The Centrepoint Kids

Summary

The Commune: Episode Six — The Centrepoint Kids
Podcast by Stuff Audio
Released: June 5, 2022
Series Theme: Investigating the notorious free-love Centrepoint commune in New Zealand—its culture, crimes, and the impact on children who lived there.

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Main Theme/Purpose

This episode dives into the childhood experience at Centrepoint Commune during its heyday in the mid-1980s. It explores daily life in the community from the perspective of children and teenagers, juxtaposing the outwardly utopian, “free” environment with accounts of emotional neglect, abusive practices, and the sexualization of minors. Through first-person testimonies and analysis, the episode asks: what was life really like for the so-called “Centrepoint kids”—and what did the adults fail to see?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Centrepoint’s Expanding Influence (Abortion Clinic Takeover)

• [00:30] Auckland’s only dedicated abortion clinic, the Auckland Medical Aid Centre (AMAC), is gradually infiltrated and controlled by Centrepoint members, to the discomfort and suspicion of staff.
• Unqualified Centrepoint members begin “counselling” at the clinic; male commune members lounge in common areas, inappropriate for vulnerable clients.
• Profits and salaries begin funneling to the commune, further blurring ethical lines.

2. Centrepoint in the ‘80s: Outward Acceptance, Inner Rot

• [06:39] After high-profile investigations stalled, communal abuses went undercover. Externally, Centrepoint faded into background noise in New Zealand culture, even attending Easter shows and gaining positive media coverage.
• Despite old tabloid exposes, the commune boasts new enthusiasm, attracting more members via the lure of therapy, communal support, or escape from the outside world.

3. First-Hand Accounts: Adults and Children

Peter Calder’s Adult Perspective

• [09:07] Journalist Peter Calder lived at Centrepoint with his family as a “resident visitor” in 1985 and recalls both the appeal and strangeness:
  • Therapy sessions were confronting but enlightening (“I learnt a hell of a lot from it, about myself, about the way I was in the world” – Peter, [09:49]).
  • Free love had its downsides: “I found the sexual freedom quite bruising… my parents are right, sex is better with someone you love… the sex I had with people I didn't love… was a somewhat bruising experience” – [13:29].
  • Still, communal parenting and support was, at times, “unbelievably good” for raising young kids—plenty of shared care and resources.
  • Frustrates the external obsession with surface-level details: “People are obsessed… My God, these people live like animals. They go to the toilet without a door! Those are trivial, superficial things…” – [10:47].

The Meiklejohn Family: Angie and Renee

• [16:16] Angie and Renee, two sisters who moved to Centrepoint as children, describe their arrival as escape from family chaos:

  • Their mother sought support after mental health struggles, believing the commune would help raise her children.

• Renee’s Childhood at Centrepoint:

  • [19:58] First impressions: nature, children everywhere, communal living felt exciting at first—“a never-ending school camp.”

  • Food was “amazing,” communal meals, social rituals like “birthday tables” were memorable.

  • The children had extraordinary autonomy: “We could actually turn the dryer on with one of us in it and we would go around. It was fucking hilarious. And we used to do that.” – Renee, [23:54].

  • Adults were emotionally and physically distracted; children formed their own “wolf packs.”

  • Property theft, both within and outside the commune, became a casual, even game-like, behavior among kids.

  • Exposure to Adult Sexuality:

    • Open sexual activity was normalized. “At any time of the day or night, people would be fucking. So there would be sounds of fucking. So we were already almost desensitized…” – Renee, [27:40].
    • Kids became curious, experimented young; at age 12, Renee was pressured by leader Bert Potter to “lose her virginity”: “I remember being called up to Burt’s to talk about losing my virginity… It was a task.” – [28:31].
    • The expectation and sexualized environment meant children experienced premature sexualization, often interpreted only years later as exploitative.

4. Therapeutic Practices and ‘Feedback’

• [31:19] “Feedback” was central—ostensibly openness, but functionally a license for aggressive verbal attack. All had to “stand there and take it.”
  • Angie: “You would just diminish yourself until you became whatever was required or accepted.” – [33:31].

5. Enforced Hierarchies among Children

• [33:59] “The hierarchy” exercise involved publically ranking and physically moving children up or down a lineup, based on adult feedback—resulting in widespread humiliation and shaming.
  • “Being sexually promiscuous got you to the top. Being pliable to the elders, to Burt and his cronies, got you to the top.” – Renee, [39:44].

6. Abusive Dynamics: Hypnosis and Exploitation

• [40:40] Hypnotherapy experiments led, unmonitored, by older teens on younger ones; used to facilitate, at times, sexual abuse and boundary violations (“I went along with the things and they really believed me… one boy coming over and helping himself to my genitals and being so petrified that I couldn’t… I was absolutely frozen and I couldn’t move.” – Renee, [41:30]).

• Relationships between much older and younger children were openly visible, leaving even the children themselves disturbed (“I remember them walking around the community holding hands… what the actual fuck…” – Angie, [43:11]).

7. The Double Life: School vs Centrepoint

• [45:17] School becomes a haven for kids like Angie: “School was quite heavenly in lots of ways because there was much less expectation, especially emotionally and, you know, sexually… It felt really safe for me.”
• Teachers and principal recall Centrepoint kids as normal—sometimes insular, but mostly indistinguishable from their peers. No formal concerns or interventions.

8. Adult Denial and Rationalization

• [48:51] Some adults, like Barry, had intuitive concerns about child welfare but were stonewalled by leaders and therapists: “Things aren’t right with the children here.” Therapist: “The children are fine. Go and look at your own pain.” – [49:07].
• Despite visible behavioral issues in kids, adults rationalized or redirected criticism, avoiding accountability.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the external obsession with commune eccentricities:

  • “My God, these people live like animals. They go to the toilet without a door! …Those are trivial, superficial things, in the same way… surrender of all their worldly goods was a very, very minor thing…” – Peter Calder ([10:47]).

• On sexual freedom and its price:

  • “I found the sexual freedom quite bruising… as I got older… sex is better with someone you love…” – Peter Calder ([13:29]).

• Adult distraction and children’s autonomy:

  • “…the spotlight wasn’t on us, so we could kind of do what we wanted. Because the adults were so busy getting fucked and getting fucked up.” – Renee ([24:38]).

• Early sexual pressure from leadership:

  • “I remember being called up to Burt’s to talk about losing my virginity… it was a task.” – Renee ([28:31]).

• On the shaming effect of Centrepoint’s hierarchy exercise:

  • “Being sexually promiscuous got you to the top. Being pliable to the elders, to Burt and his cronies, got you to the top.” – Renee ([39:44]).

• Feedback as a corrosive force:

  • “You would just diminish yourself until you became whatever was required or accepted.” – Angie ([33:31]).

• Teachers’ perceptions:

  • “They just look like regular kids.” – Jenny Helen ([47:00]).

• Obstacle to external help:

  • “Things aren’t right with the children here.”
    “The children are fine. Go and look at your own pain.” – Barry and senior therapist ([49:07]).

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [00:30] — Centrepoint’s infiltration of Auckland’s abortion clinic.
• [06:52] — Centrepoint’s shift to social normalcy and continued growth.
• [09:07] — Journalist Peter Calder’s introduction and reflections on commune life.
• [16:16] — The Meiklejohns arrive at Centrepoint; Angie and Renee’s background.
• [19:58] — Renee describes her childhood life at Centrepoint.
• [23:02] — Maximum freedom but extreme adult distraction for children.
• [25:24] — Sexual atmosphere; adult encouragement of child/teen sexual exploration.
• [28:31] — Bert Potter’s direct intervention in Renee’s sexual development.
• [31:19] — “Feedback” and emotional exposure as a communal practice.
• [33:59] — Introduction of “hierarchy” and its impact on children.
• [40:40] — Hypnosis and sexual abuse among teens/children.
• [43:11] — Relationships between younger and older children.
• [45:17] — School life as safe haven; teachers’ and principal’s commentary.
• [48:51] — Ongoing adult denial; Barry’s failed attempts at raising concerns.

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Conclusion

Episode six of The Commune confronts the uncomfortable reality behind Centrepoint’s “liberated” community—especially for the children caught in its experimental crossfire. While the commune's ideals of shared parenting and radical therapy are described with some nostalgia by adult interviewees, the kids’ testimonies reveal a darker flip side of benign neglect, humiliation, and premature exposure to adult sexuality. Meanwhile, external institutions like schools failed to see, or felt unable to address, hidden harms. The episode masterfully balances recollection, analysis, and emotion, spotlighting the lived experiences of the Centrepoint kids and raising critical questions about complicity, denial, and the unintended consequences when adults pursue utopia.

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Further Listening:
Next episode delves into the aftermath as some adults and children start to confront what was really happening at Centrepoint.

Transcript

[A]

Stuff podcasts.

[B]

Previously on the Commune There was kind of expectations on young women to be sexually liberated.

[A]

We actually jumped in the big silver vat that was full of jelly and swam around, ate it. That was epic fun. What I was saying from the very beginning was, what about the children?

[C]

What about the children? This episode of the commune contains strong language and descriptions of sexual abuse. Before the 1970s. If you were a woman in New Zealand wanting an abortion, there weren't many places to go. But then the country's first dedicated abortion clinic opened. It was called AMAC Auckland Medical Aid Centre. Working at AMAC could be risky. The legal status was hazy. There was a police raid and arrests. There were anti abortion protests, an arson attack. But the people who worked there were idealists, medical professionals and social reformers who wanted an end to dangerous backstreet and self induced abortions. They were providing a service women couldn't get anywhere else. In the mid-1980s, though, clients and some AMAC staff noticed something quite strange. AMAC had always offered counselling to women seeking abortions. But now the premises were being used for loads of other counselling sessions too. A Tuesday drop in group, a vitality group. On Thursdays, there were regular workshops in sexuality and massage. This, remember, is at an abortion clinic. The makeup of the people running it was changing too. This was an organisation with feminism in its DNA. Yet a new male doctor had turned up and taken over all the consulting sessions of three female consultants, hoovering up their earnings at the same time. There were new counsellors and new nurses as well. And some of them seemed to know almost nothing about abortion. Some even seemed to actively disapprove of it. Many of the newer counsellors hanging around the place were men. One of those men had a habit of sitting at reception in shorts and bare feet, reading the newspaper. For the more experienced staff, this didn't sit right here. You had women in their gowns and nighties, possibly at one of the most vulnerable moments in their lives, having to walk past this lounging man who seemed to be treating reception like it was his sitting room. It was worse. A nurse was told it was her job to clean the towels dumped on the floor after the massage sessions. One morning, a counsellor and her client walked into one of the counselling rooms and found a used tube of KY gel, you know, the sexual lubricant lying on the floor from the previous night's workshop. Something was going deeply wrong at Auckland Medical Aid Centre. And when some of the unhappy staff members started talking to journalists about it, the reason the reason became clear. New Zealand's biggest and best known abortion clinic had quietly been taken over by another organisation, a commune called Centrepoint.

[D]

So now you just let yourself very slowly wake up and as you open your eyes, you'll discover that you've come right back to the very familiar place, that you've brought back something new with you. Just allow yourself very slowly come back.

[C]

I'm Adam Dudding and this is the commune. Episode six, the Centrepoint Kids. It's the mid-1980s. You know, Hair metal, booming stock market, greed is good. Telephones, thank you very much to the folks out there. Nuclear free New Zealand.

[E]

You hold your breath just for a moment. I can smell the uranium on it.

[C]

Neoliberal.

[A]

Do not create wealth and opportunity that way.

[C]

Jazzercise.

[F]

You should make sure that you are

[A]

jazzercising at the proper intensity. Not too hard, yet not too easy during the workout.

[C]

All over the world, it seems like a time for taking a chance and screw the consequences. Time to wear DayGlo leotards and to make a quick buck. And Centrepoint isn't immune. For all the hippieish vibe, Centrepoint likes its luxuries and isn't especially opposed to the ways of capitalism. Also, after all its legal costs, money just poured out.

[G]

There was always a court case.

[C]

The community really needs a quick buck. So its guru, its leader, Bert Potter, makes some investments. 130 grand into the futures market. Centrepoint buys a major share in an Angora goat stud, as well as a 600 acre farm out northwest of Auckland. And then there was that abortion clinic, Auckland Medical Aid Centre, Amack. Centrepoint didn't invest in amac, but through some personal connections, the commune people got positions on the board. Eventually there'd be Centrepoint people in just about every management and and counselling position at the clinic, all with their salaries funneling back to the community. You might recognise some of the names. Keith, the gp, he's on the board. Barbara, the pioneer member who loves therapy, she's counselling at amac. Also, somehow, Dave, the money man is now accountant for the abortion clinic, which later will prove very handy. We'll come back to AMAC. But the main point is, in the mid-80s, Centrepoint is on a high and its people are full of self confidence. They've won the battles with the council and their neighbours. And all that fuss about sexual abuse of children. Well, the police looked and nothing happened. So there can't have been a problem, right? Even for insiders like Barry, who has personally witnessed some troubling things, it all seems to be calming down a little.

[G]

After that police investigation, nothing like the lawn incident happened again. Everything went covert and it would seem like nothing was happening.

[C]

And for people outside the community, Centrepoint has become part of the furniture. Background noise, the basis of a smutty joke. Or a passing mention in a newspaper column like this one, where the journalist is writing about the celebrations after one of those 1980s fundraising telethons, which apparently ended with $5.5 million on the screen and more hugging than a Centrepoint reunion party. It's just a few short years since the truth tabloid newspaper ran photos of Burt Potter under headlines like Stop this Degenerate or Kitty Sex Cult Exposed. But now Centrepoint has a stall at the most wholesome of Auckland carnivals, the Easter show. So they are there promoting Centrepoint's therapy as kids wander around with their candy floss and their fascination with who'll win the wood chopping competition this year. And around this time, open a conservative broadsheet newspaper like the New Zealand Herald to the mainly women section. And there's an article about the ladies of Centrepoint, along with a photo of four of them smiling broadly. Here's Pat talking about why she was glad she chose centrepoint over the $1 million inheritance she turned down. And here's a woman called Barry, who tells the reporter that Burt Potter is such a rare person that you want to be around him all the time. Yeah, that's the same Barry we've been hearing from. At this point, she might have some doubts, some rebellious thoughts, some concerns about the children. But in the mid-80s, she's still firmly on Team Centrepoint. And still the new members keep arriving. They're interested in the therapy and the human potential movement, or they're interested in free love. They're looking for the emotional support that communal life can offer, or they're escaping with the kids from a bad marriage. Some turn up because the world outside is just too hard to navigate, or they simply want a roof over their head. Whatever the reason, often as not, dirt says yes. Centrepoint opens its arms. Among the people arriving at Centrepoint around this time is Peter Calder.

[E]

Peter Calder. I am now retired, but was a journalist. For most of my working life, I lived at Centrepoint. For a large part of 1985, Peter

[C]

Calder was a resident visitor at Centrepoint. This meant he lived in the community in much the same way as a full member and but he hadn't handed over all his worldly possessions. Instead, he paid a kind of board. During that year, as a visitor, he was still working as a journalist. So he had one foot inside, one foot outside. Like so many at Centrepoint, he'd been drawn in by the therapy.

[E]

An old girlfriend of mine had been to a group there and suggested that I might find it interesting.

[C]

He was, you know, looking for something.

[E]

I've always been somebody who enjoyed self exploration. I found the therapy at Centrepoint quite confronting, quite scary, but I learnt a hell of a lot from it, about myself, about the way I was in the world, the way I interacted with people.

[C]

As for actually living there full time, Peter was not super keen on the lack of privacy, but his partner, the

[E]

mother of my child, really wanted to

[C]

give the place a go. So they moved in. Bad things happened at Centrepoint, and Peter Calder is at pains to make sure we get on the record that he

[E]

totally rejects those bad things unconditionally and unreservedly.

[C]

But when Peter heard that we were making a podcast about Centrepoint, he got in touch with us. Auckland journalism is a pretty small world. So I'd met Peter once or twice and producer Eugene knew him even better. They were colleagues at the New Zealand Herald for years. And Peter got in touch because over

[E]

the years, I've read pretty much everything that's appeared in the news media or watched over Centrepoint, and I've always been slightly alarmed, not quite at the sensationalism of it, because it's a pretty sensational story, but at the odd focus. I don't think there's ever been a piece written about Centrepoint that didn't mention that there were toilets without doors. You know, people are obsessed with the. Of defecation. I admit I found it quite hard to defecate in a space where there were four other people, but there were two or three toilets there where you could go and shut the door if you wanted to. And hell's bells, I thought that was. That's a pretty minor thing, but people are entirely obsessed with it. Likewise, the nakedness, the people having babies in the presence of their family, which, if you construe Centrepoint as your family, is not an entirely outrageous thing to do. But a lot of these things affronted middle class sensibilities and it's what a lot of coverage like to grab hold of. My God, these people live like animals. They go to the toilet without a door. But these are trivial, superficial things, in the same way as I think people who lived at Centrepoint as members would say, the surrender of all their worldly goods was a very, very minor thing that they did.

[C]

So Peter moves to Centrepoint in 1985, which, in retrospect, was a bit of a sweet spot in the Centrepoint journey. And he's clear on a couple of things. Firstly, he didn't see anything going on that caused him alarm. And secondly, living there, apart from the lack of privacy, was great. Like Barry with her enthusiasm for the women at the well, Peter loved the communal parenting during his time there. His son was a baby and then

[E]

toddler, and it was an unbelievably good place to have a young kid. There was a nappy changing room where you could hose off your nappies into a trough and chuck them in a bucket and pick up a nice warm, dry one, just like that. And every three weeks, you had to do nappy duty, which took like three quarters of an hour, and that was it. I think any parent would go for that. It also meant when you were tired of your baby crying, you could pass it to somebody else and say, can you take them? And they'd say, yeah, sure, you know, so there was a degree of the tribe, if you like, looking after your kid. So those were really, really positive things.

