Sins of the Father Read online

  ‘Phil Cooper was eleven years old when he began to understand that his father meant to bend him to his will.’

  Charismatic, driven and self-righteous Neville Cooper set up his own brand of Christian utopia on earth: a reclusive community on the West Coast of New Zealand. For the 400 inhabitants of Gloriavale, his word is law – despite his 1995 conviction for sexual abuse.

  Phil Cooper, as headstrong as his father, had to escape. But Phil’s wife Sandy was bound to the will of Neville and his brand of eternal salvation.

  And so began the monumental tug-of-war between father and son: a son who wanted to give his children a chance in the world.

  This is a true story of power and control, of abductions and night raids, of hearts broken and those trying to mend. It’s also the story of the long shadow cast by the unyielding vision of one man, and the hope and resolve of one family to restore its shattered past.

  Proceeds from the sale of Sins of the Father will go towards the establishment of a charitable trust. This trust will assist individuals and families who leave the Gloriavale community and wish to be repatriated into society.

  Sins of the Father is based on actual events, however in some cases names and timelines have been altered for confidentiality purposes.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Family Tree

  Map

  Introduction

  Preface by Israel Cooper

  1 Beginnings

  2 The Evolution to Community

  3 Marriage and Family Life

  4 Juggling Family and Business

  5 Desperation

  6 Extreme Measures

  7 ‘I promise we’ll get her out.’

  8 A Taste of Paradise

  9 Mystical Place Among the Stars

  10 Some Answers

  11 Life in a New Country

  12 A Revelation

  13 Dark Days

  14 Chaos of the Teen Years

  15 Changing Direction

  16 Escape from Gloriavale

  17 Fallout

  18 Reaching Out

  19 A New Generation

  20 Time for Reflection

  Acknowledgements

  Plates

  About the Author

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  At the age of 27, father of five, Phil Cooper, walked away from the religious community his father Neville had created and still controls 20 years later. This is Phil’s story and the story of his seven children, their mother Sandra, and their struggles to live in a family that’s split between the outside world and what is now called the Gloriavale Christian Community.

  Early in his life, Phil had no choice about belonging to the strict, fundamentalist religious cult. His father required obedience from his children and Phil was a young teenager when Neville began the process of drawing his followers apart from the world.

  Neville first established his community in rural Springbank in Canterbury, near the small township of Cust. Followers were attracted by his growing reputation as a charismatic preacher and a true man of God. Gradually he pulled them away from mainstream religious practice. By the late 1980s all were living communally in purpose-built accommodation on the small farm owned by his eldest daughter and her husband.

  Within a few years, the community had bought hundreds of hectares of land at Haupiri on the West Coast, inland from Greymouth. Neville called this property Gloriavale in honour of his wife Gloria who died in 1991. When an adjoining farm was bought he called it Glen Hopeful after himself, having changed his name by deed poll from Neville Cooper to Hopeful Christian.

  Phil left the community late in 1989 while it was still at Springbank and not as isolated as at remote Haupiri. Gloriavale, now twice the size of the founding community, has developed somewhat different structures to organise its 400 people. Gloriavale owns considerably more land and operates a variety of industries. It is not known whether the dark history of the Springbank days is being repeated in Gloriavale. People who have connections with it believe not; Phil hopes they are right.

  In 2008 Phil and Israel, his eldest son, decided it was time to tell their story, and I was approached to help them do it.

  FLEUR BEALE

  What We Believe was written and published by the Christian Church at Springbank, First edition, The Eight Month, 1989. The book, researched and written by Fervent Stedfast who is second in command of Gloriavale, sets out the way its members should live, what they should believe, and how they should behave. It has the same importance as the Bible and is Neville Cooper’s interpretation of the Bible.

  PREFACE

  by Israel Cooper

  Many of the stories told in these pages are of our childhood. We have tried to be as accurate as possible but we realize that memory is an elusive thing. The broad strokes are what happened and the details are as true as we could make them.

  My early life was spent in an environment where people willingly surrendered their freedom of choice to my grandfather, ceding to this powerful and charismatic evangelist the power to chart the course of their lives. Our family history, including as it does wrecked lives as well as stories of triumph, testifies to the preciousness of the freedom to choose one’s own path. My brothers, sisters, and I never take our own freedom of choice for granted.

  We have learned that the most powerful thing we can do is to make a conscious decision not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In the world, this is what makes heroes. It changes destinies and transforms generations. In a single moment, a single choice can stop thousands of years of history repeating. It can change lives, restore families, and bring prosperity. It is a wonderful and powerful gift to have.

  My single biggest concern with the Gloriavale Christian Community and its predecessor at Springbank where I spent the first years of my life, is that it takes away or limits that freedom. Through fear it removes freedom of choice, the ability to choose your destiny, the opportunity to fail and learn from your mistakes, and most importantly, to be able to choose to love unconditionally.

