Located in a remote part of New Zealand, the Gloriavale Christian Community has been compared to Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. The secretive religious cult was founded in 1969 by Neville Cooper, who later changed his name to Hopeful Christian.…[Continue Reading...]
New Zealand’s most notorious fundamentalist cult, Gloriavale Christian Community, has a long history of abuse and manipulation. For nearly 60 years, the isolated religious group has been governed by strict rules, with leaders demanding obedience and exerting control over every…[Continue Reading...]
Ushered into her parents’ bedroom with her eight brothers and sisters, the eight-year-old girl felt bewildered. “Protected” from the “wicked outside world” by a strict religious community, she had been brought up to accept the teachings of the sect -…[Continue Reading...]
Hello and welcome to another entrant in the popular television genre Do Try to Be Born a White Christian Man If You Can. This one is entitled Escaping Utopia, a three-part documentary series on Gloriavale, a secretive sect founded in…[Continue Reading...]
That’s according to the a first-of-its-kind test of public opinion curated by Talbot Mills, which asked people what should happen to the controversial West Coast commune. There have been allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, labour exploitation and more recently,…[Continue Reading...]
A leading journalist on cults doubts Gloriavale can be reformed and says it needs to be closed down. Anke Richter has been researching cults for more than a decade and is the author of Cult Trip: Inside the world of…[Continue Reading...]
There’s long been a national fascination with cults, making them fertile ground for books and documentaries. Gloversville native Susan Ashline knows this well. The Emmy-nominated journalist extensively covered the Utica-area Word of Life Christian Church cult in her 2019 book…[Continue Reading...]
Former MP Catherine Delahunty has revealed her brush with the Gloriavale community left her “disturbed” and “heartbroken” for the women there. The ex-Green MP said during a 2015 visit to the West Coast Christian community she witnessed institutionalised misogyny that…[Continue Reading...]
When Rosie Overcomer looked at her newborn daughter’s face for the first time, she was overwhelmed with fear. She was afraid of her daughter having the same upbringing as she had, in a place where women weren’t valued as highly…[Continue Reading...]
Across three nights, Escaping Utopia will reveal the careful planning involved in clandestine escapes from the fundamentalist Christian sect – with unprecedented access to its inner workings, the unravelling of its leadership, and the pursuit of justice by the Gloriavale…[Continue Reading...]
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