Ministry quiet on India Gloriavale

March 31, 2025: | Greymouth Star | Laura Mills |[Subscription Only] A year after a television documentary looked into Gloriavale’s outpost in India, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) is declining to say what action it took. In the TVNZ ‘docuseries’, Escaping Utopia, former Gloriavale members travelled to India and met a member who moved…

Extract: Unveiled: A Story of Surviving Gloriavale, by Theophila Pratt

March 30, 2025: | Kete | Theophila Pratt was born Honey Faithful in Gloriavale, the fundamentalist Christian community that has been at the centre of decades of allegations of sexual and physical assualt, and workplace exploitation. Raised in this isolated community, where a small contingent of men held all the power, Theo found…

Gloriavale

March 28, 2025: | Downie Stewart | The Christian Church Community Trust and associated entities (commonly known as Gloriavale) has received a great deal of media attention. In particular, various allegations have been made that its leaders: For many years, Gloriavale has banked with the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). In July 2022,…

Gloriavale population falls while 100 babies born, census shows

March 26, 2025: | The Press | Joanne Naish | Gloriavale has the youngest population, highest birth rate, and lowest median income in the country, census data shows. The Gloriavale Christian Community at Lake Haupiri on the West Coast has its own statistical area in the census data. Other census data shows the median…

Gloriavale on Waitangi Day

March 24, 2025: | Newsroom | Theophila Pratt | ‘Gloriavale must have been one of the most racist places in New Zealand, especially if you were Māori’, writes a former member Every Waitangi Day, the choir used to go and sing at the Grey District Waitangi Day Picnic at Dixon Park in Greymouth.…

How Theophila reclaimed her life after Gloriavale

March 20, 2025: | Woman’s Day | Judy Bailey | Theophila Pratt grew up in the cult, denied a childhood and a voice because of her gender. But since graduating from uni, she’s using those dark times to fuel her dream of helping others. Theophila Pratt is reclaiming her life – fighting back…

Gloriavale women trapped in India still under investigation

March 17, 2025: | The Press | Joanne Naish | A woman who is fighting for her sister trapped in Gloriavale’s Indian community without access to her passport says the battle is still a “work in progress” Theophilia Pratt’s sister Precious is one of five women who were born in Gloriavale on the…

Young Gloriavale man died in accidental ‘blacking out’, coroner rules

March 14, 2025: | The Press | Joanne Naish | A 20-year-old Gloriavale man died after an accidental blackout, with brain damage from workplace toxins preventing his recovery, a coroner has found. Sincere Standtrue died in Christchurch Hospital on November 2, 2018, nine days after being found unresponsive in the community’s paint shop.…