Centrepoint Community (Bert Potter, New Zealand, historical)

Centrepoint was founded in 1977 by Herbert 'Bert' Potter, a former salesman who had encountered Werner Erhard's EST (Erhard Seminars Training) on a 1976 California trip and returned to New Zealand to build a residential personal-growth community on a 27-acre Albany property. Through the late 1970s and 1980s the community grew to ~200 residents and a wider attendance network of ~1,000+, combining EST-style 'workshop' encounters with explicit sexual-revolution doctrine (Potter taught that adult-child sexual contact was a healthy expression of human openness) and significant LSD and MDMA use during 'workshops'. The 1990 New Zealand police investigation triggered by ex-member testimony resulted in Potter being convicted in 1990 on drug-supply charges (8 years), and more consequentially in 1992 on multiple counts of sexual offences against children with sentences totalling 7.5 years. Several senior community lieutenants — including Dave Mendelssohn, John Mancer, and others — were also convicted on related charges through the 1990s. The community continued at reduced scale until its formal dissolution in 2000. The 2009 New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care included Centrepoint as a major case; the 2024 RCOI final report documents long-term harm to ~250 known childhood Centrepoint residents. The Anke Richter book 'Cult Trip' (2022) and the 2022 RNZ podcast 'Comeback Kids' are the canonical journalistic records.