Name Beverly Wardle-Jackson
Hometown Ōtautahi Christchurch
Age when entered care 7 years old
Year of birth 1952
Time in care 1960–1970
Type of care facility Salvation Army Home – Florence Booth Salvation Army Home; family home – Riccarton Family Home; girls’ homes – Fareham House, Miramar Girls’ Home, Strathmore Girls’ Receiving Home; psychiatric hospitals – Oakley Hospital, Porirua Hospital; Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers.
Ethnicity Pākehā
Whānau background Beverly is the fourth of 10 children.
Currently Beverly has four children with her first husband. She has no connection with her oldest daughter but has good relationships with her other children. Beverly is married to her second husband Ian and lives in Christchurch.

I was 12 years old when I was made a State ward. My father tried hard, but we lived in extreme poverty and didn’t have a lot of food. Despite this, the children kept coming.

My family first came to the attention of Child Welfare when I was 6 years old. The school headmaster contacted Child Welfare because of concerns about our family, and not long after, other people who were concerned also contacted them. I’m not surprised by this – sometimes there was no food in the house at all, and I would have to go begging to the neighbours for milk for the babies.

When I was 10, my parents were prosecuted by the Education Board because my siblings and I weren’t going to school. Sometimes I’d be at home helping to care for the younger ones, or because I was sick. Sometimes I stayed home because I had no clean clothes or because there was a school trip on that we could not pay for.

I was sent to various girls’ homes, where I was physically abused and put in seclusion.

Like a lot of girls who went into care, I ended up in psychiatric hospital care – first Ward 27 at Wellington Hospital and then Porirua Hospital, where I stayed on and off from 1967 to 1973, and later Oakley Hospital. In between admissions, I went to other places – often back to various girls’ homes.

Each time, I was returned to Porirua Hospital when my behaviour was perceived to be ‘difficult’. I was just a lonely, isolated teenage girl. Every little thing about Porirua Hospital seemed to reinforce the feeling of being trapped and powerless. Every day, violent incidents would happen somewhere, usually ending with the nurses assaulting patients and dragging them off to their rooms, kicking and punching them along the way. It was all wrong, so wrong, but there was no one to tell, no one to complain to.

The continual screaming, banging and swearing day and night was overwhelmingly depressing. I was on edge the whole time, wary of everyone, anxious that I might end up in the thick of it.

I was filled with deep despair. I felt more alone in the world than ever before. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t mad. I also knew that Child Welfare had nowhere for me to live. As each year passed, it became less and less likely that I would ever have a home or someone who cared about me.

Even at my age, I could see the injustice of dumping us girls into mental institutions simply because there was nowhere else for us to go. It seemed as though we were some kind of social experiment.

I escaped once and was given electric shocks as punishment, although the ‘medical’ reason given was that I was suffering from depression.

There was very little for us to do other than spend each day with the other patients inside the day room. Many of the adult patients had been there for years. Some of these patients had vacant expressions and just sat hardly ever speaking. Others spoke continuously but only to the voices in their heads. Eventually I got used to living in the hospital and used to the people I was forced to live with. I no longer allowed myself to think about my future – I knew I had to accept this madhouse as my home.

When I was 16, I went on trial leave from the hospital. Trial leave is a fancy term for when they allow people like me to leave hospital to test my readiness for living in the community. While I was on leave, I met a man and fell pregnant. Nobody had explained to me how you became pregnant or how babies were born. Child Welfare arranged for me to be forcefully taken back to Porirua Hospital. I overheard the nurses talking about me being pregnant, and that I would probably stay there until after the baby was born, then Child Welfare would take the baby and adopt it out. I spent days and days crying in my room. I begged to be let out of the hospital, but my pleas were ignored.

A friend and I devised an escape plan and we managed to hitch-hike to Auckland but were found by police. I was held in the police cells overnight, remanded in custody for one month, and went to Mt Eden Prison and then Oakley Hospital. At Oakley I lived in a constant state of terror and anxiety – I was terrified by the screaming and fighting among the patients.

When I eventually appeared in court, the magistrate said to the prosecutor that he failed to see any reason why I, as a pregnant young woman, was being held in a mental institution, and he released me immediately.

I was scared and relieved – I knew I was ill-prepared, but at least my life was in my own hands, not in the hands of strangers. I still wasn’t free from Child Welfare though – I was dropped off at a home for unmarried mothers, where I gave birth to my daughter four months later. I was 17.

Within minutes of her birth, the staff took my baby from me and refused to let me see her. Child Welfare wanted me to sign adoption documents and I refused. Child Welfare told me I would have to find work, or they would take my daughter away. I was determined that wouldn’t happen, and I worked long days, leaving my baby with a caregiver. Then I accidentally bumped into her father, and we married.

I moved to Christchurch for a fresh start. Somehow, I got by from day to day, drawing on some unexplained strength within me. I reconnected with two of my sisters, but that all became too hard in the end; too much damage had been done.

Against all odds, I did make a new life for myself. The years were never easy, but somehow, I must have been blessed with a mental fortitude that made me want to get through.

I wrote a book, In the Hands of Strangers. I requested my files from Child Welfare, and as I read the notes that had been recorded about me, I wept. Shock, anger, and feelings of worthlessness welled up inside me. I could hardly believe the coverups, whispers and lies people had written to justify their treatment of me.

I am very aware that my story is just one of the many stories of the ‘lost children’ – the State wards of my generation. We were children who did not have mental illnesses when we entered mental institutions, but we all became mentally scarred by our time there. At the most basic level, most State wards were unwanted by their own families. Many of them, like me, remained unwanted as we entered our teenage years. I can only share my own story – but I know what happened to many of them. Some ended up in borstals and went to prison; others still wander lost and forlorn through life.

Some days I can’t believe I survived. But I did. I don’t deny the physical and emotional scars I still carry, but the very things I was missing throughout my childhood – love and a sense of belonging – eventually found me.

This is my story. I hope that by telling it, lessons will be learned. [98]

Footnotes

[98] Witness statement of Beverly Wardle-Jackson (7 November 2019).