Lying without Lying

Summary

The Commune (Stuff Audio)

Episode 8: Lying Without Lying (June 5, 2022)

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Overview of the Episode

This episode delves into the culture of deception and complicity at Centrepoint during and after the arrest of its leader, Bert Potter. Rather than a "whodunnit," this episode asks why people—many of them educated and principled—were willing to bend the truth, commit perjury, and perpetuate silence around severe criminality and abuse, all in service of a charismatic leader and a fragile community ideal. The story weaves together first-hand recollections, police perspectives, documentary material, and deep personal reflections on denial, complicity, healing, and the slow collapse of Centrepoint.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Psychology of Group Deception (00:14–05:00)

• Rosemary MacLeod’s reflection on educated people enabling wrongdoing:
  "Once you eliminate all the strings that tie us together … once you substitute for that blind obedience to a leader, the danger is obvious." (00:58, Rosemary MacLeod)
• MacLeod tells a chilling 1960s anecdote of university students colluding to protect one of their own, highlighting how privilege and group thinking enable cover-ups.

  "My boyfriend and I went down to make a statement, a false statement, about what we saw … the middle class people all got together and they made up a story. It was fucking unbelievable." (03:13, Rosemary MacLeod)

2. Police Surveillance and the Drug Bust (05:22–08:54)

• Ray, the detective, recounts returning to the Centrepoint investigation after gathering conclusive drug evidence:

  "We can either go through and target the whole community or … be more surgical about it. So Potter and his inner circle … were the ones we looked at." (06:17, Ray)

• On September 8, 1989, police quietly execute a search warrant, finding multiple drugs very openly in Bert’s home (LSD, ketamine, MDMA, cannabis, hash).

  "It was just sitting in the kitchen cupboards and amongst the crockery and plates. It was very open, very brazen..." (07:10, Ray)

3. The Community’s Rationalizations & The Perjury Plot (08:54–11:39)

• Bert's arrest sparks rallying from the commune, with some viewing it as persecution of a spiritual leader.
• Barry, a community member, describes pressure to lie in court:

  "Bert came to me and said, would I go on the stand… I said, I'll go on the stand and say what we were trying to do for psychological growth, but I'm not going to lie." (09:12, Barry)

• Others organize to commit perjury in Bert’s defense:

  "They mapped out this perjury case." (09:50, Barry)

• Barbara, another member, admits to lying in court:

  "I really hoped I could lie without lying… I wanted to be able to lie without lying." (10:11, Barbara) "I was directly asked if I had seen Bert give drugs to teenagers… and I said no… I knew they were given drugs." (10:48, Barbara)

4. The Trial and Bert’s Conviction (11:09–12:56)

• Despite 25 defense witnesses, Bert’s own admissions, and claims drugs were "planted," the jury convicts Potter. The judge’s summing up:

  "It was not a question of making money, it was a question of control." (12:56, Judge's conclusion summarized by Adam Dudding)

5. Bert’s Imprisonment and Persistent Influence (13:37–18:54)

• Even from prison, Bert maintains spiritual and emotional dominance via letters published in Centrepoint's magazine, framing his incarceration as a misunderstanding by a materialistic society.
• The commune rents a house in Ohura, near the prison, so members can visit Bert weekly.
• Barry inadvertently acts as a drug mule during one visit, realizing only later that the "light bulb" she brought was a cover for smuggling drugs into prison.

  "I guess he'd been told the light bulb and just kicked it under the fence behind him and got it, Joe." (17:55, Barry) "This wasn't the only odd thing about that visit. Barry noticed Bert was acting weird…" (18:12, Adam Dudding)

6. After Bert—Community Dynamics and Failing Denial (19:40–21:25)

• Despite Bert's imprisonment, drug activity at Centrepoint escalates.

  "Far from [ending], became pretty obvious that the drug offending was being ramped up… a few other heads always popped up…" (19:40–19:53, Ray)

• Bert had financial motives for drug distribution; legal costs were mounting.
• Bert’s conviction breaks the spell for many:

  "It was only after we convicted him that… we were getting a lot more people coming forward, particularly young people…" (20:35, Ray)

7. Barry’s Documents & Evidence of Complicity (21:38–29:41)

• Barry gives the producers extensive documentation ("Barry's hoard"), including her own letters to Bert and to families of victims.
• Letters reveal her conflicted, sometimes damaging attempts to “fix” things within the community, often by minimizing or rationalizing abuse.

