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A former member of the high-profile New Zealand sect Gloriavale has written a book about her life and she’s launching it at an event in rural east Auckland.
Theophila Pratt, who was named Honey Faithful at birth, was born and raised in the fundamentalist Christian community located on the West Coast of the South Island.
It was founded in 1969 by Australian evangelist Neville Cooper, who was known as Hopeful Christian.
Despite various high-profile court cases centred on allegations of sexual abuse and worker exploitation, the community is still in operation.
Pratt says she found herself questioning the “hostile and controlling environment” in which she lived, where a “small contingent of men held all the power”.
At 18 years old, having been sheltered from the outside world, and with no knowledge of how society operated, she was forced to leave Gloriavale, she says.
Pratt says she wrote the book, entitled Unveiled – A story of surviving Gloriavale, to not only give her own story a voice but also to help others who have lived in controlling environments to feel seen and heard.
“Eight years on from leaving, I often find myself thinking back to the teenage girl in Gloriavale who looked around and wanted to scream for help so often,” she says.
“The young woman who longed to be heard without judgement and seen as the valuable female she was.
“None of those things were possible during my 18 years spent in the rural West Coast community.”
In her book Pratt talks about daily life in Gloriavale. She says she left school when she was 15, which is the age up to which females in the community are educated.
“I was then rostered full-time on one of the four teams of women which ranged from girls as young as five to women in their sixties. Our workday started at 4am.”
Pratt, who lives in Auckland, is a qualified occupational therapist and owns her own home.
She’s motivated to tell her story to unveil the community’s secrets and to empower other survivors to “break free of the cycle of abuse”.
Her experience was explored in the TVNZ documentary Escaping Utopia, in which she was filmed travelling overseas to visit her sister, who lives in a Gloriavale community in India.
“I want everyone in Gloriavale, even the people of my mother’s generation, to realise their life can be so much more than that place,” Pratt says.
“Sometimes, when people see or hear our names, they put us in a box. By doing this, they make it even harder for us to leave Gloriavale behind.
“While living inside Gloriavale, we didn’t have a voice. Now we’re on the outside, there’s a group of us who have banded together and we’re showing the leaders the power that’s held in the voices of women. We will not be silenced.”
Pratt’s 224-page book is for sale for $39.99. It’s being launched at Hallertau in Clevedon, with a book signing, from 6.30pm-8.30pm on March 7.
For more information, go online to www.theopratt.com.
