Name Mr UB
Hometown Waihopai Invercargill
Age when entered care 16 years old
Year of birth 1981
Time in care 1997
Type of care facility Church, School
Ethnicity Father from Canterbury and Mother from the Pacific Islands.
Whānau background Mr UB grew up in a religious and conservative family and wider community.
Currently Mr UB is married. He has a PhD and works as a leader and consultant. 

“My existence was at odds with everything around me.”

My childhood was terrifying. My mother lived with severe psychosis and she made threatening comments to me daily – for example, that people were watching and would kidnap me. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia after a major psychotic event when I was 6 years old. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for six months.

When I was a pre-schooler, my mother sexually assaulted me when she bathed, dressed or toileted me. Once I could do those things for myself, she walked around naked in front of me, lifted her skirts at me and made sexualised comments. She also called me into her bedroom for morning prayers and initiated sexual contact with my father during the prayers.

Both parents verbally, physically and psychologically abused me. I was only allowed to speak when spoken to and my parents would both mimic my words. I was also refused medical care, including pain relief or other medications.

My father is from Canterbury. My mother first came to New Zealand in the late 1950s as a Pacific Islands government secondary school scholarship recipient and she returned in the early 1970s on the visitor permit scheme. Both parents were strongly of the opinion that my name and upbringing needed to be Palagi in order for me to be successful.

My parents attended separate churches. My mother was a devout Catholic, attending mass daily, while my father was a devout Anglican. He became a lay preacher in 1985 and an ordained priest in 2012. Both were involved in various church organisations and bible study groups.

I attended mass with my mother when I was home from school and alternated church services with my parents each week. As a teenager, I began attending a youth-oriented Pentecostal church.

I identify as fakaleiti, mainly because many in my extended family used to refer to me that way. In terms of sexual orientation, I identify as a gay male. But the concept of a Rainbow community eluded me until my early thirties.

In 1980s and 1990s Invercargill, binary genders were the totality of anyone’s concept of gender. The deeply conservative city and community around my family meant that sexuality was never discussed. I didn’t know how to connect with other LGBTIQA+ people until I found community groups in the 2010s.

I remember on the rare occasions I met my extended family, my uncles and aunts would talk about the fakaleiti and gay men in the family in an accepting and loving way. My mother would argue with them about that. I also clearly recall news items about the ‘town hall’ sessions protesting the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. I remember my parents being upset and angry about homosexuals.

At the age of 12, I began to repress my total identity. I purposefully monitored what I said around others, my references to myself, my posture and poise, my voice, my mannerisms and my dress sense. I had no-one to confide in about my burgeoning identities, the abuse or the pressure I felt to repress my self-expression.

I decided to open up about my sexuality in 1997, at the age of 16. By this point, I was deeply frustrated. Inside I knew that my existence was at odds with everything around me. When I came out as gay, my mother was enraged. After 48 hours of her abuse, and with no intervention from my father, I decided to leave the family home.

For years I didn’t have a frame of reference where I could consider a relationship between being Pasifika and gay. In the anga fakatonga as taught in my family, being gay and being Pasifika were not aligned to the point I was told to expect abuse and hell.

I was unable to access any forms of community or social support due to prevailing attitudes in the community about both LGBTIQA+ people and Pacific peoples. I also experienced two instances of conversion practices – one initiated by the church and another by my school.

The church incident occurred because of gossip in the community about me coming out. One of the pastors led a prayer session in which church leaders laid hands on me and prayed for my ability to choose “the right path” in life.

Afterwards, I was referred to a mental health professional based at Southland Hospital. I attended a counselling session where we discussed the incompatibility between being gay and the beliefs of the church. It wasn’t particularly condemnatory, but it was completely unsupportive.

The school incident happened after I came out. I had been due to attend a national speech-making competition as well as the national choral festival, but I was barred from representing the school at national competitions.

The school counsellor asked to meet with me after some classmates expressed their opinions both for and against my presence at the school. The counsellor asked me about what impact my sexuality would have on my education and asked whether I would consider moving on from the school. The counsellor claimed that some teachers were consulting with the board of trustees as to whether I should be expelled.

At the time, I saw these events as these two entities outlining their rules of engagement. I had only heard of conversion practices via TV or newspapers and thought of them as being electro-shock therapy, or intensive week-long residential courses of prayer and fasting.

As a result, I stopped attending that church and began to withdraw from church attendance overall. I considered leaving school 18 months early.

These organisations attempted to convert me away from my identity by isolating me and confronting my self-actualisation. This isolation decimated the Pacific idea of the person being connected to others as the lifeforce that helps us understand our place and value in the world. This is a simple, yet foundational, consideration that is unique to Pacific people.

Luckily these incidents occurred in Palagi environments – I’ve been fortunate to see conversation therapy as a ‘white’ phenomenon.

It taught me that Christianity is unwilling to entertain the idea that rainbow people are worthy recipients of God’s love. My family’s unwillingness to prioritise my story over their faith (as well as their long-standing abuse) led to the disintegration of the superficial relationship I previously had with them. I have no relationship with my remaining parent.

I’ve spoken with a small number of people who attended that church and school. It appears that more people knew what I was experiencing than I had realised. However, no one expressed remorse at my suffering or anger at what they knew. I have few connections to Invercargill now because people knew but didn’t care.

I didn’t acknowledge my gender identity as fakaleiti until I wrote my PhD in 2017. This was the first point in my life I had people I could discuss it with. When I was open about my identities, I started to feel a connection to my spirit, or life force.

My life journey has seen me underestimate my talents and accept poor behaviour in work and social environments. I’ve accepted countless incidents of racist intimidation and minimalisation across my career because I’ve had a core belief that I’m an unworthy person and I deserve poor treatment.

I never enjoyed leisure activities or travel as I was too busy working to ensure I had a stable financial base. My academic pathway was always pragmatic – I was looking for the next level up so that I could ensure I was a high-priced and valuable commodity.

The biggest impact is my lack of trust in anyone but myself. I don’t trust that my employer will provide a safe workplace. I don’t trust that my colleagues will treat me with respect. I don’t trust that my husband will not abandon me or start abusing me. I don’t trust that the Pasifika community could ever accept me. I don’t trust that I can go about in the world without some random event occurring to make me feel unworthy.

Community leaders, including religious leaders and politicians, must understand the implications of their words and actions. They must be held accountable for “standing up for the family” or “holding debate”. Institutions charged with care – like schools, community groups and churches – must proactively monitor the welfare and wellbeing of their participants.

No-one in my world has ever expressed regret at the things that happened to me. Many in my family deny they happened at all. The people responsible have been held in high esteem – some died with loud tributes paid, others are in influential local positions.

Having someone acknowledge the harm caused to me is unimaginable but needed. I would like to see the people who treated me this way held accountable in some way.[1561]

Footnotes

[1561] Witness statement of Mr UB (3 April 2022); Expert statement of Mr UB (11 September 2022).