  For giving me that most powerful gift of freedom I will always be incredibly thankful to my father. Knowing how precious this gift is, and the price that both my parents have paid for it, has awakened me to the power and responsibility I now have. I can choose justice or mercy; I can choose to forgive. I can choose to make my life happy and fulfilled; I can choose to love and be loved.

  Most importantly I can choose to end the sins of my father and my father’s father, and I can choose to give the gift of choice, its possibilities and responsibilities, to my own son.

  Neither I nor my siblings want another generation to have to endure the consequences of the heartbreaking decisions our own parents were forced to make. Both of them believed utterly in the rightness of their decisions and we honour, respect and love them for having the courage to act in accordance with their beliefs.

  I wish too to honour our mother’s integrity for making a decision she believed with her heart and soul to be the only one she could make for the salvation of her children. She lost the freedom to be our mother, but her daily prayers that we would find faith have not been in vain. Perhaps paradoxically we have come to our faith because of the decisions both our parents made.

  To Mum, Dawn and Cherish; our story may already be half written, but the future is still ours to write. One day we will be in each others’ arms again. Love from your family.

  CHAPTER ONE: BEGINNINGS

  Christian children should honour and obey their Christian parents in all things. This they should do all the days of their lives, even when they themselves become adults.

  WHAT WE BELIEVE, P. 69

  Phil Cooper was 11 years old when he began t
o understand that his father meant to bend him to his will. Over 30 years later, the memory of what happened that day is sharp and clear.

  The family was on holiday in Queenstown, and the setting was idyllic with the lake reflecting the mountains and the jewel-blue sky. It was the first holiday in years for the large Cooper family and Phil had looked forward to it for weeks, saving up his pocket money to spend in the shops. The Cooper kids didn’t normally go much further afield than their home in Rangiora in Canterbury where their father Neville preached and headed his ministry, so for Phil the prospect of going to the shops and spending his 20 dollars was as exciting as going to Disneyland.

  The family arrived in Queenstown, settled in to the caravan and Neville decided to give his wife a rest: he would cook the dinner. He gathered up three of his sons. ‘Let’s go shopping, boys.’

  They got to the butchery but Neville didn’t have enough money so he turned to Phil. ‘Son, have you got any money?’

  Phil told him no, he didn’t. What happened next will stay with him forever.

  Neville said, ‘Yes you have. You’re a selfish little boy.’ He pushed his son away from him. ‘You are not part of this family.’

  Phil burst into tears and tore out of the shop. He had no idea where he was going, not even what he was doing. He ended up sitting down at the wharf, sobbing. After a while he went looking for his dad, found him walking along with the other two boys, and handed over all his money. Neville took it without saying a word. Phil had complied with his father’s will and was accepted back into the family.

  For Phil, the incident revealed where he stood in relation to his dad, and part of him knew even then that he’d have to stand on his own feet if he wanted to survive, that he would have to separate himself from his father. The scene remains one of his most vivid memories. You are not part of this family still plays in his head, and he can still see himself running.

  From that time on, he began to dream of freedom. The harsh discipline of his life was nothing new, but that incident caused him to examine his position with regard to his father. It was a defining moment, the first of many incidents revealing that his father’s love was conditional on total obedience.

  Neville had always been a strict disciplinarian, and harder on his sons than his daughters. Faith, the eldest of the 15 children who survived to adulthood, loved and admired him. He didn’t speak much about his own Australian childhood, only telling his children that he’d had to leave school at 12 to work in his father’s fruit shop. Mr Cooper senior was a hard man, who threw Neville out of home when he was 16, probably as a consequence of the clash of two strong personalities. Neville stayed more or less estranged from his family thereafter, and although his mother visited regularly when Neville and his own family lived in Queensland, his children never had anything to do with their two aunts or heard much about their father’s brother who was killed in World War Two. Neville also served in the armed forces, joining the air force at some stage, but didn’t serve overseas since the war finished before his training was completed.

  The family mythology is of the young Neville running out of control, or at least living a less-than-desirable lifestyle until he was 21, when he experienced his conversion to Christianity. He seems to have been in steady work as an apprentice panel beater, and he was a keen sportsman, becoming a talented rugby league player despite his short stature.

  His children don’t know the circumstances surrounding their father’s conversion to Christianity but they do know that the experience was profound and life changing. He became a regular church-goer which is how he met Gloria, a quiet, gentle girl whom he married in 1949 when she was 16 and he 21. Faith, the first of their 16 children, was born in 1952, and was followed quickly by four more daughters all named for the virtues: Grace, Hope, Mercy and Charity.

  Neville became a preacher at the age of 23 and set himself up as a travelling evangelist in order to bring the word of God to as many people as possible. He was young, bounding with energy, utterly convinced of his beliefs, and so charismatic that he swept people along with the power and conviction of his message. He was a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher whose mission was to rid the world of sin. Bringing the word of God to the masses was what mattered to him and he lived his beliefs, espousing strong moral and family values. He preached from a marquee, calling his ministry the Voice of Deliverance, and as his reputation as a dynamic evangelist grew, the invitations to speak increased. He would pack up the marquee and drive, or later pilot his own plane, to venues throughout New South Wales and Queensland.