  "[Barry, to the mother]: ...there was never any intention to damage anyone." (24:36, letter read by actor)

• Barry organized group meetings (hui) for victims' families and community members, hoping to foster healing but also to deter criminal proceedings.
• She admits her own naivete:

  "If we can explain this, he'll see it, he'll get it, and he'll go, okay, that social experiment failed. We need to change on the new evidence." (27:21, Barry)

8. Realizations, Regret, and the Disintegration of Centrepoint (29:41–31:41)

• Barry reflects with discomfort on her "double agent" role, trying to protect individuals, the community, and Bert all at once.
• She realizes she was "blinded," trying to solve problems internally rather than allowing legal justice.

  "When I was quite secretive, it was quite secretive. Sort of double agent. Yes. Yes, but it was." (28:07, Barry)

• The tectonic plates of Centrepoint begin to shift—the leader is imprisoned, key figures leave, and previously suppressed stories of abuse surface.
• Barry sums up her failed mission:

  "That had been part of my mission that weekend, to sort of get him to understand some of these things. But just seeing none of what I was saying computed. And he was just into his things." (31:09, Barry)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "People from all backgrounds can do shitty things, but there are some people who just manage to get away with bad stuff. Sometimes it's about using your privilege and sometimes it's just that people think they're above the law."
  — Adam Dudding (04:05)

• "I really hoped I could lie without lying."
  — Barbara (10:11)

• "We've got to have another community. Need a big block of land... It's got to be about love."
  — Bert, as recalled by Barry, highlighting his erratic plans (18:40)

• "Drugs are just what we really, really need. When I come home for the weekend… I want a big extravaganza of drugs."
  — Bert, via Barry (18:56)

• "It was only after we convicted him that… we were getting a lot more people coming forward, particularly young people…"
  — Ray (20:35)

• "I mean, is that still somehow believing that… He was a human being, an intelligent human being who would get it. I mean, how naive. But that's where I was."
  — Barry (27:21)

• "She still loved Centrepoint, but Centrepoint was on the brink."
  — Adam Dudding (29:44)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:14–05:00 — Rosemary MacLeod on complicity, privilege, and early warning signs
• 05:22–08:54 — Ray investigates, collects evidence, and busts Bert
• 09:12–10:48 — Barry and Barbara describe the perjury plan
• 11:09–12:56 — The trial: evidence, lies, and the judge’s conclusion
• 13:37–18:54 — Bert’s imprisonment, ongoing control, prison visits, and drug smuggling
• 19:40–21:25 — Drugs escalate at Centrepoint; community realizes Bert’s vulnerability
• 21:38–29:41 — Barry’s documents: letters, meetings, naive attempts at healing / damage control
• 29:41–31:41 — Barry’s reflections, “double agent” role, and the final unraveling

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Tone and Language

The episode features a mix of investigative narrative, personal confessions, and frank, sometimes raw, recollections. The hosts and participants speak with candor and at times, with visible pain, confusion, or shame, especially when reckoning with how good intentions coexisted with huge harms.

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In Summary

“Lying Without Lying” lays bare how well-intentioned people within Centrepoint colluded to protect their leader—even perjuring themselves to keep his reputation intact—only for the truth of control, abuse, and groupthink to finally begin unraveling. Through firsthand testimonies and poignant self-examinations, the episode asks not just what happened, but why people excused, enabled, and even actively concealed the crimes of one of New Zealand’s most infamous communes.

Transcript

[Adam Dudding]

Stuff podcasts.

[Eugene Bingham]

Previously on the Commune, we'd heard the

[Adam Dudding]

stories around the sex and drugs. Obviously that salacious angle even sells a free paper.

[Barbara]

I was told by Bert, you know, the children are community children now.

[Ray]

If I tell you to break the law, you'll break the law.

[Adam Dudding]

And in time, you won't even question it. This episode of the Commune contains strong language and references to drug use. Remember in episode four, we met Rosemary MacLeod, who gave us some context about the 70s and early 80s and the sexual revolution and the counterculture and about the fears she had about Centrepoint at the time.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

Once you eliminate all the strings that tie us together in a way that make us work as a community, once you substitute for that blind obedience to a leader, the danger is obvious.

[Adam Dudding]

You know, the conversation sort of roamed

[Rosemary MacLeod]

around and I don't understand how educated people, intelligent people, did what they did. I wonder what they say now.

