrators are forgiven, and victims are required to forgive.

The community is guided by core principles, and leaders have clear discretion to interpret or reinterpret these principles how they wish. Changes are presented as being from a divine source and above question, even when they make no sense. The principle of unity supports living in communal dwellings. At one point, we shared a space with 11 other large families, with only partial plywood partitions between us. There was no privacy.

Living in such close quarters, children regularly see and hear their parents having sex and this is considered normal and healthy. Sex is also a common topic of conversation and frequently preached about, including stories of leaders’ own sex lives. I clearly recall the leader, Hopeful Christian, telling fathers to teach their boys how to masturbate and mothers to teach their boys how women orgasmed.

The community values education because it produces compliant and productive workers. Leaders control the curriculum, which is ‘one size fits all’. At preschool, teachers often used humiliation as a discipline tool. Beatings in primary and secondary school were sometimes public. When I was at high school, I learned nothing, doing the same math in grade nine that I did in grade six. And although children ‘formally’ leave school at 16, school-based learning stops at 15.

At school, I remember getting hidings and the principal’s physical, spiritual and psychological abuse. At primary school, he made us write notes identifying classmates who had to led us to do bad things. He then wrote the name of each child identified on a chart he hung in the hall. If those named tried to defend themselves, this was evidence of their guilt. This reiterated the community’s focus on surveillance, which means members do not seek support from each other in case they are reported on.

Hard work was a requirement. I can’t remember my mother ever telling me I was good at anything or that she loved me – I was only ever congratulated for how hard and how long I worked.

At 5 years old, we worked outside cleaning dry moss for about an hour each school day. From 6 years old, boys started work on the dairy farms, in the gardens or the community’s commercial arms and would get a hiding if they were not there by 1.30pm. We did this for three hours a day, six days a week. By 9 years old, I was also working Sunday mornings and afternoons at the dairy farm. By 10 years old, I was milking one morning from 4.30am. By 11 years old, this was two mornings and by 12 years old, it was three. I recall that I was working more than 30 hours a week, as well as attending school.

When I finished school at 15 years old, I went to work in the moss plant, then got moved to the dairy farm. The primary form of discipline was the sheer volume of physical effort expected. I started work at 4.30am six days a week and worked until everything was done, often 2am. During calving, I often worked 120 hours a week.

Leaders insisted on doing everything in-house, even when not safe, efficient or economical, and bought cheap tools and equipment. I now have significant hearing loss because I was denied and mocked when I requested earmuffs, despite working with loud tractors.

There were no days off and we were not paid for our work – it was compensation for the cost of housing and feeding us.

At 20 years old, I wanted to get married. My father sent me to Hopeful, who gave me a list of names and had me fast and pray for three days. When I told him who I had chosen, he said I was wrong and chose my now wife for me instead. We had gone to school together, but I barely remembered her. We were married three and half weeks later, having spent no time alone together. In our first 14 years together, we hurt each other because our expectations did not align. But separation and divorce do not happen in the community, despite there being some very unhappy and even abusive marriages.

The sole source of growth in the community is procreation, and married couples face immediate pressure to have large families. However, adults are also supposed to focus on working hard – my wife faced considerable criticism for working from home to spend time with some of our babies.

In the community, children’s disobedience reflects on the family. This encourages and rewards strong and visible control and punishments. Abuse was so normalised that I remember my father as the kindest, gentlest man whose physical discipline was the minimum he could get away with. However, he would use a leather belt to give us hidings and sometimes a wooden bed slat.

You need a strong will to leave the community because you face insurmountable barriers, such as no money, employment or accommodation. Any remaining family will be treated poorly, and any future communication with them will be difficult or non-existent. You also lose the salvation you spent your whole life working for.

When I was sent to other farms on sharemilking arrangements, I became aware of alternative opinions and began to think independently. My workmates and I would listen to audio sermons and discuss the Bible without a leader present, which is forbidden in the community.

Around 2015 and 2016, the leaders realised some people had been listening to sermons, and that my brother-in-law had written a book about parenting. They blamed my wife and me for being involved with the book and burned all physical copies, as well as many of the religious books in the community library.

In May 2018 I was badly burned in an accident. I was exhausted as I was working full time as the main plant operator, full time as a boiler attendant (with no training) and part time as a compost manager. I had third-degree burns and could not walk but was pressured to start work again within four weeks.

In 2020, a NZ Police investigation concluded sexual abuse among boys in the community was systemic, generational and cyclical. As a result, the community had to instigate the START programme, which consists of intervention, counselling and support around sexual violence. This programme made me realise events in my childhood were not normal, that there was other abuse, and trauma could affect you for life. However, the leaders called a meeting, and blamed parents for the problems with their children. A friend stood up and said we needed to change. I backed him and afterwards people said they agreed with us. But the leaders went on a witch hunt against us, and I had to accept nothing would change.

In 2021, I became involved in the first of the civil cases against the community trustees. I stood up with my friends outside the courthouse. There were television cameras there and I was seen. When I got back to the Community I was pulled into a Servants and Shepherds meeting where all of the men in the Community were invited to attend and to abuse me and my friends. After this, my health and wellbeing deteriorated rapidly. I knew the leaders would come after me.

My wife and I started to talk about leaving again. She brought a computer home from work, and we watched YouTube and TedX talks. I realised the community worked the same way as other cults do, and that I had been fed lies my entire life.

I eventually became so run down that my wife booked me in to see a doctor. I borrowed a vehicle from a friend outside the community, and my wife and the children came away with me for the weekend. During that time, I saw the doctor, who said I was two steps away from death, and we spoke to former community members. Taking strength from this, my wife agreed we could leave. We went back under cover of darkness to clean out our room. The leaders saw our light and sent Loving’s mother to talk to her, but she stayed firm.

We left the community in May 2021 and settled in Mayfield, where I work, and we homeschool our children. I am now trying to work out who I was before I was replaced with who they wanted me to be.

I have learned more about my wife since we left, and our relationship has improved. I am allowed to be nice to her now – I was afraid to before because I would have been accused of pampering to the flesh.

I have become a hands-on father and my children know they can achieve if they work for it. I used to discourage this because I did not want to set them up to fail.

I want to ensure no one else suffers and that the leaders are held accountable for the harm they have caused or have allowed to occur. I propose change, undertaken by people the community trusts, in consultation with the community. I also seek some form of financial compensation for the opportunities I have lost as a direct result of not being paid during my working life at the community. [310]