Name Kamahl Tupetagi
Currently lives in Australia
Age when entered care 3 years old
Year of birth 1973
Time in care 1977–1994
Type of care facility Family home – Nayland Family Home, St Andrews Family Home, Tahunanui Family Home; foster care; boys’ home – Dunedin Boys' Home (Lookout Point Boys’ Home) in Ōtepoti Dunedin; Māori boarding school – Hato Pāora College (Catholic) in Manawatū-Whanganui.
Ethnicity Niuean and Māori (Ngāpuhi)
Whānau background Kamahl has seven siblings. One was adopted to maternal grandparents. Kamahl has a twin sister.

"I hid under the bed while the priest sexually assaulted a prefect."

Life with my mum and dad was quite abusive and difficult. I ended up going to hospital more than once, and I’m surprised I didn’t come to the attention of the authorities. I was also sexually abused by people who came to our house for parties, and later sexually abused at a family home.

My father left our family when I was young and went back to Niue. I last saw him when I was about 18 years old. I didn’t have a lot of connection with the Niuean side of my family growing up, and I don’t now. My mother is Māori. She had a disagreement with her family before I was born, and moved down south. We had some contact with her family but I didn’t spend a lot of time on the marae, and I didn’t have a lot of cultural knowledge or understanding as I was growing up.

Social Welfare got involved with my family after our school noted that my older siblings were truanting regularly. My family was placed under the preventive supervision of Social Welfare in 1977 when I was 3 years old, and I was made a State ward aged 9 years old. My mother voluntarily placed us kids into Social Welfare care for six months, with the intention that we’d be home again by Christmas. Mum’s emotional health was a problem, as well as our poor financial situation and unsettled accommodation.

We were placed in the St Andrew’s Family Home. I was treated well there and wasn’t abused, but I had a lot of anxiety during that time. I didn’t really know that I was in State care. Mum visited but we never went back to living with her again. When she did visit, it was quite emotional because of the long periods of separation.

Later I went to the Nayland Family Home. I shared a room with an older boy there who repeatedly sexually assaulted me. He later stole my bike and took off, and I never saw him again. I reported it to my social worker, and I think I told him about the boy sexually abusing me, but I don’t think anything came of it. If you talked about these things, people didn’t believe you. I was physically abused by another boy there too.

Foster placements didn’t go well, so I was enrolled at Hato Pāora College in 1987 and was there until 1989. I didn’t want to go. The social worker attributed the problems I’d had in foster care to a “difference in cultural values and perception”, and he thought that sending me to Hato Pāora would give me an opportunity to explore my Māori culture and make Māori friends. But I had been brought up in a Pākehā environment. I’d never learned te reo and had no understanding of Māori culture or my Niuean culture before I arrived at the school. I asked to go to my relatives in the north, to one aunty in particular. She’d agreed I could stay there, but this was never explored by my social workers.

The decision to send me to Hato Pāora was the worst decision Social Welfare could have made for me. I was horrifically abused while I lived there, by both the students and the staff members.

Violence and bullying were endemic to Hato Pāora. Staff knew it was happening, and treated victims of bullying as blameworthy, telling us to grow up or man up. They wouldn’t intervene unless there was some serious blood spilt, and it was best not to speak up in fear of repercussion. You never knew when the punishment was going to be delivered or who gave the instruction. At times it was like being assaulted by a gang knowing there were tactics being used and nothing you could do about it.

Punishments were severe, from senior students and staff. Seniors would clear their mouths and nostrils with the ugliest snot and saliva they could muster, to have you wipe it up with your hand and eat it. My teeth were damaged after being forced at times to brush them with toilet cleaner.

We were punished if we made mistakes during culture practice or sang the wrong words or didn’t know the words, or did the wrong actions. A metal ruler was used as a knuckle punishment. We had to hold our arms out with hands palms down, and the metal ruler was turned on its side and cracked onto our knuckles hard enough to cause hand injuries and create tears, which would only create more reasons to be punished.

Culture was so important at Hato Pāora. It was so much a part of everything we did, and because I knew nothing about it when I got to Hato Pāora, I became a target. If I did not speak Māori properly or do the haka properly, senior students would pick up the nearest desk or chair and hit me with it, or find a stick to punish me with. I’d be forced to stand for hours and have my legs slapped or my hands hit.

