{"id":312011,"date":"2026-03-04T04:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/312011\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T04:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:31:08","slug":"louise-upstons-visit-to-gloriavale-revealed-amid-abuse-and-closure-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/312011\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Upston\u2019s visit to Gloriavale revealed amid abuse and closure fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

The commission called on the Government to take action to protect members of the community.<\/p>\n

In October, the Herald revealed former Gloriavale resident Virginia Courage helped resuscitate a baby after the infant\u2019s father allegedly blocked the baby\u2019s airways to prevent it from crying.<\/p>\n

During public hearings, the commission heard evidence that Gloriavale\u2019s parents were taught to cover the mouths and noses of babies and children as a form of discipline because founder Hopeful Christian \u201chated\u201d the sound of crying children.<\/p>\n

Upston was not aware of the hand-over-mouth technique \u2013 nor of Courage\u2019s experiences while living at the commune<\/a> \u2013 until receiving questions from the Herald.<\/p>\n

She said she was \u201cextremely concerned\u201d to learn of the disciplinary method.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is absolutely horrendous, and that was the first I was made aware of that,\u201d she said at the time.<\/p>\n

Upston said in October that officials from agencies including police, Oranga Tamariki and Health New Zealand were visiting regularly \u2013 a comment she reiterated today.<\/p>\n

Asked then if she could rule out authorities closing Gloriavale, Upston didn\u2019t rule it out.<\/p>\n

She wouldn\u2019t say if she\u2019d been provided any advice on options to shut the community in the interests of protecting young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working through a number of issues, but what I\u2019m not going to do is predetermine any outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Education also investigated the community\u2019s school, Gloriavale Christian School, and decided to cancel its registration in December.<\/p>\n

The cancellation was due to take effect in January, but was halted as the school sought a judicial review of the decision.<\/p>\n

Ethan Griffiths is a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He joined NZME as a print journalist in 2020, previously working as an Open Justice reporter in the Bay of Plenty and Wellington, and as a general reporter in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The commission called on the Government to take action to protect members of the community. In October, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1903,74,26676,534,95,2511,6789,17163,1259,28164,5504,114486,266,68199,4507,61812,6722,3234,111,43,139,69,40182,82649,12860,46028,5843,61,117204,169675,9863,17249],"class_list":["post-312011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abuse","tag-after","tag-allegations","tag-amid","tag-and","tag-child","tag-closing","tag-closure","tag-community","tag-fears","tag-following","tag-gloriavale","tag-government","tag-january","tag-late","tag-louise","tag-minister","tag-months","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-refusing","tag-religious","tag-revealed","tag-rule","tag-senior","tag-to","tag-upston","tag-upstons","tag-visit","tag-visited"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}