[Adam Dudding]

You know what? I'm just thinking something you said before. It's educated and intelligent people who'll take risks because they've got a soft landing. So I wonder if almost, that is sort of, you need to be educated and intelligent to have the sense of risk taking, that you'll go and do something as stupid as follow Bert.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

That's very true. When I was at university, there was some. I'll digress for a moment. When I was at university, terrible things happened. One of them was the bottling of Shorty.

[Adam Dudding]

So this is the late 60s and as Rosemary said, she was at university in Wellington, living in a house with other students and hanging out with other students.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

Shorty was an art student. He was part Mori. He was a friend of my boyfriend who was at that time an art student.

[Adam Dudding]

One day they threw a party at her place. It was supposed to be a small one. But things got a bit out of control. The place was packed and rowdy. Rosemary looked up and saw someone smash

[Rosemary MacLeod]

a bottle and shove it into the face of someone who turned out to be Shorty, who came stumbling out of the room with blood everywhere. Blood down the hall, trail of blood and into the bathroom. And I grabbed the phone.

[Adam Dudding]

She wanted to call the police, to ring for help.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

The phone was grabbed off me by the friends of the guy who'd done the bottling. I'm talking university students, right? Grabbed that off me and ran off with the broken bottle to get rid of the evidence. He disappeared for a while. I couldn't believe what was happening. I could not believe what quickly happened. How all these middle class people formed a gang against the Mori. You Follow me. This was happening in front of me. There were many details about behaviour that night that are seared in my memory. My boyfriend and I went down to make a statement, a false statement, about what we saw. And independent people who'd been going up a pathway could see into the house, saw what happened. We all said the same thing, that the middle class people all got together and they made up a story. It was fucking unbelievable.

[Adam Dudding]

The case went to court, but that guy got off.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

He's violent. To this day, he's known to be violent. He's still an absolute bastard and a psychopath. I get tearful about it to this fucking day. Anyway, sorry I bored you with that story.

[Adam Dudding]

No, quite the opposite.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

It was a very complex.

[Adam Dudding]

In fact, Rosemary's digression was somehow right on point. People from all backgrounds can do shitty things, but there are some people who just manage to get away with bad stuff. Sometimes it's about using your privilege and sometimes it's just that people think they're above the law, that it doesn't apply to them.

[Unknown Male Narrator]

Now, this is the law of the land. We're coming up against it now. We sort of bend it quite a lot and people know we're bending it. And there are detectives around right now coming out next week who are going to really go into it and they're going to try and nail us on some point of law where we have allowed our children some form of sexual freedom.

[Adam Dudding]

I'm Adam Dudding and this is the commune. Episode 8 Lying Without Lying Remember Ray VanBainen, the cop who had been blocked in his first attempt to investigate Centrepoint, when his superior had a cup of tea with Burt Potter and then ordered him and his colleague Dean Thomas to back off. So in the last episode, we told you that by 1989, Ray was in a different job on the Auckland Drug Squad.

[Ray]

And as a detective sergeant, I had the authority to decide what cases we would investigate.

[Adam Dudding]

And so, yep, soon he's back on the Centrepoint case.

[Ray]

I had the odd call from people there, but I started to get a little bit more again. And so I was able to build up a bit of a picture around, you know, what's happening.

[Adam Dudding]

And then he gets something else, something

[Ray]

really tangible, a couple of samples of the drugs that were being either manufactured or supplied or available there, which verified the information. So we were able to get that tested by the esr and they said, yep, that's certain. This is not fake, this is real.

[Adam Dudding]

The ESR are the government scientists who do forensic work for police. And of Course, those samples were real, right? By 1989, Centrepoint's drug era is in full swing, as we heard in the last episode. So now Ray has enough evidence to act, but he's got a decision to make.

[Ray]

We can either go through and target the whole community or you just target the head of it. And I always was a fan for targeting the head of it, being more surgical about it. So Potter and his inner circle, if you like, were the ones that we looked at.

[Adam Dudding]

Herbert Thomas Potter, the head of the snake for so long, so untouchable, is now in the crosshairs of the police. And on September 8, 1989, Ray's team of about five detectives and a few uniformed officers arrive at Centrepoint.

[Ray]

It would have been earliest in the morning. There's no lights and signs. To call it a raid is probably a complete misstatement, really. It was just a search warrant was being executed and it was done quietly, professionally.

