Bernie Prior: The Governors Bay guru

Saturday, 6 April 2024

Bernie Prior stares soulfully from his website page, his blue eyes seeming to hold the key to life’s mysteries.

But is this the gaze of a master who seeks spiritual enlightenment through tantric practices or the look of a sexual opportunist?

Prior first graced the pages of The Press in May 2018 in a feature on the man, the philosophy and his international appeal. How did a Reading man, who worked as a window dresser in London, move to a small New Zealand settlement in Canterbury where he established a global reputation as a spiritual leader?

By 2018, Prior had helped set up a community of like-minded individuals in Ōhinetahi/Governors Bay on a large rural property. Prior and other members of the community were well known in the area although Prior himself remained a mystery figure.

The community converted the former Governors Bay dairy and attached accommodation into a chocolate factory making the highly regarded SHE (Spiritual Human Evolution) chocolate and also opened the SHE café on the site.

Prior had little to do with these businesses as he was often overseas running retreats in exotic locations.

In 2018, many of his followers spoke positively of their experiences in Prior’s community.

However, questions were being asked in the wider community about Prior’s claims of multiple female partners. In an interview in 2015, Prior said he was a tantric master and at the time he had six women followers whom he regarded as partners in life.

'They are in deeper realisations in their own right, deeper realisations as to who they are and what the function of man and women in their calling together is really about… meeting their own depths of pure consciousness and realising the deeper they go the finer they are as women,' Prior said.

One former member of the community who helped set it up, said Prior’s sexual behaviour might be regarded as unconventional and “took quite a bit” to come to terms with but she ultimately supported his approach.

'I didn't think people did that. How crazy is that? It was weird. I was from a normal Kiwi family … it was a big deep process. I think it was a healthy process. It's done nothing but enhance my experience of this life.

“There was such a genuine heart there but he doesn't act in a manner average society would think was acceptable.'

Karen van Willigen, who had lived in the ashram for 12 years, said in a 2018 interview with The Press that Prior had been the victim of misinformation regarding his behaviour towards female followers.

'A lot of teachers face similar allegations and it is not the truth. I've been here for 12 years and there is no way there is any exploitation going on …People undergo a transformation and meet levels of themselves that must be addressed.

'A lot of that stuff on the net is people blaming their baggage on somebody else. You can blame anybody for the shit you can feel in your own life but it's actually nothing to do with anybody else.'

Van Willigen did not want to comment for this latest story.

Prior, who was too busy to be interviewed in 2018, did send a brief email to The Press following its publication.

'I want to clarify that I am now living with one woman as my sole partner and have been for the past 2.5 years. Also please let it be clear that my connection with She Universe is purely as a director and shareholder and I do not receive any funds from this business.”

Fast forward to 2024 and things have changed.

The community seems to have fractured. The cafe has shut and SHE Chocolate has morphed into SHE Chocolaterie Riverside. Bernie is the only director and also owns 80,000 of the 100,000 shares. Devotee Suzanne Johnson, who is the mother of his three children, owns the other 20,000. Both give their address as the former community property in Governors Bay.

It is owned by a company called Ōhinetahi Retreat. Prior owns most of the shares but Prior’s former wife Debbie owns 11 per cent and Johnson 21 per cent.

Last year journalist and columnist Alison Mau, who has published a series of #MeToo investigations for Stuff, was contacted by a number of women who had been involved with Prior, and who described another side to the tantric master.

Island getaway

One had become his partner in 2015. Sarah (not her real name) met Prior at a spiritual retreat he ran on the Greek island of Crete in 2015. A sudden breakup with a partner had left her in shock - and the 10-day spiritual retreat seemed to be what she needed.

She says she was a little wary, as the tantra [a meditative sexual practice borrowed from ancient Hinduism] aspect of the retreat was not her style.

'I didn't want all the cuddle-puddles and eye-gazing stuff,' Sarah says.

She called Prior's assistant and was told not to worry.

“[An assistant] said, ‘Oh no, Bernie is the most enlightened tantric master. All that stuff is very superficial, and we're much deeper than that’. I felt comforted by that response.'

The island getaway would be the beginning of a four-year relationship with Prior that Sarah says has left her scarred and keen to enlighten other people about him.

Prior paid her special attention at the retreat, she says, and she was seduced by “love-bombing” which continued over Skype after she returned home.

'It was intense. I was thinking this man adores me, we're meant to be together. [He was] saying all these incredible things, like how deep and profound he felt this meeting was, and how he'd love to invite me to New Zealand.

'I've found out that's what he does with women and has been doing it for many years, but I had no clue [and] by that time, it was like I was spellbound.'

She came to Christchurch the week before Christmas in 2015.

She says the idea of being 'open' sexually was encouraged at Ōhinetahi, with Prior encouraging women to be 'surrendered and soft' sexually, and asking them to fully trust his vision, instead of listening to their own inner voice.

She refused and told him she wasn't interested in a physical relationship with anyone else. She was dismayed to find Prior was continuing to sleep with other women in the community despite promising her monogamy. He wanted her to take part in group sex sessions and go to sex clubs but she was horrified and refused to participate.

The community lived by the edict that “only Bernie knows the truth due to his profound realisations”, Sarah says.

Secrecy was promoted, outsiders or those who'd left the community were shunned, and there was 'constant monitoring' of everyone’s behaviour.

