Were six former female residents of the Gloriavale Christian Community employees during their time there? Were they working in conditions akin to servitude and slavery?
If you are a female who believes they were employed by Gloriavale, you may be eligible for compensation. Please click here to be informed of the process.
If you worked at Springbank/Gloriavale and are interested in knowing how these rulings might assist you to get some compensation, fill in the form on this page asap and your details will be passed through to Brian Henry’s legal team. They will be in touch.
The Girls’ case is a follow-on from the Boys’ Employment case (Courage 2022). Read the background to that case to assist you with the context for the Girls’ case. The plaintiffs seeks a declaration of “employee” from the Employment Court.
Background: Gloriavale is described as a self-sustaining Christian Community with its 550 residents living what might be referred to as a communal lifestyle. It is made up of a Trust, a Partnership, a nominee company, a holding company, and a number of limited liability trading companies to operate a variety of commercial enterprises, including a honey making plant and a dairy farm.
Serenity Pilgrim, Anna Courage, Rose Standtrue, Crystal Loyal, Pearl Valor and Virginia Courage were all born into the Community and carried out various forms of domestic work starting from a young age. All six of them left Gloriavale and sought a declaration in the court that they were employees when performing work for the Community.
The case is bring brought against the Attorney General in the first instance, due to alleged failure of the State to recognise the employment status of the girls during 2015/16 and 2020/21 investigations.
The second defendants are the Gloriavale Shepherds. The Gloriavale defendants denied that the plaintiffs were employees. They claimed that the young ladies were simply participating in household and family chores. There was no intention to enter into an employment relationship at any stage.
Click here to read a Daily Vale post which details the long road to the Employment Court. It follows the journey of leavers speaking up in the media, failed Government investigations, and finally a team of lawyers who were able to drive it to the courts.
“While none of the plaintiffs remain at Gloriavale, the application for urgency is advanced on the basis that other females, including young girls, who do remain there are being subjected to the same treatment that they allege they endured and that this is giving rise to serious concerns about their ongoing safety. Those concerns are set out in an affidavit filed in support of the application.”
August 2022, Gloriavale requested that Judge Inglis recuse herself (stand down) from being the judge, because she delivered a verdict that went against Gloriavale in the Boys’ Employment Court Case in May 2022. The judge wrote:
“The application is essentially advanced on the basis that a fair-minded lay observer may reasonably apprehend that I might be biased when deciding the case in light of the fact that I recently heard and determined a preliminary issue in a related proceeding, namely Courage v Attorney General.”
She declined the request and will remain as the trial judge for the Girl’s Employment Case starting 29 August 2022. Read the Daily Vale for more details.
August 2022 – Gloriavale applied to the judge to exclude 297 paragraphs of evidence and two full briefs from the plaintiffs and witnesses affidavits (for the upcoming Girl’s case), arguing they were either scandalous, hearsay or opinion. Mr Skelton QC, counsel for the second defendants, said the briefs of evidence which had been filed for the plaintiffs presented a dark picture of life in Gloriavale in general and a wide-range of grievances against the second defendants. He submitted that large portions of the evidence had no relevance, or alternatively, very little relevance, to whether or not the plaintiffs were employees of the second defendants. He said much of it was scandalous in nature and gave every appearance of having been included to embarrass or prejudice the second defendants.
Mr Skelton summarised the second defendants’ objections, saying that their concerns fell into several broad categories:
(a) allegations of lying, dishonesty, theft, bribery, and misleading government agencies;
(b) allegations of minimising tax obligations and maximising government benefits;
(c) allegations that Gloriavale residents were not provided with adequate dental or healthcare;
(d) allegations (or insinuations) of sexual abuse or harassment;
(e) alleged physical abuse of young children;
(f) egregious hearsay;
(g) other irrelevant evidence that could only have been included for its prejudicial effect;
(h) evidence about the state of mind of persons other than the witness; and
(i) opinion, often verging on submission, characterising Gloriavale and life in the community in a negative fashion.
