Gloriavale Funding Trust Stripped of Charity Status Over Child Labour and Failure to Report Abuse

The Charities Registration Board has revoked the Christian Church Community Trust’s charity (tax-exempt) status for three years starting Sept. 23, concluding that trust funds enabled “serious wrongdoing,” including the use of child labour and failures to report sexual offending linked to the Gloriavale commune on New Zealand’s South Island.

Board Findings and Rationale

The board said money provided by the trust allowed the community to operate "in ways found to be unlawful and inconsistent with the wellbeing of trust beneficiaries." The decision follows a string of legal findings and inquiries into the commune’s practices, including a 2022 employment court ruling and a wider, countrywide inquiry into decades of abuse in state and religious institutions.

Key Legal Findings

The 2022 employment court ruling found former members had been unpaid employees of trust-run enterprises rather than volunteers, with children as young as six recorded as doing full-time work. The court described harsh conditions including forced labour, deprivation of food, public shaming and dangerous work environments.

Pressure to remove charitable status intensified after the 2025 conviction of former leader Howard Temple for sexual offences against girls and young women spanning two decades. The Charities Registration Board also highlighted the trust’s failure to report sexual offending against a child at the Gloriavale school, which the trust owns.

Trust Response, Reforms and Next Steps

In submissions the trust argued much of the misconduct cited was historical and warned the revocation would affect hundreds of dependent people, including children, the elderly and the infirm. The board acknowledged the trust has implemented "significant changes" to governance and safeguarding in recent years but concluded the seriousness, scale and duration of misconduct made deregistration necessary in the public interest.

Gloriavale's Howard Temple, center, arrives to the Greymouth District Court in Greymouth, New Zealand, on Aug. 2, 2023. (Jason Blair/The Press/STUFF via AP)(Jason Blair/The Press/STUFF via AP)

The trust may appeal the board’s decision. A Gloriavale spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wider Consequences

The trust reported assets of NZ$50 million (about US$29 million) in its July 2025 financial return and listed one full-time employee and 23 volunteers. Its income comes from large-scale farming, a charter flights company and government funding for its school and daycare centres. The revocation rescinds tax-exempt privileges, and the longer-term financial and operational impacts remain unclear.

Weeks earlier, New Zealand’s Ministry of Education revoked registration of the trust-run school and moved to close it over concerns for pupils’ physical and emotional safety; about 80 students remain enrolled while legal processes continue.

People and Context

Gloriavale, founded in the 1970s, is an isolated, communal conservative Christian sect where about 600 people live on trust land. Members share finances, live in trust-owned buildings, and typically work or study within the commune. Social rules include women wearing navy ankle-length dresses with white head coverings, discouragement of contact with relatives who leave, encouragement of large families, and male-only leadership roles.

Separately, the board banned Howard Temple, an 85-year-old former leader and past trustee, from charity governance roles for five years. His earlier prison sentence was overturned in March and he is currently serving home detention.

Quote: "The Board recognises the right of the community to exist as a religious minority within a free and democratic society," Charities Registration Board chair Jane Wrightson said. "The Board regulates the Trust, not the community, and this decision does not determine the future operation of this religious community."