Age when entered care: 7 years old
Year of birth: 1962
Hometown: Ōtautahi Christchurch
Time in care: 1969‒1981
Type of care facility: Multiple foster care placements; Children’s homes
Ethnicity: Pakehā
Whānau background: Ms M’s parents separated when she was 2 years old. Her mother remarried the following year. One of her two older sisters had been removed by police while only 18 months old due to neglect.
Currently: Ms M has a good relationship with her surviving older sister. She is a bird lover and when throughout life things were overwhelming, she would watch the birds flying and wish she could escape with them.

"I would have been terrified to say anything, especially in front of my foster parents."

My sister and I were told we were going for a six week ‘holiday’ with foster carers on the West Coast. Instead, we were raped, abused and terrorised there for the next five years.

For the first seven years of my life, my sister was my mother. I remember playing together on Sumner Beach stealing food from old drunks because we were starving, and sitting in the gutter crying from hunger. I remember mum being really sick and me at four trying to do the ironing and I dropped the iron on my eye. It wasn’t Mum who helped me; it was a neighbour I went to for help.

The next memory is of my mother being in bed, rambling about things that didn’t make sense even to a 7-year-old. My sister rung an ambulance and Mum was taken away. After that, my sister, our stepbrother and I went to Huntsbury House. I loved it there – I had clean clothes and food. I went to school. I got to swim in the pool, and my sister was with me.

Mum died in hospital in February 1969 – I had just turned seven. I apparently attended her funeral but I don’t remember. I have no visual memories of her at all. My stepfather – who I believed to be my father – was found dead in the house six weeks later. He’d shot himself.

Our stepbrother went to live with an aunt and we lost contact with him. My mother’s father took us to the West Coast on a train, where we were to stay temporarily with a foster family.

Imagine being a little girl and trying to judge your carer’s mood by how much milk he put in his whisky and then knowing what was coming. Watching your sister being thrown across the room and then going to sit on your carer’s knee trying to keep him sweet so you wouldn’t be next.

Imagine having to watch the man who was supposed to be looking after us threaten his wife with a loaded shotgun, tearing her clothes off in front of you and us not knowing if the gun was going to go off.

We often went to school with black eyes and bruises from the stock whip. No one ever asked us if we were ok. No one ever came to check on us.

I didn’t find out until years later when we were adults that our foster carer used to drug my sister and lend her out to some of his mates. She was between 10 and 15 years old when we lived there.

There was only one other house in the district. We didn’t feel there was anyone we could tell about what was happening to us every day.

In May 1974, my sister went to the police with the support of a girlfriend whose partner was a police officer. Our foster carer was charged with unlawful sexual activity. We were placed in a family home – we felt safe there for the first time in five years.

We had to give evidence and our case was heard in July 1974. The abuse I suffered was so traumatic, so complete – emotional, physical, sexual – that I had become almost incapable of thinking. I hardly remember giving evidence, but I know from the transcript that I gave evidence that our foster carer regularly had intercourse with me.

Although I was just 12 and the medical evidence was that we had been repeatedly vaginally penetrated, and that our foster carer had torn incriminating pages out of my sister’s diary that showed I had been telling the truth, he was acquitted of sexually abusing us. After the trial, everyone thought we were liars. It was as if the judge had labelled us as liars, and it followed us everywhere.

Our carer had made threats to kills us, so we returned to Christchurch. We were separated – no one spoke to us about what we wanted or told us where we were going.

I went to live with a family on a farm not far from the city. I can hardly bear to remember myself standing there, wondering where I was, wondering where my sister was and if I’d ever see her again.

I was regularly abused by my foster father. Although I ran away from their home three times over a three-week period, no one ever really asked me why. One of the other children had reported seeing my foster father and I “doing things” on the sofa. According to my files I was interviewed about the allegations and denied them. I can’t really remember anything about it, but I know after my last experience with disclosing abuse – the trauma of the trial and the acquittal, and being labelled as liars – I would have been terrified to say anything, especially in front of my foster parents.

Nothing was done. Even after independent witnesses with no reason to lie said they had seen him abusing me, no one did anything to protect me.

A friend and I ran away but were caught by police – after that I went to live with a reverend and his wife who I had met while living with my previous foster family.

When I was about 16, it was agreed the family would adopt me. I wanted so much to be part of a family and I thought this would be it at last. I believed being adopted would give me some rights and they wouldn’t be able to send me back because I’d really belong to the family.

That’s when the rapes began. My adoption was finally completed when I was 19. At the time he started having sex with me I was his foster daughter, then I was his legal daughter. I can remember not wanting the adoption to go through, but not knowing how to stop it. I had been abused by almost every man that was supposed to look after me – I thought I was the common denominator, so it must be my fault.

I have many challenges caused by the years of abuse I suffered. I’ve tried to escape living because I didn’t feel entitled to breathe. I have nightmares most nights, and flashbacks – they got worse after the 2019 mosque attacks in Christchurch. I have major depression and chronic complex post-traumatic stress disorder, among other things. I have never been able to work full-time. I haven’t married or been in a relationship for more than 30 years. I would have liked to have been married and had children.

The name of the man who adopted me still triggers me, even now. I think I am so scared of him because I didn’t necessarily expect much from the other men who were supposed to be looking after me, but he was a minister, I thought I could trust him.

My sister died at age 51. We reconnected when I was in my early twenties. She was fun-loving, passionate, artistic, but had bouts of depression that manifested itself by suicide attempts and admissions to Sunnyside Hospital.

I worked in the area of child protection for 20 years and I’m the person that people turn to in crisis, yet often don’t feel I count. I live alone because I feel unable to cohabit. So, in sharing this with you I’d like you to see a snapshot of two sisters who were let down by the system over and over again.

If people had truly wanted to help, it wouldn’t have taken a lot to see we were being horrifically abused, over and over again, but people were blinkered.

We were not bad children. We were abused, neglected and left unprotected by the State. I’ve taken many years to claim that truth and I honour my sister for saving my life.

I would like to say to other survivors:

Nobody knows your pain. Nobody can truly appreciate how difficult it is to get out of bed in the morning when you haven’t slept because you are having nightmares.

The courage it takes to put one foot in front of another each day and the courage it takes to begin to heal.

It’s a lifetime of recovery of using doctors, counsellors, friends and family. Some people choose to end the pain having lived a life that was for them too painful to endure. It is important we honour them and their families.

Your childhood desecration isn’t what you only have to live for, for the rest of your life, take hope in the Albatross.

Source

Witness statement of Ms M (5 November 2020).