Ex-Gloriavale teenager ripped up golf course
A TEENAGER who left the West Coast’s religious Gloriavale community has admitted doing burnouts on a golf course.
Barnabas Ben-Canaan, 18, appeared in the Christchurch District Court yesterday where he pleaded guilty to charges of wilful damage and driving while his licence was suspended.
Ben-Canaan featured in a Campbell Live story in April, where he said he wanted to leave Gloriavale because he was ‘‘sick of all the control in there’’.
‘‘Every time you wanted to do something you weren’t allowed to do it. You didn’t get a say in anything. You’re just told where you had to work and what you had to do. Just way too controlling,’’ he told the TV3 current affairs show.
A month later, he was caught doing burnouts in a car on the fairways at the Temuka Golf Club, on May 17.
Police said the two or three minutes of burnouts tore up the three manicured fairways and damaged two sprinklers.
At the time, he told police he did not realise he was on a golf course.
Ben-Canaan pleaded guilty to the charges. He was fined $1000 and ordered to pay $1608 to repair the damage, which he would pay at $50 a week. He was disqualified from driving for six months.
Judge Barbara Morris told him one conviction for an 18-year-old could be explained away as an error of judgment, but she warned: ‘‘If you do it again, it starts to define who you are.’’
She said: ‘‘There needs to be a deterrent sentence for such cases, which are just designed to cause destruction.’’
Police said his licence was suspended in March for three months for accumulating too many demerit points.
At 9.20pm on May 17, he drove a Toyota Corolla on to the Temuka Golf Club course from Domain Tce, and did the burnouts on the fairways. He was found by police leaving the golf course.
Gloriavale senior figure Fervent Steadfast said Barnabas Ben-Canaan was not a current member of the community.
A spokesperson for the family of James and Hope Ben-Canaan, who left Gloriavale with their 12 children at the beginning of March, said Barnabas was not one of the couple’s sons.
Barnabas told Campbell Live he wanted to leave Gloriavale when he was 14 but was not allowed out until he was 16, when two men drove him to South Westland and dropped him on the side of the road. He had no possessions and nowhere to go.
‘‘I pretty much cried the whole [first] night because I was really scared,’’ he said.
‘‘I didn’t know where I was, what was going on. Pretty much for the first two months I’d pretty much cry myself to sleep a lot of nights because I didn’t know anybody and everything was just really scary. And not allowed to talk to your family or anything – the only people you’ve ever known.’’