A former member of the Gloriavale Christian Community says he continues to feel the fear of his childhood after coming face to face in court with the man convicted of abusing him and other boys more than a decade ago.
The Christchurch District Court heard that Vigilant Standtrue was found guilty on seven charges of assault with a weapon involving four victims. The offending took place between 2001 and 2013 while he supervised boys working at Gloriavale’s moss shed.
According to 1News, the victims, aged between eight and 13 at the time, were subjected to assaults using objects including sticks, plastic pipes, broom handles, a shovel and a pitchfork.
Among them was Boaz Benjamin, who grew up in the West Coast-based religious community and left just over three years ago. He returned to Greymouth for the sentencing, where Standtrue was ordered to serve 10 months’ home detention.
Benjamin said the experience of seeing Standtrue again brought back painful memories.
"Walking in and seeing him there just took me back to being a young boy again," he said. "I could mentally feel that fear all over again," 1News has quoted.
He told the court that as a child, he was regularly assigned to work alongside Standtrue under Gloriavale’s after-school labour system, describing an atmosphere of intimidation and violence.
"You didn’t know if you were going to get hit that day," he said. "Sometimes I’d even hide because I was scared but you still had to go," 1News has quoted.
Judge Tony Zohrab said the assaults occurred while Standtrue held a position of authority over the boys, and found the victims’ accounts to be credible and truthful. He emphasised that the violence was unjustified regardless of workplace pressures.
The court also noted that Standtrue had previously been sentenced in 2022 to a year of supervision for assaulting a child and had since completed anger management programmes.
According to 1News, while acknowledging efforts to address his behaviour, Judge Zohrab warned that a prison sentence would likely have been imposed if the offences had occurred more recently. He described the offence as serious but said home detention was the least restrictive sentence that met the purposes of sentencing.
Despite the convictions, Standtrue denied using weapons during the assaults, an assertion Benjamin said was particularly difficult to hear.
"That’s not something you can just make up," he said. "Especially when multiple people are independently saying the same thing," as quoted by 1News.
Benjamin said the outcome did not reflect the severity of the abuse.
"Ten months just isn’t enough. As a victim, I don’t think it reflects the length or impact of what happened," 1News has quoted.
Standtrue is among more than 20 Gloriavale adults sentenced in recent years, with further investigations ongoing, including inquiries by the Teaching Council and a separate probe into alleged labour exploitation.
Benjamin urged authorities to maintain pressure on the community.
"If they let up, it just gives the community room to slide back into how things were. The pressure needs to stay on, things still need to change," as quoted by 1News.
The Gloriavale Christian Community did not respond to a request for comment.