Judge B A Corkill was selected for this job and he allowed a large majority of it to be admissible. Issues of sexual misconduct and anything related to background and power and control were allowed to remain. Judge Corkill said,
“In short, the plaintiffs have pleaded a broad range of examples of the way they lived their lives at Gloriavale may be relevant to the issue of control. The examples they give will, on the plaintiffs’ case, be part of the broad inquiry. It is clear from the authorities referred to earlier that evidence which is scandalous may nonetheless be relevant and therefore admissible.”
Read more in the Daily Vale post.
Read the judgement here: https://www.employmentcourt.govt.nz/assets/2022-NZEmpC-145-Pilgrim-v-Attorney-General-No-6-jud-180822.pdf
The hearing was set down for a few weeks, but ended up being 10 weeks in total, stretched across three blocks of time in (August/Sept 2022 and Feb/March 2023). It was heard in Christchurch District Court, except for one week in Greymouth during February 2023, where the Judge also did a site visit to Gloriavale.
13 July 2023, Chief Judge Christina Inglis released her 64-page judgement and made declarations that Serenity Pilgrim, Anna Courage, Rose Standtrue, Crystal Loyal, Pearl Valor and Virginia Courage were employees from the age they joined the teams (around 6-8 years old) until they left the Gloriavale Community.
“In a typical week in 2018, the female workforce in the kitchen produced more than 11,000 meals; the female workforce in the laundry washed at least 17,000 items. The evidence clearly established that the work required to produce these outcomes was unrelenting, grinding, hard, and physically and psychologically demanding.
“The evidence disclosed that none of the plaintiffs were given a choice about whether they worked on the Teams or not. Broadly speaking, that decision had been assigned at birth, having been born female. Nor (as I will come to) did any of the plaintiffs (or their parents) exercise any real choice about which Team they worked on. Rather, the plaintiffs were assigned to a particular Team without any real consultation, and generally became aware of which Team they had been assigned to when they left the Community school, and saw their name written on a roster on a Community notice board in the main building.”
” Each of the plaintiffs was born into the Community and they were taught from birth that they were to submit to male leadership in all aspects of their life including their work”
” I have reached the conclusion, based on the evidence before the Court, that the plaintiffs did their work on the Teams, which admittedly benefitted the Community, because that is what they were told to do; what each of them had been trained to accept from birth; and the consequences of not doing what was expected (namely falling “out of unity”) were dire and well known – exclusion from the Community, from all that was familiar, from family and friends, and into a world they know little about, were ill equipped to navigate and had been taught to fear.”
Read a summarised version of the court judgement on the Daily Vale.
The plaintiffs also claimed that the Labour Inspector breached their statutory duties. This aspect of the claim centred on a report of the Labour Inspector, concluding that people working in Gloriavale were volunteers. This part of the proceedings will be heard at a later date.
Read the Media Statement the court released.
Click here to read a summary of the ruling from the Daily Vale blog.
Hear from the victorious plaintiffs and their legal team as they respond to the news of the win.
9 August 2023 Gloriavale filed for leave (permission) to appeal the Pilgrim decision (link). They tried to “splattergun” approach which involved listing at least 15 reasons why the judgment was wrong. Read article here.
These include: possible Misdirection of Employment Court on the requirements of Section 6; lack of Contract of Service; wrong conclusion by the Employment Court that amounts to an error of law; an error of law by not identifying the employer; a breach natural justice rights by: a) The judge failing to recuse herself (step down) after judging the Boys’ case, b) Appointing Counsel to assist the court (Mr Kirkness) when the plaintiffs had adequate representation, c) Admitting evidence that was prejudicial and irrelevant, d) Appointment of Dr Norris as a court expert part way through the case, without interviewing any plaintiffs or having access to the evidence. They also noted that that the judgement is likely to impact the rights and interests of other community members; the Labour Inspectorate investigated twice and found they were not employees, since the judgement; the Govt has indicated it intends to take action against the community and this will have ramifications for the way of life of its members; it will impact other communal groups in NZ; it’s contrary to how other country’s courts have viewed similar communal groups; the issue should have been heard by the Employment Relations Authority first.
It is expected the judges will rule before the year end.
8 December 2023 – The Court of Appeal dismissed the majority of Gloriavale’s concerns . They said the Employment Court did not misdirect itself on the requirements of s 6 of the ERA2000 (the meaning of “employee”), which incorporates the legal concept of a contract of service. It did not misapply the test in s 6, so insupportable as to amount to an error of law. They did not err by making an order under s 6(5) declaring that the plaintiffs were employees, without determining the identity of the plaintiffs’ employer? They did not err by conducting the trial in a manner that breached natural justice?
