Bernie Prior The Governors Bay guru
Is businessman Bernie Prior a master who seeks spiritual enlightenment through tantric practices or a sexual opportunist? Martin Van Beynen reports.
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 cafe 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% and Johnson 21%.
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 around 2018. 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.’’
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 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 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 Ōhinetahi, 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 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 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. Others were encouraged 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.
The Falkland Islands is one of those places New Zealanders instantly connect with. It has the windswept beauty of our Chatham Islands and stunning landscapes set among huge skies, and is at the same latitude as our Auckland Islands.
Amid sheep-covered terrain and abundant wildlife, the Falklands tells a tale of resilience that echoes the spirit of early New Zealand settlers who ventured to these remote lands in pursuit of ‘white gold’: wool.
The Falklands has a precarious history from British and French discovery at almost the same time as the Napoleonic Wars drove France to reassert its interests in the southern hemisphere. Losing the war, it was forced to cede its colonial possession to Spain. British and Spanish settlements were built on each of the large islands and were virtually unknown to each other.
Spanish settlers, in their colonisation of Patagonia, decided to replicate the model that worked in South America: cattle and gauchos (cowboys). The cattle thrived and were introduced on all the islands.
American sealers and whalers then arrived, seeking their fortune, only to come to the brink of war when the USS Lexington was sent to restore order in feuds between the American, British and Spanish sealers. Britain, feeling the pinch after the American War of Independence, then closed its Port Egmont settlement and used Captain James Cook’s ship Endeavour to do three return trips to Falklands to bring everyone home in 1774.
The islands ended up dubiously becoming one of Spain’s most secure penal colonies, setting up the story 200 years later for the 1982 Falklands War.
Quite a lot happens in 1883. Britain finally reasserts its sovereignty with the visit of the St Clio. The claim was somewhat feeble, however, and consisted merely of giving the local storekeeper a Union Jack to fly outside the West Store.
Charles Darwin visits in the Beagle with Captain Robert FitzRoy, who is destined to become New Zealand’s second governor in 1843. Darwin documents the huge numbers of cattle now running wild and describes the place as “miserable islands with the whole landscape having an air of extreme desolation”.
He also sees the last of the warrah, which he documents as a cross between a fox and a wolf, and predicts “they will be as extinct as the dodo within years”.
He observes plants like blechnum ferns and geological formations that help prove the emerging theory of Gondwanaland – that all the southern continents of South America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand were once linked – when he see the same plant species in New Zealand and Australia.
Governor Richard Moody is appointed in 1841 and, in administering the new colony, sees the only economic opportunity as the culling of some of the 40,000 wild cattle.
He advertises in the UK, Argentina and Uruguay and gets only one real bid: the Lafone Brothers from Montevideo. This sets in motion the shifting of gauchos from Patagonia, with their horses, to attempt to tame and farm the cattle. With no realistic market for beef, the focus is on salting cattle hides for leather.
The business booms – so much so that in 1851 the British decide to buy out the Lafones and set up the Falkland Islands Company, modelled on the British East India Company. In 1840, they introduce sheep for the burgeoning wool trade, but with many being destroyed by dogs, lambs eaten by turkey vultures and gulls, and the outbreak of sheep scab, sheep farming is deemed a failure by 1864.
Moody has one last idea – to bring shepherds from New Zealand and Britain and seek Kiwi investment in his newly formed Falklands Islands Company.
The Kiwis are a masterstroke. They introduce romney and corriedale breeds and a science-based breeding programme, sheep dips for scab using tobacco as an insecticide, construct shearing sheds based on New Zealand designs, and plant shelter belts from wind for lambing.
By 1880, all the flocks are free of scab and the Falklands becomes phenomenally wealthy as a result of the huge demand for wool for the Boer War and World War I uniforms, and canned mutton for the British army at war in the trenches.
As Darwin predicted, the warrah become extinct in 1876 as farmers shoot them for eating their valuable sheep.
Another business emerges as the town of Stanley can service the clipper sailing ships rounding Cape Horn to the Californian goldrush. This comes to a dramatic end when the Panama Canal opens in 1914.
The Falkland Islands Company buys virtually all the rural land and sets up massive farms of 12,000 to 200,00 hectares to make the most of the windswept and poor-quality peatlands. By 1927, it has 37 huge farms and has built the largest sheep shed in the world at Goose Green, capable of holding 5000 sheep.
New Zealand continues to supply shearers to process the white gold. At its peak, the farms have 500,000 sheep (132 per person compared with New Zealand’s five sheep per person).
Fast forward 100 years and the white gold peaks in 1964, but has now been essentially replaced by one of the biggest squid fisheries in the world. Ten per cent of all squid comes from the Falklands’ special marine conservation zone.