[C]

The open marriages and free sexuality, well, that had its pros and its cons.

[E]

Speaking for myself, I was pretty sexually active there, though by Centrepoint standards, not outrageously so. But looking, I think that I found the sexual freedom quite bruising. One of the things I felt as I got older is my parents are right. Sex is better with somebody you love, you know? And so the sex I had with people I didn't love, it was just like, hey, what about it? I think, in retrospect, was a somewhat bruising experience inside and outside Centrepoint.

[C]

But the bit that Peter thought was really great, still thinks was great, was the therapy that was built into the Centrepoint experience. And he feels this sometimes gets lost in all the retellings of the story.

[E]

There was a recent piece in north and south magazine which contained a sentence that went something like, it was supposed to be a therapeutic commune. Well, bugger that. It was a therapeutic commune and it was a spectacularly successful one for quite a long time, which benefited and enriched the lives of a lot of people until really bad shit happened. And I'm not minimising all that stuff that happened, but I often feel that the full story is not told.

[C]

Anyway. The therapy at Centrepoint, it could be

[E]

confronting, you know, the screaming and the crying and the sobbing and so on and so forth. I mean, it certainly stirred me up.

[C]

But all the same, I found that

[E]

all the therapy I did at Centrepoint a great Experience, not always pleasant, but a learning experience.

[H]

Yeah,

[C]

I said before that there were lots of reasons to come to Centrepoint. For Peter, it was about raising a child, about supporting his partner's desire to be there and getting involved in some really exciting therapy. For others, Centrepoint was a place of refuge. That was certainly the case for a family that joined the commune that same year. This new family were the Meiklejongs.

[I]

Yeah, we just kicked off Maui, then lippy and surly and had a bit of a nightlife going on.

[C]

That's Angie. Remember, she was the girl I knew at Long Bay College, the one I sang a duet with in the school musical. Angie arrived at Centrepoint along with her mother, her mother's partner, though he left pretty fast. Her younger brother and two even younger sisters. Now, in the years before Centrepoint, the two oldest siblings, Angie and her brother King Carlos, had been pretty wild.

[I]

My brother and I just got into heaps of trouble. We just were stealing and got caught and Mum couldn't cope with us and put us into social welfare care. I was 15, my brother was 14.

[C]

For Angie and Carlos, some of that wildness would continue at Centre Point. But the sibling we're going to hear from now is the youngest of the family, Angie's little sister Renee.

[A]

One, two, three. One, two, three.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

The two sisters voices are kind of similar, so we'll take care to let you know which one's talking when. Anyway, Renee is six years younger than Angie. So when they all arrived, I was nine.

[A]

When we got there really early nine,

[C]

not so long ago, producer Eugene and I headed out of Auckland. Chickity chick, make it a little bit louder for me. And spent an afternoon with Renee. So if you can just start by self introducing, just because we've heard a lot about life at Centrepoint for the adults, people like Barry or Robert or Peter, but they actively chose to be there. And that wasn't generally the case for kids. They'd usually moved in with a parent or perhaps been born there. So we wanted to know what was it like to be a Centrepoint kid.

[D]

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[F]

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[C]

Experian 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 borders shut. I'm Adam Dudding. I'm Eugene Bingham and in our new series Quarantine Nation we are looking back at New Zealand's experience of a global catastrophe.

[A]

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

[E]

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

[C]

Living through Covid was deeply weird.

[E]

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

[C]

So in Quarantine Nation we take a minute to figure out just what happened. What were they thinking? What was the world thinking? Made with the support of NZ On Air out now.

[A]

My name is Renee Helen Meiklejohn and I moved to Centrepoint with my mother and my siblings about the middle of 1984. Five I believe. And I was there on and off

[C]

for Renee's family life before Centrepoint had been pretty messy so we were living

[A]

in a house in Mount Eden in Edenvale Crescent.

[C]

For years Renee's mother had struggled with

[A]

her mental health so mum had these mental breakdowns and we would go into respite care once.

[C]

Renee remembers staying at a kids home for several weeks with nuns that looked after us while her mother dealt with a mental health crisis. Somehow her mother and stepfather got involved with Centrepoint.

[A]

They would go out to the community to the satday meetings and get tranced out by bird at the meetings and they came away feeling really good. And after a few of those meetings they announced that we were going to move to the community. But I think she went to Centrepoint thinking she would have more of a help to raise her children and do it in a support environment.

[C]

So one day they packed up and moved in. First impressions. For nine year old Renee it was a big place.

[A]

It was really green and lots of bush and birds and kids running around and toddlers and I love children so I got really into looking after the little kids.

[C]

The famous communal toilets.

[A]

Kind of just thought that it was a bit weird but it was where I lived now so I kind of got, I got used to it. But for poos I would go upstairs to the lockable toilet. Like I wouldn't just sit there and shit like all the adults did.

[C]

Open showers, that was sort of okay

[A]

again Like I'd have showers with my friends or my mum. And that was cool and different, you know, like we just. I just think I got used to it pretty quickly.

[C]

The thing about Centrepoint is that if you've heard Barry's story of the girl on the lawn, or Robert's story about Bert boasting at the showers, you slip into the assumption that life for children at Centrepoint must have been a constant nightmare. But actually it was way more complicated than that. At Centrepoint there was always something happening and Renee loved that.

[A]

It was just this humming, bustling community with all these different workspaces. The nursery, the glass house, the scarves,

[C]

the dressmaking, the hat factory.

[A]

There's so much going on for kids.

[C]

It could be like a never ending school camp.

[A]

People would line up for meals and you'd have this huge kdr, we called it the kitchen dining room. Kdr, where there'd be just these long tables with benches.

[C]

Compared to the chaos and occasionally empty cupboards back in their previous home, Centrepoint life seemed luxurious.

[A]

Yeah, the food was amazing. Like it was served up camp style and big Bain Marie's or big trays of lasagne and creamy mushrooms. And Sundays we'd have pancakes and if it was somebody's birthday, they'd bake a big cake and they'd have a birthday table. So it would get tablecloths and you'd invite people to your birthday table. And that was one of the running things. Oh gosh, you better be nice to her. It's her birthday next week. You won't get invited to her birthday table. Yeah, that was one of the things. Cause they'd serve the table and then honestly, the community would line up behind the birthday kit and they would dish out the rest of the cake to the hundred people. Everything was bulk, bulk mixers, bulk hot plates, you know, big pots, massive, big pull out toaster that we all have old burns on our inner forearms from reaching in and grabbing the toast from that damn toaster.

[C]

Communal living was a blast. There'd be movie nights and they'd drop

[A]

a white screen down in front of the kitchen area and we would pile all the tables up at the very back of the room and make little huts.

[C]

And before the movie, they might put on a little show.

[A]

The teenagers or the kids would show them the songs that we'd been doing dances to.

[C]

Sometimes bands came and performed and there were also musicians inside the commune.

[A]

We'd play a flute from the lookout. So some mornings we'd wake up and there'd just be this Music, It would just float across the whole community and it would put everyone in a real dreamy kind of state. People would just be really happy that day because they woke up with this music playing.

[C]

The big thing, though, was how much freedom the Centrepoint kids had. It was a core Centrepoint principle that children would thrive if they were just left to their own devices. It was something that Bert Potter was always very clear about.

[D]

The important thing is that the children are brought up to be independent and they've got to learn to handle life themselves, that there's no way they can get hooked into the parent and expect the parents to be there and look after them for the rest of their days, because parents are not around the whole time.

[C]

So that meant if you were a kid, you had the freedom to roam.

[A]

We used to walk with our pocket money to Albany. We'd walk up through the longhouses and through the horse paddock and sometimes the horse would chase us.

[C]

The freedom to plan your own day.

[A]

Waking up and just knowing that I could go up into the nurseries and eat grapefruit off the trees and roll around.

[C]

Freedom to do slightly dangerous stuff.

[A]

We could actually turn the dryer on with one of us in it and we would go around. It was fucking hilarious. And we used to do that.

[C]

Freedom to steal.

[A]

A lot of shoplifting. I remember going down to the Albany pharmacy and stealing some makeup and actually getting caught and having to work in the pharmacy to pay off what I stole.

[C]

To be fair, Renee also thieved within the community. Property was communal at Centrepoint, but there were lockers where members could keep a few treasured things of their own. A toothbrush they didn't want to share, Personal trinkets, cash.

[A]

I mean, it was like a free lunch, really. You had like 50 lockers that you could pilfer. It was almost like a bit of a game. What can I get?

[C]

Renee says the Centrepoint kids created their own social systems.

[A]

There'd be a pack of you, like a little wolf pack, and you would grow up together or, you know, bring each other up. And even though there were so many adults there, they were busy and they were really distracted. The spotlight wasn't on us, so we could kind of do what we wanted. Because the adults were so busy getting fucked and getting fucked up.

[C]

Like I said, by the mid-80s, the stories about sexual abuse of children by adults had faded in the public eye. The police investigation had stopped. But the open relationships between the adults, that was never a secret. And early on, Renee learnt what that meant in practical terms. There was this boy that she clashed with.

[A]

He was like my nemesis. But one time, yeah, he said, your mum's gonna fuck Bert. And I was like, no, she's not. That's dumb. She's not going to do that. Oh, that's disgusting. She wouldn't do that. Yes, she will. They all do. All the adults have to him, all of them. And I was just repulsed. And I asked her, you're not going to. Are your mom. You're not. And she was, of course not. But yeah, she would have. She did. They all did.

[G]

Yeah,

[C]

That was how it was among the adults. But according to Bert, one of the most important freedoms for the children and teenagers was being allowed to discover their sexuality. And yeah, around the age of 10 or 11, kids typically do get very curious about relationships and about their bodies and about kissing.

[A]

We were pashing and having like rumpus room, intermediate kid, kind of 11, 12 year old fondlings, kissing competitions where we would honestly pash for 30 minutes with just tongues and drool outside of our mouths with a towel almost and people timing and egging us on and we'd just be like, you know, so we would. There was, yeah, we were definitely experimenting and playing around with it. I think it's a natural human thing to be inquisitive about other people's bodies and genitals and it's a developmental thing.

[C]

But the thing about Centrepoint was that competitive snogging, a bit of natural curiosity, that wasn't the end of it, not by a long way. At Centrepoint, during the time that Renee was there, sleeping arrangements for kids were based roughly on age. If you were high school age, you'd be sleeping in the separate teen dorm, what they called the annex. At intermediate school, age 10, 11, 12, you'd be sleeping in the short houses. So sharing a room with four or five others around the same age as you and babies and young children slept in the same room as their parents. So if your family was in a longhouse, the big multi family dorm rooms, you soon learned what adult sexuality looked like and sounded like.

[A]

It was a big long room. There was double bed, double bed, double bed, baby toddler bed, double bed, double bed, double bed. And at any time of the day or night, people would be fucking. So there would be sounds of fucking. So we were already almost desensitized to the sound of fucking. But it also made us curious. And I don't know how old people are when they start masturbating, but I think, you know, I was probably in form one, maybe stand four when you know, sounds of sex were turn me on and I would be exploring myself. But for some reason that sort of felt bad. Like, I felt there was guilt attached to it, there was shame attached to it.

[C]

Also, some of the adults took a very close interest in the awakening sexuality of the teens and preteens. When Renee was about 12, there were a couple of different boys she fancied, but one in particular.

