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- [00:02]
Adam Dudding
Stuff podcasts.
- [00:10]
Eugene Bingham
Previously on the Commune.
- [00:14]
Robert (whistleblower)
I don't really have much of a problem with the drug taking, but I unconditionally and unreservedly revile the sexual abuse that went on.
- [00:26]
Adam Dudding
No apology would ever be enough, quite clearly. And all I see it is just.
- [00:31]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Stirring up more distress. And I don't understand how educated people, intelligent people, did what they did.
- [00:42]
Eugene Bingham
This episode of the Commune contains strong language references to drug use and suicide, and descriptions of sexual abuse.
- [00:53]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
So these are the open showers.
- [00:54]
Adam Dudding
This was all open. Even that roof. Must have gone on much later.
- [01:02]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Must have got cold.
- [01:03]
Adam Dudding
Well, no, you ran down from the.
- [01:05]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Long houses naked and into the shower.
- [01:08]
Adam Dudding
Then into old comm at the back and chose your place.
- [01:10]
Eugene Bingham
The long houses up there.
- [01:11]
Robert (whistleblower)
Yeah.
- [01:12]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Okay. Right.
- [01:13]
Adam Dudding
And then there's the last bits of washing there and the laundry sort of where the toilets are.
- [01:18]
Eugene Bingham
Not so long ago, producer Eugene and I were given a guided tour of the place, which once upon a time was the Centrepoint Commune. Long rooms, long houses. Long houses. Sorry, did you have a permanent posi.
- [01:30]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Or was it first and first served?
- [01:33]
Adam Dudding
No, no, you had your bed. Who was in it was a bit changeable.
- [01:37]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Right?
- [01:38]
Adam Dudding
Or who was in it at any one moment? So, yep.
- [01:41]
Eugene Bingham
No, our tour guide was Barbara, the Centrepoint pioneer, who was a single mother when the commune began, the one who brought the hierarchy exercise back from Austria, one of the people who perjured herself at Burt Potter's drug trial. Showing us around her old home was Barbara's idea. She still clearly knew her way around the kitchen.
- [02:05]
Adam Dudding
All under here was bread and butter and jams and things.
- [02:09]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
And over there was toasters.
- [02:11]
Adam Dudding
So the kids crawled around the floor, sort of getting their hands in the.
- [02:15]
Eugene Bingham
Sugar or the jam.
- [02:16]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
And they were very healthy.
- [02:19]
Eugene Bingham
Their immunisation program, much of the setup, right down to the walk in fridge, is still much the way it used to be. Yep. We have 20 acres of land here remaining. Building wise, nothing has changed. There was areas. This is Paul Gregory. Barbara introduced us to him while we were on her tour. My name is Paul Gregory. I am the general manager of the Prema Charitable Trust. I look after Kawai Pura Pura, the retreat centre. And I look after Worldpark College of Natural Therapies. Kawai Purapura. That's what the property has been called since 2009, when its new owners bought the place and converted it into a sort of convention centre. Meets natural therapy school, meets residential complex. Here you can hire a venue, study herbal medicine or rent a room. Before COVID they were holding a couple of major Festivals each year, the International Yoga Festival and Voices of Sacred Earth. So, yeah, there's still a hippie ish vibe to the place. But this isn't a commune. We're the landlord and we have 100 tenants. And it's not Centrepoint. We've changed the names of all the buildings, every single one of them, just to remove ourself from Centrepoint. But in another sense, it will always be Centre Point. There's a sign at the bottom of the drive that says, private property. Please do not enter. And we get complete strangers that turn up and it's almost like a tour, like an LA Tour. They want to see where Bert lived. Well, I guess that's sort of why Eugene and I are here. And that first time we visit with Barbara, there is something strange and something quite powerful about seeing up close for the first time this place that's been described to us so vividly by so many different people. Paul says they do get visits from former residents. Sometimes by day they bring a flask and some sandwiches and they go and sit in the glade. Sometimes by night they'll find themselves drunk and upset and we find them asleep on the sofas down here. That's happened a couple of times. A random sleepover by someone who'd been a teenager at Centrepoint and was having a tough time. So Paul and his staff, we come in, we make them a cup of tea, make sure they're okay and send them on their way home. When Barbara is showing us around, it's obvious how much she still loves the place.
- [04:45]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
If I was working in the city.
- [04:47]
Adam Dudding
I'd come back and cross the bridge and just feel like I was going into this other planet, really. I'd have this great big sort of relief out of the mad world and onto the lovely planet.
- [05:02]
Eugene Bingham
Barbara's lovely planet is huge and it's still mostly bush. Each part has its memories.
- [05:09]
Adam Dudding
There's your beautiful pool.
- [05:11]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Oh, wow.
- [05:12]
Adam Dudding
So that was a herb garden.
- [05:13]
Eugene Bingham
There's the swimming pool that the kids loved so much. Barbara shows us the streams that still run through the property.
- [05:20]
Adam Dudding
It used to flood and once it picked up a whole lot of car cases and floated them downstream with one woman and her guitar stuck on the bridge. So I was there at that stage and I was pretty heavily pregnant and I was in the next car case up. So after that we were firmly told.
- [05:36]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
We should touch a piggery.
- [05:37]
Eugene Bingham
She takes us up the hill where there used to be.
- [05:40]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There was a piggery and a big.
- [05:41]
Adam Dudding
Garden and an orchard. And one year I grew Rock melons. I told you about the rock melons for the 10 year extraordinary pile of rock melons.
- [05:55]
Eugene Bingham
When Centrepoint was founded, it was at the northern limit of the Auckland suburbs, a patch of bush in the middle of Albany's orchards and farms. But even then, everyone knew the developers would come eventually.
- [06:07]
Adam Dudding
We knew that it was on the.
- [06:09]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Plan that there would be a city built here.
- [06:11]
Eugene Bingham
And now the city's here. Suburbs and light industry have swallowed up just about all of those old orchards and farms.
- [06:18]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
If we look across the road, just.
- [06:20]
Eugene Bingham
A busy road, a mega mitre, 10, some other boxes.
- [06:25]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Yeah, shopping.
- [06:26]
Eugene Bingham
But none of that was there, was it?
- [06:27]
Adam Dudding
Oh, no, no. It was all orchards.
- [06:28]
Eugene Bingham
Inside the 20 acres of Kawaipurapuru, though, there's still bush and birds and the ghosts of Centrepoint. We're in the Glade, scene of the.
- [06:43]
Adam Dudding
Famous and infamous giving of ecstasy to teenagers. I'm sort of picturing where. Because, you see, I said in the High Court that I hadn't seen Bert give drugs to teenagers. But I can at this moment. I can see where he was. I can see all the people around. So that's teenagers and adults, probably me not even distinguishing between them. And we all went to Bert and got our little dose. But it's a beautiful spot.
- [07:19]
Eugene Bingham
At the entrance to the glade, a Piwakawaka, Aotearoa's native fantail, is giving its all. Barbara's right. It is a beautiful spot.
- [07:31]
Adam Dudding
Anyway, it's pretty cool. Makes you want to bring your kids up here, doesn't it? She gave a slightly sick laugh. Then.
