Name Ms NI
Hometown Ahuriri Napier
Age when entered care 11 years old
Year of birth 1963
Time in care 1974–1976
Type of care facility Faith-based institution: Church youth group – Presbyterian.
Ethnicity Māori and Pākehā
Whānau background Ms NI has one sister and two brothers, one of whom is adopted. Ms NI’s mother was adopted and was a State ward.
Currently Ms NI is close with her three children.

“Everyone has had to deal with his abuse in their own ways”

Mum and Dad were both involved in the church. Mum was an elder and Dad was one of the managers. Mum was more on the faith-based side of it, while Dad mostly did practical things like maintenance. We were closely involved with the people at church, both ministers and their families, and with others who went to church. So, I spent a lot of time at and around church growing up.

My parents had a hypocritical lifestyle – on one hand, they were quite involved in the church and the school, but on the other hand, they lived a somewhat alternative lifestyle, and as a family we were members of the Sun Club. My parents took my younger brothers to festivals, and alcohol and parties on Saturday nights which was followed by church on Sunday. It didn’t make sense to my developing mind.

I was in my last year at primary school when there was a new minister appointed at our Presbyterian parish. He was a bit different to other priests – he didn’t wear a clerical collar, and he dressed as a clown for the school gala. The minister started a youth group, which our church hadn’t had before, and we started going on youth group camps. The minister would pick the kids who went on the camps, so we felt like we were lucky if we were chosen to go.

I didn’t have particularly close friends at school, and we didn’t have nearby neighbours, so our family was a bit physically isolated. It made it hard for me to feel like I belonged and to make friends. I was also a bit of a cry baby, easily upset, and a bit of a sook. I was vulnerable to any attention of being made to feel included and special.

I drifted between groups of people, and it was easy to be isolated physically from others. The minister would send children off to do different activities, so I often found myself only with him, or with only a couple of other kids around. The street lighting in the area and the lighting in the halls wasn’t that bright – there were darker areas.

There was sexual abuse in the youth group and on the camps and outings. The abuse I experienced was inappropriate touching, inappropriate nudity, and encouragement of us to explore sexually with our peers. The minister touched my body all over, including under my clothes and around my breasts and vagina. He also made me touch his penis. He would take opportunities when we were isolated. The abuse happened at church, in my home, at youth group camps and outings, in the transport used for youth group and at church events. He’d isolate you but make you feel special that you were being chosen to be with him.

There was this undercurrent of inappropriate touching and open nudity on the camps and at youth group. We were encouraged to skinny dip and there would be ‘accidental’ touching underwater. The minister would change in front of us without any attempt at modesty and encouraged us to do the same, both in front of him and in front of each other. Promiscuity was encouraged but also a secret.

There was so little supervision by the church. Our parents trusted the minister to look after us because he was a minister, and also because he had kids and a wife.

My mother once witnessed him touching me in our home. We regularly had the ministers or their families at our home for meetings and other things. Mum came into the kitchen one day when he was touching me, but she didn’t say anything in the moment. After he left, she challenged me, “Were you letting him touch you?” I said ‘no’ because I wasn’t ‘letting’ him. I didn’t have a choice in it. I thought if I said ‘yes’, then I’d be in trouble for ‘letting’ him touch me.

A local school principal somehow got wind of what was going on, and about six or eight of us ended up making statements at the police station. It should’ve been a headline story – there were so many people impacted by the minister’s abuse that it should’ve been made public and been stopped. But nothing went any further than that trip to the police station. The touching continued to happen. It only stopped when the minister moved on to another church when I was in third or fourth form. By then, the damage was done.

My mother was interviewed by the police about it, and they showed her my statement. She told police she had asked me if he had been touching me in the kitchen at our house and I’d said “No, nothing was happening”. She told the police that what was written in my statement was obviously a lie. A little girl never forgets the betrayal of her mother.

Mum was an elder at the church and part of those who appointed and monitored the minister. She would’ve been involved in him getting and keeping his job. She saw what he was doing to me in the kitchen, in my home where I should have been the safest. I don’t know how she could have defended him and made me out to be a liar – she had seen it with her own eyes.

I’ve made some poor decisions and done some Bonnie and Clyde stuff I’m not proud of. I’ve been lucky to get through life without a criminal record. I’ve taken a lot of risks where things could have gone really wrong, not just for me but for my children also. There are skeletons in my closet I need to keep hidden.

If it weren’t for the breakdown of my relationship with my family caused by what the minister did, I wouldn’t be living with depression, anxiety, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and imposter syndrome, controlled only by medication. My career stability and educational outcomes at school could have meant that my life journey would have been quite different. Economically I’ve missed the boat, and I’ll need to work into my 70s. I’ve used alcohol heavily over the years, and I’ve had periods of cannabis use as well as prescription medication. I attempted to take my own life a couple of times in my teen years.

The grooming and touching really influenced me as a teenager and later in life. I didn’t value my body, and I’d be intimate with anyone who would pay me attention. For a time, I worked as a high-class sex worker, because I needed money.

Everyone has had to deal with the minister’s abuse in their own ways.

After having my three kids, I decided I needed to knuckle down for them to have a better chance at life than I had. I went to polytech, got a diploma and got a job, and bought a house. I kept a close eye on my kids – they rarely went anywhere when I wasn’t with them, and it was like me and them against the world. We’re still close.

My relationship with my mother went pear-shaped in my teen years. I believe that me being sexually assaulted touched a nerve for her – it was hard for her to face it or deal with it, because until recently she believed she had been conceived because of a sexual assault. She was abandoned before she was two years old and made a ward of the State. She was in and out of foster care before being adopted at around 3 or 4 years old. Her birth mother went on to have several children to multiple fathers, and her birth father was in and out of prison and psychiatric units for his whole life – I think he was locked up to prevent him using his cultural practices. He died in prison the year I was born, and Mum never got to meet him. My son has done a lot of whakapapa research, and we are slowly reconnecting with our iwi, hapū and marae.

Mum not accepting that I was a victim has just made it impossible for me to connect with her. A lot of what I do to keep a relationship with her, I do resentfully. Over the years she stayed good friends with the minister and his wife, even after they left Napier. She once wanted to take my two girls to visit them when we were travelling past their place on the way to the South Island together. Another time she asked me to come to her house and prepare a dinner for some ‘surprise’ guests they had coming. I did this often, and the children and I stayed and had a meal as well, so it wasn’t an unusual request. But I discovered it was the minister and his wife coming to dinner, so I took my kids and left before they got there. Some sick kind of surprise. Mum has never accepted that I was one of the minister’s victims, and her not believing me is a real cloud over our relationship.

Over the years I have dreamt about confronting him directly, but I never did. By the time I realised I could, it was too late, and he had died. There are institutional structures that have protected the perpetrators of abuse and shattered the lives of their victims in the process. Churches need to acknowledge their part and do better, much better than just putting fancy words on their websites.[309]

“Our parents trusted the Minister to look after us because he was a minister, and also because he had kids and a wife.”

 

Footnotes