27-03-2024, 06:11 PM
Most of us will have seen the three part programme,Escaping Utopia, including the final part, in which some ex members went to India to visit the sister of one of them & found some distressing things there.
Govt agencies have now been accused of allowing abuse at Gloriavale to continue.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5127...o-continue
"Four government agencies are being accused of knowingly allowing abuse to happen at Gloriavale, in High Court action brought by a leavers' lawyer who describes the community as a "sex cult cloaked in Christianity".
Barrister Brian Henry has filed proceedings against Oranga Tamariki, the Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Social Development and Labour Inspectorate, after sending a letter to the Prime Minister and other senior ministers calling for the West Coast commune to be shut down.
Henry criticised the failure of previous governments and officials in the 6 December letter, arguing inaction had turned them into "enablers".
"My clients seek immediate action at ministerial level to close the Gloriavale community," he said.
"Enabling ongoing abuse of little children by the dint of their birth into the community is a gross dereliction of their duty."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-det...omen-there
"When Theo Pratt saw her sister in India's Gloriavale outpost last year, she was horrified.
"She was just like a shell of the person I remembered as my sister. I was very taken aback, I didn't expect it to be that bad," she says. "She was so lifeless."
Pratt was in India to check on her sister and the other women and children living there.
On Tuesday, the final episode of TVNZ's three-part documentary [i]Escaping Utopia[/i] revealed the existence of this offshoot in India. But as Pratt told [i]The Detail[/i], she's known about it for years - and has tried for about seven years to get help.
"I've been trying to find a way to get the government and to get someone to realise what was happening and what Gloriavale was doing with sending women to India," Pratt says.
"Over the years I've met with human rights people, and lawyers, and media people, and at the end of the day it was in the too-hard basket and no one was going to touch it because it's Gloriavale and it's so complicated."
Pratt says of the small community there, five are New Zealand women married to Indian men, and 35 are their children. She says the women don't have access to their passports, and some of the children don't even have birth certificates. Peter Righteous, one of Gloriavale's leaders, denies this, saying that the Gloriavale members there would be able to leave "at the drop of a hat".
Pratt also says that the oldest of the New Zealand children is 13 or 14, and the plan is to begin to marry them to each other in a few years.
"Those kids and those women are hugely at risk."
Govt agencies have now been accused of allowing abuse at Gloriavale to continue.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5127...o-continue
"Four government agencies are being accused of knowingly allowing abuse to happen at Gloriavale, in High Court action brought by a leavers' lawyer who describes the community as a "sex cult cloaked in Christianity".
Barrister Brian Henry has filed proceedings against Oranga Tamariki, the Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Social Development and Labour Inspectorate, after sending a letter to the Prime Minister and other senior ministers calling for the West Coast commune to be shut down.
Henry criticised the failure of previous governments and officials in the 6 December letter, arguing inaction had turned them into "enablers".
"My clients seek immediate action at ministerial level to close the Gloriavale community," he said.
"Enabling ongoing abuse of little children by the dint of their birth into the community is a gross dereliction of their duty."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-det...omen-there
"When Theo Pratt saw her sister in India's Gloriavale outpost last year, she was horrified.
"She was just like a shell of the person I remembered as my sister. I was very taken aback, I didn't expect it to be that bad," she says. "She was so lifeless."
Pratt was in India to check on her sister and the other women and children living there.
On Tuesday, the final episode of TVNZ's three-part documentary [i]Escaping Utopia[/i] revealed the existence of this offshoot in India. But as Pratt told [i]The Detail[/i], she's known about it for years - and has tried for about seven years to get help.
"I've been trying to find a way to get the government and to get someone to realise what was happening and what Gloriavale was doing with sending women to India," Pratt says.
"Over the years I've met with human rights people, and lawyers, and media people, and at the end of the day it was in the too-hard basket and no one was going to touch it because it's Gloriavale and it's so complicated."
Pratt says of the small community there, five are New Zealand women married to Indian men, and 35 are their children. She says the women don't have access to their passports, and some of the children don't even have birth certificates. Peter Righteous, one of Gloriavale's leaders, denies this, saying that the Gloriavale members there would be able to leave "at the drop of a hat".
Pratt also says that the oldest of the New Zealand children is 13 or 14, and the plan is to begin to marry them to each other in a few years.
"Those kids and those women are hugely at risk."
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)