Sins of the Father

by Fleur Beale

  On the work front, the waterbed business was so successful that Phil stopped teaching and became the business manager for the community. Life was frantically busy but at least the community organisation meant he didn’t have to worry about helping Sandy with the new baby. There were plenty of women to do that and, anyway, it wasn’t a man’s role to help with the children or the domestic chores.

  Phil had channelled his own restlessness but was able to recognise all the signs in Michael, his younger brother. Phil was Michael’s boss but the two worked in harmony without any sense of one being set above the other. Phil enjoyed his brother’s humour, cheerfulness, and ability to work hard, but wasn’t surprised when Michael went to their father and told him he wanted to leave.

  Neville didn’t call a men’s meeting. He simply rejected Michael immediately; called Phil, Mark and Miracle and ordered them to drive their brother to Wellington, stay there until Michael could get his passport application processed, then put him on a plane. He gave them money for a motel, the plane fare, and $100 to launch Michael in Australia. Banishment to Australia without support of any kind was the community’s method of dealing with wayward teenagers at the time. Michael wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to be put on a plane and abandoned.

  The four siblings stayed together in a motel for a week, having a great time watching all the television they could. Michael got the passport and, as instructed, his siblings took him to the airport to catch a plane for Australia. Phil hoped he’d make a go of it, but he knew how hard it would be, Michael being much the same age he’d been when he ran away to Australia.

  As Phil had done, Michael missed his family sorely. If Neville had allowed Gloria or his siblings to write to him, he may have been able to make a new life for himself, but as a son who had rejected his father by leaving, he was as good as dead. All contact was prohibited.

  When he came home, defeated, six months later, Phil was pleased to have him back and did all he could to help his brother settle into the community. ‘I did it, and you can as well,’ he told him.

  Phil saw that his brother continued to struggle despite his help. Although Neville accepted Michael back, this son didn’t use his energy to impress his father, the way Phil had done. It took all Michael’s strength simply to stay; he couldn’t play the prodigal son, as well.

  In 1983 Phil and Sandy’s second child was born, a daughter. Again Phil skirted around his father’s notion of appropriate names. He called her Dawn after their friend in northern Australia and told Neville the name referred to the dawn of the new day.

  Sandy obviously enjoyed being a mother and loved her children. The family were still living in the single room but she managed to turn it into a home and screen an area off as a bedroom for the children. Phil adored Israel and Dawn, was proud of them, and slightly amazed that here he was at 21, the father of two children.

  He was also proud of being the one his father depended on for the money to run the community. The buzz he got from being at the heart of things, of having projects on the go, was addictive. The travelling he had to do as the business manager widened his horizons and a bonus was that it let him escape some of the obligatory men’s meetings which were called to discuss community affairs, or to discipline a miscreant, or when a young person was to be put out of the church.

  Unfortunately, though, he was at home in 1984 when Michael, having decided he definitely couldn’t stay, again told Neville he wanted to leave the community. This time Neville called a meeting, ordering Gloria and all Michael’s siblings to attend as well as the men. Phil will never forget it. To this day the memory of it brings back the sickness he felt, the anger he experienced on his brother’s behalf, the heartbreak he saw in his mother, and the overwhelming sense of his own powerlessness.

  After about two hours of pressuring Michael to stay, it was clear he wasn’t going to change his mind, and Neville switched tactics. ‘If you want to leave and walk out that door, then you turn around now and call your mother a slut.’ His reasoning was clear to Michael: if you want to leave, then you are no son of mine and therefore your mother must have gone off with another man to get pregnant with you.

  Michael withstood the barrage for as long as he could, but it was relentless, the words pounding at him, drilling into his head. In the end, desperation took over. He called his mother a slut and left, but the emotional damage from that moment went on to wreck his life and he struggled to survive on the outside. Faith cared for him through long periods of severe depression, saving her brother from several suicide attempts. He would leave her house when he recovered, and live independently, but things always got bad again. Instead of going back to his sister, he would return to the community, hoping that would be the answer. But they would take him off the anti-depressants, make him stop smoking and tell him how evil Faith was. He would ring her in utter confusion and despair. Despite what the community were telling him, he knew that she was the one who cared for him and loved him. She tried to tell them to let him stay on his medication, to get him off the illegal drugs but let him have his cigarettes in the meantime. They wouldn’t listen and she would have to go and pick him up. The cycle would begin again.

  Phil kept his head down and kept busy.

  When Sandy gave birth to their third child in 1985, Phil named her Justine. Neville agreed to her name because it was the feminine form of ‘justice’. Sandy, the good and obedient wife, made no objection. Their growing family meant they needed bigger quarters and they were given a two-bedroomed apartment with a lounge shared by families in adjacent apartments.

  When their third daughter was born in December 1986, Sandy told Phil that people were criticising her because her children didn’t have inspiring names and she chose Tender for the new baby. It was the first time she openly chose the path set by Neville rather than obeying her husband. Phil tried to give the name greater normality by adding Joy and the baby became Tender-Joy.

