82. Part 4 of the Inquiry’s final report, Whanaketia – Through pain and trauma, from darkness to light, describes how Pacific children, young people and adults in State and faith-based care experienced the full spectrum of types of abuse and neglect reported to the Inquiry, including:

• entry into care, which caused trauma
• psychological and emotional abuse and neglect
• physical abuse and neglect
• sexual abuse
• racial abuse and cultural neglect
• spiritual and religious abuse and neglect
• medical abuse and neglect
• solitary confinement
• financial abuse and forced labour
• educational neglect.

83. This chapter describes how Pacific survivors were subjected to targeted racial abuse focused on their Pacific identities and cultural neglect. It also explains that many Pacific Peoples in care experienced ethnic misidentification or lack of ethnicity recording, which was a specific form of cultural neglect.

84. The lack of recorded ethnicity data for people in State and faith-based care throughout the Inquiry period created challenges to identifying the full nature and extent of abuse and neglect experienced by Pacific survivors. The best available estimates indicate that up to 200,000 people were abused in care between 1950 and 2019. The Inquiry was not able to reach any conclusions about what proportion of this estimate were Pacific survivors.

85. Analysis of accounts from survivors, including the Pacific survivors who registered with the Inquiry, shows that 63 percent of Pacific survivors experienced physical abuse and 52 percent experienced sexual abuse in social welfare care. For Pacific survivors in faith-based settings, the most frequently experienced types of abuse were physical (45 percent) and sexual (33 percent).

86. Many Pacific survivors who came forward to the Inquiry also had whakapapa Māori, meaning they often experienced multiple and compounding forms of racial abuse and cultural neglect and were often denied access to multiple cultural identities and their associated knowledge, languages and customs.

Targeted racial abuse

87. Pacific survivors told the Inquiry that they experienced overt racial abuse that targeted core components of their identities. The Inquiry defines racial abuse as any instance of abuse that includes hostility, contempt, ridicule, or hurtful or offensive actions on the grounds of a person’s skin colour, race, or ethnic or national origins. As such, it co-occurs alongside verbal, physical or sexual abuse, but provides another ‘layer’ to the abuse that victims experience.[77] Racial abuse of Pacific children, young people and adults in care is a transgression of the vā.

88. Pacific survivors reported psychological and emotional abuse, in the form of verbal abuse, being used to shame and degrade them. Pacific survivors report being called ‘coconuts’ and ‘niggers’.[78] The Inquiry also heard that for Pacific disabled survivors, verbal abuse exacerbated challenges they already experienced due to disability or mental distress. For example, Samoan survivor Antony Dalton-Wilson recalled being called “bung-eye” by teachers because he was unable to see properly.[79]

89. Abusers did not always discriminate based on the specific ethnicity of those they were abusing; often it was out of colourism, or an underlying prejudice towards those with dark skin (which is itself based in colonial and racist ideologies). Samoan survivor David Williams (aka John Williams), who was placed into Ōwairaka Boys’ Home in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland when he was 11 years old, told the Inquiry:

“The thing is, no matter where you went, if you had brown skin, you were going to get abused. Physically or sexually or both. Occasionally one of the white boys would, but he would have to be a real bad bugger. If you were brown you were going to get done no matter what.”[80]

90. Derogatory statements were also made in survivors’ records, which they discovered years later upon receiving them. Samoan survivor Fa’amoana Luafutu found comments that disparaged his family and showed negative views towards Pacific Island migrants, such as:

“This 12-year-old boy comes from a family who have not settled into European ways readily and cling to a Samoan language and dress. If the parents would take a greater interest in English, then they would have been able to assist their boy to a far greater extent.”[81]

91. Māori and Niuean survivor Mr VV, who was placed in Kohitere Boys’ Training Centre in Taitoko Levin when he was 14 years old, shared how one staff member wrote in his notes that he was not productive as a member of the work group and suggested he should go back to the islands where his present way of life could be acceptable.[82]

92. In education settings, Pacific survivors reported that they were often disregarded and ignored by teachers, streamed into classes with easier work, or outright racially abused.[83] They were also punished more frequently and more severely for perceived misbehaviour than their Pākehā counterparts. During the Inquiry’s State Institutional Response Hearing, Chief Executive and Secretary for Education Iona Holsted acknowledged that the education system’s expectations of Pacific children and young people were ‘too low’, which caused harm and contributed to poor educational outcomes over generations.[84]

Cultural neglect through disconnection from identity and families (kainga)

93. Many Pacific survivors were denied the ability to practise and access knowledge of their cultural identities, practices, customs and languages, and access to their kainga (family). The removal of Pacific children, young people and adults into care, and being kept separated from family once in care, was a transgression against the Pacific value of kainga (family) and a transgression of the vā.