- [07:42]
Eugene Bingham
There was a time when, when I knew a lot less about Centrepoint, when I might have thought I could agree with Barbara, that maybe it could have been a good place to raise your kids, despite all the complexities. But now I can't imagine a universe where I'd think that was true. People came to Centrepointe asking some important questions. How can we live better? How should people connect? Where can I find refuge from a difficult life? And looking around Kawaipura, you can still see how this might have felt like the place where you'd find some answers. There's the trees and the water and the birds and the glade. There's the places where people could work together, in gardens and greenhouses, in the pottery and the other workshops. There's the beautiful communal spaces, the kitchen, dining room and lounge, the wooden decks and grassy lawn. But a home isn't just a place. It's defined by what happens there. And half a century after Barry and John and Robert And Barbara and Ulrich and Dave and Annie and Bill and Keith and Burt Potter embarked on their big adventure. The questions about Centrepoint are still being asked. What the hell happened here? How did people who thought they were doing good manage to do so much harm and for so long? I'm Adam Dudding and this is the final episode of the commune. Episode 12, the Wounded Healer. OK, yeah. So there's a line I wrote that Centrepoint has done for communities what the Hindenburg did for airships. This is Chris Gaskell. We met him back in episode two. He's the journalist who is editing a local community paper. Rodney and White. A matter times in the early 80s, when Centrepoint was often in the news. Yeah, it might seem like I had some great vision of what was going on there, but it wasn't at all, you know, I thought it was a comedy. It was actually a tragedy. That's really sad, eh? That when you look back, all those signposts were there. How could this have happened? How could it have happened over such a long period that children were abused in that way? What a terrible outcome from Bert's misbegotten dream. People like Chris watched Centrepoint rise and fall and they still have questions about the place. Like, given how open Potter was about his beliefs around child sexuality, why weren't things shut down faster? You know, I'm not the only one. There'd be lots of people who would be thinking, you know, why couldn't we see further into it, that, you know, clearly there was some not only unacceptable but criminal behaviours going on there. So, sadly, as the editor of the newspaper, we didn't get onto that at all. I know it was something like eight years later, before the drug charges were laid, and maybe 10 years, I think, before the convictions over the child abuse. Yeah, it's pretty confronting to think that that was going on in plain sight. Chris wonders if it was something about the way people trusted authority back then and because for a long time, authorities were giving the place a pass. Mark. The police looked at it. They were obviously couldn't see anything that was concerning them. The health authorities were in there alongside them. Plus, Potter was a master of distraction, you know, calling himself God, you know, that sort of thing. Nothing happening over there. Look here also, the people at Centrepoint seemed so normal and decent. I mean, they had open days, you know, people were invited there to see them and, you know, it wasn't some weirdo hippies. He'd somehow plugged into what you might call normal people in as much as they were doctors. And nurses and teachers who'd been caught up in the vision or the dream. Jenny, Helen, the book publisher who used to be my high school English teacher, she also suspects this was part of it.
- [12:00]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
You know, all sorts of highly educated, smart people. And so you kind of thought, well, obviously people are getting something out of this that they're not getting out, you know, in the mainstream, it must be okay.
- [12:11]
Eugene Bingham
The idea that the kids might be being abused was. Wasn't even on her radar. At Long Bay College. No staff room chatter for this junior teacher to overhear.
- [12:20]
Adam Dudding
I mean, I think we all thought it was strange. Everyone thought it was strange.
- [12:25]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There was probably a bit of concern.
- [12:27]
Adam Dudding
On a level I have no memory of anyone talking about child sexual abuse.
- [12:34]
Eugene Bingham
As early as 1980, newspapers like the Truth and the Sunday News were making sensational claims about Centrepoint. Yet a few years later, it was almost as if that reporting had been totally forgotten. When I mention those early tabloid headlines, Jenny says she never even saw them. Why do you think that stuff is just allowed to fade away? I don't know why everyone wasn't freaking out the whole time. That's incredible, because it was just there.
- [13:03]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I suppose those papers were seen as.
- [13:04]
Adam Dudding
Muckrakers, Digestina's sort of scandal, scandal rags.
- [13:10]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
So I can guess that's why.
- [13:12]
Adam Dudding
I mean, I don't know.
- [13:12]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I am kind of shocked to hear that.
- [13:18]
Eugene Bingham
Centrepoint wasn't her cup of tea. Potter seemed a bit gross, but there was just nothing to work with, no clear cause for alarm. All the same, I feel so bad.
- [13:29]
Adam Dudding
About it now, you know, I really. I feel so terrible that those children were going through all of that terrible stuff and that we were all standing by and letting it happen, you know.
- [13:41]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I mean, I feel like I didn't.
- [13:43]
Adam Dudding
Have the tools to do it or to recognise it, but at the same.
- [13:47]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Time it kind of. It's mind boggling, you know, to think.
- [13:51]
Adam Dudding
That, you know, imagine if that was happening now. I think we're so much more aware.
- [13:58]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Now and we're so much more.
- [14:01]
Adam Dudding
But are we?
- [14:04]
Eugene Bingham
To the newspaper columnist Rosemary MacLeod, the question about the child sex abuse at Centrepoint isn't exactly how did this happen? It's more like, how did the mothers of Centrepoint let this happen?
- [14:16]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Well, I'm just thinking of Freud. You know, biology is destiny. A female body. You are an animal that is going to carry a child in your body or another animal in your body, you're going to give birth to it and a surge of hormones and whatever is going to make you feel incredibly protective. Of it and you will be feeding it. You've got a symbiosis going. In the beginning, it's a natural thing to want to protect that fragile new human and try not to expose it to harm. Do your best not to. But I guess when somebody has accepted the idea that harm doesn't exist, then you've got a whole new thing happening. And the idea that it takes a village to raise a child is a very pernicious one. It doesn't. It actually takes at least one active parent to raise a child and hopefully two. So a community doesn't raise a child. A community doesn't have the visceral ties that a parent has, particularly a mother. So the stage was set for something very odd to happen.
- [15:27]
Eugene Bingham
She reckons the self obsessed philosophies of the human potential movement and the psychobabble that came with it only made things worse.
- [15:35]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There was a lot of bastardised talk about psychotherapy and so on, you know, oh, you mustn't feel guilt.
- [15:42]
Eugene Bingham
That's literally true, by the way. We've got it on tape, remember? And we have to get rid of our guilt, our shame and all the other things. Anyway, back to Rosemary.
- [15:50]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I'm all for guilt. I think guilt is what stops us doing bad things, you know, and that's why we have it, we need it, because we have to live in communities with each other and we shouldn't hurt each other. It's that simple. And you can hurt people doing things that you think are benign and then discover that you were very much wrong. And so you then have a conscience. Something inside you tells you, don't do that again. That is, if you care about people. But Burt Potter didn't, did he? He could mimic caring, he could go through all the motions of caring, but he was only caring for himself.
- [16:31]
Eugene Bingham
Derek, the lawyer for the neighbours who opposed Centrepoint, the guy who worried about property values but then realised that wasn't the only reason to be concerned. I've always been saying, well, heck, what.
- [16:43]
Robert (whistleblower)
Else could we have done? What should we have done? Were we a bit weak? Were we a bit slack? Were we asleep at the wheel? You know, could we have got some.
- [16:50]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Better evidence and presented it in a better way?
- [16:53]
Eugene Bingham
But again, that first police investigation had a wall which left Centrepoint opponents with nowhere to go.
- [16:59]
Robert (whistleblower)
We certainly gave it our best shot.
- [17:04]
Eugene Bingham
For Derek, what went wrong is actually pretty simple. It's all about Potter.
- [17:09]
Robert (whistleblower)
He was just a devious, dirty old man.
- [17:14]
Eugene Bingham
Ray the policeman, in a sense, he's the one who toppled the first domino when he arrested Potter on drug charges.
- [17:20]
Robert (whistleblower)
It was your next son.
- [17:21]
Eugene Bingham
Which cleared the way for all the other charges and convictions that followed. Centrepoint stayed with him in a pretty literal way.
- [17:28]
Robert (whistleblower)
There were file boxes full of material that I'd kept.
- [17:32]
Eugene Bingham
He says he wasn't obsessed with the case, but, I mean, I was frustrated.
- [17:35]
Robert (whistleblower)
That there were still people acting as apologists for Potter and his ilk.
- [17:40]
Eugene Bingham
Yet if police had laid charges earlier, a lot of the later offending might never have happened. So should the police have moved faster? Well, maybe, says Ray, but I mean.
- [17:52]
Robert (whistleblower)
It'S not easy to penetrate a cult and to get people to give evidence and to obtain convictions. I mean, that's. That's rare in my experience.
- [18:01]
Eugene Bingham
Fair enough, but it's impossible to ignore the fact that very early on, when Ray was working with that other police officer, Dean Thomas, their investigations were blocked by that senior officer. The one who had tea and Vicky's was Potter. What on earth was going on there? Well, years later, some really important context came to light.
- [18:24]
Robert (whistleblower)
The irony is that a number of years later, that senior officer was investigated, prosecuted, charged and went to prison for child sex offences himself. Which in hindsight.
