Gloriavale community buildings on the West Coast. Photo: Google Maps
Workplace sexual harassment was normal at Gloriavale, where leaders would grab girls' bottoms, unzip their dresses or ping their bra straps in the kitchen, a former member says.
Rosanna Overcomer told an Employment Court hearing the behaviour made her feel sick but was laughed off as nothing to worry about by older women and other girls at the Christian commune.
Overcomer was born into the community when it was based at Springbank north of Christchurch, but left Gloriavale with her husband and children in 2013.
She said most of the abuse happened in the kitchen, where she started working regularly from the age of 13, by men including Gloriavale founder Hopeful Christian.
"When I lived in Gloriavale, sexual harassment in the workplace was just normal," she said.
"It was mostly bum-grabbing by the leaders - even just walking past undoing the zip on the back of your dress or pulling your belt undone, or even pinging your bra strap.
"You didn't even know that what was happening was called abuse, it was so normal that no-one would blink an eye, but in saying that, I hated it. All the girls hated it."
She said men would also walk up behind girls and put their arms around their waist for hugs.
"This behaviour made me cringe. I hated it, but at the time I had no knowledge or power to say leave me alone."
Overcomer told the court she hated serving a shepherd's breakfast table when she was a primary school girl.
"I would avoid it at all costs. If you got close enough to him he would pull you close to him by your dress. He would wrap his arms around our legs and rub our legs up and down.
"If we said anything about it, it was simply dismissed."
Four years after she left Gloriavale, police spoke to leavers about sexual abuse and inappropriate touching, Overcomer said.
"We were all amazed and realised that all the touching that had made us feel sick in the kitchen was not allowed, we had just all thought it was normal and that we had to put up with it," she said.
Overcomer was testifying in an Employment Court case brought by six former Gloriavale women who wanted the court to rule they were employees not volunteers - a claim the community's leaders strongly denied.
She said she was expected to work on the women's teams when her family moved to Haupiri.
"I remember thinking not long after we got to Gloriavale, we don't do fun stuff any more. I literally thought my childhood is finished. I was 10 years old and I thought my life as a child had ended," she said.
Around that time, she said Hopeful Christian decided people did not need lunch.
"They sometimes gave us a cheese stick and we used to go and melt it on the stove after lunch to make it bigger because we thought it would fill us up more that way," she said.
"I can just remember being cold and hungry all the time."
Gloriavale community buildings on the West Coast. Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
When she went to high school, Overcomer said she weighed 32 kilograms.
She told the court children were often denied food as punishment and some would get a humiliating "hiding" on stage in front of everyone.
"Standing on the stage would make you blacklisted and then you would be watched and scrutinised and criticised for every move you made," she said.
"This blacklisting principle was true for my entire life in the community and applied to adults as well as children. I was just so scared of being blacklisted, scared of pretty much becoming the whipping boy."
Former Gloriavale woman Rebekah Kempf earlier told the court she started work from the age of six and was later tasked with stacking food in the -18-degree freezer.
"Life in Gloriavale was lifting 20-kilogram crates above my head on a stool on a wet, slippery floor on my own for hours on end in freezing temperatures," she said.
"I would often be struggling to get the crate up and rest it part way, my legs would be shaking, then I'd just somehow lift the baskets, it was adrenaline probably."
Kempf said she had permanent frostbite on her fingers and did not receive any help for a back injury.
"Countless times I cried because I was in so much pain, I didn't want to be there working," she said.
"My overwhelming memory was I was always tired. I never refused to work because I was so terrified of what might happen."
Kempf said she was taught not to complain and told from a young age that she had no talent, except to serve God, and was fat.
"I was told a number of times that I couldn't have been a Christian if I was fat because it proved that I wasn't disciplining myself.
"Working hard proved that I had talent."
Gloriavale's leaders were always talking about saving money, Kempf said.
"In high school they said they were going to stop buying women's sanitary products so I stocked my drawer full because I was told we would have to go back to using sphagnum moss," she said.
Kempf said she became depressed at the age of 14 after someone looked at her in the shower.
"I obviously thought somehow it was my fault, that's how we'd been taught our whole lives, that if something sexual happens it's always the girl's fault," she said.
Kempf's sister Hannah Harrison also described unwanted attention from Gloriavale men.
"I was scared of old men," she said.
"When my Dad was in India, Howard used to say hello to me a lot a give me hugs from behind that I didn't like. He said stuff like, has anyone told you today that they love you? It made me feel like I was important, but I never liked the hug thing."
On Tuesday Gloriavale's barrister Philip Skelton QC told the court the community's leaders did not condone sexual offending and had taken steps to address it.
