„I didn’t choose the cult life. The cult life chose me.”
When Theophila Pratt showed me these words on her laptop in 2018, I was the first journalist ever to interview her for a long feature in New Zealand Geographic. She was only two years out of Gloriavale, still finding her feet, changing her last name, getting a tattoo and studying for a degree in occupational therapy. And she was writing a book.
In her room in Auckland, she pulled a photo of her family from a drawer: everyone dressed in blue, most of them still trapped in the gulag she had fled. I left with delicious blueberry muffins that Theo had baked for me – and a deeper understanding of what it takes to rebuild your life as a girl raised in a place where a group of indoctrinated men have total control over your body, mind and spirit.
Theo has presented us now with another gift. “Unveiled”, her memoir of growing up in the secluded Gloriavale Christian Community on the remote West Coast of New Zealand, is more than another glimpse behind the iron cult curtain which was lifted in two previous books over the last decade (“Daughter of Gloriavale” by Lilia Tarawa and “Sins of the Father” by Fleur Beale). Her account of her mental health struggle, physical and sexual abuse, isolation and rebellion is as revealing, shocking, insightful and heartbreaking as the 2024 TVNZ documentary “Escaping Utopia” which she participated in.
Together with Gloriavale leaver Rosanna Overcomer, she was filmed undercover when she visited her pregnant sister Precious at the cult’s satellite community in India, another place of oppression and hardship where Precious and other Gloriavale members had been shipped off to. Theo was in shock. “The five women, including my sister, looked like lifeless zombies walking around with no real future, hopes or dreams”, she writes – and promises to not let them be forgotten.
Her book takes us from her childhood in the West Coast bush – overshadowed by her father’s violence – through the different stages of grief and recovery when she landed on the outside at age 18, utterly unprepared and disoriented. Not knowing who Tayler Swift was was a minor problem compared to finding a counsellor where she wasn’t wasting her time explaining Gloriavale to them. Most of them had no proper idea what a cult was.
Janja Lalich’s book “Take Back Your Life” was a lifeline for Theo, but she still had difficulties managing the newfound freedom, navigating love and relationships, dealing with severe depression, nightmares and panic attacks – and grappling with questions around faith and feminism. After moving through a number of Auckland churches, she had a pivotal realization that “organised religion wasn’t for me.”
Her honesty is striking, and her factual, restrained writing highlights what she and so many of her peers have suffered through. At the end of “Unveiled”, Theo lets other wāhine toa like Pearl Valor contribute their stories too (“we survivors are unstoppable”), adding to the outcry for accountability and justice. “People have known this has been going on for decades and yet nothing happens,” she states in the epilogue. “Why not?”
New Zealand’s most visible homegrown cult has been in the courts and in the news over the last years, also thanks to the work of the Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust. It’s more important than ever that we hear the voices of those who survived Gloriavale – and I mean that in the literal sense. There have been too many suicides among leavers who couldn’t cope.
Theo was interviewed by RNZ this week, have a listen. If you’d like to hear this brave new author and activist talk about her book and meet her in person, then check out her website with all upcoming speaking events across the country, starting this week.
The last one this month will be at Christchurch’s central library (Tūranga, where we held the first Decult conference) on Saturday, 29th March at 10 a.m.. Please register for it here.
Hope to see you there too!
Anke Richter