  During those years, Neville kept refining his ideas about what sort of community he wanted. He made extensive studies of various historical churches, including early Anabaptists such as the Amish, the Mennonites and the Hutterites. The Hutterite philosophy appealed to him the most since he saw them as the most scriptural of all the Anabaptist churches. He also admired the fact that they had a history several hundred years old and had suffered persecution before they fled from Europe to America, but through all the turmoil had held to their beliefs. They lived in community without private ownership of goods, following the teachings of Christ and his apostles, dressing modestly and caring for each other.

  In 1987 Neville invited some of the elders of one of the Bruderhof Hutterite communities in the US to come to New Zealand to visit his Church at Springbank. To the outsider there appears to be little difference between the Bruderhof and other Hutterite communities, but the Bruderhof have a history of being excommunicated from the Hutterites and then reconciling. At the time they came to New Zealand, they were associated with the Hutterites.

  To Neville’s followers, particularly the younger ones, these men were exotic. Phil’s oldest child Israel was only five, but remembers them clearly. They dressed differently, they spoke differently, they were revered; but to the children’s astonishment, they were kindly. They were also men of faith and morality and, as such, disagreed strongly with a lot of Neville’s teachings and abhorred the sexualised environment he had created. A system of leadership with one man at the top who was accountable to nobody went against their beliefs of governance by eldership. There is community film footage of Neville with two of the elders: the Hutterite men are holding themselves as physically aloof as they can from an ebullient Neville. Another clip shows Neville speaking about how girls are physically ready to bear children when they are 12, and boys to father children from the age of 14, thus it is healthy to promote early marriages where young people’s natural urges will find sanctioned expression. The elder makes no comment. He doesn’t look at Neville and his grave expression never changes.


  Despite their misgivings, the elders agreed to Neville’s plan of taking 30 of his young unmarried followers to America on a tour of their communities. Perhaps they hoped they could influence him to run a more Godly church, but in any case the trip went ahead.

  Phil’s job was to stay at home earning the money to pay for it. He was deeply disappointed at not being able to go. He handled his disappointment in the usual way, by burying himself in his work.

  His home life was busy, too, with their next daughter arriving in October 1988. He called her Crystal, telling his father he’d chosen the name because it meant clear and pure. Sandy accepted it, probably because Neville did.

  Life was hectic for the young couple. Sandy wholeheartedly embraced community living. It was her ideal in that she was able to be a mother as well as live a life dedicated to serving God. At least the distressing visits to Neville’s room – or his to theirs, when he came to ‘do something nice for your wife’ which meant undressing and massaging her – had ceased. Phil tried to forget that they’d ever happened.

  He was working so hard that he seldom had time to spend with Sandy and the children.

  Of those years, Israel remembers his mother taking the five children everywhere she went. Tender-Joy especially was her little shadow, never letting her mother out of her sight. She was soft and gentle while the others were adventurous and boisterous, although Sandy never let any of them get out of control. Wild children would not have been tolerated, and she was too much of a loving, hands-on parent for them to need to rebel, although Justine’s strong will caused her some worry.

  Whenever Sandy was making bread, shelling peas, mixing scones, or doing any other suitable duty, she involved the children, singing to them and quietly showing them how to do tasks they could handle. She instilled leadership and caring into Israel and Dawn as the two eldest, but they both adored babies and were only too happy to take charge of Crystal.

  When Sandy had free time, she and the children would crowd into one of their small bedrooms, sit on the beds and sing songs together. She would read to them and play games. The songs were often those from one of the few videos Neville deemed suitable for community viewing. A favourite, that the whole community saw so many times they all knew the songs by heart, was the story about the donkey that carried Mary to Jerusalem.

  Phil was very much a weekend dad but whenever he was at home during the week, he’d take Israel with him into the workshop and give him simple jobs to do. Israel’s favourite was taping up the pallets the waterbeds went out in, but sweeping the floor, sorting nails – everything was fun with Dad there to praise and encourage him. Sandy, though, was the centre of the children’s lives. Israel remembers her motherliness, the security of knowing she would always come to soothe and comfort him when he woke in the night with a bout of the colic that plagued him, no matter what time of the night it was or how often she’d already had to get up.

  Life for Phil was too stressful. The more successful the business became, the harder it was to keep it going without borrowing money, which Neville forbade him from doing. Christians, he said, did not get into debt. With no cash flow, Phil was finding it almost impossible to keep the business afloat. His businessman friend, Clive Bilbie, came to the rescue by acting as factor for the community, providing much-needed cash flow. When Phil received an order, he would invoice Clive for the amount needed to buy materials. Once the customer paid the community, money was repaid to Clive plus the interest he charged for the service.

