 As time passed, Brother XII became increasingly dictatorial and paranoid, fortifying his island kingdom and reportedly accumulating a fortune in gold.His mistress, Mabel Skottowe, née Rowbotham (under the name "Madame Z"), worked the members without respite, the tasks given being considered tests of their fitness to advance spiritually.One man who had been imprisoned in a cellar on the northern end of Valdes Island managed to row to Nanaimo to report the circumstances to the British Columbia Provincial Police, who investigated, but took no further action.