Gloriavale leaver given one week off work for the birth of her child

The Gloriavale Christian Community on the West Coast. Photo / George Heard

By Niva Chittock of RNZ

A former Gloriavale member says she returned to work a week after her baby was born.

Crystal Loyal is one of six former Gloriavale women seeking a ruling they were employees, not volunteers, during their time in the Christian community.

Gloriavale's leaders maintain the women were never employees of the community and strongly deny the claims.

From five years old, Loyal began working in the community, setting tables for dinner.

She told the court about how one of Gloriavale's leaders inappropriately touched girls aged eight- to 10-years-old at meal times.

"When you served his table in the mornings he'd put his arm around your waist, kiss your neck, and touch your bum. A lot of the older men thought this was their right with the young girls," she said.

"He did this to all the girls, I recall no one wanted to serve his table."

Her workload progressively increased with age, until she was working full-time at 14.

As Loyal got older, she said it felt like work was also prioritised over spending time with your children.

She fought back tears as she explained the situation.

"When I was pregnant I worked to the birth, then I had a week off with my baby. After a week he was placed in the centre and I carried on, on the teams [the four day roster of women's community work]."

Women were looked down on if they had to leave work too often to settle their baby, she said.

Her child was in the community's childcare centre from 9am until 3.30pm, six days a week from when he was one week old, Loyal said.

She believed the early separation from her eldest child has had an ongoing effect.

"Looking back, that was horrible how they were in the centre that much. I just... I didn't even see them and I feel like, especially with my oldest, there's a connection lost when he was a baby."

Loyal and her now husband, Isaac, struck up a secret relationship inside Gloriavale.

They had sex outside of marriage in the hope it would give the leaders no option but to marry them.

When the leadership found out, Loyal was pulled in for a meeting.

"I was only in there for probably half an hour, but it was a humiliating experience. They used words like 'whore' and 'slut' to describe me," she told the court.

"They kept telling me it was my fault [that the relationship had occurred outside marriage]."

Loyal, her husband and their two children left Gloriavale five years ago.

She was reluctant to leave at first but the constant pressure to keep her family in line wore her down, she said.

In retrospect, her husband was depressed and their experience inside the community was horrible, she said.

"I regretted living in Gloriavale, I had a horrible time there, especially after we got married. I was [in] survival mode every day."

"I wasn't living, I was surviving every day, just trying to keep my head above water. That's what it felt like."

By the end of her first week out, she did not want to go back any more.

"About six weeks after Isaac and I left Gloriavale, we started to feel free so we set up a bonfire and burnt our Gloriavale clothing," she said.

Gloriavale's defence is expected to begin later this week.