what happened to bert potter

Bert Potter, the New Zealand commune leader behind the Centrepoint “sex commune,” is dead; he spent his later years disgraced after convictions for child sex abuse and drug offences and died in the 2010s as an elderly man.

Who Bert Potter Was

Bert (Herbert Thomas) Potter was a businessman-turned self-styled therapist who founded the Centrepoint commune on Auckland’s North Shore in the late 1970s. The community promoted radical encounter-style therapy, sexual openness and the surrender of members’ property to the group and to Potter’s authority.

Crimes and Convictions

Over time, police investigations uncovered serious offending within Centrepoint. Potter was convicted in the early 1990s of sexual abuse of girls under 16 and of drug offences involving MDMA and LSD held and manufactured at the commune.

Life After Prison

Potter returned to Centrepoint land after his release in 1999, still largely unrepentant and trying to retain influence. Ongoing internal conflict led to a settlement in 2000 that paid him and a small group of loyalists to leave permanently, and Centrepoint was then shut down and its assets repurposed to support people harmed by cults, especially former Centrepoint residents and their children.

Death and Later Reporting

Bert Potter died in his mid‑80s after a period of declining health, following a fall and hospitalisation in Auckland. His death prompted renewed media focus on the long-term impact of abuse at Centrepoint and survivor accounts that continued to emerge in the years after he died.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.