[Adam Dudding]

Ray's team go straight to Bert's house up the hill.

[Ray]

He didn't have a lot to say for himself. He wouldn't make any admissions other than his blustering self.

[Adam Dudding]

The team start the search for drugs and, well, it doesn't take long.

[Ray]

It was just sitting in the kitchen cupboards and amongst the crockery and plates. It was very open, very brazen, and he just wasn't expecting that level of scrutiny. And it wasn't just one type of drug. I think there were four types of drugs. There was lsd, there was ketamine,

[Adam Dudding]

there

[Ray]

might have been some mdma, which is a form of ecstasy. There was some cannabis and maybe some hash as well. So they were dealing quantities as well.

[Adam Dudding]

So Bert finally is arrested and yet, like Ray said, it was really low key. He thinks they didn't even put Bert in handcuffs. Bert is charged with supplying and possessing drugs and taken into custody. He's facing serious jail time. The community is in shock, but they rally around their guru. Bert's son, John Potter writes in the Centrepoint magazine that this was almost inevitable, not because, you know, Bert was dishing out illegal drugs to everyone, but because, and these are John's words, Bert is a revolutionary and society is beginning to react to preserve the status quo. John goes on to say, this sort of thing happens to all great spiritual leaders who challenge wider society. Maybe it's that attitude which played a part in what happened next, how the community reacted and why some of them, at least, were prepared to do what they did. Maybe they genuinely felt Bert had been persecuted and didn't deserve to be locked up. Or maybe they'd been indoctrinated by Bert. Remember, he's the guy who Robert had heard saying to the community, if I

[Ray]

tell you to break the law, you'll break the law.

[Adam Dudding]

And in time you won't even question it. While Bert was awaiting trial, he was released from prison on bail. Barry says within the community there was a lot of discussion about the upcoming trial. At one point, Barry says Bert approached her about being a witness.

[Barry]

Bert came to me and said, would I go on the stand to talk about the drug? I said, I'll go on the stand and say what we were trying to do for psychological growth, but I'm not going to lie. So I was sitting in the dining room. He just patted me on the head and walked on.

[Adam Dudding]

So Barry wasn't keen to lie. She was no use to Bert, but others were.

[Barry]

And what actually happened is that people went up to the house up the back. The Guilds Road house, the Gills Road

[Adam Dudding]

house was where Bert and his wife were living and where the police had found the drugs.

[Barry]

And they mapped out this perjury case.

[Adam Dudding]

Perjury, the crime of giving false evidence to intentionally mislead a court.

[Barbara]

I agreed to go to the High Court and testify on Bert's behalf.

[Adam Dudding]

This is Barbara, the counsellor who was one of the originals, who talked in the previous episode about the LSD trips.

[Barbara]

And I really hoped I could lie without lying. You know, I really thought I might be. I didn't know what was going to be said. I wanted to be able to lie without lying.

[Adam Dudding]

Barbara was not alone. There were others in on the plan to cover for Bert. Barbara says she was driven by her belief that the drugs they were taking at Centrepoint really were for the good.

[Barbara]

I thought I had a high therapeutic value. I think it was very wrong that it was given to the teenagers, but I didn't think about that then. I just thought, thought that the uses were good.

[Adam Dudding]

So when it came time for the trial, she went along to the court

[Barbara]

and my perjury was that I was directly asked if I had seen Bert give drugs to teenagers in the glade. And I said no. And I can still say I don't know if I actually did see it or not, but I mean, I knew that they were given drugs. In the

[Adam Dudding]

the 10 day High Court trial against Bert actually heard from 25 witnesses for the defence, current and former community members standing up to sing his praises or lie on his behalf. At one point, Bert himself took the stand and said he had no idea that a container of what he thought was an organic pick me up was in fact lsd. As for the other drugs, he told the court he didn't even know they were in his house, which is interesting if you recall that Ray said that

[Ray]

it was just sitting in the kitchen cupboards.

