KEY POINTS:
As Dad tells it, John's world fell apart when Mum walked out of the family to move in with a new boyfriend.
John (not his real name) was 12 going on 13, his sister two years younger. Initially, Mum's contact with the children was limited.
"She used to phone them and pick them up every second weekend, until the boyfriend and my son had a fight and my son came home with a black eye," Dad says.
"Since the marriage split up, he lost interest in life. He just lost his way. He stopped playing sport. He stopped everything, and all he did was he crept into his shell and was like a hermit. He didn't want to do anything."
John had always been highly strung, but was highly intelligent. But when his parents broke up, his schoolwork collapsed and he started getting into constant trouble. He wagged school and took marijuana and alcohol.
"At that time, my daughter seemed to be the stronger one of the two," Dad says.
But three years later she attended a sex education class at school and told a school counsellor that her brother had abused her. The counsellor rang Dad, and then Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS). The family's world fell apart a second time.
"It was such a shock to the system. It was like my heart had been wrenched out," Dad says.
CYFS put the girl into foster care until eventually she went to live with Mum. Dad still isn't sure what John did to her, but says: "I think it started with, `Show me yours and I'll show you mine,' and it progressed till it got out of hand."
Questioned by CYFS, John first denied everything, but "within five minutes he owned up to it".
The Youth Court ordered him to undergo treatment at Auckland's Safe Network. Youth team coordinator Paul McManaway says the first thing they did was help John to take responsibility for what he had done to his sister.
"We do some quite intensive work about taking responsibility and admitting, sometimes in quite graphic detail about what they actually did," he says.
"After that, there's identifying the various factors that contributed to it. We call those `problems of life'. That could include bullying, parents breaking up, parents arguing, failing at school, being exposed to drugs and alcohol or being exposed to porn.
"So the kids learn the problems that contributed to the behaviour. They identify the moments when they first started thinking about it and how they planned it and what they did to gain some control over the other person and what actions they took afterwards to try to cover their tracks.
"As a result, they identify how to make sure those things don't happen again, how to deal better with the problems they face in life, how to notice if they might be starting to plan another bit of offending behaviour, and who to go to for help."
The treatment involved one group session and one one-on-one counselling session after school each week for about 14 months, plus three week-long bush camps in the holidays when counsellors worked intensively with the youngsters.
Dad attended several sessions too and Mr McManaway says John was lucky to have a Dad with "huge passion and love for his son - in some cases young people don't have that advantage".
Now, six months after the treatment ended, Dad says: "What they did in those sessions was brilliant because he's a different kid."
John has stopped getting into trouble and is doing well again at school. He has started playing sport again. He has stopped smoking and drinking, has made lots of friends and has just started a holiday job.
"We helped him out of his shell by dealing with his shame and embarrassment," Mr McManaway says.
"An embarrassed, ashamed person is going to be a lonely, isolated one, and then is actually more likely to carry on doing the behaviour that makes him feel better.
"So we helped him to feel better about himself, to focus on his strengths - his intelligence, his humour, his ability to build really good friendships that are now helping him to have a great life."
As part of his therapy, John also wrote two letters of apology to his sister, who now lives with Mum.
"Although we split, we are still a family," Dad says.
"In the last six months we have been able to sit down and talk and function together quite amicably. At our last meeting, when we were saying goodbye, my daughter gave my son a hug."
