Virginia Courage – Sentencing Thoughts
Jean Edwards RNZ Interview with Virginia Courage after her brother John Ready’s court sentencing for physical assault of two minors while managing a diary herd at Gloriavale in 2015.
Jean: What did you think about what Judge Savage had to say?
Virginia: I was amazed and very grateful for his insight into the case as a whole story and not just an isolated event out of someone’s life. It’s not easy to come out of Gloriavale because you actually know that they have actually damaged you morally – not just the physical and the verbal things you’ve done but they’ve tainted you morally, and so many of the people that I am in contact with who have made the journey out of Gloriavale it’s their own awakening to the moral destruction that’s just happening to them that actually leads them out of Gloriavale‘s culture.
And I know that John has never tried to hide that he’s a flawed human being and I really appreciate his honesty through this whole scenario. It’s not easy when you’re trying to say that things are unacceptable and yet you know yourself that you’ve participated.
I think the other thing it does is it gives a tremendous amount of weight to the issues with the Employment Case that’s still awaiting that judgement. The acknowledgement that you’ve got someone who’s saying that abuse did happen in the workplace. Children were put in situations that were harmful and they were working in commercial industry and they were not able to prevent and isolate themselves from the accepted culture of what Gloriavale would expect from a child, and the disciplines that the supervisor could inflict on them. So I feel like it’s such a tick really for the people who stood up in the Employment case. Gloriavale are trying to downplay what happened. They are trying to ignore what happened and yet you’ve got someone here today who said “this happened, in the workplace, to children and I’m acknowledging that.”