[Adam Dudding]

The defence tried to suggest the drugs might have been planted by enemies of Centrepoint. On the other side, the prosecution had several powerful witnesses, including one of the Centrepoint pioneers. This guy was Mike, a former teacher who was there from day one, but he had left back in 1984, disgruntled with this and what was going on at the community. At one point before he was arrested, Bert had gone to meet Mike. During that meeting, Bert boasted about the drug program he was running at Centrepoint, even confirming that drugs were being given to teenagers. Mike and his wife, who was also at that meeting, told the police about this and fronted up to the trial. In the end, despite all the lies from Burt's faithful, the jury didn't buy Centrepoint's story. Burt was found guilty of possession of ecstasy and LSD for supply, which basically means he had large quantities of the stuff. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. While handing down the sentence, the judge zeroed in on what he believed was behind Potter's offending. Even though the LSD alone was worth $15,000, the judge concluded that what was going on at Centre Centerpoint was, quote, not a question of making money, it was a question of control. Which sounds right. Remember what Barry said in the last episode? She saw the sudden surge in drug use at Centrepoint as a ploy by Burt to claw back some respect and influence within the community. But with Burt now in jail, what was to become of Centrepoint? Stay tuned.

[Unknown Male Narrator]

You may have been a little intrigued at the reasons why you should do something and didn't go and do the things you'd like to do.

[Adam Dudding]

The year is 2020. The outbreak centres on the city of a deadly pandemic is raging and in Aotearoa, New Zealand cabinet meet this afternoon, our government slams the border shut. I'm Adam Dudding.

[Eugene Bingham]

I'm Eugene Bingham. And in our new series, Quarantine Nation, we are looking back at New Zealand's experience of a global catastrophe.

[Barry]

You're holding in your hand this sample and it's like this could just.

[Eugene Bingham]

I can recall pacing around the room thinking, we've just got to move quickly.

[Adam Dudding]

Living through Covid was deeply weird.

[Unknown Male Narrator]

Big surge in New Zealand. So, you know, it's terrible.

[Eugene Bingham]

So in Quarantine Nation, we take a minute to figure out just what happened.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

What were they thinking?

[Ray]

What was the world thinking?

[Adam Dudding]

Made with the support of NZ On Air out now. Okay, so it's 1990. Bert Potter is in prison on drugs charges. And for the first time it's in its 12 year history. The commune is trying to figure out how to get by without its leader. Except that's not quite true. Bert is off in prison, sure. So physically he isn't there. But make no mistake, he still rules the place. Many people are still hanging on his every word. Initially, Bert is at Mount Eden, an imposing Victorian era jail. Brick, iron bars, all that, in central Auckland. But he's later moved to Ohura, a minimum security prison in the middle of nowhere in the central north island of Aotearoa, not far from Taumara Nui. Right from the start of his stay, he starts writing letters to his followers. Often they're published in the Centrepoint magazine, long missives from the Messiah. He still talks about inside and outside and. But of course, those terms mean very different things now. So you are still out there living your lives. The dynamic that his Centrepoint goes on. Even though I've been plucked out of it, he continues, and so our lives go on in separate ways. Burt writes that the reason he's in prison is not because he broke the law. It's because the prosecution and the judges have failed to understand that society is hung up on money and power. He writes it never occurred to them, he means the prosecutors and the judge, that our bonding together is based on loving and that power and money are not the important things in our lives. So it's everyone else who has it wrong, not Centrepoint and certainly not Bert. The letters keep Bert connected to the community. And once he's at Uhura, the community make plans to keep in regular physical contact as well. Here's Barry.

[Barry]

Uhura is a pretty small town, basically just the prison and some old houses. I think it used to be a coal mining town, so lots of old houses, pretty decrepit.

[Adam Dudding]

Side note, the prison closed down in the mid 2000s. These days, Uhura is most famous, if that's the word, for an annual medieval market. You know, jousting and swords and preserves. Anyway, back in the early 1990s, there was the prison and not much else.

[Barry]

The community had hired a house near the prison at a very low rental.

[Adam Dudding]

Yes, Centrepoint hires a house in Uhura so that each weekend members can go down on a roster basis. Driving down in one of the communes,

[Barry]

we had these white Toyota station wagons. So I think it was probably one of those.

[Adam Dudding]

It was quite a haul all the way from Auckland to Uhura.

[Barry]

I don't know, maybe five hours.

[Adam Dudding]

One weekend it was Barry's turn to visit Bert.

[Barry]

I think it must have sort of come around my turn. It was quite a big deal to go to go to Uhura for the weekend.

[Adam Dudding]

So she and her partner at the time hop in the car to drive down to Uhura. As they're about to leave, someone gives them something to deliver to Bert, this box of food. They eventually get there, settle into the rental place, then go along to the prison to visit Bert. Remember, Uhura is a minimum security prison, so it's pretty low key. Bert's wearing his inmate tracksuit, sitting waiting for them at a picnic area in the prison next to a wooden fence.