- [18:35]
Eugene Bingham
Wait. In case you missed that, Ray is saying that the senior officer who blocked his and Dean's early investigations, the guy who seemed very chummy, was Potter and who gave Potter permission to be present in the police's interviews. Yeah, he turned out to be a child sex offender himself and went to prison for it.
- [18:58]
Robert (whistleblower)
Went to prison for child sex offences himself, which in hindsight would lead you to suspect that were they in collusion, could he see what Potter was about or was he acting in some other way? You know, Dean has a very clear recollection of him interfering a number of times and being very straight, you know, you will not.
- [19:17]
Eugene Bingham
I am telling you, Ray says he has no reason to believe that Potter and this senior officer, whose name is permanently suppressed, by the way, even though he's now dead, were in any sense co offenders. He suspects it was more.
- [19:31]
Robert (whistleblower)
I think it was just one recognizing the other. They were certainly pretty cozy in his office. But I think too, that. And it's not defending, but I think too that the media were certainly on Potter's side and I think thought, oh, I don't want us to be made to look bad from a media perspective, so let's just dampen this down. But look, I might be being overly charitable there.
- [19:55]
Eugene Bingham
Look, we have no idea what the mechanics of this might have been, but however you cut it, years were lost. Years when Centrepoint could have been legally held to account, or even just made a bit safer for children. If you hadn't been blocked, I don't think. Would that have been the end of Burt Potter?
- [20:15]
Robert (whistleblower)
No, I don't. I don't think so. Look, it's. You just can't. You'd be guessing wildly. I mean, I think that you're dealing with an adversary who is determined, well resourced, has a lot at stake and probably quite enjoyed the game of it as well. You know, bucking the system, all of that stuff. You know.
- [20:44]
Eugene Bingham
People like Ray or Derek or Rosemary or Chris or my old teacher Jenny, they might still think about Centrepoint, but for the people who actually lived there, the legacy can be overwhelming. There's something Barbara said to us.
- [20:59]
Adam Dudding
I think you really need to understand that with, say, 300 people, you'll get 300 different stories.
- [21:05]
Eugene Bingham
And sure, of course, everyone who lived at Centrepoint has their own story, but there are enough points of overlap between those stories that you start to see recurring patterns. For many adults, the story is a journey from hope to horror. And the big difference between those stories is how long the journey took. For Barry, as we know, it took a while. For others, like that other pioneer, Robert Master of the Chainsaw, it was much faster. Still, one of Robert's great regrets is that when he first blew the whistle about child sex abuse, he just couldn't muster enough support from inside Centrepoint to put things right.
- [21:48]
Robert (whistleblower)
You'd only need one or two other people to stand shoulder to shoulder with me and it wouldn't have happened, but they never got there.
- [21:57]
Eugene Bingham
It's a real regret because even though it went so terribly wrong, being at Centrepoint was one of the greatest experiences of Robert's life.
- [22:06]
Robert (whistleblower)
It's an education I couldn't buy. It's something that I've had my money's worth out of. It's something that I've lost a wife in the process. She was meant to go. She wanted to go. But an experience I'll probably never be lucky enough to have again. And, like, out of all of it, you can sort out the shit and the good stuff while it's 50. 50, I can handle that. But when it tilts or it hurts somebody, no go. But what a waste of fucking good energy in bloody shagging it up like that.
- [22:46]
Eugene Bingham
And why does Robert think it was all shagged up? Well, really, again, it comes back to Potter. Potter set the tone. Potter created an environment where people did things they knew were wrong. Robert explains it with, of course, a sheep farming metaphor.
- [23:04]
Robert (whistleblower)
It's like Two dogs going out and one of them a sheep warrior.
- [23:08]
Eugene Bingham
That's a dog that attacks sheep, you know, worrying them.
- [23:11]
Robert (whistleblower)
And the other one's catching onto the job pretty quick, you know, knowing bloody well that they're not allowed shame.
- [23:27]
Eugene Bingham
Bill and Annie, remember, they were the couple who welcomed Barry into the group therapy scene when the idea of a commune was still just a dream. Like Robert, Bill and Annie saw the problems with Centrepoint early on and left. Bill's no longer alive, but we've seen a letter he sent to the parole board while Potter was still in prison. In this letter, Bill is basically warning officials, watch out when Potter's released because, well, I know that he's a psycho. Here's an actor reading from that letter.
- [24:01]
Robert (whistleblower)
I confess that as a psychiatrist, I.
- [24:03]
Eugene Bingham
Knew him to be a psychopath, even.
- [24:06]
Robert (whistleblower)
Told him so once, but was nevertheless.
- [24:08]
Eugene Bingham
Foolish enough to believe and trust him. He is an extremely clever man.
- [24:13]
Robert (whistleblower)
Those of us who started with him.
- [24:15]
Eugene Bingham
Were all intelligent, mostly professional people with high moral standards. He was able to manipulate us all into deceiving the authorities in many ways, but most especially in claiming we were a religion.
- [24:28]
Robert (whistleblower)
This was a pure tax dodge. Mr. Potter always derived satisfaction and often.
- [24:34]
Eugene Bingham
Considerable amusement from defeating and discomforting those in authority and and improving his manipulative superiority. Potter, the manipulative psychopath. That sounds pretty familiar. But the part of Bill's letter that fascinates me is where he tries to explain the power structure that developed under Potter and how most of the pioneers dreams were portrayed. The way Bill tells it, they were brought together by a shared enthusiasm for the wild let it all hang out encounter groups. Bill says as an actual trained psychiatrist, he knew this punching pillows and screaming stuff wasn't really psychotherapy. Real psychotherapy involved a lot more restraint and professionalism. You know, things like not having sex with clients during the lunch break. But Bill says Potter blurred those lines and anointed himself guru and became sole arbiter of who could become a new member. Which meant on this basis, Mr. Potter built a community which was not only much larger than we in the initial group ever anticipated, but also contained a large number of very dependent individuals who could not do without Mr. Potter as their leader and who remained permanently in therapy.
- [25:49]
Robert (whistleblower)
This means, of course, being taught to.
- [25:52]
Eugene Bingham
Be deviant, like their leader. It is those extremely dependent individuals who remain as Mr. Potter's faithful adherents and who slavishly follow him into antisocial behaviour and its consequences. Keith, the doctor and former missionary, he took a while to get it. Keith left the community in 1991. But shortly after leaving, he was one of those charged with historic sexual offending. He was in his 70s by then and has since died. But we've seen a document he wrote in the late 1990s where he steps through his journey from successful, spiritually minded doctor to disgraced, broke, convicted sex offender. Early on, Keith writes in this affidavit, he was won over by the group's vision. A community living together with mutual respect, close to nature, caring for the earth, growing our own food, seeking honest relationships and raising our children free from. From our hang ups about sex and material possessions. We believed anything was possible. But then, basically, Potter led everyone astray. I accepted him as my spiritual guide.
- [27:08]
Adam Dudding
When you do that, you give up your critical faculties.
- [27:11]
Eugene Bingham
I was misled by Bert as our leader. And after that, Keith writes, it's all downhill. Faking a religion, ignoring the laws around children and sexual widespread drug taking. Eventually, Keith wants to leave, but he feels trapped by the financial rules and by fears of rejection. When he was charged with sexual offending, he pleaded guilty and was fined. You know, I sometimes wonder if it's too easy to dump all the blame for Centrepoint's crimes on Potter. He was the guru, he was a dominant figure, and at many critical moments, he led the charge. But you also have to remember these were all adults and they followed his lead. So is it that straightforward? Evil guru destroys everything. It's something my old schoolmate Angie talked about.
- [28:05]
Adam Dudding
I've never been able to align with the people that point the finger at Bert or other people and say this is their fault, because I think everyone who was there that gave him that power has a part.
- [28:17]
Eugene Bingham
Some adults never even reached the point where they realised the dream had become a disaster. That's especially true of the Old Believers faction you heard about in the previous episode during that final battle over the Centrepoint Trust. People who kept the faith long after their guru had lost his shine. People like Ulrich, the chemical engineer. Other offenders like Henry and Richard. People like Dave, the finance guy. After Centrepoint folded, Dave moved to Australia and he's since died. And then you get someone like Barbara, who gave up on her guru, Burt Potter, long ago and seems to understand the harm that was done at Centrepoint, but still quite clearly misses the place. Remember, during those final trust battles, she had been part of the group that.
