Gloriavale man beat children with weapons as they worked, jury finds

| The Press | Joanne Naish and Brett Kerr-Laurie |

A Gloriavale man assaulted boys with sticks, plastic pipes, broom handles, a shovel and a pitchfork while supervising them at work, a jury has found.

Vigilant Standtrue, 43, was found guilty of seven charges of assault with a weapon following a trial in the Greymouth District Court this week.

The verdicts were received on Thursday morning, Crown prosecutor Aaron Harvey confirmed. Two charges were withdrawn, and others amended to be representative.

The offending was previously alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2013, and involved four boys aged between 8 and 13.

Among the victims was Gloriavale leaver Paul Valor, whose arranged marriage featured in a national documentary. He had testified that Standtrue beat him once or twice a month, while he bagged wet sphagnum moss as part of the community’s commercial moss business.

Standtrue became stressed when large orders needed to be filled and would shout at the boys if they were not fast enough, call them names and threaten they would not get dinner, Valor said.

“He would grab whatever came to hand in the swamp … [and] hit us with it once – or if he felt a more structured discipline was needed he would bend you over a bale and give you a hiding.”

Valor said Standtrue used pieces of alkathene pipe to beat him on about six occasions, sticks three times and once with the handle of a carved swamp axe.

“It wasn’t like he lost control and wanted to hurt me, he would explain he was teaching me a lesson and I needed to feel things in order to set the lesson in.”

Standtrue would hit the boys with a piece of rope, the handle of a pitchfork or his hand if they became distracted, he said.

“I would often end up with welts or bruises from it… There was one occasion, two occasions, when I had broken skin afterwards… It was expected in Gloriavale that we would be toughened up and not be babies about these sorts of things.”

Defence lawyer Stewart Sluis had said Standtrue admitted getting frustrated and flicking Valor’s ear but denied beating him with weapons.

“He says you got that wrong. He’s confused about why you are making these accusations,” he said.

Sluis asked Valor whether he was attacking people in Gloriavale to try to have the community closed down.

Valor said he had no animosity towards the idea of Gloriavale or its people, but believed the system needed to change. He said communal living and mutual support were positive, but people needed free access to information and to live within legal guidelines.

He had clear memories of the beatings and the humiliation he felt at the time, he said.

“I don’t see [Standtrue] as a villain or a horrible person. I see him as somebody doing what he was taught to do. I’m assuming that was similar to how he was raised.”

In his opening address on Monday, Crown prosecutor Aaron Harvey said the complainants, now adults, would give evidence that Standtrue was quick to lose his temper and resort to violence as a “pretend means of discipline”.

The boys were expected to perform physically demanding work in difficult conditions and would return home bruised and in pain, he said.

Sluis, in his opening, said the alleged offending occurred when Standtrue was about 18 or 19. He said Standtrue had previously pleaded guilty to three violence charges between 2017 and 2021 while working as a teacher and garden supervisor, but denied these earlier allegations.

The complainants were former members of the Gloriavale community, Sluis noted.

“I’m not going to say they are lying. He is saying it did not happen and he doesn’t know why these allegations are being made. He never hit them and never intended to hit or hurt them.”