It’s an initiative the islands could implement only after the 1982 Falklands War, with the posting of a 1500-person garrison, patrol craft and four Eurofighter jets on the islands to defend their interests. To have done this before the war would have significantly inflamed tensions with the Argentine junta. Something like 150 boats from Spain, China and Taiwan arrive every February.
After the Falklands War, the vast Falklands Islands Company farms are sold to private landowners in the belief that farm owners will be better farmers than a company employing farmers. An abattoir is finally built in 2002. This largely works except that Falklands farming starts to undergo significant change.
As we spend four days visiting the remarkable outer islands of the Falklands by ship, we witness the changes firsthand. Essentially, as a result of climate change and a series of UK government measures, farmers are being forced to change to ecotourism to secure their futures – some with more than 150 years of family links to the land.
The first place we visit is New Island, whose owner I have known for more than 30 years. Tony Chater, with whom I worked on Antarctic cruise ships, met his wife, Kim, on the ship, brought up three children on the island and now grows garlic in Montana.
He bought the entire northern island in 1985 and established it as a nature reserve now run by Falklands Conservation. His son is a pilot for the local airline of five Britten-Norman Islander planes (only one is going when we arrive due to a shortage of pilots and parts).
The island is extraordinary, with thousands of rockhopper penguins breeding among black-browed albatross on dramatic cliffs and huge mounds of recovering tussock grass.
On nearby West Point, the Napier family have farmed the island continuously for 150 years. New Zealand shelter plants like cabbage trees and flax abound. The early Kiwi shepherds really created West Point as a little New Zealand.
Lily and Roddy Napier started a tradition that continues today, of scones, cream and the local diddle-dee berry jam for visiting expedition ships, a tradition that has become famous across the Falklands.
West Point is reducing its sheep as the weather changes from wet, windy winters to year-round wind and winters with less rain.
David and Louise Pole-Evans meet us on Carcass Island, on the most stunning white sandy beach, and guide us to their vast albatross colony and rockhopper penguins. David is nervous as avian flu has just broken out on Steeple
Jason Island, site of the biggest black-browed albatross colony in the world, and has killed thousands.
South Georgia is already off limits to tourism as avian flu reaches almost every major wildlife site and is decimating Antarctic fur seal and elephant seal pups. On the Valdes Peninsula in Patagonia, 90% of elephant seal pups died between November and January. Finally, in February last year, avian flu reaches Antarctica.
Losing birds from his spectacular albatross colony is the last thing David needs as post-Covid nature tourism booms (when the planes are flying).
As we visit, a boat arrives to remove 500 sheep as he no longer has enough grass to sustain a herd of 5000. He says the droughts started in about 2010 and are getting successively worse. Coincidentally, this
is about the time the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers started quickly receding and also when the alpine fellfields on Macquarie Island started drying out and dying. Under climate change, the Furious Fifties are blowing harder, drying out the fellfields in tandem with less variation in winter and summer temperatures.
David explains the triple whammy Falklands farming faces. Climate change is clear and most farmers are reducing their herds to counter the continued droughts. Brexit has unfortunately resulted in an increase in Falkands imports by about 15% as European tariffs amplify their costs.
Finally, the islands’ Covid response has not run through their economy. He explains that because there was no market for wool, with reduced sales of carpet and clothing, the Falklands government bought all their wool for two years. Now it’s trying to sell the stockpile against similar
stockpiles in Australia and New Zealand, which keeps forcing the price down.
Jan Cheek owns the Volunteer Point farm. In 1972, 100 king penguins turned up and began breeding on her farm. Today, Jan has more than 10,000 pairs of king penguins and boasts one of the biggest wildlife attractions on the Falklands. She has built a visitor centre, toilets and a car park big enough to take 60 Land Rovers on the big cruise ship days.
We come ashore through the surf to the whitest beach you have ever seen. The reflections of the kings in the tidal pools are simply breathtaking. Meanwhile, Peale’s dolphins spin and surf the breaking waves. It is really clear where Volunteer Point’s future lies. Jan has managed to keep 10,000 sheep and the income is 50/50. Without the penguins, she wouldn’t be farming.
As we reach the capital, Stanley (population 2800), there are two other fascinating transitions to nature tourism.
The nearby Gypsy Cove and Yorke Point have been declared free of mines for the first time in 40 years and visitors can finally walk over this exquisite beach to the gentoo penguins.
Across the harbour, Lisa Lowe purchased the Murrell Farm in 1980, just before the Falklands War. The Argentinian conscripts placed minefields through most of the outer farm to stop British access to Stanley.
For the last 40 years, Lisa has been unable to walk on a large part of her farm. Heavier cattle would set off the mines and she would lose two or three a year. Cleverly, she developed a system where most of the farm was sheep. She would release her dogs to do the muster by themselves while she watched from a safe high point.
