Gloriavale leader Howard Temple 'did not grope', lawyer says
Photo:
The Press/Kai Schwoerer
The Greymouth District Court will hear more evidence from women accusing
Gloriavale leader Howard Temple
of sexual offending today, as the judge alone trial continues.
Temple is
facing 24 charges
of indecent assault and doing an indecent act to nine women who ranged in age from nine to 20 years old when the offending took place, between 1997 and 2022.
The crown said the crimes occurred in the kitchen, dining hall and a men's bathroom at the commune, which is located about 60 kilometres from Greymouth, at Lake Haupiri.
The crown alleges the defendant would prey on the young women, stroking their legs, grabbing them around the waist or by their dresses as they served food, or while working in the kitchen, grabbing them from behind, kissing them on the neck or groping them.
Temple, 85, has pleaded not guilty. He acknowledges kissing and hugging some of the complainants, but denies any of it was indecent.
His lawyer, Michael Vesty, said Temple - and other leaders - would merely acknowledge the young women's work with an "affectionate hug".
He describe the gestures as demonstrations of "gratitude and support that were acceptable conduct in the day to day life of the community", and said Temple "did not grope, did not grab, did not linger".
On Monday, the court heard from one of the nine complainants.
The woman, who has name suppression, told the court of working in the kitchen and dining hall from the time she was a primary school aged child.
A videotaped police interview from 2015 was played to the court before the woman took the stand and told of being touched, grabbed, groped and harassed by Temple and other men at Gloriavale.
She talked of strategies women and girls used to try to avoid the worst of the harassment, or avoid being vulnerable to assault.
The complainant, who was born at Gloriavale and left when she was in her late 20s, described a culture of fear and victim blaming.
During her time there, "if any issues happened, say between a married man and a single woman, or two single people even, the women were always at fault".
"The man's wife was at fault because she obviously wasn't doing the right thing to keep her husbands eyes only on her, and the girl who had been abused was at fault because she had also tempting him."
Anything from showing too much hair under their headscarf to wearing ankle socks to tying their belts incorrectly was considered rebellious or "worldly", and an attempt to attract men's attention.
Telling anyone could have meant being shamed, isolated, or prevented from marrying, and there was no one to confide in, because "it's everybody's job to dob everybody else in".
During cross examination, Vesty indicated he will call a number of witnesses to attest the woman had a friendly and warm relationship with Temple, and would sometimes instigate hugs herself, which she denied.
The defence spent some time dissecting letters Temple had sent the then-teenager while he was in
India setting up another community
, often addressing her as his favourite girlfriend.
The woman said the letters were inappropriate in their language and tone, coming from the group's leader to a teenager.
But Temple's lawyer's Michael Vesty said the letters show genuine pastoral concern.
The crown intends to call some of the other complainants as well as two of the police officers involved in the case.
The trial is set down for two weeks.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Bangladesh-born Jahangir Alam's 25 years of passport fraud and sham marriage land him record jail term
Photo: RNZ A man who pretended to be his brother for 25 years and entered a sham marriage to get citizenship has been handed the longest jail term in New Zealand history for passport fraud. Bangladesh-born Jahangir Alam - whose true name is not known - was found guilty of 29 offences, which included applying for visas for his wife and mother with his false identity, earlier this year. He was jailed for four years at the Auckland District Court on Friday for producing forged documents, supplying false information and using a false passport, where the judge Peter Winter denounced the two-decade long passport and immigration fraud. "The initial identity fraud offending progressed and continued to mushroom from there," said Winter. "It was complex, premeditated and longstanding. The duration and scale of the offending is considerable." His 45-year-old wife, Taj Parvin Shilpi, who was sentenced to 12 months' home detention, was "fully aware" of the fraud, he said, as they were cousins who had lived in the same village growing up. The Te Atatu couple have a 21-year-old son, a university student who was 'entirely blameless' said Winter, having arrived with his mother as a four-year-old in 2008. He became a citizen as the child of a New Zealander. Alam went on to become president of the Bangladesh Association of New Zealand Inc (BANZI), in which he helped up to 80 people applying for passports. Bangladesh had no consulate in New Zealand and Alam, through BANZI, had helped with paperwork, passports and stamps. There was no suggestion any of those passports were false. The judge was asked to take his work in helping others into account as community service when looking at whether Alam's sentence could be discounted. Winter said it was a "form of arrogance" that someone who was illegally in the country, and who had standing in the Bengali community, was dealing with other people's passports. He refused to reduce his sentence for that, or for Alam being of good character. Alam's age and true identity remain unknown, but he is believed to be the 50-year-old older brother of John Alam, who lives in the US. How he adopted his brother's identity and came to possess the Bangladeshi passport that got him to New