[Barry]

And then there's just a big courtyard, a grass area with just basic New Zealand wooden table with benches all around and just family groups and put the picnic box on the table and, you know, Bert hoed in.

[Adam Dudding]

Bert's not just interested in the food though. There's something else.

[Barry]

I think it was a light bulb or something. Bert needs this light bulb and he just scrabbled in the box, picked that out. So I guess he'd been told the light bulb and just kicked it under the fence behind him and got it, Joe.

[Adam Dudding]

It's a literal light bulb moment. Bert finds this light bulb that he's expecting to be in the box, kicks it under the fence and says, got it, Joe. Barry is a bit stunned, thinking, did that really happen? It's not till later that she figures out she's been an unwitting mule bringing drugs into the prison, which Burt has quickly smuggled to another inmate. This wasn't the only odd thing about that visit. Barry noticed Bert was acting weird, jumping all over the place and conversation.

[Barry]

We've got to have another community. Need a big block of land, Got to be able to have this many hundred people and then he'd switch. The community's getting too materialistic. It's all about money. I don't want it to be about money. It's got to be about love.

[Adam Dudding]

And then Bert went on a big rant.

[Barry]

Drugs are just what we really, really need. When I come home for the weekend, home leave, I want a big extravaganza of drugs. We really need small money. So, you know, I think we could get LSD out to the gangs.

[Adam Dudding]

Remember, this is a guy in prison on drugs charges and he's talking about how Centrepoint should double down and become suppliers of LSD to The gangs.

[Barry]

It was just bizarre.

[Adam Dudding]

It was a crazy idea, but in fact, perhaps not as crazy as it seemed to Barry at the time. Because back at Centrepoint, even with Bert out of the picture, the drugs epoch hadn't ended.

[Ray]

Far from became pretty obvious that the drug offending was being ramped up rather than cut back.

[Adam Dudding]

This is Ray the cop again.

[Ray]

And so we'd been unsuccessful in terms of trying to close that down.

[Adam Dudding]

The head of the snake thing hadn't quite worked.

[Ray]

Hadn't quite worked because a few other heads always popped up and that vacuum was filled. But Potter's main issue was financial. He was always very conscious of income and he'd spent a lot of money and the community had spent a lot of money.

[Adam Dudding]

Legal bills ain't cheap.

[Ray]

Potter, I think, saw that this was a way to kill two birds with one stone. One was to continue the drug use and distribution of drugs, but do it on a commercial scale and make money out of it. And so they started to do that.

[Adam Dudding]

And that wasn't the only thing that Ray and the police noticed with Bert in prison, that whole dynamic of a closed down community, a community where people wouldn't come forward to the police and say what was really going on that was over.

[Ray]

It's really like ripping the scab off a wound or a plaster, really, because it was only after we convicted him that all of a sudden we were getting a lot more people coming forward, particularly young people, because the way they explained it to me was he was a God or a demigod. He was able to walk around that community, community. And his word was absolute. It was almost life and death stuff. So they were very surprised and shocked that the establishment or the community or the law would intervene and be successful. Because Potter always taught them that he was almost untouchable. We're outside the hoi polloi down there and what we're doing is right and we'll just carry on and live our own lives and so forth. So they then realized he's not untouchable, that people were will take action against him and that they probably have a voice, they will be heard.

[Adam Dudding]

The thing was, there were plenty of people with other things to tell the police, not just about drugs. Behind the scenes, a number of women who'd been young girls at the commune, well, they had things to say, but

[Unknown Male Narrator]

the point is that we don't allow ourselves this closeness, we don't allow ourselves this touching, this just being here. It's just not the thing to do.

[Adam Dudding]

Over the past year, we've spent a lot of time talking to Barry. If there's anyone or anything connected to Centrepoint, chances are she knows about it or knows who will know. She's also got a trove of stuff, like those tapes.

[Barry]

Well, this is just a small selection of tapes out of a huge number.

[Adam Dudding]

And at one point, you mentioned some documents. It was just as we were leaving last time we mentioned that. I can't remember where we got to with that.

[Barry]

I've got boxes and boxes, and it's a project to sort them through, but they're very disorganised. So, yeah, I'm not sure where you'd want to start.