Her farm, like Gypsy Cove, was declared free of mines in 2022. To her great surprise, she found a totally new breeding colony of king penguins in the middle of the minefield. She is now opening for tourism similar to how Jan Cheek started Volunteer Point.
Kiwi Peter Carey, from Christchurch, bought four islands specifically for conservation and was the first on the Falklands to eradicate rats, mice and rabbits in a single operation. He regularly visits to continue his conservation work and is an active leader of the Falklands’ conservation efforts.
All the farmers are clear that it would be increasingly hard to farm economically without nature tourism as the climate slowly but surely changes.
Argentina still allows only one flight a week from Santiago to fly over its airspace, effectively controlling any increase in tourism. A Royal Air Force Airbus A330 flies twice a week to Britain, connecting locals and the military garrison, but it’s a huge distance to fly visitors for nature tourism.
Peat was farmed for energy until 1980 and has since been replaced by wind energy and a new power station. When I was chief executive of Antarctica New Zealand, we built the largest wind farm in Antarctica at Scott Base with Meridian Energy and looked to the Falklands for its leadership in the use of giant Enercon wind turbines that could cope with extreme winds and cold.
New Zealanders are still an important contributor to the Falklands, with shearers visiting annually, our fishing boats involved in the Antarctic toothfish fishery (though recently several ended up in the clink after a pub fight), teachers in the school and the most prominent art shop, Studio 52 (latitude 52), owned and run by Julie Halliday from Christchurch – her wonderful photos and books sell like hotcakes when cruise ships visit.
Prime minister Robert Muldoon famously stated in 1982, when the Falklands War broke out, that New Zealand would wholeheartedly back Britain. After all, New Zealanders were, like Falkland Islanders, living at the end of the line, and knew what isolation was like, he said. I recall backpacking in Argentina in 1984 and being made to wait for hours at border crossings as reprisal for New Zealand’s support at the time.
Many Falklanders have likewise chosen to move to New Zealand. I first met Debbie Summers as the tour ship agent in Stanley in 1995 when zodiac driving in Antarctica and South Georgia. Debbie now lives in Auckland and is deputy chairperson of the New Zealand Cruise Association, focused on enhancing visitors’ experiences here.
On the Falklands, they still lament her shift but Debbie says, “I have never come across another nationality as similar to Falklanders as Kiwis – the Edmonds cookbook recipes are equally cherished in both countries”.
Indeed, Richard Davies – our vice-regal consort and partner of Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro – was the resident doctor in Stanley for 15 years and the highest-polling candidate in the Falklands government until his move to NZ in 2012. In Stanley, he did everything from emergency response to elderly care to operations.
Today, the Falklands is on the verge of having one of the highest GDPs in the world through its extraordinary location and wealth of natural resources.
But it’s not without tensions. The Rockhopper oilfield north of the islands could contain as much oil as the North Sea. A decision to begin commercial operations is expected in late 2024. Many Islanders think the oil should remain where it is.
Ocean ranch salmon farming on the Falklands is as controversial as it is in New Zealand, with fears that moving to giant sea pens similar to Norway could affect the inshore foraging grounds of squid and penguins.
The Argentine tension remains too, with new Argentine President Javier Milei promoting a Hong Kong-type solution, although in a 2018 referendum 98.9% of Falklanders voted to remain British.
Twelve hours after we leave the islands, heading to Argentina, we pass a huge area of unresolved agreement called the Blue Hole. It’s ablaze with the lights of 400 Taiwanese and Chinese squid boats as they exploit the unresolved ownership of territorial waters just outside Argentina’s and the Falklands’ exclusive economic zones.
Ultimately, this new fishing pressure could destroy the very livelihood the Falklands now depends on to replace the change in farming under way as the illex squid migrate from Patagonia to the Falklands through the Blue Hole.
There is no question. as the world population continues to grow. that the Falklands’ natural resources will increase in value and ability to sustain a country with the same population as Hokitika.
In the face of climate change, shifting economic landscapes and a delicate dance with geopolitical tensions, the Falkland Islands stands at a crossroads. From the days of white gold and the echoes of war, to the current emergence of nature tourism, these islands encapsulate the intertwined relationship between humanity and nature.
Teaming albatross colonies, comical rockhopper penguins and the majestic king penguins remain in charge, set among gorgeous white-sand beaches and towering cliffs. It’s a place where time stands still and the locals keep in place a culture and lifestyle that Britain fought a war to retain.
As the world evolves, may the Falklands continue to cherish its wild nature, offering a timeless sanctuary where the forces of nature prevail, and a unique way of life persists against the winds of change.
Lou Sanson is a former director-general of the Department of Conservation.