- [29:05]
Adam Dudding
Wanted to build a new community without a charismatic leader.
- [29:10]
Eugene Bingham
She left for good in 2000, not long before the trust wrapped up. Centrepoint gave her a lot, and it cost her a lot all the same.
- [29:19]
Adam Dudding
I still have an Ideal of good community. I carry that deeply inside me. I might have to wait for another life now, but I hope I've left something from this one.
- [29:37]
Robert (whistleblower)
I see it as an episode in my life from which I gained a lot. And I'm really, really sad about the.
- [29:45]
Eugene Bingham
Damage that was done Peter Calder, the retired journalist again.
- [29:49]
Robert (whistleblower)
But I think a lot of people had very rewarding experiences, had rich rewards from their association with the place, and I would certainly count myself among them.
- [30:03]
Eugene Bingham
Remember, Peter lived at Centrepoint for just a year in 1985, though he had connections with the place before and after that.
- [30:10]
Robert (whistleblower)
But, you know, if Centrepoint was started up again tomorrow, I wouldn't say, oh, shit odd, I'm going to go and do a group. I mean, it was just another time of my life.
- [30:19]
Eugene Bingham
Being there for such a short time and living there at that particular point in the. The commune's history, that makes Peter's perspective super interesting to me. One of the really baffling things about Centrepoint is that so many people who lived there before the sex abuse arrests say they just didn't know what was going on. And around 1985, when Peter was there, that's actually in a period where it does seem plausible that you could be at Centrepoint and totally unaware, because as Barry said in the very early days, it was quite blatant moments, like the girl on the lawn with Potter and his wife Margie, that was seen by large numbers of people. But then for a while, because of the fuss Robert made and because of that first failed police investigation, there wouldn't.
- [31:07]
Adam Dudding
Have been any more lawn incidents, anything public. Everything would have gone underground at that point, although it continued.
- [31:18]
Eugene Bingham
The other big surge of obvious offending was at the other end of the decade, late 80s, when Potter started doling out ecstasy and LSD in communal drug taking events that would often turn sexual. Again, a bit hard to imagine that nobody knew about the crimes from this time. But in those middle years, it does seem things were relatively quiet, at least on the surface. So we asked Peter about that, this idea that he didn't know, and he.
- [31:47]
Robert (whistleblower)
Said, I have often thought about the sexual abuse at Centrepoint and thought, did I know? And buried it, and if I didn't, should I have known? And I was greatly encouraged by a conversation I had with you in which some of the dates suggested that I probably didn't know, but.
- [32:08]
Eugene Bingham
And then Peter rewinds the clock a bit and describes an incident that sort of turns things on their head. He says, way back in 1978 or 79, when he was doing a few encounter groups at Centrepoint. Not living there, just a client. He was doing a group, you know, one of these let it all hang out, have sex at lunchtime kind of groups. And during a break I was approached.
- [32:30]
Robert (whistleblower)
By a teenager whose name I'm not going to use, but she was 15 at the time, not quite 16, and gorgeous. And she asked me to go and have sex with her. I thought all my Christmases had come at once. I said, yep, great. And she said, I'm just going to wash my dishes and I'll meet you at such and such a place. I went out there full of beans and she wasn't there. So nothing ever occurred. But it could have. It could have. So I'm not claiming any moral high.
- [33:05]
Eugene Bingham
Ground here anyway, but when Peter returned to the group room, another man in the group, the therapist who was leading it, in fact, mentioned to the group that he had just had sex with that same 15 year old girl. Legally speaking, you could say Peter had dodged a bullet. Did you know at that point that she was 15?
- [33:27]
Robert (whistleblower)
I don't think the question of her numerical age entered into it. I knew she was a teenager.
- [33:36]
Eugene Bingham
In.
- [33:37]
Robert (whistleblower)
The context, kind of social context, of complete freedom. I don't think the question was entering my head. All I knew was, what was this, 1979? So I was 27 and she was a lot younger and she was very delicious and very tempting, but I don't think the actual numerical age or the technical legality of what was about to occur came into my mind.
- [34:06]
Eugene Bingham
And with that, it feels like Peter has opened the door to that bigger question about knowing or not knowing. Because seriously, if you wanted to know the community's attitudes around children and sex, all you needed to do was listen to what was being said in public or during Potter's Saturday talks or in the Centrepoint magazine. And those public statements are quite clearly the thin edge of a wedge. And the thick edge of that wedge is the sexual offending against children, which so many people say they weren't aware of. So I ask Peter if we can sort of take a walk along that wedge. So you knew obviously the people having sex was front of, in front of each other, because that was in the newspaper.
- [34:52]
Robert (whistleblower)
Yes, yes. And that children would see this sometimes. Yep, yep. Didn't see a problem with that then. Do now.
- [35:02]
Eugene Bingham
Next step, Bert's encouragement of sex play in kids as not only natural, but to be encouraged. You know, again, in the newspapers, surely that was visible.
- [35:12]
Robert (whistleblower)
I'm not sure that I ever saw kids doing that, but Certainly I was aware of Bert saying that next step.
- [35:19]
Eugene Bingham
Along that wedge and then 10 sex that is. Hey, you know, there are 15 year olds and if they approach you, that's not particularly a bad thing. So we've got to there.
- [35:29]
Robert (whistleblower)
Yeah, it's interesting, you know what I mean? Yeah.
- [35:31]
Eugene Bingham
So we're sort of firmly on the wedge.
- [35:33]
Robert (whistleblower)
Yeah, yes, yes.
- [35:34]
Eugene Bingham
So I guess can you step us along the wedge and tell us what you did and didn't know and. Yeah, what that process of going, shit, did I know? Did I not know? Can I comfort myself? Can I not comfort myself? Do you know what I mean?
- [35:47]
Robert (whistleblower)
Well, it's a fair enough question though I have to say I find it quite confronting. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, see, there was a long established resident who had a long term relationship with a woman who was under 16, but it was a long term loving relationship. They were together, they were a couple. I remember it crossing my mind that she was under 16, so I must have been a widow. That it was technically illegal. But I kind of saw it again in the context of social experiment. These rules of society don't obtain in the same way as, you know, up the Coromandel growing dope.
- [36:27]
Eugene Bingham
I guess this explains how you can not know something but still be quite unsurprised when all of a sudden police are arresting people and accusing them of sexual crimes against children at the place where you used to live. Because here's what Peter thought about the first sex arrests.
- [36:44]
Robert (whistleblower)
Yeah. I guess what went through my mind was. Yeah, that makes sense. That adds up. Yeah, that fits.
- [36:54]
Eugene Bingham
I mean, and just to be crystal clear, at that time, for instance, when propositioned by a 15 year old, would you have considered there anything morally problematic about you having had sex that you didn't have at that time?
- [37:07]
Robert (whistleblower)
At the time? No. That's. Yeah, and that's interesting. That's why I asked.
- [37:10]
Eugene Bingham
What about now?
- [37:11]
Robert (whistleblower)
Now I think it would be deeply problematic.
- [37:14]
Eugene Bingham
Can you name the date when you changed your mind?
- [37:20]
Robert (whistleblower)
When I had kids, probably. Yeah. That's a good question though, eh?
- [37:29]
Eugene Bingham
Would it be okay if she'd been 16?
- [37:37]
Robert (whistleblower)
Do I think that now? No, no, I don't think it would have made a difference. I mean, I think she'd have to be like 20, 21 or something.
- [37:45]
Eugene Bingham
Yeah, it's really.
- [37:47]
Robert (whistleblower)
That question really puts me on the spot though. Stuff that I found, what I plainly found acceptable because I accepted it, that occurred at Centrepoint, I now see as deeply problematic, if not outrageous and utterly unacceptable.