[Adam Dudding]

I mean, documents, we can help with that. We're game for the adventure of looking through a box of random stuff to see what we find, if you're okay with that. So don't protect us from the chaos. But if you don't want to give it to us, that's cool.

[Barry]

Okay, well.

[Adam Dudding]

So one day we backed the car up and loaded up the boot with boxes and boxes of Centrepoint documents. Collectively, we started calling them Barry's hoard. Barry was right. The boxes were disorganised, but they were full of things we didn't know and of things that helped producer Eugene and me understand things better. Affidavits, media cuttings, reports. And then some stuff that reminded us again how extraordinarily open Barry is about her past mistakes and her own role in the harm caused by Centrepoint. Because some of the stuff she handed to us didn't reflect very well on Barry herself. For instance, there are copies of these letters that she wrote to Bert in prison. Remember, at this point, she's still living at Centrepoint, but she's concluded that the child abuse incidents, like the girl on the lawn, were definitely wrong, no matter what Bert or others might say. In some letters short, she is pushing back at Bert a bit and pointing out to him the damage he's caused. We've got an actor to read from these letters.

[Actor Reading Letters]

I do know it's going to take quite a while to clean up the mess in a healing sense and in a legal, financial sense.

[Adam Dudding]

But at the same time, often in the same leg letters, she's letting Bert know what's going on behind the scenes, even informing him about his various accusers and what they're saying. It's not just correspondence with Bert. In one letter, Barry is writing to a mother of one of the girls who has alleged sexual abuse and who is talking to the police. And Barry is strongly suggesting to this mother that the courts are not the place to sort all this out. She's saying it won't be the effect offenders going to jail who will be punished by that, but their families.

[Actor Reading Letters]

Certainly we were stupid, naive and ignorant 10 to 13 years ago, but that doesn't mean we have to go on making mistakes and hurting more children.

[Adam Dudding]

The ignorance, Bert's and everyone else's, appalls her. Barry says to this mother, but there was never any intention to damage anyone. Remember this is a letter to the mother of a child who is saying the sexually abused her and Barry is making excuses for the abuser. And what makes it worse is she's also informing Bert about some of these side conversations she's having. Big picture. Barry's intentions appear to be good. This is from another letter to Bert.

[Actor Reading Letters]

I want to facilitate the healing because I want to move on. It's old to me, but somehow we cannot move on until those girls are healed. For some reason they're not getting healed out. The situation is stuck. I'm convinced that it is us that has to make the moves. It is our problem too, because they are all still family, they are still

[Adam Dudding]

our daughters and it's not just airy fairy. I want to help stuff here. At one point, Barry and others actually facilitated a hui, a meeting at Centrepoint and invited along anyone who had a grievance. We asked her about that.

[Barry]

I am invited all the troubled families from outside to talk about these issues, what they'd learnt, how their families were affected and anyone from the community who want to understand come up as well and we talk it through and we work out what to do. I think I was hoping there wouldn't be criminal charges, but just wanting to hear what what people had to say and how it affected because we were starting to get a group of especially mothers wanting to make a stand about this.

[Actor Reading Letters]

Of course.

[Adam Dudding]

Barry later writes to Bert about the HUI and what has been said, including the fact that child abuse had been a big topic of discussion.

[Actor Reading Letters]

The difficulty in the sex with underage children area is that no one believes anything we say because they say we have a huge of denial in the early days and in the trial this year. They don't want to believe us and then find out in time that they've been gullible mugs.

[Adam Dudding]

It's just unfathomable. Barry has come to realise that the child sex was wrong and damaging, but she's engaging with the prime offender, trying to talk the community and its accusers through this message and to talk Bert around, is it just good faith, stupidity, more naivety? I asked Barry about it during that time where you're kind of looking for different ways to fix things. You were talking quite directly to some of the victims about the abuse, but you're also still talking to Bert, including talking about what you're talking about with them. It's almost something of a double agent about what you're doing then.

[Barry]

I mean, is that still somehow believing that. No. He was a human being, an intelligent human being who would get it. I mean, how naive. But that's where I was. If we can explain this, he'll see it, he'll get it, and he'll go, okay, that social experiment failed. We need to change on the new evidence.

[Adam Dudding]

But how conflicted did you feel at that, personally, in terms of sort of almost for a time, you were kind of playing both sides. Was that. Was that difficult or, you know, did you feel murky about it?