However the judges did leave open a possibility for an appeal to be heard on two finer points of law. They wrote, “ However, we are disposed to think there are narrower questions of law which may have wider significance for religious or volunteer organisations, and which are capable of decision on the existing record without embarking on the wider inquiry sought by the applicants.”
They are:
(a) whether the respondents in this case worked for hire or reward; and
(b) if not, whether they were volunteers for purposes of s 6(1)(c).
“The first of these questions involves consideration of intangible benefits such as religious support and guidance, spiritual salvation and the entitlement to remain so long as the person works. The second concerns the impact in law of the evidence that the respondents’ agency was compromised in their circumstances at Gloriavale.”
Submissions were requested and will be considered by the judges in early 2024. Read the whole judgment here.
On 15 December 2023, Chief Justice Inglis ruled that Overseeing Shepherd Howard Temple was the employer of the girls after they left school (usually around aged 15) and entered the workforce at Gloriavale.
She stated,
“I have formed the view that at all material times the employer was the Overseeing Shepherd. Essentially that is because the evidence pointed squarely to the Overseeing Shepherd, at any particular point in time, being the ultimate controlling force within the Community, specifically (although not exclusively) in respect of work and in respect of the assets of the Community.”
The two parties tried mediation late 2023, but it failed. So the next step was for the plaintiffs to file their wage arrear claims with the Employment Relations Authority (ERA). Their job is to settle employment related disputes. The plaintiffs filed in January 2024, but they also then immediately asked for it to be removed back to the Employment Court to complete the process. Click here for more details. The lawyers argued it was a complex case and it would speed up the process for the same judge to work it out based on the evidence accepted in court. No, poor or untrue record-keeping is problematic for this case.
But this attempt failed, with the ERA saying they were the best placed agency to deal with the issues the ERA commented,
“In his decision, ERA member David Beck said the authority had dealt with similar matters where there were no records kept, and that there was no urgency in this case because it had taken a long time to get to this point”
2 May 2024, Gloriavale was given permission to appeal the Pilgrim decision on two points of law:
a) Did the respondents work for hire or reward within the meaning of s 6(1)(a) of the Employment Relations Act 2000; and
b) If not, were they volunteers for the purposes of s 6(1)(c) of the Employment Relations Act 2000.
Gloriavale will need to decide whether they wish to proceed with the Appeal, and make the application. An Appeal is not a re-trial. It will be dealt with on paper with the evidence already submitted.
The girls’ lawyers have appealed Gloriavale’s right to appeal the Pilgrim case, stating that the reasons they were granted permission fall outside of the appeal criteria. They appealed it in the Supreme Court, (the highest court in the land) but ultimately lost that in July 2024. The Supreme court said that the Appeal Court had a broad jurisdiction to grant leave “for any reason.”
So now Gloriavale can appeal the Girls’ case if they want to. It doesn’t mean they will appeal or that they will win the appeal, but there is an option for Gloriavale if they want to spend more money on lawyers and delay the proceedings even more…
On 25 July 2024 Judge Christina Inglis heard the plaintiffs (applicants) and defendants (respondents) arguments for or against the Employment Court finishing off the cases to ensure the Boys and Girls way is paved for payments of lost wages, instead of keeping it with the Employment Relations Authority. The leavers’ lawyers arguments were based on the desire to safeguard the plaintiffs from having to give further evidence about their work life at Gloriavale. They also highlighted the difficulties with producing time-sheets, and they argued that the ERA was not going to be capable of determining the time bar issue. (Gloriavale had indicated they would be seeking the courts assistance to set in stone as 6 year time restriction for backpay, while the plaintiffs maintain the exceptional circumstances of their work and life in Gloriavale meant there should be no restrictions on back pay.)
On 7 August 2024 the judge ruled that both the time bar issue and the remuneration issue be completed in the Employment Court and removed from the ERA.
