Name Tani Tekoronga
Hometown Whakatū Nelson
Age when entered care 11 years old
Year of birth 1974
Time in care 1985–1992
Type of care facility Foster homes; family homes – Opawa Group Home, Tahaunanui Family Home, Richmond Family Home; Boys’ homes – Stanmore Road Boys’ Home in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Hamilton Boys’ Home in Kirikiriroa Hamilton, Epuni Boys’ Home in Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai Lower Hutt, Hokio Beach School near Taitoko Levin; girls’ homes – Kingslea Girls’ Home in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Miramar Girls’ Home in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington; youth justice facility – Rangipo Detention Centre near Turangi.
Ethnicity Cook Islands / Māori (Ngāi Tahu).
Whānau background Tani has two older sisters and lots of older and younger half siblings. They didn’t live together but he went to school with some of them.
Currently Tani has always been close to his mum and recently reconnected with his dad. He has a son from a previous relationship. After being in care, Tani went back to school and studied. He then travelled and lived in Scandinavia and Australia, working in forestry, farming, hospitality and the music industry.

“Hokio was a hellhole” 

There was lots of violence at home and the cops knew but they didn’t do anything about it because they were family friends. The teachers at school knew we were getting beaten, too, but I think it was seen as the typical ‘darkie’ situation. At the time, I was the only darker-skinned pupil in the whole primary school.

In 1985, the day before my 11th birthday, my mum left my dad. It was a dark day. My parents then went through a custody battle over me. It dragged out until eventually the judge wouldn’t award custody to either of them, and instead made me a ward of the State. By this time, I was already in State care. I was 11 years old.

That was the beginning of me being shipped all around the country. I remember just wanting to be with my mum. I got into a lot of trouble with NZ Police during this period and racked up a bit of a record.

I went to Hokio Beach School in 1987 when I was 13 years old and was there for just over a year. I'm not sure why I was sent to Hokio. It might have been because I was getting into trouble and playing up.

Hokio was a hellhole and the most traumatic placement I was in.

As soon as you got to Hokio, you had to ‘run the line’. You had to run down a narrow hallway with boys on both sides, and they could do anything they wanted as you went down. It was carried out by the boys, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the staff invented it. The physical abuse from staff was bad, and almost daily. A senior staff member would smash us if we did anything wrong, and staff would punch us in the guts or hit us across the back of our heads. We would be beaten for small things like moving too slowly, if your shoes weren’t polished right, if you didn’t clean quickly enough or if you answered back at all. I still have scars from that staff member’s beatings.

One time, the senior staff member locked four of us into separate rooms and then went through each, one at a time, and beat us. I was the last one to be beaten. It was worse because I could hear him beating each person before he got to me. There was a strong gang and kingpin culture at Hokio. One day the kingpin got me into his room, pushed me down on the bed and sexually assaulted me. I was embarrassed, ashamed and scared. I didn’t tell anyone about what was happening at Hokio because there was no-one to tell, and there was a big ‘no-narking’ culture. I crawled into myself and stayed there.

Several boys tried running away from Hokio and a few of them died while on the run. I tried running away too – I was caught, beaten by staff and put into the secure unit with a Bible, the only book we were allowed. I spent a couple of weeks in secure and it was horrible. The second time I ran away, my records show that I stole a school van along with three others and drove it through two fences and into a staff car. Anyone who tried to run away would be punished, along with the rest of the population – this was part of the ‘jail’ or ‘institutional’ politics.

I was eventually discharged from Hokio when I was 14 years old. I had very little life skills, and I went to live with Mum. When I was 15 or 16 years old, I went into corrective training, and then I was in and out of jail until I was about 22 years old.

I still carry this stuff around with me. It’s like carrying a rock in your chest. It affects everything I do. It’s painful and it makes me feel like damaged goods. Under that, there’s the anger and the disappointment. I was a smart kid – if I had a chance, I could have done a lot more. It pulls me down constantly. Looking back at my time in care, there were no positives. There was nothing there that you should be doing to a kid. The only good thing was when I was able to get out of it.

I did want to do well in life, I did want to be better and to be good at something. But because of what has happened in the first 20 years of my life, and having no stability, it has made me feel like I am useless, crap, that I will never be good enough and that I don’t deserve good things.

Kids need to feel loved. They need someone who believes in them and genuinely cares about them. But all I heard was, “you’re a piece of shit”, “you’re useless” and “you’re jailbait”. I didn’t feel loved, I didn't feel wanted, I didn’t feel I could do anything.

Because of my upbringing and time in care, I have a distorted image of love. I came from shit, went into shit, came out and found a shit relationship, because that’s what is familiar to me. I found it difficult to leave because shit is all I knew and maybe that’s all I deserved – that’s what my thinking was.

When I was at Hokio, I got involved in the culture group. A large number of boys in the group are either dead or in prison now. I have a photo from then. Every one of the boys in that photo has suffered, even the ones that made me suffer. I don’t want retribution against any of them. I want the Government to know that they really screwed up some people’s lives.

The system is broken – you can’t treat a kid like that and expect them to come out alright.[327]