[A]

So I had been kind of fooling around a little bit with a guy about 18 months older than me, and we had built up a bit of a friendship and we were just, you know, going to second base kind of thing, really enjoying his company. I remember being called up to Burt's to talk about losing my virginity. So I was 12. I'm pretty sure his words were like, when are we going to have you deflowered? You know, you. You're sexually mature, your breasts are growing, I see you, I hear you're having relations with boys. It's almost like he had spies and he was hearing about things that were happening around the place. But, yeah, he said to me, so what are your choices? Who are your choices? I think he actually set me a timeframe. It may have been three weeks. It was a task.

[C]

To complete Bert's task, she chose the boy she'd been fooling around with, the one about 18 months older than the first time they tried.

[A]

She felt sick, so I told him to stop. And we just, you know, cuddled and continued with just fondling or whatever. But then the next time after that, it felt okay and it felt right.

[C]

It felt okay, it felt right. But later, Renee would realise 12 was pretty young. Without that pressure from Bert, without the constant sexualised atmosphere of everyday life, she reckons she'd have waited quite a bit longer.

[A]

I think I was quite comfortable with just fooling around and having snuggle parties and, you know, kind of playing with each other's genitalia and passion. But I don't think I would have had penetration sex maybe for a few more years. Like, it felt very young to me. And when I consider and I talk about how old my friends were, they were a lot older, a lot older when they had penetration sex.

[C]

It's easy and totally justifiable to focus on the way Centrepoint accelerated the sexualisation of its children and teenagers. But talk with a few former children of Centrepoint, and there's another thing that keeps coming up. It's another example of where adults who joined the community chose something for themselves, but the following generation were caught up in it. Whether they wanted it or not. And it was the thing that right from the beginning was at the heart of the Centrepoint project.

[D]

Most of us that started this place off were involved in psychotherapy of one sort or another.

[I]

Therapy, cathartic therapy, psychotherapy, sex therapy, primal

[C]

therapy, months and months and months of therapy.

[A]

Oh, everybody needs therapy.

[C]

Centrepoint was a therapeutic community and the group therapy concepts of openness and honesty were built into the rhythms of everyday life. A key part of that was something called feedback. No doubt you're familiar with the word, but possibly not with the way it was used at Centrepoint. In theory, it was an expression of the community's openness. In practice, it meant that you had licence to verbally attack whoever you wanted for just about any reason. Barry explains.

[G]

So whatever you saw about somebody that you think was blocked off or wasn't clear or wasn't good enough, then you'd be in their face. People giving feedback would shout, scream, people would get really upset.

[C]

The only real rule was that if someone was giving you feedback, you had to stand there and take it. Walking away wasn't an option. Some adults found this hard enough. Kids found it even harder. From the day Renee arrived, aged nine,

[A]

I didn't like the abruptness, the forcefulness of the way that the adults were allowed to violently expunge their toxic spew on people.

[C]

Now, we're just going to pause with Renee for a sec because there's a story her older sister Angie told us that seems relevant and it really shows how feedback could hurt.

[I]

I used to sing everything was a song when I was happy. I'd just sing whatever my thoughts were. A song would come to mind and I just. And I had this person walk up to me and say, stand right in front of me and say, angie, I think your singing is an avoidance of what's really going on. And I just went like shocked and just stopped singing and just almost held my breath, like waiting for someone to come up and just attack me with whatever they wanted to say. And that happened over and over again with different things. But it's like I started there really happy and just vibrant and self expressed and just being myself. And then you get these like little pecks and you would just diminish yourself

[A]

and diminish yourself and diminish yourself until you just became whatever was required or accepted.

[C]

So that's feedback. Back to Renee. So a few years after Renee arrived, Centrepoint started experimenting with a new therapeutic exercise.

[A]

So someone went away overseas, I don't know, maybe Germany or Sweden, somewhere European, and brought back this thing called the hierarchy. I think possibly when you ask children of Centrepoint, we'd all be able to say that the hierarchy was one of the big things that we remember and feared. The hierarchy was a line where, say, the teenagers, and there might have been like 40 or 50 of us lined up on the top step of the lounge all the way along. And all the adults were on the lower floor of the lounge, seated, cuddling up on pillows, looking up at the line of teenagers. One end was the lowest, low, like you didn't want to be at the bottom of the hierarchy and the other end was the very top. And you're a star and you've done everything right in your life and we love you to pieces. So you'd line up and then the adults would physically come up and move you up five spaces. So, for example, I'm going to move you up five spaces, Renee, because I really enjoyed how you, you played so well with my children the other day and just really gave me a good break. Someone else will come along and say, well, I'm moving you down three spaces or 10 spaces, because I thought what you said to my daughter was really bitchy and I don't contone that kind of feedback. So you keep physically moved up and down this hierarchy and, you know, stealing looks alongside, you know, one another and going, fuck, here we go.

[C]

So a kind of weird power trip meets party game. What was the point?

[J]

Well, the point of it was action feedback.

[C]

This is Barbara. The name might be familiar by now. She was that founding member who joined as a single mum, loved therapy and ended up counselling at the AMAC abortion clinic.

[J]

So that someone would say, well, I'm moving you up in the hierarchy for something very, very specific for doing this or whatever, or I'm moving you down in the hierarchy for something very specific. And basically people did that for an hour or so. There wasn't more to it than that.

[C]

Barbara knows this because she's the one who went to Europe and brought hierarchy back to New Zealand. To be precise, it wasn't Germany or Sweden. She brought it back from Austria.

[J]

Friedrichshof in Austria.

[C]

Barbara went to the Friedrichshuf commune in Austria because her partner was about to become a Centrepoint member and this guy wanted to splurge on some travel before signing over all his money. So the two of them went on a whistle stop tour of communes around

[J]

the world, including Findhorn.

[C]

That's the famous Findhorn community in Scotland.

[J]

A primal therapy commune of women in South Donegal, Ireland.