I’ve been disconnected from my Pacific and Māori culture for most of my life. I think being involved with my own culture would have given me a sense of myself and a sense of belonging. I didn’t know any Niuean or Māori language growing up, which I think would have helped me as well. My cultural learning was done at Hato Pāora, at a time when I experienced an enormous amount of abuse.

I was regularly sexually abused by a priest at Hato Pāora – several times a week, sometimes several times a day. He realised I had no contact person or anyone I could tell, because I was never visited by a social worker. It was worse during the school holidays because I was often left behind. He did whatever he wanted to me because he knew no one cared about me.

There was an open bathroom with a bath on one end. Boys would often be in the bath while the priest fondled them, even with people walking around. I think he was sexually assaulting boys so often that it was considered normal.

A lot of older boys also sexually abused younger boys. I was sexually assaulted multiple times by a senior boy. He was older and bigger, and I was too scared to refuse him.

I became a target for sexual abuse when other boys noticed how much attention the priest paid me. Once, I was summoned to the prefect’s dorm and told to strip down to my underwear. We heard the priest coming and the boy told me to hide under the bed. I had to stay there while the priest sexually assaulted the prefect.

I ran away with two other boys several times. Both of them had talked about abuse from the priest and from other boys. They were State wards as well, and we all felt quite helpless. There was no one we could turn to.

I became so mentally exhausted by the abuse that I faked having appendicitis. The priest drove me home from surgery. I was in the infirmary for two weeks and he abused me there too.

I know that some survivors of abuse have unclear memories of the things that happened to them. Unfortunately, I have very clear memories of everything that happened. I also have physical responses to things, such as smells I associate with the priest.

So many of my Social Welfare records from my time at Hato Pāora indicate I was being abused. A social worker wrote a note saying I was “unlikely to develop the strength to be able to survive at a boarding school” as I might be “the subject of all types of physical abuse,” and “observing him, his beautiful piano playing, lack of sporting interests, and delicate gestures – it is easy to accept that he would have difficulties with bullies at boarding school”.

I was finally allowed to leave Hato Pāora after telling my social worker I was going to kill myself. I was sent down south because my mum was based down there, and Social Welfare had changed its policy and kids had to go back to their parents or extended family. That was awful because we’d been estranged from Mum for a very long time.

I was enrolled at a high school where I experienced a lot of racism because we were the only dark-coloured students in the entire school. We were called ‘black bitch’, ‘black bastard’, ‘black c**t’ every single day.

I started to go to counselling in 1989. I also spoke to my social worker at the time about the abuse at Hato Paora and I was interviewed by the police, but it does not look like the priest was charged in relation to my complaints at that time. It looked like my social worker believed I’d been sexually abused at Hato Pāora, so I don’t know why police didn’t pursue it.

I was sent to live with an aunty. By that time I was so unhappy that I set the house on fire because I wanted to kill myself. I was in a very bad state, and very distressed. They took me to hospital and then I was sent to Lookout Point Boys’ Home. I was depressed and seeing a psychiatrist every week.

I spoke to a staff member there about the sexual abuse I experienced at Hato Pāora, and I signed a report about it. It’s not clear whether anything was done with it. My records from this time mostly talk about me being depressed. A progress report said that while I was clearly very depressed, I had none of the anti-social behavioural problems that the home usually dealt with, and I was inappropriately placed there.

I had just bounced around the whole country, and I didn’t have any power to make decisions for myself.

Eventually a ‘family preservation agreement’ was signed, which gave me some money for flatting and expenses, and I was to apply for the Independent Youth Benefit. I had someone who was a real advocate for me, and she helped me lodge an ACC claim. But I was pretty much on my own.

There was a real lack of care in the way Social Welfare looked after me. I had to fight for a lot of things from them, like counselling, and there was a lack of interest in us – sometimes social workers wouldn’t even turn up for appointments. We weren’t consulted about placements. We were in Social Welfare care all our lives and no one actually did anything to save us.

I left New Zealand and went to Australia when I was about 17 years old. I had to get away from everything that had happened because I felt suicidal. I’ve had many attempts at self-harm, and it wasn’t until I left New Zealand that I had an opportunity to change my life.[446]

“There was a real lack of care in the way Social Welfare looked after me. I had to fight for a lot of things from them, like counselling, and there was a lack of interest in us – sometimes social workers wouldn’t even turn up for appointments. We weren’t consulted about placements. We were in Social Welfare care all our lives and no one actually did anything to save us.”

Footnotes

[446] Witness statement Kamahl Tupetagi (September 2021).