- [38:19]
Eugene Bingham
After the break, what do the children of Centrepoint think when we were setting up interviews for this podcast. We got a lot of help from people who had been children at Centrepoint. Many have stayed in touch with each other over the years. Others have reconnected more recently through Facebook and through a website called the Centrepoint Restoration Project. Producer Eugene and I shared our contacts through these networks and people started getting in touch with us. One of the first interviews we set up was at the Stuff offices in Auckland. The guy we were meeting was someone who'd boarded at centrepoint in the mid-90s, and from our initial chats, it seemed he had mostly positive memories. I was really interested to know how these more positive stories went, because you don't often hear them told out loud. The time came for the interview, so Eugene and I went and sat in the reception at Stuff. There are a couple of nice chairs by the window that gittle the afternoon sun. And we waited for our interviewee to walk through the lift doors. And we waited and sent a few texts and left a voicemail and waited. No dice. We'd been ghosted. And that was far from the only time that we had someone get in touch and talk to us about talking to us, only to eventually, quietly disappear. But the reason we're even bothering to tell you about these journalistic failures of ours is that even as they're ghosting us, these children of Centrepoint are actually telling us something pretty important about its legacy. There are lots of good reasons not to talk. Some Centrepoint children had a horrible time and they don't want to talk about that trauma, only natural. Others have kept their Centrepoint background quite secret because the place has a bad name and they don't want to publicly out themselves. But quite a few seem concerned mostly with how other ex Centrepointers would react if they talked to us. Because behind the scenes, not everyone agrees about what it was like to be a Centrepoint child. So one of the people who ghosted us, in the last email I got from her before she went silent, she wrote, I know a lot of the other kids from CP will defend it and I don't want to upset anyone. But then someone else I talked to was the exact opposite. She really wanted the world to know about how great her childhood there had been, but was worried about upsetting the friends of hers who she knows did suffer harm there. So what you're seeing when these different people ghost us is that, yeah, the legacy of Centerpoint is just so complicated. And people can be messed up about it and feel anxious about talking about it for entirely different reasons. Even Diametrically opposite reasons. And even for the people who have some bad memories, for better or worse, this was their home. Here's what Julian said. He's the guy who was there in the late 90s and got an LSD tab for Christmas when he was 14. It often makes me sad when I hear another book's been written, another documentary's come out, another something or other's been done, and you just kind of hear the same old things being dredged up again. He has mixed feelings about the place, but he still doesn't enjoy seeing his former home getting torn to pieces in public. There's someone else we interviewed pretty late in the piece who ummed and ahhed, then eventually agreed to talk, but using a made up name. You've heard her voice a couple of times already.
- [42:00]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Ok, for the purpose of this interview, my name's Evelyn and my father lived at Centrepoint.
- [42:05]
Eugene Bingham
For Evelyn's time at Centrepoint was the usual complicated mix, fun times with the wolf pack.
- [42:11]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There was a huge toaster that could fit about eight pieces of toast in it.
- [42:14]
Eugene Bingham
But also terrible tales about what happened when the adults weren't around.
- [42:18]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There was a little girl sitting there who had no undies on. She would have been about four or.
- [42:22]
Eugene Bingham
Five, as well as other terrible tales from when the adults were around.
- [42:26]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
He was having a threesome and the woman looked at me and said, oh, I think she's envious. I think she wants to join us. And that just. Who would say that? You know, even now it brings up feelings of just fury and disgust. I just think, and I think that's the best thing.
- [42:54]
Eugene Bingham
Evelyn wants to use a fake name because she's tied by family or by friendship to so many other Centrepoint people.
- [43:01]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
So between us all, there's probably about 20 of us who are in my family in inverted commas, so he was mine.
- [43:08]
Eugene Bingham
If you want a sense of how complicated, complicated these ties can get. Evelyn says her first serious boyfriend at Centrepoint was my half sister's half sister's half brother. And in that big, complicated web of family, some people just don't want to talk about it.
- [43:23]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
There's lots of people that I care about that still have their own process and things they're going through. And I don't want to draw attention to them or have them singled out if they don't want to come forward and tell their stories and truth, everyone's got their own opinions.
- [43:43]
Eugene Bingham
One person who understands the reluctance to Talk is Beth St. Clair.
- [43:47]
Adam Dudding
Beth St. Clair. I was a child of an early member of Centrepoint, and so saw it from pretty much the beginning right through to the end.
- [43:55]
Eugene Bingham
She saw Centrepoint up close, but in the years since, she's also studied cults in a professional capacity.
- [44:01]
Adam Dudding
I'm a psychotherapist, and I work predominantly with people who've come through trauma of various sorts.
- [44:08]
Eugene Bingham
Which means Beth has a broad perspective on the anxieties people have when talking about Centrepoint.
- [44:13]
Adam Dudding
Probably the most extreme one is people being very fearful that there'll be legal repercussions, so not wanting other people to talk because then there's a risk that something will come out and there'll be more court cases and more prison time and more people's lives damaged.
- [44:28]
Eugene Bingham
She knows of people who've lost a job because an employer read a name or saw a photo in an article.
- [44:33]
Adam Dudding
About Centrepoint, or they've lost a partner, or they've lost access to their children. There are some people who. It just feels like this huge Damocles sword hanging over their head every day of their lives that they will never.
- [44:43]
Eugene Bingham
Ever be free of, even out of the public eye. Talking about the past is perilous, says Beth. There's that web of family connections. Just think of Evelyn and her half sister's half sister's half brother. But also one person's abuser might have been another person's protector back in the day. So if you get a group of X Endpoint kids talking about, one person.
- [45:06]
Adam Dudding
Can want to talk about someone who.
- [45:09]
Eugene Bingham
Mistreated them, but to someone else in the group, that person could be a relative of theirs. And to someone else, again, that might.
- [45:17]
Adam Dudding
Be the one that made a real difference to keeping them safe and happy. And so that also shuts people up because they know that could hurt someone else. Just hearing about it, it's a minefield. I did some looking around of, like, finding out whether my family members did do anything that I should be concerned about, that I didn't know and asking around a bit. And I was relieved that some things I was worried about proved to not be true. But that sense of not even knowing, kind of whether you can trust your own family members or whether the friends you had, maybe they were great to you, but maybe they did something bad to someone else. It's very, very tangled, Very, very hard to find any way of kind of stepping forward without feeling like you're gonna trip over another line that's gonna hurt someone else.
- [46:17]
Eugene Bingham
I mentioned earlier the Centrepoint support groups that have appeared over the years. One of these is the Centrepoint Restoration Project, which was set up by a former child of Centrepoint, Caroline Ansley. Caroline appeared in a recent TV docudrama about the commune called Heaven and Hell, and she was also very helpful to us as we made this podcast. Around the time the docudrama came out, an open letter was published on Caroline's website. It was a call for former adult members of Centrepoint to acknowledge the lasting harm done to Centrepoint children. And it invited the adults to organise a collective and open response to the children. Or to oversimplify a bit, it's a request for an apology. The letter has been signed by about 50 former child or adult residents, plus another 24 people who identify as close family of former children, their partners, spouses, children. Because that's the thing. The effects of Centrepoint reach beyond the people directly involved and onto those who are close to them.
- [47:18]
Adam Dudding
Yeah, I'll get comfy.
- [47:19]
Eugene Bingham
People like Georgia Dudawood.
- [47:20]
Adam Dudding
My name is Georgia Dudawood and I've been with a child of Centrepoint for 21 years, since 2000, and we married in 2008.
- [47:30]
Eugene Bingham
Georgia grew up in Auckland, but she only had a vague idea about Centrepoint. She hadn't even realised that people had gone to prison.
- [47:37]
Adam Dudding
When I learnt that the guy that I was seeing grew up in this place called Centrepoint, I was fascinated, because in my mind, so Centrepoint was this progressive, challengingly rebellious commune where there might have been some inappropriate sexual behaviour from the adults that children witnessed, and there might have been quite a bit of marijuana, but that's about it.
- [48:06]
Eugene Bingham
She noticed some weird undercurrents in her husband's family when the subject of Centrepoint came up.
- [48:11]
Adam Dudding
We just don't mention the war, we just don't mention it. Also, the story that it wasn't that bad was constantly being strengthened by subtle and not so subtle means.
- [48:25]
Eugene Bingham
But after more than a decade of what she describes as being gaslit, she then learned more about the reality of Centrepoint from reading books like Ella James, Surviving Centrepoint, but also when her husband started telling his own story.