[C]

That commune was called Atlantis. But the local locals called them the Screamers because they were really into primal scream therapy, which is pretty noisy. Barbara says the whole trip was a blast. But the place which had ideas she thought worth bringing back to New Zealand was Friedrichshof.

[J]

Friedrichshof was very, very energetic and was somewhere outside Vienna. I think we stayed maybe two nights.

[C]

Like Centrepoint, Friedrichshof cherished open sexuality. Like Centrepoint, it was inspired by the teachings of the utterly bizarre Wilhelm Reich. And like Centrepoint, it was led by a guru who seemed fixated on sex. His name was Otto Muehl.

[J]

Otto Muhle.

[C]

And to cut to the chase, he ended up in prison for child sex offences and drug crimes. But when Barbara met him, she was impressed.

[J]

Clearly a charismatic leader. There seemed to be number one woman and number two women, and that was very like Bert. I gathered that women slept with different men every night.

[C]

Barbara didn't speak German, but kept up with the help of an interpreter.

[J]

And I must have watched one of their hierarchies because that's what I brought back to the community back home in

[C]

Aotearoa, she explained the rules to the Centrepoint therapists and they tried it out.

[J]

I've heard people later, after the community, say how excruciating it was.

[C]

Same. We've heard from a few people who were teenagers during the years when the hierarchy exercise was a thing at Centrepoint, and it's right up there on the list of their least favourite things.

[D]

Oh, my God.

[C]

Yeah. 300 odd adults doing that to children. It's wrong and it was hurtful. That's Nate. We'll meet him properly a bit later. There were times when it was adults in the lineup getting moved around, but it was the hierarchy exercises involving teenagers that ended up having a lasting impact. Dozens of former Centrepoint children have been interviewed about their experiences by university researchers, and in that study, many of them singled out hierarchy as having been shaming and humiliating for both themselves and for other children. Renee found hierarchy horrible, not just because she'd end up at the wrong end of the line, because I was a

[A]

rebel and defiant and a bit of

[C]

a bitch, and not just because it was humiliating.

[A]

They would actually grab you physically by the shoulders and move you, and not

[C]

just because it went on for hours, two, three hours, but because, in fact, one of the nastiest things about hierarchy was what it revealed about the community's definitions of good and bad. Sure, you might get to the top because you'd been getting good marks at school or winning at sport or being helpful around the community, but Also, being

[A]

sexually promiscuous got you to the top. Being pliable to the elders, to Burt and his cronies got you to the top. Greasing. Yeah.

[C]

So think about this setup. Kids growing up in a hypersexual atmosphere. A community wide culture of social and therapeutic experimentation. Adults who are absorbed in their own dramas and children who are making up their own rules in their little wolf packs. Sometimes the results weren't great. Renee's got a story, two stories really, about the time when the adult therapy groups were experimenting with hypnosis. And that sort of filtered down into the teenager therapy groups. And then we had a couple of

[A]

older teenagers that would come down.

[C]

These older teens would have been 17,

[A]

18 to try the hypnosis on us.

[C]

Swinging a pendulum, you're getting sleepy, that sort of thing.

[A]

One particular night I remember being hypnotised, but not. And pretending that I was. And because I was such a good little actor, I went along with the things and they really believed me. Like I could sneak a look when they weren't looking and the looks on their faces were that I was under and they've got full control. I didn't come out of it, didn't snap out of it. So eventually people went, went to sleep. Like everyone in the room was asleep. And I remember one boy coming over and helping himself to my genitals and being so petrified that I couldn't. I was absolutely frozen and I couldn't move and he was all over me and I was still carrying on like I was hypnotised. And eventually he got his release and he went away. So that was one moment of just feeling like I completely lost control and being so frozen that I couldn't. I couldn't stop it.

[C]

In the other story, Renee wasn't the one getting hypnotised.

[A]

There was another incident where an older girl actually had been hypnotised or she'd gone along with it, I don't know, but she was doing all the things. And you know, they'd say, lift up your left arm and touch your nose and she would do it. And then someone said, get a glass of warm water if you put it. She was. They sat her on a towel, she had her knickers off and they sat her on a towel and they said, put her hand in warm water and she'll wee. And she didn't. But then there was a bread and butter knife there and somebody said, oh, we should put this up her fanny, up her vagina. It just went in and that went out and I don't think they actually did it over and over again. I think it was more a let's see if we can do this kind of thing. You know, these kids are being kids and exploring, but that's full on. Yeah.

[C]

Other things seemed out of whack too. Renee's sister Angie told us of quite open relationships between kids in their late teens and much younger children. 11, 12.

[I]

I remember them walking around the community holding hands and just thinking, what the actual fuck you could be going out with people your own age and you're going out with someone. The maturity of 11 or 12 year old. I couldn't get it. Why would she do that? I couldn't get it even back then.

[C]

Hearing this sort of thing from Angie is unsettling. She's kind of flipped me back into the 80s as well. I'm looking back at my own memories of the Centrepoint kids I knew at Long Bay College. I mean, I didn't know Angie was well, but I thought she was great, smart, interesting, great talker, great singer. And it was the same with other Centrepoint kids I knew. They didn't really seem all that different from the rest of us, but when they weren't following the routines of our pretty ordinary North Shore high school, they were living in a very different universe from me. One I don't think I could have imagined at the time. Sure, of course I was aware of the. The communal toilets and showers and the first up best stressed policy on clothes and the nudity. I knew that where most of us teenagers spent a lot of time thinking and talking about sex, the Centrepoint kids were actually having some. I think I was slightly intimidated by that, but also a bit envious. But I didn't realise that they were living in a place where grown ups shared their feelings by shrieking at each other and where kids were got shuffled around in a humiliating hierarchy exercise and where a 12 year old would get called in to talk to the guru bird about setting a time frame for losing her virginity. And each day the Centrepoint kids were flipping between these two worlds, from psychobabble and hypersexuality to school books and uniforms, then back again. Centrepoint had its own school bus that dropped the kids off each day. And for Angie, that daily journey from commune to school, driving through beautiful bush and sparse farmland, was a real time of transition and a bit of a relief.

