Name Ms NT
Hometown Aorangi Feilding
Year of birth 1974
Type of care facility Psychiatric hospital – Te Whare Ahuru Mental Health Ward in Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai Lower Hutt 
Ethnicity Pākehā
Whānau background Ms NT has two younger siblings. Growing up, her family attended church regularly and she was an altar boy.
Current Ms NT has a partner and they have a good relationship. However, her biological family can’t accept her for who she is. Ms NT has a child from a previous relationship.

“Priests, teachers and the school nurse knew about the abuse but did nothing”

When I was a child, there were times I thought I was a woman, but I didn’t really know what transgender was.

I don’t remember much from my childhood, although I remember attending church twice a week. I made friends with another boy at primary school, and sometime between the ages of 8 and 11 years old, we went camping with another friend. My friend threatened me with violence and they made me give them blowjobs. The sexual activity, including rape, continued for a number of years and my friend used intimidation, financial control and physical assault to control me.

Because of this, I became sexualised at an early age and thought this kind of activity was normal.

I went to a Catholic boarding school when I was teenager. I think I may have been seen as an effeminate child – I was skinny and vulnerable and got bullied. I was beaten up by other boys many times, and I was often caned until I bled. Priests and teachers, and the school nurse knew about the abuse, but no action was taken. At 14 years old, I was caught sniffing glue so I ran away and got expelled.

I ended up at a local high school and the same ‘friend’ started sexually abusing me again. It was horrible and became quite violent – he was stronger and bigger than me. One day I just walked away – I hadn’t known I could do that before then. I had never told anyone I was being raped and abused and it was only later I realised it wasn’t normal behaviour.

I blocked out the trauma with solvent use and cannabis, which reduced the pain.

I was expelled in sixth form, due to my low attendance and drug use. After that, my parents asked me to move out. I had an older girlfriend by then, so I moved in with her and we had a child. After a couple of years, I moved, got a polytech qualification, broke up with my girlfriend and started to view myself as bisexual. But although I was working and had started studying for a degree, things weren’t going well for me and I attempted suicide. I was then diagnosed as having an adjustment disorder.

I finished my degree in 2000 and over the next few years, I travelled overseas, then moved to Wellington and started work there. About this time, I started to confirm in my mind that I was a woman.

I stopped using solvents when I was 28 years old but started using cannabis to cope with my anxiety. At work, I was sexually harassed so I left. That, plus being diagnosed with a brain tumour, led to my breakdown. Following that, I told my partner about my childhood abuse. She was the first person I ever told. She listened, she understood, and she was supportive.

I still have the brain tumour, it’s slow growing and I am on a ‘watch and wait’ programme and may require surgery. I have hearing loss in one ear because of it.

Having a breakdown really affected me financially. I made a claim with ACC regarding weekly compensation – this claim had nothing to do with my childhood abuse. Chasing my claim was extremely difficult and I went through five case managers. To start, they wanted a medical certificate from 2000 – by the time I finally got one, I had a new case manager and instead of using the medical certificate, I had to have a psychological review and they decided instead to cover me using the 1996 medical report that diagnosed me with an adjustment disorder.

For the next five years, I had psychosis and hallucinations – I couldn’t leave home. Around 2006 or 2007, I tried to kill myself again and was admitted to hospital as a voluntary mental health patient. I returned home after six weeks but when I couldn’t sleep, I took a double dose of medication. My partner thought I’d tried to attempt suicide again so she called the police. They asked her if I had a firearm and when she said she didn’t know, the Armed Offenders Squad came. Embarrassed and naked, I ran away in shock and they stopped me with a taser and pepper spray. I was readmitted to the mental health ward under the Mental Health Act and after six weeks I was allowed to return home on the condition I take my medication.

By this time, I had started to transition from being a man to a woman with hormones and testosterone blockers. When I was readmitted, all of my hormone treatment was stopped and I found this distressing. This was a time when gender identity and transgender people were not so common and there was a stigma attached to people like me.

I remained under the Mental Health Act for two years. During that time, I started part-time work and made a gradual recovery. Once I came out from the compulsory treatment order in 2010, I went back into the gender reassignment programme. I started a new job, but after a few years I became unwell and got bullied. I ended up having psychotherapy for five years. It was challenging but, along with gently changing my medications, I began to improve.

In 2016 I had gender reassignment surgery in the United Kingdom and in 2019, I began training to be a nurse. After graduating, I started working in mental health.

In August 2020, ACC declined me the weekly compensation and considered if I could have an independence allowance – I was assessed as being impaired to a level of 25 per cent. I asked for the decision to be reviewed but it was upheld. In the review, ACC said I have no clear recollections of the abuse as a child – however, this isn’t true. It also said I agreed with the 1996 date ACC had used for my claim, however I did not. Also, my claim had been for my breakdown, not my childhood abuse. I realise now I needed an independent advocate but I felt too much shame to try and get one. I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

I would like things to change.

Transgender people face stigma, exclusion and marginalisation. I have experienced all of these things, especially from my biological family. They still can’t accept me for who I am – that hurts most. I understand that at least 40 per cent of transgender people attempt suicide at least once and most of them don’t have the support of family or friends. I place myself in that category.

Although attitudes towards transgender people have gradually improved over the last 20 years, I still run into problems. I have been treated badly by medical practitioners, who have refused to use my chosen name or pronouns in their report and when speaking to me. I also found it hard to get my brain tumour diagnosed – when I first presented with deafness, my psychiatrist said it was psychological. Because of this, finding the tumours was delayed.

I would like ACC to be nice. Sensitive claims are hard to file and case managers change so often, it’s hard to start from scratch with a new person who has to know the things I feel most whakamā (embarrassed) about in life. I would have preferred fewer people to know my story and to have only one point of contact for the whole process.

I would like better mental health support for adolescents, and I would like every child to have the opportunity to speak to someone confidentially, away from their home and parents.

If I had been given the chance to talk to a school nurse who was trained in mental health then I might have disclosed my abuse and received treatment for my issues. My life might have been quite different.[31]