Arm stuck in conveyor belt and a pitchfork near the eye: Boys suffer lasting damage at Gloriavale's moss business
Friday, 25 March 2022
A 10-year-old boy’s arm was marked and swollen for more than a year after it got caught in a conveyor belt with no safety guard while he was working in a moss shed at Gloriavale.
Another boy almost lost an eye when he inadvertently jumped onto a pitchfork while working in the moss swamp in 2007.
The boys, now adults, have told their stories to the Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust, which helps people after they leave the West Coast Christian community.
Stuff talked to both men, who did not want to be named.
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* Founder's son fails to give evidence for Gloriavale in Employment Court
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**
Working conditions at Gloriavale are currently before the Employment Court, with chief employment court judge Christina Inglis reserving her decision into whether members of the community are volunteers, employees or subject to forced labour.
One man, now 22, said when he was 10 years old in 2010 his arm got trapped in machinery at the moss shed.
The man told the trust his arm was pulled into a conveyor belt up to his elbow because the belt had no safety guard.
One of the boys yelled out to turn off the machine, but the supervisor, who was deaf, was more than 8 metres away. Another severely visually impaired man was supervising that day, and wouldn’t have seen what occurred. It took more than 30 seconds to eventually turn the machine off.
He said someone got a wrench and wound back the machine by hand. It was another 20 minutes before his arm was freed. He was left with a severely swollen arm, with marks from the machine imprinted onto his skin for about a year later.
He was taken to a woman in the community who administered first aid and gave him painkillers and a sling, and told him to put ice on it.
His mother was worried, but the family was conditioned and discouraged from seeking medical attention from outside the community.
The next day at dinnertime the community founder the late Hopeful Christian publicly berated the boy, saying he was uncontrollable.
The supervisors at the moss shed expected him to return to work, but despite his mother objecting he was back a week later, and had issues that lasted about six months.
He left the community when he was 15.
Another man said he nearly lost his eye when he was 7 while working in the moss business in 2007.
He jumped off one of the drying racks in the moss swamp as another boy with a pitchfork draped over his shoulder turned around. The pitchfork went straight above the eye, chipping the eyebrow.
He had blood dripping off his face but the supervisor grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, beat him with the pitchfork and verbally abused him for being a stupid boy.
He was only half-conscious and barely able to see, but was not brought to a doctor. A first aider gave him stitches and a bandage.
Before long he was back working with the moss.
When the community moved to the West Coast in the early 1990s it began operating a sphagnum moss business exporting the product overseas.
The men say as boys they began working in the moss swamp at aged 6 or 7, an allegation community leader Peter Righteous rejected in the Employment Court – he said some boys aged 9 or 10 began doing chores like any boy growing up in rural New Zealand.
The men say they used pitchforks or their hands to pull the moss out of the swamp and put it into wool bales. The bales would be picked up by helicopter and brought to the moss shed at the community.
There the boys and men would pack the moss into blocks, then into boxes and into shipping containers.
They describe extremely difficult working conditions where boys would get soaked working in freezing conditions with no gloves and very little food.
Righteous told the Employment Court he was in charge of the boys’ rosters but denied children as young as 6 or 7 were working with the moss.
He said the boys were given chores with the permission of parents.
He said the supervisors used to take the boys outside and play games with them for half-an-hour. But none of the men who have recounted their experiences have many memories of that.