- [48:39]
Adam Dudding
It was heartbreaking, the anger I felt on behalf of my husband, but also the anger that I feel personally, that I was sort of taken in. I do feel a certain sense of shame that I didn't sort of. But, you know, my husband said to me more than once, but you didn't. I didn't know. I was in denial.
- [49:00]
Eugene Bingham
Georgia says her husband has struggled with addiction. She blames that on a childhood at Centrepoint, where drug consumption was normalised or even mandatory, but also on the other traumas of a Centrepoint Childhood neglect over sexualisation, mind games, the works. Georgia says her questions about it haven't gone down well with her husband's family.
- [49:21]
Adam Dudding
I was being shut down. The finger was being pointed back on my issues or my prudery or my conservatism. When I became really curious about the extent of the child abuse and whether it was just some fluid boundaries of kids witnessing sex, I was told, well, you know, you've got the problem because society's got the problem.
- [49:48]
Eugene Bingham
I gotta say, that sounds like the Centre point we've been getting to know from what George has learned. She reckons the therapeutic process at Centrepoint was weaponised.
- [50:00]
Adam Dudding
The therapist would get the information and then take it back to Bert and then Bert would actively use that. And this was children as well as adults. So I've experienced with my husband a deep seated inability actually to trust a therapist or any sort of authority figure, psychiatrist, psychologist, counsellor, whatever, because they are the rapist. You know, he said to me once, you know, oh, you know, they rape your mind and leave their residue.
- [50:41]
Eugene Bingham
Like Barbara says, everyone has a different story. But sometimes if you collect enough stories, they start to turn into statistics and statistics tell a story of their own. That 2010 Massey University study of the adult children of Centrepoint was based on interviews with 29 people. Here are some numbers from that study. One third of those interviewed described themselves as having been sexually abused at Centrepoint. About half said they'd had sex when underage. About half described having significant problems in their intimate relationships and friendships since. One third reported having trouble with alcohol or drugs. One person said they'd been hospitalised for depression. Two said they'd been hospitalised for psychotic episodes. One described themselves as a sex addict. Several talked about anxieties about being seen as sexual abusers themselves. I could go on. This was a 261 page report, but you get the picture. To understand the numbers, you zoom out. But if you really want to understand how trauma works and how memories can haunt someone, you need to zoom back in, look at the particulars. There's an incident that both Angie and her sister Renee told us about, and I think it's important remember that Angie arrived at centre point at 15, already sexually active, and by her account, pretty comfortable about that.
- [52:09]
Adam Dudding
Most of what I did was because I wanted to.
- [52:11]
Eugene Bingham
Drugs too, were familiar before she arrived and when she had the chance, she wasn't averse to using Centrepoint's really high quality ecstasy.
- [52:19]
Adam Dudding
You know, it was pure mdma and I was just like, oh, my God, that would be so Great.
- [52:24]
Eugene Bingham
But during that period in the late 80s when Potter was handing out ecstasy or LSD to large and small, small groups alike, there was one time when Potter invited Angie and her sister Renee and their other sister up to his house, the one with a whole wall. It was just a mirror. This is how Renee describes it.
- [52:44]
Adam Dudding
We were issued a capsule of mdma which we downed with a glass of water. And then we were to walk up to Bert's house. It was really strong. It was my first drop. I was 12 years old, it was my first trip. And we walked up through the nursery and I remember saying to the girls, let's just go, let's just go. We don't have. Why do we have to go up there and see him? He's gross. Let's go. We could just go and trip out in the trees and the grass and let's do it. Everything, all the colours, you know, the hallucinations were already starting to happen. I was just vibing on, being with my sisters and walking, you know, up between them up this dusty metal road, but with this looming picture of Bert sitting in his house at the top of the hill waiting for us. And that gave me a horrible feeling. And I remember that feeling even now, just that crusty, dirty old man feeling. And so we got there and we pretty much spent the whole trip in the lounge room of his house. I remember standing in front of a mirror that was wall to wall and floor to ceiling and stripping off and the three of us looking at our bodies and noticing how mine and Angie's bodies and hips and, and, and Bart and knees even were the same. So, yeah, walking around naked and Bert sitting in the corner, often just wanking and getting off on these three beautiful young women just peeling off our tits on ecstasy. There was a lot of talking, there was sex between him and my older sister Angie. There are lots of gaps in that. I think as a 12 year old I've blocked those out on purpose, locked them away. And I think, you know, we have a way of locking trauma away, things that we don't want to or don't need to or daren't examine.
- [54:42]
Eugene Bingham
Angie's memories of that day mostly match Renee's. But for the longest time she felt terrible guilt about what she remembered. She was the oldest, about 17 by this time. And although her memories were blurred, there was one moment she couldn't get past. She remembered carrying out a sex act involving a banana on her middle sister.
- [55:11]
Adam Dudding
And I had always felt guilty about that. I felt horrified. I couldn't look I could barely look my sister in the eye the whole of my life. I felt like an abuser, like a perpetrator, and I always had that fear around her that I'd abused her.
- [55:29]
Eugene Bingham
She carried this for years. But then all three sisters were interviewed by the journalist Anka Richter, who has done a huge amount of research and reporting on Centrepoint over the past decade.
- [55:41]
Adam Dudding
And we had a sharing circle and the girls shared the version of that that they remember. And I was like, no way. I thought that had gone a whole different way.
- [55:50]
Eugene Bingham
What Angie's sisters remembered was still appalling, but it was crucially different from Angie's memory, because what they remembered of the sex act and the banana was that the middle sister wasn't even involved. It was Potter who'd done it and he'd done it to Angie.
- [56:07]
Adam Dudding
And it was just like that kind of cloak of shame and guilt at perpetrating abuse dropped away. That was phenomenal because I felt like I'd seen it, you know, I felt like I'd lived it, but I was. We were absolutely high and it had gone a whole different way. And I had two people saying, no, it was this way. It was like, okay, I'll go with that one. You know, it's a lot better outcome.
- [56:47]
Eugene Bingham
Remembering and retelling the Centrepoint story often involves a lot of pain. You could argue it would be better if everyone just stopped doing it. But Barry reckons the pain is precisely the reason why it keeps getting told, why every few years there's another article or documentary or open letter or support group. That pain is why Barry continues to talk to journalists about it. When they come asking.
- [57:17]
Adam Dudding
And I know people actually say that, look, it was a long time ago. Put it away. But this is the reality. When there's pain, when there's trauma, until it's resolved, we keep getting drawn back. And so, you know, the story of Nazi Germany has not been analysed. Hasn't it been unpacked? Hasn't it been told? But it's a pain in humanity. And so we just go back there. You know, I once had an image of it. It's pain that keeps us trapped until.
- [57:52]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
We resolve that pain.
- [57:53]
Adam Dudding
We can move on a bit, then we pull back. And I just see it in therapy all the time.
- [58:00]
Eugene Bingham
You're almost like describing an eddy current in a stream. Was that sort of what you're.
- [58:05]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Yes.
- [58:06]
Eugene Bingham
Visualizing there? Yes, because you know the stream's coming down, but yes, you're trapped in this, Eddie.
- [58:11]
Adam Dudding
And then. Yes, yes, pain just circles around that.
- [58:15]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
And.
- [58:20]
Eugene Bingham
Sometimes the risks of talking about Centrepoint aren't quite what you'd expect. We haven't explained before why Robert didn't want his real name used in this podcast, because he used it and appeared on camera when talking to media years ago. But he's sick of the blowback. It doesn't seem to matter that he's clearly one of the good guys here, the whistleblower who went to police about Potter's crimes. I mean, here's what happened after he did an interview for that TV series, Beyond the Darklands.
- [58:48]
Robert (whistleblower)
I suffered abuse here called Little Girl Rooter, screaming at me coming out of the boat club.
- [58:55]
Adam Dudding
Little Girl Rooter.
- [58:57]
Eugene Bingham
Fucking Little Girl Rooter.
