Leavers’ Thoughts on Escaping Utopia DocuSeries
Liz Gregory spoke to a few adult male and female Gloriavale leavers over lunch after the Escaping Utopia Series had aired the week prior. They couldn’t believe how amazing the scenes were reconstructed. She then asked if she could capture their comments on camera. She passed these on to the film crew too.
Here were their random, unrehearsed thoughts:
John Ready: I was honestly shocked at how good it was. At times I was like, I’ve only been away from GV only six years and I can’t remember who that person is in GV, And my wife said “They’re actors”. I said, “Are they?” They’re nailing it so well. I don’t know how they would have conveyed to the actors how they got it so well. It was unnerving actually. The accuracy of it was mind blowing, Like she had lived there. I thought they did a really good job on conveying the SS (Servants and Shepherds) meeting and what’s going on inside, to the person internally. Even though it may not happen like that externally, it really conveys that high pressure, a lot coming at you. Walking through a minefield. Say one thing and someone is going to jump down your throat. It felt way too real. It was really well done. It’s amazing how many people I’ve talked to had exactly the same thoughts about the exact the same scenes. It was uncanny how it provoked exactly the same response in leavers and they articulated it exactly the same. That’s crazy.
Virginia Courage: I was so impressed, I felt like they had actually got into the psyche into how people feel. How threatened, how hopeless, how overwhelmed. You can feel completely overwhelmed even though you’re surrounded by 600 people. The details were amazing, the names on the cutlery containers, the coloured tape.
PR: It was all so authentic. The painted backdrops, the blue curtains, and then the while plastic spread, containers with the vitamin tablets.
DC: It was awesome. It was like, they got it, they nailed it. Yes there was too much trauma to watch some of it.
John re India. What’s weird was you watch the first part and you get a sense for how it’s going. And then you come back to the second part and you’re like I can’t take this. But I made it through all three. The third part made me feel guilty – because you forget about people. You forget their situation and you get carried away with your own things and then it gets brought back to you. It’s really hard and you have guilt.
DC: (re India) It was … I know it, hearing it again was bringing it back, the plight those women are in.
John. Yes the plight of the woman. There are two things going on at the same time. In this position they kind of don’t know how bad it is. Unfortunately it comes back to a place that they’re not aware of how good God is and there’s a concept that somehow we’ve just got to suffer. If I’m suffering I’m in the right place and that’s a denial of how good God is. It doesn’t mean we don’t suffer, but there are answers and ways through.
DC: It almost gives the thought that they’ve given up hope and the only hope they have left to them is that the Lord is going to come back – which is actually the equivalent to you being dead inside. If you can compare that to the state of mind that someone would be in if they were going to commit suicide. It’s very much the same thing ‘The Lord’s going to come back. It will be alright. If I die, I die.” That whole mindset those people can be in.
Mother with young children: You know that thing that happened to Rosanna, where she and her children were moved around to hide from our husbands, that kind of thing happened to me, and her (points to someone else) and (then mentions another name).
Another mother: Wow even Howard’s hands looked like his when he pulled the girl onto his lap.
Another Father: I jumped when I saw the back of Hopeful Christian in the SS Meeting. It looked like him and they even had his hearing aids.
General Feedback
Liz says: I have spoken to countless leavers who said it was brilliant, accurate, honest and extremely well done. They know the content was true, as many of them have experienced similar situations or were witnesses to various events depicted. Most did not feel there was any sensationalism, because in many ways some of these things were normalised and there is no need to drum them up into more than they were. There was nothing to be gained by making the story sensational. It is what it is. And it needs to stand on the truth of the claims made.
We watched the doco with a house full of leavers, and we know it rang true, because of the physical reactions we noticed when there were triggering scenes. You don’t make that stuff up.