  Life for Gloria can’t have been easy. Her husband was a good provider but he didn’t have a steady job because he was away preaching, sometimes for weeks at a time, on his tent campaigns. She would be alone with her young family and solely responsible for supervising their correspondence schooling. She would not have complained or even wished for things to be different. It was her duty as a wife to be subservient to her husband, obey his commands, and bear and care for his children.

  When he was home, Neville would take any paid work he could find, panel beating when it was available but something else if it wasn’t. During a stint as a sewing machine salesman he taught himself to sew, using this skill at home to make pretty dresses for his small daughters.

  In those early years, the family moved house regularly, sometimes in response to churches inviting Neville to do speaking tours, and sometimes because he had fallen out with the pastor of the local church Gloria and the children were attending.

  By June 1959, Neville had completed converting an old bus into a three-roomed home in which he meant to tour Australia, but three days after Faith’s seventh birthday disaster struck. It was winter, but the bus was warm and baby Charity was tucked up in the bedroom at the rear. Much to the delight of the four older girls, the pet rabbit was hopping around the floor of the living room, but suddenly it knocked against the heater, spilling kerosene onto the floor. Gloria grabbed a cloth to clean it up, but the friction must have ignited a spark: the rabbit caught fire and fled, tearing around the small room, setting alight furnishings as it tried to escape. The place was an inferno, with the door to the back room where the baby was asleep impassable. Neville and Gloria grabbed the four older girls, and raced outside where Neville hammered at the rear window till it smashed and he was able to snatch the baby to safety.

  The family were now destitute, with no money, no belongings, and only the clothes they were wearing. A church in Maryborough north of Brisbane heard of their plight and invited Neville there to preach. They had a house available for his family, too. This was the furthest the family had ever moved, but at least they had nothing to pack and arrived at their new home unencumbered by luggage. Immediately Neville found work and began the slow process of building up their belongings again, alongside his preaching schedule. Soon after their arrival, he went to an auction hoping to buy cheap furniture for their bare home, but an old piano caught his eye. Despite arguing with himself that a piano didn’t feature on his list of essentials, there was something compelling about it and by the end of the day he found himself owning the ancient, battered instrument. He got it home and for some reason opened the back, where he discovered a wad of bank notes. By the look of them they’d been there for years and there were a lot of them – 800 pounds in all. It was a fortune but Neville was a scrupulously honest man and so made strenuous efforts to track down the rightful owner. The auction house told him the piano had come from a deceased estate, and no, there were no heirs. That wasn’t enough for Neville and he tried for several months to find somebody legally entitled to the money. When nobody came forward, he finally accepted that it was his and used it to set up his family.

  The association with the Maryborough church didn’t last. It’s unclear now what caused the breakdown, but Faith suspects there was probably wrong on both sides. In 1962 Neville moved his family to Brisbane where they lived in a war pension house. By now Gloria had given birth to John and Mark, with Philip born shortly
after the move to Brisbane.

  The pattern of moving house continued. In each new area Neville would find a suitable church for his family to join, usually Four Square or Assembly of God congregations, which he, too, would attend when he was at home. By now his reputation as an inspirational preacher had spread throughout Australia and New Zealand. He left his family for three months when he was invited to tour New Zealand, and as had happened in Australia, crowds clamoured to hear his vision of a world based on biblical foundations.

  Back home, he continued to preach, interspersing his campaigns with periods of paid work when he would accompany his family to their church. But he was a man ahead of his time, and would try to force his own ideas on the pastor, as well as challenging the man’s doctrine. Once the inevitable split came, he would move his family on to a new location, settle them in to another church and the pattern would repeat, usually within 18 months.

  Faith’s memories of her father are happy ones. When she and her sisters were small, he would brush and plait their hair. He taught her to read and write and as she grew older she would go with him to panel beating jobs where she learnt the basics of the trade. The children were expected to pull their weight, though. When she was twelve she was left at home one afternoon to mind the two youngest children, even though she was very ill with scarlet fever.

  Phil remembers the harsh discipline, describing how Neville used to beat the devil out of the boys with a rubber hose. Gloria their mother was gentle, however, and they all adored her. Phil didn’t mind it when she disciplined him. She’d take him into her room: ‘Philip, do you know what you’ve done wrong?’ Then it would be one belt across the bum with the wooden spoon and it was over. She never chastised him in anger, unlike his father who would belt him whether he’d erred or not. Gloria didn’t raise her voice, despite the chaos of having so many children and a husband who would bring home several visitors at a time, always unannounced, and always in time for the family meal. She was extremely quiet, never overbearing: the perfect, meek woman.