- [58:59]
Robert (whistleblower)
Another guy tried to king hit me while I was having a piss in the urinal and I ended up latching onto his tit. After he punched me about 20 times, Shearer fit young Shera and I bit onto his tit, big mouthful. And I never let go. And I bit till it was just about touching. I was getting quite concerned because what am I going to do, this young bastard, when there's nothing left in me mouth? And with that, his mate comes running.
- [59:31]
Eugene Bingham
Get up.
- [59:31]
Robert (whistleblower)
Get up.
- [59:32]
Adam Dudding
Look out.
- [59:32]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
He bit.
- [59:35]
Robert (whistleblower)
Come.
- [59:35]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Go.
- [59:35]
Adam Dudding
Leave me alone.
- [59:36]
Robert (whistleblower)
I'm not pretty far. You're not going to carry on. Nobody's had another go.
- [59:56]
Eugene Bingham
In March 1999, Herbert Thomas Potter, a frail 73 year old convicted sex offender, returned to live at the Centrepoint community. In his time in prison, he'd had a couple of heart attacks and a tooth knocked out by an inmate. He was suffering from arthritis. Journalists asked him for interviews and of course, he obliged. He said that in his time as the commune's guru, he had harmed nobody and he owed nobody an apology. He said sex between an adult and child could be a very healthy thing. He said he wouldn't do it again, but only because it was illegal and he didn't want to go back to prison. He actually did go back to prison briefly, because he breached the parole condition that he have no contact with children. But then he returned to the commune when the Centrepoint Trust was wound up. He left with his $49,000 payout, eventually living alone in a pensioner flat. From time to time, someone in the media would track him down again. They'd usually ask him if he'd had any second thoughts or regrets about the choices he'd made and the crimes he'd committed. He never had. Over the years, it became apparent that he was suffering from dementia. He moved to a rest home. He had a Fall and was admitted to hospital and died there on the 6th of May 2012. He was 86. Remember from the start of the podcast, Angie was in a supermarket when she heard that Bert had died.
- [61:27]
Adam Dudding
I felt like I was stepping out of this long, dark, black cloak that stretched back through matter and time. I hadn't realised how deep those hooks were into me.
- [61:40]
Eugene Bingham
And Renee, when Angie texted me and.
- [61:43]
Adam Dudding
Told me that he was dead, I had a party. I had a party that night.
- [61:49]
Eugene Bingham
At the funeral, Potter's son, John Potter, delivered the eulogy. Like his father, John Potter had served a prison sentence for child sex offences. A lot of what John Potter said was affectionate praise. His father was fearless and someone with special talents. He had a complete disrespect for authority and saw himself as a revolutionary. John Potter said, more than anyone else in the world, Bert has made me the man I am and I honour him for everything he passed on to me. Sharing my life with Bert has been a wild and exciting ride at times, and I consider myself blessed to have had him as a dad. But within the eulogy, there was also an apology. We've got an actor to read this bit for us. By committing himself to a radical ideology promoting the sexual liberation of children, Bert got it badly wrong and people were damaged as a result. Sadly, he never accepted his social experiment failed in this respect and he believed to the end that he had done no harm. As one of the other residents of Centrepoint, however, I have to accept just as much responsibility as him for creating and maintaining an environment where children were not protected from deluded adults. He didn't make me do it. I sincerely apologise to anyone hurt by either my actions or inactions. And if I can now finally presumed to speak on Dad's behalf, I apologise for him as well. I hope his demise will bring some closure to those with unresolved issues. Of course, despite John Potter's hopes, Bert's death didn't really bring closure. Time and again, Centrepoint's survivors keep getting drawn back to the pain, picking at the scab, retelling the stories in the hope that they'll start to make sense. That open letter I mentioned, the one that was recently published on the Centrepoint Restoration Project's website, calling for a response from the Centrepoint adults that came out while we were still doing interviews for this podcast. So as we called around. Hello, Henry, it's Adam.
- [64:14]
Robert (whistleblower)
Hello.
- [64:15]
Eugene Bingham
Is this so? Yeah, we. Basically, that call for a fresh apology was one of the things we were asking about children. They're saying that. That they're looking for that apology. You know, what do you think about. But as you know from the previous.
- [64:27]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Episode, I'm not available right at the moment. I'm not going to get into anything else.
- [64:31]
Adam Dudding
Okay, Adam, look, I think that's enough.
- [64:33]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I wouldn't trust you with a parasite. Sorry. Bye.
- [64:37]
Eugene Bingham
Okay, well, I. Yeah, we didn't get very far. Cheers, Ian. Okay, thanks. Listen, I'll leave you to your day. Bye. But then we tried one more number. That's recording. That's recording. We weren't holding our breath and nobody answered. But then, to our surprise, they called back.
- [65:00]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Hello? Hello? Hello. Hello.
- [65:02]
Eugene Bingham
Is this. This person?
- [65:04]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
This is.
- [65:05]
Eugene Bingham
Was willing to talk. Of all the people at Centrepoint who are convicted of sexual crimes against children, this is the only one who agreed. Agreed to stay on the line when we called and to answer our questions. She said she'd talk only if we agreed not to use her name. So we haven't. I started by asking about that open letter some of the children of Centrepoint making that recent request for an apology by Centrepoint adults.
- [65:36]
Robert (whistleblower)
Have you.
- [65:36]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I'm absolutely prepared to apologise to anyone at any time. In fact, I have put that out for many times. Never been taken up on it. I am absolutely happy to apologize for my part in enabling. I do believe that sexual abuse went on there and I enabled it by not speaking out.
- [65:57]
Eugene Bingham
Okay.
- [65:58]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
But I also pleaded guilty to charges, not all of which were true, but I pleaded guilty anyway. A lot of what the children say is exaggerated in some cases, but it's their story and they're living with that story, and I'm very sorry about that, but I can't go back and change things. And if any of them want to confront me, I'm very happy to do so. But not with the media present.
- [66:29]
Adam Dudding
Sure.
- [66:30]
Eugene Bingham
What did you plead guilty to?
- [66:32]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I was charged with sexual assault with two teenagers.
- [66:35]
Eugene Bingham
Right.
- [66:37]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
One of which was completely and utterly untrue. And the other one, I was in the same beard as my partner and a teenager, and I pleaded guilty and I spent time. So I feel like, you know, I pleaded guilty. I've done time. What else do they want from it? You know, all this stuff is like, if I'd murdered somebody, I would be better off now than what's happening to me because it just goes on and on and on. And I feel I'm totally persecuted and my family's totally persecuted, my grandchildren persecuted, because they all hate the ongoing stuff.
- [67:15]
Eugene Bingham
Did you apologise to the victims in those Cases that you pleaded guilty to.
- [67:20]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I wasn't allowed to even speak to them. Right, right. But I pleaded guilty. That was the best I could do.
- [67:26]
Eugene Bingham
Let's just pause for a second. We've checked the court files, and indeed, this woman pleaded guilty and went to jail. And her version of events back then was pretty similar to what she's saying to us now. That in one case, she was simply in the bed alongside her partner and the teenager. And in the other case, she totally denies the accusation and only pleaded guilty to spare the girl the ordeal of a trial. And what did the victims say back then? Then, in the first case, the victim told police she was in bed with this woman and the woman's partner on numerous occasions, starting when she was 14 years old, and that while the man performed oral sex on her, the woman would touch her breasts. In the other case, the one which our caller flatly denies, the victim says she was 12 years old when the woman and her partner took her to bed. She says while the man before performed oral sex on her, the woman kissed her breasts. Okay, back to the call. With that sort of acceptance that there was child sexual abuse, Is that something that you accepted back at the time of the court cases, or have you. Has that been more of a dawning?
- [68:35]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I took my part in it, but over the years, I've come to see how many children were abused. I've come to see, you know, what a pretty sad picture it is. Yes. And I've had counselling for the last three years on this. It's very painful for a generation of children who were at Centrepoint and who had a good time there, and they don't speak out because they're ashamed to be associated with the place. They just find it a real struggle that they're lumped in with those that were abused. You know, it's haunting them, even though they're not a victim and not a. A perpetrator.
- [69:20]
Eugene Bingham
Do you feel the positives of Centerpoint outweigh the negatives?
