Name Ms MC
Year of birth 1964
Type of care facility Foster care; residential school – Salisbury School in Whakatū Nelson; hostel – IHC hostel.
Ethnicity Māori
Whānau background Ms MC was made a State ward and spent her childhood in foster care. In 2019 she discovered that her biological mother and two half-sisters live in Australia. She thinks her Māori heritage is through her father but doesn’t know who he is. She would like to find him.
Currently Ms MC’s husband passed away in 2001. She lives independently with support from CCS Disability Action and Healthcare New Zealand.

“I wasn’t allowed near my foster parents’ daughter. If I did go near her, she’d scream and I’d get a hiding, with a belt buckle across the back of my legs.”

My Life

I live my life in a shell.
There I live very well.
I feel like I want to tell,
But all I can do is yell.
People say that I am a pain,
And that I have got nothing to gain.
They say I have not got a brain,
Or if I have, it is made of grain.
They always like to pick on me,
Because they say it is free.
They are only happy when they can see
That I am sad, as sad as can be.
My life has been nothing but sheer hell;
Sometimes all I want to do is yell.
Is there anyone I can tell?
Maybe then, I would feel well.
I feel that I am on a merry-go-round,
Instead of solid ground.
In my world, I cannot be found,
So sh-h-h, do not make a sound.

I have no memory of my early life, but I was placed with my foster mother and her first husband when I was 3 years old. There were about three families in one house, and my bedroom had no bed, no nothing. I’d be locked in and couldn’t get out. When something happened, I got the blame and the hidings.

They would tie me to the clothesline, around my stomach and my feet with my hands behind my back. If they went out, they put me in the shed with a rope tied around my neck – I’d have to stand on my toes because the rope was too short. When they came home, they’d tie me to the clothesline again. They’d also put me in the pool naked with weights tied to my feet so I couldn’t get out. The water came up to my mouth – I could just put my nose out to breathe.

Sometimes my foster father and his friends would use me as bait for pig hunting. I was tied between two horses and dragged along. When the pigs came, they scratched and bit – sometimes to the bone. My foster mother sewed me up, and if I screamed, she’d stick the needle into the muscle.

My foster parents threw lots of parties with doctors, lawyers and police from all over town. During the party they’d throw me face up on the bed and tie my legs and wrists to it. Just about every guy at the party would put their fingers or themselves in me. The wives would watch, cheering them on. They’d tell the teenagers to put things inside me – broom handles, sticks, tools, carrots and potatoes. The more I screamed, the harder they did it.

They wouldn’t stop, even if I was bleeding. I was their sex toy, a prostitute, but I wasn’t getting paid for it. It’s the only way I can describe it.

I hardly ever went to school. When I did, the teacher would call me dumb and make me sit in the corner. The kids I lived with would tell their mates what happened at home, and they’d bully me. I’d try to tell the teachers about the bullying, but they’d tell me to go away and not tell lies.

My foster parents split up when I was 6 years old. At first, my foster mother brought me up on her own, with the help of her mum and dad. Her parents didn’t do anything to me, but as I got older her mother would say I was old enough to do housework. I had to do it all. If I missed anything, I’d get slapped.

My foster mother left me with her parents. When she came back, she asked if I wanted to live with her, her new husband and their daughter. I wasn’t doing well at school, so I thought, “Yeah, new school, new start, Mum’s going to be there”.

That was the biggest mistake, ever.

My new room was the same as my old room – it didn’t even have carpet. I slept in a box and wet it every night. The only thing I had to wear was a potato sack. I was tied up again, with my hands behind my back around the pole and my legs tied together. They put a rope around my neck. When I was older, they used a chain.

I wasn’t allowed near my foster parents’ daughter. If I did go near her, she’d scream and I’d get a hiding, with a belt buckle across the back of my legs. When she was 2 years old and I was 10 years old, she fell out of the car and broke her leg, and they blamed me, even though I was nowhere near the car.

My new foster father was one of the big people in his job, and a Presbyterian Church elder. Whenever my foster mother wasn’t around, he put himself in me. I think he kept it a secret from her. It was mainly him but once or twice one of his male friends would do it to me as well. On the weekends, he’d tell his wife he had to pick something up from work, tie me up and take me to his job. He’d do it to me in his office, on the desk.

A social worker visited every six months. They would always ring and give my foster parents time to prepare. I would be dressed properly, and the social worker never checked my bedroom. If they asked me questions, my foster parents would frown at me, so I’d say I was all right.

