Age when entered care: 13 years old
Year of birth: 1956
Hometown: Fairlie
Time in care: 1970–1974
Type of care facility: Education - Christ’s College in Ōtautahi Christchurch
Ethnicity: Pākehā
Whānau background: Jim’s family were farming people. His dad was the farmer and his mum was the farm wife. Jim has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. He is the oldest.

I lived with my parents in Fairlie until I was 12 ½ years old and then I was sent to Christ’s College in Christchurch as a boarder. The school was based on four boarding houses and four day-boy houses. I was in Richards house. There were just under 80 boys in the house, run by a house tutor who lived in the house, a house tutor who didn’t, a house master and a matron. They were the four adults. We didn’t see much of them. The house was really run by the house prefects who were 7th formers.

It was pretty violent all the time. When you were a 3rd former you walked down the corridors and the 5th formers would knee you in the leg until you fell over. We had fagging at Christ’s College. This was where junior boys were required to do chores for senior boys. As a prefect, I had a fag who made my bed and cleaned my shoes. The fagging system also meant that 3rd formers could be sent on errands, such as going to the tuck shop for a senior boy.

I pottered along more or less until I got to the 5th form. By then, you’re a bit higher up the pecking order, you don’t get pushed around so much. The school had this institution called ‘hauling’, where senior boys would take a junior boy off and beat him up basically, give him a hard time. I don’t know where the name came from, but I think the current term used in popular culture for this is ‘hazing’. Hauling was not an initiation; it was done as a punishment for perceived offences committed by the junior boy.

We get to the 5th form and one day in the summer, towards the end of the year, I went into the dining hall. There are 400 boys going into the dining hall and I bumped into a guy who was a year older than me. He was a 6th former then. I didn’t think anything of it, went on and had my lunch. After lunch, he and his mates came up to me and said, “You’ve disrespected him we’re going to haul you.” I protested and said it was an accident and I didn’t mean to. They said, “No, we’re going to haul you, come up to our study”. So, I went, because that’s what you did.

I went up to their study, which is at the top of Richards house, and they said, “You’ve been disrespectful, we’re going to teach you respect.” They started to push me around. There were three of them. They were the main three and various of their mates came and went during the afternoon. They abused me and bullied me for an afternoon.

They produced these half gallon flagons of warm salty water and told me to drink it. It feels like it was yesterday, it feels like it was so recent. I thought, well, I’ll drink the water and they’ll be finished with me. So, I drank one flagon but then they produced more and they kept filling them up. I think they had about six. I was beginning to feel horrible, sick and bloated. They were angry and desperate, and I thought, as a 15-year-old, they’re gonna kill me. Unless I do what they tell me, they’ll kill me. They were angry. They were having a good time, so I did what they told me, and I was so sick. They made me vomit in a metal rubbish bin and after a while, blood started to come up from my nose. You tear your throat, so my throat was tearing from all the vomiting. Blood was coming up and that worried them, so they sent me off to empty my own vomit out of the rubbish tin and to wash it out and come back.

I thought I’ve got to go back. If I don’t go back, they’ll find me. I took it back and it still stank. They sent me back again. I cleaned it out again and did that three or four times. Then, when I went back with the rubbish bin, they said, “fuck it, have sex with it. It’s your girlfriend, have sex with it”. It’s the rubbish bin. They said shove down, so I shoved down to where I was lying prone over the rubbish tin.

They told me to pull my pants down. I said I wasn’t going to do that, so they pulled my pants down and said, “Here, go on, tell her that you love her. Say nice things to her. It’s your girlfriend, get onto it.” Then they shoved and punched me. I thought, well, I’ve got to do this. If I don’t, I don’t know what they’ll do to me. So, for all I knew about sex, I moved my hips and one of them put a broom handle up my anus, which hurt. I screamed and I ejaculated. They stood me up and I was covered in vomit and blood and cum.

Another guy, to whom I’m eternally grateful, who was a friend of theirs, came in and made them stop. He told me to get out of there and clean myself up. I went off and cleaned myself up as best I could. One of the other guys in my year, to whom I’m very grateful, told the Housemaster that I had been hauled and by whom. The Housemaster called me in and he was this huge big man. I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I thought in those days if I told him what had happened, that those boys would kill me, that they would do something, so I wouldn’t tell him anything. He could see I was distressed. I’d cleaned myself up by then. He called the boys in and told them they weren’t to touch me and if they did, they would be thrown out of the school.

There was no more hauling of me after that. I remained afraid that I would be hauled again.

The abuse at Christ’s College changed my life. I had flashbacks. I haven’t had a flashback for a few years but I’ve had flashbacks most of my life. It was so intimate and even though it was just once, that was enough to change my life.

I hung on at Christ’s College. I tried to join the army. My dad talked me out of it, maybe because it would have been out of the frying pan into the fire. He didn’t say that though. I just thought I’d get on with it. It was something that had happened, but I wanted to get on with my life.

My father died at the age of 87 without ever knowing what happened to me. He knew that something had happened, but he didn’t know what, so there was no family support there. They weren’t there for me, so you just seal it up and go on.

Having sex would set the flashbacks off. I had a series of partners who had to put up with me writhing, screaming and crying. Going to a crowded pub or a busy place and someone coming up behind me touching my back would also set me off into another flashback. I had nightmares about being stuck back at Christ’s College for many years.

I thought about going to the police. I did therapy through ACC and I talked to my therapist about it and decided not to. Partly, I thought it would be re-traumatising, partly I thought not much would happen and partly, I was worried about going up against the school. I didn’t think about doing anything about my abusers for many years.

The perpetrators, helpers, aiders and abusers are still around, and I know where they are. I am not going to approach them by myself.

Now I would like to meet with my abusers. That’s what I would like. I would like to meet with someone to mediate and actually see their response. I don’t have any expectation about how they respond but I would like to meet them and speak to them. That is why I decided to speak to the police in the end.

I haven’t heard of anybody else whose sexual abuse happened at Christ’s College apart from one other guy. I wasn’t aware of anybody else at the time, but I am aware that it could well have happened. Certainly, the hauling happened. The hauling was all sorts of stuff - bullying hitting, pushing, shoving, making people do stupid things.

Telling people - it’s called pimping. You don’t pimp, you don’t tell tales. It’s a big strong culture. I mean, that’s what I would change. That’s the first thing that I would change in places like that, that you must tell. People must tell. I would like to set up a system in schools where students can go to safe adults to tell them about abuse.

Source

Witness statement of Jim Goodwin (21 September 2020).