Senior public servants fight Gloriavale claim

| The Post | Wellington Court Reporter |

Two men who were senior public servants at a time the isolated community of Gloriavale was under scrutiny, say a claim against them should be struck out.

Four people who left the West Coast community of Gloriavale have filed a case suing several government departments.

They had tried to join the two men who were senior public servants to the case but that attempt was knocked back. They then filed separate proceedings against the men.

But at the High Court in Wellington on Friday lawyers for the two men argued that they were immune from being sued personally.

Victoria Casey, KC, said the claim should be struck out. Improper and unfounded allegations were made, she said.

But the lawyer for the Gloriavale leavers, Brian Henry, said an exception existed to the immunity because it was alleged the two men — whose names and positions were suppressed — had not acted in good faith. The law did not protect that level of failure, he said.

Henry said the case should proceed so the full facts were known before a decision was made on the legal issue. Although the current case names just four claimants who were children at Gloriavale, what was planned was a class action on behalf of dozens who had left.

But Casey said it was a side issue to the claim against the government departments. The claims of bad faith against the two men had no proper basis.

Henry said a television documentary in 2015 raised questions about what happened at Gloriavale and what the government knew.

The children were subjected to sex abuse, beatings, long hours working. The leaders were sex offenders, he said.

Newborn babies and young children were were subjected to “suffocation”, a hand put over their nose and mouth when they cried or “fussed”, until they went limp. It was to destroy self-will but sometimes children had to be revived, Henry said.

These were all things that had to be known to any responsible civil servant dealing with the issues that came out of Gloriavale, Henry said.

But Casey said the two men had full immunity from being sued unless they had acted in bad faith. No factual foundation was put forward for allegations of dishonesty, personal ulterior motive, malice or other grounds amounting to bad faith.

Justice David Gendall reserved his decision.

In separate proceedings the trust, which owns and runs Gloriavale, the Christian Church Community Trust, has already said it wanted a claim against it struck out.

Earlier this week Gloriavale leader Howard Temple resigned as Overseeing Shepherd after being convicted of sexual offending against girls and women at the community.

Temple, 85, was replaced by Shepherd Stephen Standfast.

Temple pleaded guilty to five charges of indecent assault, five of doing an indecent act and two of common assault just days into a judge-alone trial in Greymouth last month. He was on bail awaiting sentencing.

Formerly known as Howard Smitherman, Temple is a former US Navy engineer who became Overseeing Shepherd in 2018 after the death of the community’s founder Hopeful Christian.