'He asks for platonic contact with ex-boyfriends to stop, and for deep intimate secrets to be shared with him. In my case, material that was shared in confidence with Bernie was used against me, to defend himself to others.'

Sarah tried to leave the community a number of times, but Prior would send others to stop her with stories of what might happen to her on the outside, she says.

'They said I'd never find this depth of love in my life ever again, and told me the last woman who left ended up with a physically abusive boyfriend. I was shocked that this was used as a fear tactic to get me to stay and I told them that.”

Sarah, who had a breakdown, has since left the community. It turned out she was not alone in her experience with Prior.

Grieving mother

Ireland-based Finola, who did not want her surname used, says she was particularly vulnerable when she signed up for a Prior retreat in County Kerry in 2000. After the recent loss of her baby daughter just nine days after she was born, she was grieving deeply.

'I was in a lot of pain, and was looking for things that could help me awaken,' she says.

That vulnerability must have been evident to Prior, she claims.

After singling her out at the retreat, he told her she had a gift and invited her to his room the next day.

“Don't tell anyone,” he told her.

“If somebody said that to me now, I'd be like, 'red flag' straight away, but back then I thought, ‘he's chosen me out of the whole group’. [And he said] this will move you on, this will move you further,' Finola says.

She went to the meeting expecting a spiritual awakening, not the sexual encounter that occurred.

She was shocked when two of Prior's assistants came into the room afterwards and complimented her, 'as if I had received a magical gift”.

'I felt in that moment something very dark and wrong had happened, but I blocked it completely and went back to the retreat as if nothing had happened.'

She says the special attention she had been getting from Prior stopped 'there and then'. She did not speak of her experience for years.

'It's painful for me [to say this] as I see how naive I was in that situation…It's so insidious.'

‘Overtly sexual’

Effie Dobbertin, from California, was 42 when she went to Tuscany in Italy in the summer of 2012 for a retreat run by Prior. She was moved by Prior's spiritual message, but was not 'at any time, in any way' attracted to him sexually.

Prior courted her over Skype and in messages in the months afterwards and implored her to join his community at Ohinetahi, she says. She now believes he was intending to persuade her to become one of his 'wives', but at the time it was framed as a portal to God.

She describes a second meeting with Bernie, this time in California, with two of Prior's other female followers present.

'He began listing the rules of the community to me - he would be allowed to have other lovers, but I would not; how his time would be shared among me and the other women; where I would live, and other things.'

The encounter became 'overtly sexual', Effie says.

'That was the moment I woke up and realised what he was doing. I knew I didn’t want that with him. Somehow before that moment I was making excuses for him… trying to believe in his goodness so that I could have the spiritual awakening he was offering. I got up and ran out of the house.'

She decided not to join Prior’s ashram in Governors Bay.

Love-bombing

Thirteen years after meeting Prior at a 21-day retreat in Fiji, another former follower, Camille (not her real name) spoke to The Press from her home in the United States.

Camille had decades of experience in the world of 'spiritual masters' and was surprised when, on the first night of the Fijian retreat, Prior told her he was 'drawn to make love’’ to her.

She recalls that within days Prior had told the retreat attendees she would be moving to New Zealand to live at his commune as his 'wife'.

For three months at a time, over the next three years, she lived at the Governors Bay property. Like Sarah and Dobbertin, she describes being 'love-bombed' by Prior.

Camille left the community in 2012 after she was shunned, she says, by Prior after an argument. Her final three-month stay at Ohinetahi was marked by sleeplessness and suicidal thoughts: 'I thought I was going mad.'

After she left, Prior would call her periodically telling her she was beautiful and expressing his sexual desires, she says.

Although she was now married and has not spoken to Prior for years, Camille says the experience left her traumatised and untrusting of so-called 'spiritual teachers'.

Prior’s alleged behaviour is a familiar story to anyone who has researched why even intelligent and grounded people can be unduly influenced by cult leaders.

US-based cult expert, Dr Janja Lalich who is coming to Christchurch in October for the Decult conference, describes the alleged behaviour as 'systems of influence'; a more subtle form of control than overt rules and regulations, but often seen in cult situations.

She said they would use the “very human emotions” of “love, fear, shame, guilt” to influence others.

'You find yourself in a very closed environment - what I call a self-sealing system - which is a social system that's closed in on itself. It has the answer, and it is the only answer, and it is only this person that can promise you this answer.'

Sarah is not content to let matters lie and is determined to ensure women go to Prior’s retreats with their eyes open.

She says she's speaking out having exhausted all other options to get Prior to understand the effect he's had on some of his followers. She has also lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

Mobeena Hills, from Shine Lawyers, said Sarah’s claim against Prior alleged he sexually harassed her with promises of preferential treatment.

She was seeking compensation for humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings. She encouraged others to come forward.

'It is unacceptable that this is occurring in our backyard in 2023 by a spiritual entity that claims to have the power to heal others,' says Hills.

The Press sent a list of questions to Prior and received an emailed reply from law firm Wynn Williams saying Prior denied engaging in any abusive behaviour 'either in personal relationships or otherwise“.

'He also denies being involved with any sexual activity other than on a willing and consensual basis. If a claim is filed, he will respond to any specific allegations through the legal process,' the email reads.

Prior was 'not in a position' to reply further due to potential legal proceedings, the letter says.