- [69:25]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Oh, God, I've no idea. It would absolutely depend on who you were talking to. I mean, for me, it was an amazing experience. There would probably be 90% of, you know, good times for me personally. But this morning, you know, I woke up thinking, oh, God, you know, my life's just a total sham. You know, what I was supposed to have been doing, thinking it was good, is, you know, just wiped out because there was this sexual abuse that was horrific. But, of course, it was such different times. I don't think I even thought about the. What do you call it? The age of consent was such a different time. You know, I knew child, adult child stuff was appalling and I would have spoken out a lot more if I hadn't been under the influence of guru, probably. But I didn't know a lot of what of that that went on, you know, some of that went on behind closed doors. I didn't know about it, but for me, you know, it was an amazing. I learned an amazing lot. I'd tried marriage, I'd tried career, I'd tried children. Life was a bit empty. And that was the most exciting thing that was happening in Auckland at the time. And I went there because it was just an exciting, fun, communal place to live. And I believed in communal living. I thought that was with how we should live. I still do, but it's hard to get to because the pressures of society and how we're supposed to live. I mean, the nuclear family is a total disaster. Probably a far bigger disaster. Well, yeah, it's a big disaster anyway. We were just a group that got together to begin with to live together because community seemed a good idea. And over the time, Bert took his power and we gave it to him.
- [71:30]
Eugene Bingham
Do you regret that handing of power to Bert?
- [71:33]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. You know, I'm just shocked and saddened that I didn't speak out a hell of a lot more. I did, but far too late.
- [71:44]
Eugene Bingham
I ask about Potter and the mind games he used to play under the guise of therapy. How did those things at the time, did it feel like that it was manipulative or destructive? Or did it feel like it was, you know, interesting games and experiments?
- [72:00]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Oh, golly. Because I'm a tough, strong person. It probably felt like, you know, sort of experiments, but I think for some it was pretty bad. You'd get the whole gamut, I think.
- [72:16]
Eugene Bingham
When were you last living at Centrepoint?
- [72:20]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
I left in 93, I think.
- [72:22]
Eugene Bingham
Did you return to the community after your jail term?
- [72:25]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Very briefly. And realised, there's no way I could live there. I had nowhere to go, you know, you had no money. So I went back there hoping, because my dream had been to live there in my old age with people I loved and knew. But it was a total disaster. It was chaos and messy and I got out as soon as I could. It's a pity, you know, in a movie like that, what came out the other day, you know, showed the shocking horror of those girls memories. But it's not a. And I don't know how you'll ever get a real picture of the place because as you found out, a lot of people don't want to speak up because it has so many repercussions and it gets tied to all the bad publicity that's come out. I've lost jobs over it. My friends had lost jobs over having their names attached to it. It's like a whole round of second punishment. I cannot say good things about the place because then I'm in denial of all the bad things. I'm really caught between a rock and a hard place.
- [73:29]
Eugene Bingham
Do you know if there are any people left with, you know, a history at Centre Point who would still argue that what happened wasn't sexual abuse?
- [73:42]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Wasn't sexual abuse. Do I know anybody who says there was no sexual abuse at Centrepoint?
- [73:48]
Adam Dudding
Correct.
- [73:49]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Do I know anybody well or know of anybody? I don't know. Because if there were, I wouldn't be talking to them. You know, there's only a small group of people that I now mix with and none of us, we would all agree probably that Bert's paedophile and it was horrific what went down. We've all got children from that place. There may have been people who were, you know, agreeing with them at the time. I wouldn't be surprised that most of them have moved on. Anyway, I need to go, Adam. There's people coming here very shortly and I need to prepare a little bit.
- [74:22]
Adam Dudding
So.
- [74:26]
Eugene Bingham
The caller has to go. Later that day, she contacts us through a friend and she says she might be prepared to do a proper sit down interview. But a few days later, she says she's taken advice and changed her mind. So what you've just heard was the only chance we got to talk. Thanks very much.
- [74:43]
Evelyn (anonymous interviewee)
Yeah, okay, bye bye.
- [74:51]
Eugene Bingham
It's a shame we didn't get that follow up conversation. There are things we could have dug into. Like when she said the age of consent hadn't seemed important because the late 70s were such different times. I mean, different how exactly? Sex with children was just as illegal then as it is now. Which is why police people like Dean Thomas were investigating the place right from the early years. But it's like so much of the Centrepoint story, not everything always lines up. There are still some competing versions out there about what happened, about what it meant, and what happens next. I guess the version we've got closest to in this podcast is this one. Once upon a time, there was a nice Presbyterian girl who set up one commune, then left it to help set up another. Only the second one was directed by a charismatic ex salesman and he preached about radical Honesty and free love and some ideas he'd picked up after reading a Playboy article. Yes, I suppose the nice Presbyterian girl edited a magazine of the man's words of wisdom, which were actually a mix of smug truisms and random information from the newspaper and some not very subtle promotion of paedophilia. And slowly, way too slowly, she realized she was in a cult. They were all in a cult, and this cult was doing bad things, and she should stop it. For a long time, she tried things that didn't really work. Committees and a hui and quiet, respectful conversations within the commune. Then she watched as her guru and some of his acolytes went to prison.
- [76:31]
Adam Dudding
Yeah, she left.
- [76:34]
Eugene Bingham
Then from the outside, she watched as some of these people went straight back to the commune. So she worked to destroy it, using the law of trusts and agitating behind the scenes. And finally, finally, she and others brought Centrepoint down.
- [76:51]
Adam Dudding
Yes, yes, yes.
- [76:52]
Eugene Bingham
In the years that followed, she worked as a counsellor, helping people who had escaped from other cults. She called this the work of the wounded healer. Later still, when her former guru died, she didn't go to the funeral. She had a friend, though, who went to see the body, just to make sure. There's one more story Barry told us about something that happened while she was still in Centrepoint.
- [77:36]
Adam Dudding
I had an LSD trip. It was a solo trip. I mean, that's crazy. That's not how. How you do it in therapy. You have a guide with you. But this was totally on my own.
- [77:49]
Eugene Bingham
Barry says the thing about LSD is that it allows you to really focus on something, almost tunnel vision, so you can ask the drug to help you figure something out.
- [78:00]
Adam Dudding
So I just took in this question, well, who am I? Because by then Bert was in prison and everything was falling apart, and I was in this dilemma. So who am I? Who am I? Just going, you know, seeing myself as a mother, that's not totally it. Seeing myself as a sexual woman, that's not totally it.
- [78:21]
Eugene Bingham
She kept digging, trying identities on for.
- [78:24]
Adam Dudding
Size, going down all these different layers and facets of who I could be and just getting to this. I'm a person who creates order out of chaos, over and over again. And actually, that has stopped. Date with Me.
- [79:18]
Eugene Bingham
That was the final episode of the Commune, a Stuff production. It was researched, written and produced by Eugene Bingham and me, Adam Dudding, mixing by Andrew McDowell at Digicake Music by Audio Network Seeing this is the last episode, we also want to mention some of the Stuff colleagues who've helped make this podcast possible. Script Editing by Michael Wright Illustration by Phil Johnson Digital design by Seungmi Kim Research assistants from Lesley Longstaff stuff's project director is John Hardefeld. The legal team is Genevieve o' Halloran and Courtney Grenfell. Administration assistants from Sky, Austin Martin. The commissioning editors were Carol Hirschfeld, Patrick Crutzen and Mark Stevens. Voice actors were Katrina, Suzanne, Noah, Kieran, Ruth, Graham, Luke, Louis, Xoanne, Michael, Alex, David and Jack. Thanks Etifano and thanks especially to all the people who agreed to talk to us about Centrepoint. You've heard a lot of them in the podcast, but there were many more whose insights and help were invaluable. Ngmihinui Keaakoutau for more information about the show, head to Stuff Co NZ thecommune thanks for listening to the Commune. We hope you liked it. If you're looking for another series to listen to, we recommend the Bet, which is the latest podcast from the Commune's producers, Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham. The Bet is pretty different from the Commune. It's a series of powerful and raw first person accounts from people who've gone through the hell of gambling addiction. But if you enjoyed the Commune, we suspect you'll find this one pretty fascinating too. You can find it by searching for the BET on Apple podcasts.