Cast Out to 'Walk the Paths of Hell

NZ Truth, October 18th, 1977

The Exclusive Brethren forced Dad over the edge…

“As far as I am concerned he took his own life and the Brethren drove him to it.”

“They wrecked him and his life, just as they split and shattered homes and families of others who got out of line.”

Motueka farmer Dave McGaveston, 26, spat out the words with conviction.

“Dad was a sick man,” he said.

“They drove him out of the church and hounded mum and the family.” Now Dad’s gone and I know who to blame… the Brethren.”

The strange disappearance of Dave McGaveston’s father, Edward Arthur McGaveston, 53, stunned the close knit Motueka community. But it came as no surprise to friends and family who knew what Ted McGaveston had been through at the hands of the Exclusive Brethren.

It is said he left his home at 475 High Street, Motueka, at 3am. Where he went and what happened is a mystery.

Damaged

His youngest son’s bike was found undamaged against a culvert at the Motueka Inlet, only about 3km from his home. And on Wednesday October 5, his waterlogged jacket was discovered by a searching sect member at nearby Jackett’s Island.

Sect members found Ted McGaveston’s partially decomposed body at Jackett’s Island at 6am on Thursday.

Ted had been a lifelong member of the secretive Exclusive Brethren sect, which has 300 devotees in the Motueka district. But in recent years the father of five, who suffered from a weak heart and could not work, became a sect outcast.

And to be cast out from the Exclusive Brethren is to walk the paths of hell according to rigid sect doctrine.

Once a happy family man, Ted McGaveston was forced apart from his wife and children. His wife left the home with the younger children and went to live in the home of local sect boss Alan Smith, a Lower Moutere orchardist. Ted, a semi invalid, was left alone for months.

During Truth’s investigations we were told that the sect had relented and had allowed Ted back into the fold. But the price was high. Sect leaders visited Ted and his family constantly to interrogate him and force him to confess over and over to a sexual indiscretion committed nearly 40 years ago.

The long interrogation sessions are common in the sect, which encourages members to spy on one another and to reveal the so-called sins of fellow members to their leaders.

Eldest son Dave McGaveston who broke with the sect several years ago, told Truth he believed his Father could not take any more interrogations and pressure.

“He had mentioned to me a few times there was only one way out,” said Dave. Ted McGaveston’s older brother Keith, of Richmond, told Truth the Brethren were not all bad but that there had been a “wicked influence” taking over during the past few years.

Sect members physically stopped non-sect family and friends of Ted McGaveston gathering at his graveside.

During a two hour confrontation, at Motueka cemetery, sect members packed closely round the grave while non-sect mourners stood back several yards waiting to pay their last respects.

The coffin was kept in the hearse for some time at the orders of sect boss Alan Smith, who directed that “unbelievers” were not to be allowed near the grave. But threatened police action and a ruling from Nelson undertaker G. T. Shirley and Motueka town clerk J. A. Rogers, eased a fiery situation.

Non-sect mourners, including many of Ted McGaveston’s family, were allowed to read a scripture and pray around the opened hearse.

But according to Yvonne McGaveston, the wife of Ted’s elder son Dave, the behaviour of the sect was “disgraceful”.

Harassment and a spate of deaths.

Naked fear, suspicion and harassment still pass for Christian doctrine among the Exclusive Brethren. A strange, secret sect – about five members of which have committed suicide in the last seven to eight years, Truth discovered.

Ted McGaveston is said to be the latest victim in the sect’s tragic chain of death. Others include a man called Colin Smith who is said to have gassed himself about six years ago when the sect refused to allow him to continue his job as engineer on a coastal boat.

Colin Smith is said to have been an uncle of the current local leader Alan Smith, of Lower Moutere.

Former sect members told Truth that Colin Smith was found to have a radio on his boat and a photograph of a North Island family he had befriended.

Accused

The radio was forbidden and the man was accused of having “Immoral relations” with the family of friends. Sect pressure to repent finally drove him to kill himself, Truth was told.

In an exclusive interview with Truth, a sect leader in Motueka, Mr Roly Hewetson admitted that some sect members had committed suicide over the years. It was Mr Hewetson who, in the early hours of October 1, told Motueka police of Ted McGaveston’s disappearance.

Suicide

Mr Hewetson confirmed the suicide of engineer Colin McLean Smith and the suicide at Auckland of another sect member Norman Tindall. But Mr Hewetson refused to tell the names of other sect suicide victims.

Truth was told that a sect member named Gilmore took his life at Westport a few years ago, and that another member had died after taking weed killer at Cambridge.

It was claimed by former sect members that all suicide victims were men who had been separated from their families and loved ones by cruel sect doctrine.

Asked if he thought Ted McGaveston took his own life, Mr Hewetson said: “We are all capable of it.”

Mr Hewetson refused to disclose Mr McGaveston’s standing with the Exclusive Brethren when he disappeared. Truth was told that Mr McGaveston was supposed to appear before a 6am “care meeting” at sect headquarters for one last chance to redeem himself.

It was suggested to us that something snapped in the unwell Ted McGaveston faced with what he may have been forced into believing was his last chance to escape the paths of Hell.

Mr Hewetson refused to say what relationship the sect permitted Ted to have with his wife and family.

House

“They have been in their own house for a while,” he said. He refused to say if the sect required them to eat or sleep apart. Asked if the sect regarded Ted as an outcast, Mr Hewetson said, “If you walk different paths then you disagree.”

Asked to explain what that meant, he reluctantly confirmed what others had already claimed.

That members were not permitted to communicate with outcasts, and that Ted McGaveston and his wife “walked different paths”.

During his discussion with Truth, which lasted more than an hour, Mr Hewetson frequently quoted passages of Scripture which he claimed were God’s law and needed no explaining.

He denied suggestions, that pressure from the Exclusive Brethren forced Ted McGaveston to kill himself.