Sins of the father: Gloriavale leavers react to Julie Christie's new documentary

When Gideon Benjamin watched a Gloriavale leader's on-camera admission about a failure to protect the Christian commune's children from offending by his father, anger rose inside him.

He felt betrayed by the knowledge that decades of sexual predation by Jonathan Benjamin had been hidden from his family.

"I almost felt victimised again. It brings a lot of emotions. Anger, confusion, it just blows my mind how they're coming out all honest now about how dishonest they were back then," he said.

"I calmed myself down because as a Christian I can't hold on and harbour that anger because it turns to bitterness and that's not the right way to be. It wasn't nice finding out that I'd been lied to. They deliberately hid that from us."

In the three-part documentary Devotion: The Gloriavale Story, Servant Peter Righteous tells how Jonathan Benjamin's family was isolated from the community block but his wife and children were never told why.

Righteous admitted that leaders of the West Coast sect knew as far back as 1996 that Benjamin was a problem when they had a meeting with police, but because none of the parents or children wanted to press charges, a safety plan was developed instead.

Righteous said Benjamin was allowed back into a hostel after Gloriavale founder Hopeful Christian died in 2018, creating a "problem", although Benjamin's sons maintain the family moved years before that.

"The bottom line is, it wasn't handled well and we would have been better off if we had reported him to the police and just let the police do their thing," Righteous said.

Gideon Benjamin told the documentary-makers that even though his father had destroyed his family's reputation, he had to forgive him.

"It was one of the hardest things in periods of my life ever to go through, to call my own father a paedophile. It was no small thing," he said.

Gloriavale leaders last year rejected Gideon Benjamin's request for a personal apology for allowing his father to abuse people, and for not getting him help or dealing with him appropriately.

He told RNZ they are not confronting the whole truth.

"They are trying to face up to some of it but I think they're only facing up to what they think they can handle. If they faced up to 100 percent of the abuse, 100 percent of the wrong that's happened, I think it would overwhelm them," Benjamin said.

His brother Boaz Benjamin, who declined to take part in the documentary, said Righteous had confirmed his belief that leaders covered up his father's offending.

"I felt mortified, even a bit traumatised. It was very hard to just sit there and watch that. To me it just felt like they were like well, 'Since everybody seems to know about everything, there's no point trying to hide it any more,'" he said.

Before he left Gloriavale, Boaz Benjamin said member Luke Valor told him he knew his father had done some "wrong things" and had urged Jonathan Benjamin to tell his family before it was too late.

Valor told the documentary-makers it was frustrating that Gloriavale was "held to a much higher standard than anyone else".

"Nobody can actually guarantee the safety of anyone anywhere. I can guarantee that if abuse comes to light [at Gloriavale] it won't be covered, it won't be ignored. Can you guarantee the safety of the children of Dunedin? Can you guarantee the safety of the children of Dobson? To guarantee the safety of the children in Gloriavale? No one can," he said.

Vast mountain walls

Devotion's executive producer Dame Julie Christie wants viewers to make up their own minds about Gloriavale, but some former members including Pearl Valor disapprove of her approach.

"I felt like that was really harmful, especially to the people who have been negatively impacted by living in the community and are still living with those harmful impacts today," she said.

Her husband Paul Valor features in the series, telling the interviewer, "Pick an abuse, I got the full deck".

Pearl Valor was one of six women who told the Employment Court they worked extremely hard under punishing conditions for years on end in the community's domestic teams but were treated as volunteers.

The court ruled they were Gloriavale employees.

She told RNZ the remote Gloriavale property's wild West Coast beauty and mountain vistas were also features of isolation and entrapment.

"People can look at it and think that's really idyllic but those vast mountains turn into walls," she said.

Valor singled out remarks by Righteous in the documentary about Gloriavale's blue dress being the costume inspiration for the screen adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.

"I think those cloaky-type things they wear on that show are quite different from ours but if they're after just a standard of modesty, so what, I don't care, I don't take that as a reproach," Righteous said.

Valor said core beliefs had not changed at Gloriavale, including a modesty and purity culture that was the root cause of much of the abuse and harm.

"If we're going to quote The Handmaid's Tale, I'll borrow a line from Commander Lawrence: 'Can't we all agree, gentlemen, that it's embarrassing to be running a place from which people are constantly trying to escape.' If the community is so wholesome, why do people leave with nothing?" she said.

Valor said other changes at Gloriavale were only as a result of leavers telling their stories, and court cases.

"It's really unfair to say that Gloriavale has changed themselves because the reason why the men are being paid is because of the court cases, the reason why the children aren't in the workforce is because of the court cases. The cell tower in there, the technology, it has nothing to do with Gloriavale, it's external forces," she said.

'A new face for a corrupt system'

Christie has said Gloriavale's leaders are not in denial about past wrongs.

"They face up to the fact that they have made some big mistakes with the way they've treated survivors and the way that they let perpetrators back into the community. We've heard a lot from the victims or survivors, but it was their time to face up to the past and talk about the future," she said.

"To me, they are paying for the sins of their fathers, still. You have to understand, 520 people still want to live there. That's really important. It's a very, very different place under Stephen Standfast than it was under Neville Cooper [Hopeful Christian], in regards to personal freedoms, religious freedoms and how integrated the people are with the community."

Stephen Standfast took on the role of Overseeing Shepherd in August 2025 following the resignation of Howard Temple who is serving a sentence of 11 months' home detention for indecently assaulting young women and girls at Gloriavale over 20 years.

"Wrong things have occurred in our life, they do not define who we are," Standfast told the documentary-makers.

"They do not define our faith or the value of it. What's left for us to do now is to go back and understand how these things could have occurred, and the hurt and the trauma and the trouble that has happened in our history.

"Quite certainly we are in a time where we are facing consequences for whatever has not been right in our history and it can feel like it is very unfair. The fact is that so much of what has occurred does not occur now."

Standing before the headstone of Gloriavale's founder, the convicted sex offender Hopeful Christian in the community's cemetery, Standfast reflects on his legacy.

"Because of the controversial history surrounding Hopeful we don't tend to talk about it. Many of us weren't there to experience it and didn't experience it and don't know. People can fail. Did Hopeful fail? Very likely, but God and what he's doing is not defined by a person and their failure. Hopeful's past, passed with Hopeful," he said.

For leaver John Ready, burying the past is a "smokescreen for people who don't want to take responsibility".

He said a new leader did not necessarily mean turning over a new leaf.

"For me it's just like a new veneer on rotting wood, it's new plaster on crumbling stone, it's new bandages on a corpse, it's a new face for a corrupt system."

Gloriavale has not responded to a longstanding RNZ request to interview Standfast.