A Passion for Healing
Dr. Caroline Ansley combines her personal experiences with her professional expertise to advocate for individuals affected by cults. Her work aims to facilitate healing and recovery, drawing on her medical background and survivor advocacy work.
Dr Ansley is a physician of over two decades experience, working in the areas of general practice, forensic psychiatric and sexual assault assessment and treatment settings, in both hospital and community settings. She brings this clinical expertise to all of her work.
Educator in Cult Awareness
Dr Ansley is an active advocate for understanding of how cults impact individuals and communities. Her education and advocacy has reached across multiple sectors and to multiple domains - from public addresses to Parliament, live television interviews, podcast and radio show hosting, and conference presentations - she tirelessly takes opportunities to bring her knowledge and expertise to the awareness of the general public, leaders in policy, and into the health and social services sectors.
Public Speaking
Engaging Audiences
Dr. Ansley speaks at conferences, presents webinars, and hosts workshops, shedding light on the impact of cult experiences and the path towards recovery.
Impacting the Medical and Allied Health Workforce
Clinical Guidance
She authored a 2024 clinical guidance "High-Control Group" pathways on Healthpathways. This medical guidance aimed at doctors is the first of its kind internationally and offers assessment and management guidance for the New Zealand medical workforce to support culturally appropriate and trauma-informed support for survivors of high control groups.
Interviews
Media Appearances
Dr. Ansley has been featured in written, radio, television and podcast interviews where she shares her expertise and understanding of systems of power and how these appear in health and social settings, impacting the health and wellbeing of survivors.
Clinical Experience
Grounded in Professional Credibility
Dr Ansley is a physician of over two decades experience, working in the areas of general practice, forensic psychiatric and sexual assault assessment and treatment, in both hospital and community settings. She brings this clinical expertise to all of her work.
Collaborations
Teamwork Matters
Dr. Ansley collaborates with social sector agencies, media professionals, research networks, lived-experience expert panels and medical experts. She co-leads the Cult-Informed Professional Network, which is New Zealand's only multidisciplinary, non-heirarchical network for cult-aware professionals and lived-experience experts.
A Snap-Shot of DR Ansley's Work
Dr. Ansley was interviewed on New Zealand's prime television network in January 2026 about her work, and the professional collaboration she is leading.
About Dr Ansley
Before Dr Ansley was an educator and a clinician she was a child at risk in a cult. As a child she lived at the Centrepoint cult, a community notorious for manufacturing and selling drugs, using these and classic thought reform and indoctrination methods to lower the inhibitions of members, coercing adults in sex acts, and grooming children into accepting sexual abuse. It was this experience - navigating and integrating her own trauma, and coming to understand what happened there through the stories of many of her childhood friends - that she started to see and understand the harms of high-control and cultic groups.
In 2015 Dr Ansley started the Centrepoint Restoration Project. The project grew out of her desire to bring attention to the harms of Centrepoint (which closed in 2000), and to bring the former children together to address some of the wrongs done to them. The Centrepoint Restoration Project ran for 10 years and culminated in an Open Letter being published in a leading New Zealand newspaper and a staring role in an internationally acclaimed and award-winning documentary about the former cult.
It was through the Centrepoint Restoration Project that Dr Ansley came to see how little was being done in New Zealand to recognise, address and intervene to protect New Zealander's from high-control and cultic groups, especially the children brought into, or raised in such groups. Through forming connections with others working in the cult awareness space internationally and regionally, Dr Ansley has built her connections with other experts and advocates with the ultimate goal or reducing susceptibility and ignorance amongst New Zealanders for recruitment and to develop referral pathways for survivors for recovery. She has written about how her childhood experiences have shaped her view on the social landscape of cults in New Zealand and delivered an address to the New Zealand Parliament in October 2024 about how it is time that New Zealand learnt from the harm which happened to the Centrepoint children.
Dr Ansley's advocacy and education efforts have lead to key outcomes, changing the landscape of understanding amongst professionals, social agencies, policy makers and those workers interfacing with cult members and survivors in New Zealand. For a sample of Dr Ansley's work, follow the links below:
Grounded in Clinical Expertise
In more than two decades working as a physician Dr Ansley has developed an evidence-based, trauma-informed clinical practice which spans all domains of medical care. She has decades of experience in working across diverse socio-economic and ethic settings in her role as a general practitioner. With 13 years work as a clinical editor (8 as senior clinical editor) for New Zealand's most trusted resource for physicians, Healthpathways, she has developed robust skills in communicating with and educating health workers in the New Zealand health system, proving herself as a key leader and driver of change.
Over her career Dr Ansley has built an interest and expertise in mental illness and wellbeing, with a particular focus on the physical expression of trauma and mental distress in the body. She has lectured and written repeatedly on the topic of how cults affect the health and well-being of those people who are exploited by coercive group settings, and she regularly talks to her patients and survivors impacted by cults about how the cult experience affects a person's relationship with their health.
Dr Ansley also has expertise in the medical care of people with mental illness in restrictive settings, through her role as physician for a closed forensic psychiatric unit. She is also a sexual assault forensic medical examiner, working with police, sexual violence services, and court advocates, to provide health care and forensic evidence for sexual assault victims.
These roles all support and inform Dr Ansley's work in cult awareness education and advocacy, making her a key leader in the New Zealand social sector, and a rising voice for cult awareness and change in Australasia.
Qualifications
1994-96
Bachelor of Science
University of Canterbury
1997-2002
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
University of Otago School of Medicine
2006-08
Fellowship
Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners
2021 & 23
Level 1-4 Te Reo Māori
Te Wānanga ō Aotearoa