  Clive became Phil’s valued friend and mentor, a situation Neville tolerated out of financial necessity, even though Clive wasn’t a Christian. A kindly father-figure, he and his wife Sue gave Phil a different perspective on family life. Theirs was a companionship between equals, of the sort not possible inside the community. Phil hadn’t grown up witnessing that sort of relationship, either. His adored mother was an obedient and submissive wife who never questioned her husband’s authority over her or their children. Phil had never thought about the imbalance of authority between himself and Sandy. He was the head of the household, which they both accepted, expecting him to take that role. They also knew that Phil’s position as head of his own household counted for nothing in any disagreements with his father. Neville’s word ruled supreme.

  Clive became the role model for Phil of what a husband and father could be. In turn, Clive appreciated that Phil wanted nothing from him materially – something he found unusual because as he was well off he tended to attract people who wanted money from him. All Phil wanted was the friendship. Living in the Springbank community meant he had no need for money and in itself it held no attraction for him.

  Clive wanted Phil to go with him to a waterbed show in the United States. The experience would be good for him, both in terms of the business and in letting him see something of the wider world, but Phil knew that Neville would object to the cost. Between them, Clive and Phil concocted a plan to discount an invoice to Clive for the cost of the ticket, and they told Neville that Clive would pay for it. Neville gave his permission.

  The trip was another defining experience for Phil. His time in America showed him, again, that there was much more to life than the community could offer. It made him look at relationships differently, too. Clive’s wife Sue had written notes for her husband and hidden them in his luggage for him to find. Phil had never seen love expressed in such a way. Spouses in the community simply performed their set roles towards each other and towards their children. They saw no need to work at a relationship.

  On his return home, nothing had changed, and the pressure from Neville was as relentless as ever. Phil continued working such long hours that he barely saw Sandy and the children, and there was no chance of enhancing his relationship with them.

  Phil held himself apart from the internal politics of the community as much as he could, avoiding the men’s meetings when possible. A steady trickle of people were leaving the community. Some left without telling anyone they were going, but others were open about their intentions and so were subjected to the men’s meetings. No matter how a person left, once they had gone they were painted as evil. Neville and the hierarchy preached that young ones who left got into drugs, alcohol and fornication – that they ended up in jail, which two of the teenage boys would later do as a self-fulfilling prophesy. The outside world was evil, it was wicked, and the only way to eternal salvation was to stay in Neville’s community at Springbank.

  Although the community had its dark underside, there was also joy in practising their faith, in living communally, supporting each other and attending to the daily chores together. At this time the community was almost self-sufficient: they grew wheat and processed it in their own mill; they grew all their vegetables and killed their own meat. The only food they brought in was poultry. Everyone hated chook day when they had to kill and pluck dozens of birds. However, nobody had to buy their own supplies (although, by the same token, you couldn’t just go into the kitchen and help yourself if you got hungry).

  By now the people wore uniforms. It was put to the women that the standardised blue dresses would be cheaper than mufti. The women agreed; it would mean they didn’t have to buy their own fabric, and they had no money anyway – money was allocated according to the number of children each couple had, and was given to the husband to buy personal items the community couldn’t provide, such as shoes and toiletries. The community itself was careful with money, and when they wanted to carry out a project such as putting up a new building, they would look at the shopping lists and work out what they could do without.

  Neville was the sole leader, despite having twelve ‘shepherds’ who were supposed to have leadership roles as well, but in fact he brooked no opposition, nor was he often shown it. Sandy’s mother Naomi was called in once as witness against a young man and when she came out she said to one of the men, ‘That went wrong in there.’

  He just said, ‘Don’t worry, sweetie. He’s the boss and God’s still on his throne.’


  People had to be very careful if they didn’t want to be called in to a men’s meeting.

  Phil managed to survive by keeping busy, by always having several projects on the go, and by striving with everything he had to make the money to keep the community afloat. He didn’t stop to wonder how long he could keep going, he just put his head down and worked. But sooner or later something had to give.

  CHAPTER FIVE: DESPERATION

  All the people must obey the leaders in the Church in all things and submit themselves willingly to them as unto the Lord …

  WHAT WE BELIEVE, P. 52

  Neville held services twice a week, preaching his interpretation of the word of God. He was a powerful orator, striding up and down, using effective pauses, rhetorical questions, and expansive arm gestures to bring his message to his people. He was the only one who could show them the way to salvation, and how much God required of them. It was never easy to lead a selfless life, but their reward would come in heaven, whereas sinners would be denied a place at the right hand of God. He reinforced the moral precepts of the community: contraception was evil, divorce anathema, homosexuality and pre-marital sex forbidden. The world outside was a place of wickedness, wantonness, corruption, crime and selfishness.

  At mealtimes Neville read aloud from the newspapers any items that confirmed his portrayal of the outside world, and so the people sitting at the long tables ate to the accompaniment of stories of murder, robbery and immorality. Nobody but Neville spoke at table.