When I was 13 years old, I was sent to Salisbury boarding school because Social Welfare paid for it. The principal took me into her home and taught me how to use a knife and fork, and how to do my buttons. I loved her, like a mum. But at the end of each term, I had to go back to my foster family, and I hated it. My foster father kept on abusing me, and I thought it was normal to be treated like that – I didn’t even tell the principal.

The day after I finished boarding school, my foster family put me in an IHC hostel and told me I wasn’t good enough for society. I still had to go back to them on weekends though. I had no choice. My foster father continued to abuse me and warned me not to tell or I’d have to live with the consequences.

I worked in the IHC community, which was okay, I didn’t mind doing the jobs and I was paid. But when I saw my foster family, I had to give them my money – they said it was theirs. When I got a full-time job as a finisher at a knitwear factory, my foster father would pick me up, do what he wanted to do with me in the bushes, then leave me on the side of the road. I had to find my own way to my job. At work, I’d say I was held up with something or I went to the doctor, I was too ashamed to tell. Even now I feel ashamed. That shamefulness stays with you, no matter what you try to do to get rid of it.

The first time I got pregnant, I was only about 12 or 13 years old. I gave birth on their bed, on a big plastic sheet so I wouldn’t make a mess. After it arrived, they took it away. I don’t even know if it was a boy or girl – even if we came face to face, I wouldn’t recognise them.

Over the years I had several babies – I think I’ve been pregnant 12 to 15 times. Once a baby came out, another one came in. It felt like there were no breaks in between, and each was harder than the last. I had miscarriages, and a couple of stillbirths. No one ever knew I was pregnant because I wore baggy clothes about four times my size, anything to hide it.

I don’t know what happened to the babies. I think they either kept them or gave them away. I never heard any conversations about the babies, but my hearing wasn’t good because of the beatings. I know some of the babies weren’t born ‘normal’. Those ones, I’d hate to think what they did to them, knowing what they did to me.

I was pregnant before I went to the IHC hostel. When the baby was due, my foster parents kept me home, but it didn’t come at the due date, and I wasn’t allowed out of the bedroom. About a week after it was born, I went back to the hostel. They asked where I’d been, but I’d been told to lie and say I had been on holiday. What the master says, you do.

When I was 28 years old, the house mothers at my second IHC home asked if I had been touched by my foster father. I said no. They asked again, another 10 or 15 times, until I broke down and said yes. They took me to my foster parents, and I told my foster mother what her husband had been doing. She said I was lying and that he wouldn’t rape me. He said nothing. I felt relieved after confronting them. The house mothers banned him from coming to see me and said what I did next was up to me, but I didn’t want to tell anyone.

If he’s dead and buried, I hope he burns in hell, but even that’s too good for him.

I was working when I met my hubby. My boss always yelled at me and called me a shit-stirrer, and the other trainees wouldn’t let me sit with them during breaks, so I sat in the corner on the concrete floor to eat – and then a man came over and took me to his table.

He and I lived in the same community home. We got married and shared 10 years of a good life together. I didn’t know how to read or write until he taught me. He had a lot of patience. I told him about what I’d been through, and he took me to the police station. They interviewed me, put me through the works, took me to doctors and had me looked at. They got the police to visit my foster parents, who denied doing anything. Why wouldn’t they? He was a church elder, their name was too precious. I told the police not to worry about it.

Then my husband got sick with blood cancer. In 2001 he had an accident and when I walked into A&E, they had the defibrillators on him. I asked them to stop so he could pass in peace, with dignity. I froze in place for hours and the hospital priest had to take me home.

After this, a friend of ours started sexually and physically abusing me. He would wallop me with his fist if I didn’t do what he wanted. I didn’t know how to stop it or if I was allowed to. I ended up getting a restraining order against him.

Someone once asked me why I’m not the meanest person in town after what I’ve been through. But my philosophy is, why hurt people? Why pass it on?

I still hate my life at times. I can’t stop hearing my foster family, smelling them, feeling them. I have all these thoughts all the time, there’s no break. By telling people, I opened Pandora’s box. Part of me wishes I didn’t, but part of me is also glad, because people know why I am like I am.

If I can save one soul with my story, it’s worth it. I want the Government to know what happened to me, so it will never happen to anyone else. Absolutely no one, no child, should have to go through what I’ve been through. If I can stop that from happening, then as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my duty to society.[215]

Footnotes