A week in NZ Skeptical History - October 16th - 22th

2021: A group called Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination releases an open letter to the New Zealand public stressing the importance of vaccination. The letter is signed by 6535 registered doctors.
2022: After being closed for a 2-year renovation project and a few weeks of public tours, the Hamilton Mormon Temple is rededicated. Listen to the Yeah… Nah episode about Bronwyn, Craig, and Mark’s road trip to tour the temple here!

1891: Ah Shing, a Chinese miner, is found hanged in a guest house in Greymouth. Over a hundred years later it is claimed that his ghost haunts Phil’s Bakery.
2005: So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God by Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin is published by Vision Forum. The teen sisters are the daughters of Geoff Botkin, a former acolyte of Jim McCotter and CEO of the New Zealand Media Group. As per their biography they were living in Canterbury, NZ at the time of this book’s publication. It was one of the more influential publications in the Stay-At-Home daughters movement in fundamentalist christian circles through the 1990 to late 2010s. To learn more about the Botkins and their time in NZ, you can read Part 1 and 2 of Bronwyn’s newsletter articles.

2014: Minds that Matter, the journal of the Tera (1 in a trillion) high IQ society, is formed and releases its first issue. This implausible society was formed by Roddy Young from the Waikato, although there’s no good evidence that he meets the entry requirements for his own society.
2019: New Zealand becomes the 34th country to refuse entry to American anti-LGBTQIA+ preacher Steven Anderson.

2018: Iranian-Kiwi Zholia Alemi is found guilty of four fraud and theft charges in a UK court. While the charges stemmed from scamming a dementia patient, the subsequent investigation revealed that Alemi had worked fraudulently in the UK as a psychiatrist for 20 years. She claimed to have earned her medical degree from the University of Auckland when, in truth, she had a degree in human biology from the university but did not complete medical school. It is believed that she has treated thousands of mental health patients since the early 1995, some of whom were detained, prescribed medications, or received electrotherapy. In January 2023, Alemi went to trial for another 20 offenses, including forgery and fraud; she was sentenced to seven years in prison on February 28th, 2023.

1886: Birth of Herbert Sutcliffe in England. Sutcliffe was a psychologist who would eventually make his home in Havelock North, New Zealand, where he would establish a base of operations for his alternative health organisation called Radiant Living.

2004: Holocaust denier David Irving announces that he had applied to the New Zealand High Commission in London for a dispensation to allow him to visit New Zealand. Irving was barred from entering New Zealand in September due to previously being deported from Canada 11 years ago.
2018: HRV, an air conditioning company, is fined $440,000 for making false claims about its water filters and scaremongering people about the quality of their water supply.

2015: Sir John Scott, one of the perpetrators of the Otago UFO hoax in 1952, dies.

2013: Famous NZ art forger Karl Sim, aka Carl Feodor Goldie, aka the other C. F. Goldie, dies in Auckland.

1972: Poet and playwright James Kier Baxter dies. Inspired by a dream he had in 1968, Baxter relocated to a Māori settlement known as Hiruhārama/Jerusalem. At the time, the Sisters of Compassion (a catholic order founded by the venerable Suzanne Aubert, who’s journey to sainthood has hit a bit of a snag). The sisters gave Baxter permission for a long stay and between 1969 and 1972, Baxter formed and grew a commune that combined his Catholic beliefs and interest in Māori culture. As these things do, the lack of rule and order at the popular commune rubbed the locals the wrong way, made the Sisters a little less compassionate, and upset the local iwi. The commune was briefly disbanded but allowed to return to the Jerusalem property with significantly fewer residents. In 2019, following the revelation that Baxter had admitted to marital rape, a former commune resident accused Baxter of attempted rape. The same informant alleged that other women were sexually abused by Baxter.