Former Gloriavale teacher sentenced to home detention for violent assaults on children
A man who was beaten with weapons as a nine-year-old because he was not working fast enough during 12-hour days in a moss swamp, says a sentence of home detention for the offending is “not good enough”.
Former Gloriavale teacher Vigilant Standtrue was sentenced in the Greymouth District Court on Tuesday to 10 months of home detention for assaulting boys with sticks, plastic pipes, broom handles, a shovel and a pitchfork while supervising them at work.
Standtrue, 43, was found guilty of seven charges of assault with a weapon following a trial in January.
Outside court, one of his victims Boaz Benjamin said he was disappointed in the sentence of home detention.
“It’s not good enough but it’s better than community detention. At least he’s at home with a bracelet, he cannot go anywhere. But I still think that to be fair it’s different for him with home detention because he’s got Gloriavale to support him financially,” he said.
He said the community made millions of dollars from free labour, including from children.
“They’re going to support him with food, with fuel, with a vehicle for the kids to go back and support back to the community because he’s still part of Gloriavale. They’re going to absolutely support him 110%,” he said.
He said he worked under the supervision of Standtrue from when he was eight to about 13 years old in the community’s moss business after school and all day Saturday when a big order was due.
“There came a point where he could have just chose not to. It doesn’t matter how much stress you’re under, you shouldn’t actually feel the right to be abusing someone else’s kids just because you might be having a bad day,” he said.
He said he was angry to hear in court that Standtrue was still denying the use of weapons.
Benjamin, in the victim impact statement that was read out on his behalf, said the physical abuse and the mental strain he experienced growing up was hard to quantify.
“The abuse made me into a hard emotionless person because that is the only way I could protect myself,” he said.
“I feel angry and sad that most of my childhood was full of nightmares I couldn’t wake up from.”
Judge Tony Zohrab said Standtrue’s offending happened between 2001 and 2013, involving four boys aged between 8 and 13.
He said Standtrue had written a letter to the court accepting the outcome of the trial as fair and agreeing that he was angry and verbally abusive but denied using weapons.
Judge Zohrab said the four men were not making up what happened to them and were compelling witnesses. Sometimes they were left with welts and bruises.
“You were under pressure when managing the work in the swamp and the moss shed. You were quick to rise to anger … Nothing that was said or done by these young boys could any way justify the response and the violence that was meted out to them,” he said.
He gave Standtrue a starting point of two years and four months in prison but reduced it by 15% because Standtrue was a young man himself at the time and given a position of responsibility to supervise the boys without the necessary maturity and self control required.
He said Standtrue’s wife also wrote to the court detailing her husband’s important role as a father to their nine children would be impacted if he went to prison.
During the trial Gloriavale leaver Paul Valor testified that Standtrue beat him once or twice a month while he bagged wet sphagnum moss.
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.
Valor said Standtrue beat him with pieces of alkathene pipe about six times, used sticks three times, and once assaulted him with the handle of a carved swamp axe.