[I]

School was quite heavenly in lots of ways because it had a different structure and there was much less expectation, especially emotionally and, you know, sexually. People were younger and more naive and there was safety in that everything was restructured, so it felt really safe for me.

[C]

What about the school itself? Angie saw it as a place of safety, but did this place of safety even know that? Was the school worried about the Centrepoint kids? I asked my former English teacher, the publisher, Jenny Helen, about it. She was a new teacher when she came to Long Bay, so she didn't have the broader view a senior teacher might have had. But keeping an eye out for kids, general well being, that's part of the job, right?

[B]

Yeah, for sure, yeah. I mean, you know, you are in loco parentis. You know, you are standing in place of their parents in that role and I think most teachers take that very seriously.

[C]

So the Centrepoint kids, did the teachers worry about them?

[B]

Yeah, I was aware of them because they stuck to themselves. I think largely they all arrived on a bus together. They kind of to some extent were shunned by the other kids, I reckon. I don't know how many of them interacted with the other kids there. And for all intents and purposes, they were an ordinary bunch of kids. Some were really outgoing and very confident and vivacious and some were quite quiet and withdrawn and some were just those kids in the middle that no one ever really notices, so they just look like regular kids.

[C]

What about someone more senior then the school principal say?

[H]

Right, well, I'm Ian Sage. I was a principal of Long bay College for 17 years, the first 17 years of the school.

[C]

I haven't seen this guy who I find difficult to call anything other than Mr. Sage since I left school in 1987. But he's basically exactly as I remember him from three and a half decades ago, including his talent for discretion. Like anyone, Mr. Sage knew about Centrepoint's communal toilets and showers and clothing, plus the other usual stuff.

[H]

I did hear rumours about open sexuality between adults and I didn't. I mean, when you're a principal, you hear more than you ever speak about.

[C]

As for the kids, I knew they

[H]

were from Centrepoint, but that didn't make any difference. They were just students at school. Surprisingly, kids have their own private lives. You may never unearth the problems that they're facing because every kid has their own sense of individuality and, and self pride and they're not going to share that. And some of them would say, especially with teachers.

[C]

What about school counsellors? Perhaps some Centrepoint kids confided in them.

[H]

I have no knowledge of it. And of course, what happens between a counsellor and a school counsellor and a student has nothing to do with me.

[C]

Alright, so that's an admittedly unscientific survey of two of my former teachers. But yeah, whatever might have been going wrong for the children at Centrepoint, it seems there were no alarm bells going off at the school where most of the teenagers went. But on the inside, there's someone who was concerned about the children.

[G]

I knew things weren't right with the children, but I didn't have this concept of what it was.

[C]

Yep, Barry still trying to get ahead around things. One time she'd gone to a senior Centrepoint therapist to talk about this and

[G]

I said, things aren't right with the children here. And she just said, the children are fine. Go and look at your own pain.

[C]

Look at your own pain. Take your feedback. Remember that judo move from the Centrepoint old timer back in episode one when he sent me that text? Adam, is there something you feel guilty about? Again and again, that trademark Center Point response to any sort of challenge turning it back on you. And here it's Barry getting it from one of the senior therapists. The kids are fine. You're the one who's messed up. Sure, Barry's vulnerable to that kind of gaslighting, but she's still watching. And her instincts tell her there's something deeper going on. All that wild behaviour in the kids, the stealing, the. That seems such fun to Renee's wolf pack. It's not just a bit of fun. And Barry's seeing other worrying signs. A child who won't wash. Another who has developed a thumb sucking habit and is gaining surprising amounts of weight. Another who's doing badly at school. When Barry knows she's smart and capable, something is going on.

[G]

I knew they weren't okay. I knew in this group of children, there's a lot of habits that don't look very healthy for their age. And yet.

[C]

And yet what? Barry, at this point, I understand if you feel like reaching into this podcast and shaking her, because for fuck's sake, Barry has seen the girl on the lawn and knows what it means. She's aware of the accusations of child sex abuse that Robert has taken to the police and to the council and to multiple journalists. And yet, somehow, she can't seem to join the dots. Her instincts tell her the sexualisation of children in the commune might be part of the problem. Hell, some families have already left for just that reason. But Bert, if what he says is true, then these should be the luckiest kids alive. Commune life means they've been rescued from oppressive nuclear structures, from excessive parental interference. Best of all, they're being Saved from an adulthood that would otherwise have been plagued with sexual hang ups, Barry is feeling utterly bamboozled. But then something happens, something that finally joins the dots.

[G]

And it was just like, this is the hand. This is what I'm seeing.

[C]

I would do as much as I possibly could to disrupt that. I would slam on the side of the hut. I would call him a pedo fuck. Yet no one listened to me.

[J]

You'd see someone you were drawn to talking with or sitting with or having sex with or whatever. So that was lsd.

[G]

And I was once in the shape shower with Larry and he said to me, this won't bode well if Centrepoint keeps going like this.

[C]

That was episode six of the Commune, a stuffed production. It was researched, written and produced by Eugene Bingham and me, Adam Dudding. Special thanks to Sandra Kohne, whose 1988 Listener article about AMAC was the basis of that section of this episode. Mixing by Andrew MacDowell of Digicamik. Music by Audio Network for more information about the show, head to stuff.co.nz thecommie. The year is 2020. The outbreak centers on the city of a deadly pandemic is raging and in Aotearoa Cabinet meet this afternoon, our government slams the border shut. I'm Adam Dudding. I'm Eugene Bingham. And in our new series Quarantine Nation, we are looking back at New Zealand's experience of a global catastrophe.

[A]

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

[E]

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

[C]

Living through Covid was deeply weird.

[E]

Big surge in New Zealand.

[C]

So, you know, it's terrible. So in Quarantine Nation we take a minute to figure out just what happened. What were they thinking? What was the world thinking? Made with the support of NZ On Air out now.