27 November 2024 Judge Christina Inglis awards $274,427.75 + GST + Disbursements and Expenses be paid by Gloriavale to the plaintiffs for legal costs. (This is a fraction of the real costs of the legal expenses, had the lawyers been charging a fair fee). It is understood that Gloriavale’s legal fees to defend the case were more than $1 million.
28th – 30th October 2025, Gloriavale lawyers challenged the Pilgrim decision that the females were employees (as ruled in July 2023). Led by Philip Skelton KC, the community’s leadership argued that the original Employment Court had fundamentally mischaracterized their lifestyle. They said it was a Spiritual Commitment, Not Hire and argued that the women performed communal work purely as an expression of religious faith and a shared communal ethos. Because members sought to emulate early First-Century Christians, they worked without expecting personal possessions, gain, or financial reward. They also Rejected the Commercial Context arguing that domestic duties (such as kitchen work and laundry) were part of an internal communal economy, not a commercial enterprise or a “work for hire” contract. Finally they said there was a Flawed Legal Test: They contended that the Employment Court heavily relied on a flawed “vulnerability and/or lack of choice” test to override what they asserted was a voluntary religious agreement.
The arguments for the former members (Leavers), represented by Brian Henry and Steve Patterson, argued that the community functioned on a coercive, corporate model. They said it was an Exploitative “Sharp Business Model” and that it was designed specifically to exploit cheap labor under the guise of religion. They stated there was a severe power imbalance within the commune, noting that the Overseeing Shepherd maintained absolute authority. The community consolidated all funds—including intercepting the members’ individual government welfare payments (around $1,200 a fortnight)—meaning the women had no genuine choice or financial autonomy to leave. And finally they presented that there was Illusory Consent and argued that because of systematic coercion, severe isolation, and the threat of being severed from their families, the “choice” to volunteer was entirely illusory. The punishing conditions and gruelling hours amounted to coerced commercial labor rather than willing religious service.
The three judges will now each have to grapple with a law that wasn’t designed for this exact scenario.
One appeal judge appeared to have the measure of things when she said, “So how does slavery fit into this?” She could see that the original judge’s ruling clearly had the features of slavery.
More details on RNZ article here
The 26–27 November 2025 hearing was a preliminary Employment Court hearing about whether the Pilgrim and Courage claims could still proceed despite statutory time limits.
The Court was dealing with four related proceedings: the former Gloriavale workers’ claims for wage arrears, holiday pay, breach of contract and personal grievances, and the Labour Inspector’s separate claims for declarations of breach, compensation and pecuniary penalties. The main questions were which claims were time-barred, whether transitional limitation provisions applied, and whether the four proceedings should be consolidated before the substantive hearing.
A major issue was when the limitation clock started and stopped. For the leavers, the Court considered when their wage claims became reasonably discoverable and when proceedings had effectively commenced. For the Labour Inspector, the Gloriavale defendants argued MBIE had waited too long to bring its enforcement claims.
During 16 – 18 March 2026 the Employment Court scrutinised the Labour Inspectorate’s failure to intervene in Gloriavale both in 2017 and 2021 despite overwhelming evidence. They accused inspectors of turning a blind eye to modern slavery and child exploitation. The Crown defended the agency, arguing that community members were viewed as religious volunteers at the time and that intervention had to be balanced against their communal lifestyle. Ultimately, internal records proved devastating for the Crown, revealing that the inspectorate had ignored explicit legal advice from Crown Law to investigate deeper, choosing instead to prematurely close its files and leave vulnerable children and adults unprotected.
More details on the Daily Vale here.
Read more about it on the Daily Vale here
Read more about it here on the Daily Vale
Serenity Pilgrim, Anna Courage, Rose Standtrue, Crystal Loyal, Pearl Valor and Virginia Courage were all born into the Community and carried out various forms of domestic work starting from a young age. All six of them left Gloriavale and sought a declaration in the court that they were employees when performing work for the Community.
Gloriavale surveys its members in a most extraordinary fashion, and calls for more witnesses to "protect the Community". The survey hits the media and causes a big stir among people who have left Gloriavale.
Today the Employment Court started a five-week hearing to determine whether Serenity Pilgrim, Anna Courage, Rose Standtrue, Crystal Loyal, Pearl Valor and Virginia Courage were employees when performing various forms of domestic work for the Gloriavale Community.