Zealand is not clear, but authorities found he lived in Japan in the 1990s, before returning home and setting off for Auckland. He became a taxi driver and entered a 'marriage of convenience' with a New Zealand woman - they separated shortly after he got his residence. He told a jury earlier this year that they split because of differences over her 'lifestyle' but claimed that it was a genuine partnership. Having become a citizen, married Shilpi and had a son, he could still not complete his fraud, as Immigration New Zealand initially rejected her visa application because of discepancies in the interviews staff had with the husband and wife. But she arrived in 2008 on the first of a number of visas - her application for residence was rejected as her health was deemed too poor. Alam had also tried to get his mother a visitor visa, but that too had been declined. Shilpi, who suffers from hypertension and diabetes, was "aware that he was not the person who he claimed to be, and was aware from the very beginning", said Winter. The jury had not believed her version that the couple did not meet until after his New Zealand marriage failed. Immigration New Zealand welcomed the record prison sentence, and said it was a complex investigation that took six years to complete. Shilpi has only been on temporary visas and her last visitor visa has expired. Alam's case will be referred to Internal Affairs, which is in charge of passports and citizenship. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Passport fraud and sham marriage land Jahangir Alam record jail term
Photo: RNZ A man who pretended to be his brother for 25 years and entered a sham marriage to get citizenship has been handed the longest jail term in New Zealand history for passport fraud. Bangladesh-born Jahangir Alam - whose true name is not known - was found guilty of 29 offences, which included applying for visas for his wife and mother with his false identity, earlier this year. He was jailed for four years at the Auckland District Court on Friday for producing forged documents, supplying false information and using a false passport, where the judge Peter Winter denounced the two-decade long passport and immigration fraud. "The initial identity fraud offending progressed and continued to mushroom from there," said Winter. "It was complex, premeditated and longstanding. The duration and scale of the offending is considerable." His 45-year-old wife, Taj Parvin Shilpi, who was sentenced to 12 months' home detention, was "fully aware" of the fraud, he said, as they were cousins who had lived in the same village growing up. The Te Atatu couple have a 21-year-old son, a university student who was 'entirely blameless' said Winter, having arrived with his mother as a four-year-old in 2008. He became a citizen as the child of a New Zealander. Alam went on to become president of the Bangladesh Association of New Zealand Inc (BANZI), in which he helped up to 80 people applying for passports. Bangladesh had no consulate in New Zealand and Alam, through BANZI, had helped with paperwork, passports and stamps. There was no suggestion any of those passports were false. The judge was asked to take his work in helping others into account as community service when looking at whether Alam's sentence could be discounted. Winter said it was a "form of arrogance" that someone who was illegally in the country, and who had standing in the Bengali community, was dealing with other people's passports. He refused to reduce his sentence for that, or for Alam being of good character. Alam's age and true identity remain unknown, but he is believed to be the 50-year-old older brother of John Alam, who lives in the US. How he adopted his brother's identity and came to possess the Bangladeshi passport that got him to New Zealand is not clear, but authorities found he lived in Japan in the 1990s, before returning home and setting off for Auckland. He became a taxi driver and entered a 'marriage of convenience' with a New Zealand woman - they separated shortly after he got his residence. He told a jury earlier this year that they split because of differences over her 'lifestyle' but claimed that it was a genuine partnership. Having become a citizen, married Shilpi and had a son, he could still not complete his fraud, as Immigration New Zealand initially rejected her visa application because of discepancies in the interviews staff had with the husband and wife. But she arrived in 2008 on the first of a number of visas - her application for residence was rejected as her health was deemed too poor. Alam had also tried to get his mother a visitor visa, but that too had been declined. Shilpi, who suffers from hypertension and diabetes, was "aware that he was not the person who he claimed to be, and was aware from the very beginning", said Winter. The jury had not believed her version that the couple did not meet until after his New Zealand marriage failed. Immigration New Zealand welcomed the record prison sentence, and said it was a complex investigation that took six years to complete. Shilpi has only been on temporary visas and her last visitor visa has expired. Alam's case will be referred to Internal Affairs, which is in charge of passports and citizenship. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
9 hours ago
- RNZ News
Police monitoring hundreds of street racers in Wellington's Spotlight carpark
Police are monitoring a gathering involving hundreds of cars and people. Photo: RNZ / Mark Stevens Police are monitoring a large gathering of what RNZ understands to be street racers in Wellington. A witness said hundreds of cars and people were gathered in the Spotlight carpark on Hutt Road on Friday evening. Several police were also in attendance. Police said they were monitoring the gathering, but no issues had been reported so far.