[Barry]

When I was quite secretive, it was quite secretive. Sort of double agent. Yes. Yes, but it was.

[Adam Dudding]

Barry knows in hindsight that this is just batty. You can hear her in real time struggling to explain it all.

[Barry]

It was more that. Sorry, you can cut this out, can't you?

[Adam Dudding]

To help explain her mindset back then, she tells us a story from this time. She'd secretly stashed some money that had come to her from a family estate into a personal bank account. It was during a phase when she thought that the answer to this historic abuse was to bring mothers and daughters together to talk.

[Barry]

Let's work this out. And I still. I still didn't understand sexual abuse, the traumatic effects of it.

[Adam Dudding]

She used some of the money to help one mother and daughter reunite by helping with travel costs.

[Barry]

She must have reported that to the police, who checked out. Was this money coming from Centreport?

[Adam Dudding]

And you can see why the police would be interested. At the time, they're looking into sexual abuse allegations at Centrepoint. Here's a prominent Centrepoint figure giving one of the victim's families some money. It was not a good look, but that's where Barry was at. She was blinded to the idea that the thing to do right now would be to get out of the way and let the police deal with this. Instead, she thought she could sort this mess out by talking to everyone and getting everyone talking to each other.

[Actor Reading Letters]

Yeah,

[Adam Dudding]

it's a lot to take in, right? You've got Barry running around trying to be the saviour, trying to protect, well, everyone. A mission impossible. Part of it, of course, was that although she'd reached the point where she knew the sex abuse was Wrong. She still loved Centrepoint, but Centrepoint was on the brink.

[Unknown Male Narrator]

Let the children see what happened. Let them experience it. Let them get into it.

[Adam Dudding]

One of the things, this place that for more than a decade had been held together by this fast talking guru. An overpowering speech patter with his penetrating gazes and acutely perceptive feedback. The man who dished out psychoactive drugs to adults and children alike, who manipulated the consensus decision making process to make sure the community bent to his will. He's now sitting in a prison prison cell in Uhura, hundreds of kilometres away. It's like the tectonic plates of Centrepoint are shifting. Keith, the former GP and missionary and one time chairman of the Centrepoint Trust. He leaves. Former children of Centrepoint are talking to the police about what they went through. And in the middle, there's Barry, flailing, still trying desperately to make Bert see the truth. She told producer Eugene and me that on that trip down to Uhura, she'd decided, this is it. I have to convince him.

[Barry]

That had been part of my mission that weekend, to sort of get him to understand some of these things. But just seeing none of what I was saying computed. And he was just into his things.

[Eugene Bingham]

So you've gone there to try and convince him, hey, we. We need to front up to this. And instead he's talking about these mad schemes of buying property and dealing drugs with the gangs and things like that.

[Barry]

Yes, yes, yes. And just

[Eugene Bingham]

crazy.

[Adam Dudding]

Yeah, crazy. But Barry finally gets. Nothing can stop this. Not even her Centerpoint. For so long, this place has enjoyed a sheltered existence in the bush at Albany, hunkering down and riding out everything that lashed it. The council scraps those early child sex allegations from Robert, even the imprisonment of its leader. Now, though, something really big is coming. And this time it's impossible to imagine how Centre Point can ride it out. That was episode eight of the Commune, a Stuff production. It was researched, written and and produced by Eugene Bingham and me, Adam Dudding. Mixing by Andrew McDowell at Digicake Music by Audio Network for more information about the show, head to Stuff Co nz, the Commune.

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[Adam Dudding]

Experian the year is 2020. The outbreak centers on the city of. A deadly pandemic is raging. And in Aotearoa, New Zealand cabinet meet this afternoon, our government slams the border shut. I'm Adam Dudding.

[Eugene Bingham]

I'm Eugene Bingham. And in our new series Quarantine Nation, we are looking back at New Zealand's experience of a global catastrophe.

[Barry]

You're holding in your hand this sample and it's like this could just change New Zealand.

[Eugene Bingham]

I can recall pacing around the room thinking, we've just got to move quickly.

[Adam Dudding]

Living through Covid was deeply weird.

[Unknown Male Narrator]

Big surge in New Zealand. So, you know, it's terrible.

[Eugene Bingham]

So in Quarantine Nation, we take a minute to figure out just what happened.

[Rosemary MacLeod]

What were they thinking?

[Ray]

What was the world thinking?

[Adam Dudding]

Made with the support of NZ on air out now.