94. Pacific survivors of institutional residential care reflected on how residential facilities and homes were not set up to provide for them culturally in the first place. Survivor Fa’amoana Luafutu told the Inquiry that Kohitere Boys’ Training Centre in Taitoko Levin “had no function to meet the needs of a Samoan like me”.[86] Similarly, Tokelauan and Māori survivor Mr TH said that “there was no cultural support at Epuni [Boys’ Home]”.[86]

95. While the experiences that survivors shared showed that cultural neglect and racial abuse were distinct forms of abuse, they were also often interrelated. Pacific survivors experienced verbal taunts and racist name-calling that made them too embarrassed to identify with or share their culture. Cook Island Māori survivor Jovander Terry shared how he was fluent in Cook Island Māori before entering into care. However, after the racist name-calling experienced by peers and staff at a boys’ home,[87] he chose not to speak his language. Other institutions dissuaded Pacific survivors from speaking their specific language by using corporal punishment if they were caught doing so.[88]

96. Pacific survivors discussed corporal punishment that was given with a cultural justification. Survivors from the Methodist Wesley College in Pukekohe such as William Wilson recalled violent punishments enforced by peers, such as the ‘Samoan Slap’ and ‘Island Respect Hidings’.[89] Instances of violence that occurred with a cultural framing contributed to the separation of survivors from their culture, as this abuse meant they wanted nothing to do with the practice or the abusers.  

97. For Pacific survivors with a disability or mental health condition, institutions did not provide for a connection to culture, including within therapeutic processes.[90] Samoan survivor Lusi Faiva, who has cerebral palsy, described the lack of opportunities she had to learn about and participate in her culture during her time at Kimberley Centre in Taitoko Levin:

“(No) one ever talked to me about my Samoan heritage … I felt like people didn’t know or care about my Samoan culture. Even if they did there was no recognition, interest or inclusion. There was no respect or effort to recognise me for who I am. Even I didn’t know.”[91]

98. Other survivors were not told that they had family they could contact and connect with. Samoan survivor David Crichton shared that the social welfare residences and institutions he stayed in held the contact details for his extended Samoan family, but never facilitated that connection or told him about them.[92] Cook Islands and Māori survivor Anau Jr (Ngāpuhi), who was placed in care at 12 years old, was denied the ability to connect to his family as the social welfare residences and institutions did not try to contact his immediate and extended family while he was in care.[93]

99. Some Pacific survivors were denied their connection to their kainga because the State failed to correctly identify and support their ethnicity while they were in care. The Inquiry has heard of instances where survivors were made to believe that they were Māori but only found out later in life that they were Cook Island Māori,[94] or learned they were Samoan only after they had requested their records from the Ministry of Social Development as an adult.[95]

Cultural neglect through ethnic misidentification

100. Some Pacific survivors reported that their ethnicity was misrecorded by care staff, or not recorded at all in State[96] and faith-based care,[97] faith-based schools[98] and psychiatric care.[99]

101. Survivor Mr TH, who spent time in Epuni Boys’ Home in Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai Lower Hutt, Arbor House in the Wairarapa and Hodderville Boys’ Home (The Salvation Army) in Putāruru, received some of his files and saw that sometimes he had been recorded as only Māori and not Tokelauan.[100] Cook Islands Māori survivor Te Pare Meihana described how “with the flick of a pen”, her ethnicity was changed to Māori to make it easier to adopt her out to a Māori family.[101]

102. Samoan survivor David Crichton was mislabelled as Māori upon entry into the care of Presbyterian Support Services as an infant, an error that followed him through his time into social welfare residences and institutions and then adulthood.[102] Due to thinking he was Māori, David missed out on the opportunity to connect with his Samoan culture and aiga, a neglect that he feels was the worst aspect of his time in care.[103]

Footnotes