The disgraced former leader of the infamous Christian community, Gloriavale, will be sentenced today (Friday) on a raft of sex offences against girls and women over a period of more than 20 years.
Howard Temple, 85, pleaded guilty to 12 charges earlier this year, including indecent assault, doing an indecent act, and common assault.
The offending was against nine complainants aged between 9 and 20, between 1998 and 2022.
Some of the charges are representative – meaning police believe Temple committed multiple offences of the same type in similar circumstances.
The elderly offender’s admissions came three days into a trial in the Greymouth District Court before Judge Raoul Neave.
By then, five of the nine complainants had given evidence.
They told the court they were too scared to say anything about Temple’s offending because they knew women were always blamed in similar circumstances, and risked being branded as flirts or whores, being hauled into a “servants and shepherds” meeting and berated for not following the Bible, ostracised by the community or prevented from marrying.
“He had the power to change the trajectory of your life,” one woman said.
The women described Temple taking advantage of the domestic duties they performed to touch, caress and grope them, such as during meal times, when they would be serving large, heavy jugs of non-alcoholic cider or hot drinks to tables of 50 or more. One woman said she was left without “any hands free to protect myself”.
The women said it was common practice to attempt to arrive early so they could be allocated to any table except Temple’s.
The only space to pour would be at his side at the head of the table, which allowed him to grab the young women around the waist, caressing them from their calves to their lower backs or grabbing them around their waists.
“He would run his hand up and down my legs, and touch my bum, or put his arm around me. He would ask me if anyone had told me they loved me today,” one woman told the court.
She would usually “just shrug” because she was scared, “but if he persisted, I would often lie and said yes, someone has told me they loved me, because I didn’t want him to say he loved me”.
Another woman said this would happen while Temple was flanked by his wife and daughter and in front of the entire community of more than 500 people, “but no one ever spoke up or said anything, so I didn’t know that I would be allowed to. I didn’t know it was wrong, I just know it didn’t feel right to me”.
Temple was also alleged to have frequented the kitchen to “hug” the young women from behind while they were cooking or washing dishes, kissing them on their necks, touching their breasts or making lewd remarks.
Asked why she feared Temple, one woman said it was because the leaders hold all the authority in Gloriavale and “had the power to ruin your life”.
“Right from a baby, you’re taught not to speak against the leaders. As a woman you’re supposed to be meek and quiet with downcast eyes,” she said.
“When you do speak up about abuse that has happened, it was inevitably your fault because you seduced them somehow.
“I knew nothing good would come of saying anything. I didn’t have anyone to protect me because my parents hold the leaders in ultimate authority and they would listen to the leaders over their own daughter.”
The complainants told the court that there was no way to refuse Temple, nor to report his actions to anyone.
Temple will appear in court this morning for sentencing.
Under the Crimes Act 1961, he is facing a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
Temple originally faced 24 charges. But on July 29, he entered guilty pleas to five charges of indecent assault, five of doing an indecent act and two of common assault.
On August 12, it was announced that Temple had resigned as Gloriavale’s leader – a position known as the Overseeing Shepherd.
Formerly known as Howard Smitherman, Temple is a former US Navy engineer who stepped into the leadership role in 2018 after the death of the community’s founder, Hopeful Christian.
Christian – whose real name was Neville Cooper – was sentenced to six years in prison in September 1994, after being found guilty by a jury of 10 counts of indecent assault between 1980 and 1984 against five young complainants.
He was aged between 53 and 57 at the time of the offending.
Following an appeal and retrial, Christian was sentenced to five years in prison after he was found guilty of three charges of indecent assault.
In his sentencing notes, Judge Graeme Noble detailed Christian’s offending against young people aged between 12 and 17, including massaging or caressing the naked breasts and genitalia of one complainant on 10 to 20 occasions.
“All of the young complainants were members of your flock, conditioned to do your bidding. Yours was the pervasive influence on the lives of all of these young people,” he said.
“Within that influence were orthodox preachings and teachings but combined with your bizarre sexual activities in relation to the complainants.
“I find that the evidence was overwhelming that you used and abused your position of trust, power and dominion over them to sexually abuse the complainants, while professing to do these things to relieve their tensions, and/or to prepare them for life, or prepare them for marriage, all of the while telling them not to tell.”
– Additional reporting, RNZ
Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz