Abuse in Care: The spiral from home to state care, gang life, and prison

Once a hardened gang chief, Paora Sweeney - supported by his son - broke down at times during evidence to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, Māori hearings. Photo / Supplied

WARNING: This story deals with Physical and sexual abuse.

Two men have told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care's Māori hearings how their lives spiralled out of control after they were put into state care in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

When Paora Sweeney was thrown into the "pound" at the now infamous Kohitere boys' home after cracking the skull of another youth, he hid under the bed in the dark and rocked back and forth humming the way his mother used to when he was little.

Sweeney would go on to start the Hamilton chapter of the Mongrel Mob at just 18, as a result of the trauma he suffered as a ward of the state, he told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

At age 11 in the early 1970s, Sweeney lost his mother in a car crash in Hamilton.

Six weeks later his father died of a stroke and soon after his older sister died in her sleep.

Until then Sweeney and his six siblings had lived a poor but "good life", filled with aroha, in Tūrangi.

His father, also Paora, never yelled or swore, and never raised a hand to the children. His mother June was "a wonderful mum".

Sweeney was sent to live with relatives caring for his younger brother but attacked the woman when he saw her whipping the 6-year-old boy.

He tried to flee with his brother but realised he didn't have anywhere to go and had to leave his young sibling with people he knew were hurting him.

"That was probably the hardest thing for me."

Kohitere Boys' Training Farm, Levin, during the 1920s. One former resident says the home was a breeding ground for gang and prison life. Photo / NZME

Sweeney lived on the streets, sleeping in cardboard boxes and breaking into sports clubs for food.

Eventually he was picked up by Social Welfare workers and made a ward of the state.

By the time he was 12 he had been sexually abused by a female carer at a foster home in Taumarunui, which set him on a path of mistrust and dislike of women.

Although he'd received a Māori Education Trust scholarship to attend boarding school after doing well on an entrance exam, Sweeney ran away, unable to process his grief.

His initiation into a boys' home in Kirikiroa was a punch in the mouth from a housemaster handing out fruit after Sweeney hesitated over which type to choose.

The force split his lip over two bottom teeth and when asked a second time Sweeney again hesitated.

The housemaster threw him against a wall and Sweeney wet himself in fear.

He spent the next seven years in and out of boys' homes including in Kirikiroa, Hokio Beach and Kohitere, Levin.

In the boys' homes, excessive physical violence and punishment were meted out by both housemasters, who were all Pākehā, and other boys, who were mostly Māori, in a hierarchical system similar to a gang.

Construction of the security block at Kohitere which was to provide accommodation for 12 boys. Paora Sweeney says Kohitere turned him toward a life of crime. Photo / NZME

Sweeney's education stopped inside the system and he spent hours locked in cells.

Daily life inside Kohitere was a fight for survival.

Boys were split between two villas; Tui was Mongrel Mob-affiliated and Kiwi was Black Power and there he was groomed for gang life.

One day, during a fight sanctioned by housemasters he cracked open his opposer's skull, sending the boy to hospital.

After three months in the pound - a secure unit - Sweeney was no longer seen as the sickly kid who'd suffered rheumatic fever as a child.

He was now a kingpin in the system and on the outside, at just 15 he earned his first patch.

Over the course of the next 16 years, Sweeney was in and out of borstals and prison.

During stints on the outside he started the Hamilton chapter of the Mongrel Mob and at one point he was convicted and served time for being a party to a gang rape.

After he got out Sweeney gave up the drugs and alcohol following a breakthrough in dealing with the trauma of his youth, raising his children differently.

He has been out of gang life and free of addictions for 31 years.

The 62-year-old said he had been sacked from two jobs working in prison as a drug and alcohol counsellor because of his record and for attending the funeral of a gang member, but each time, although it took years, he had fought to clear his name.

Wiremu Waikari was abused in state care. But he left his life of drugs, gangs and prison behind and trained to become a social worker and counsellor. Photo / Supplied

He is now suing the Department of Corrections.

Sweeney, who at times broke down during his evidence, believes had the state looked after the children in its care properly, instead of a life of gangs, crime and prison, most of the men he knew might have made something of themselves, and he might have met up with them at university and not in jail.

Wiremu Waikari was viciously beaten by a housemaster at Epuni Boys' Home in Lower Hutt on his first night. He was 10.

Waikari had been adopted by his mother's brother and spent his early life on a farm outside Masterton but when he was sent back to his mother's he began acting out.

Social workers told his mother he'd get a better education at Epuni but Waikari told the Royal Commission there was no schooling, just daily physical abuse and "slave labour".

Older boys and a night watchman tried to molest the younger boys - Waikari screamed, kicked and scratched the old man until he left his cell but remembers boys as young as 7 crying with a "sore bum".

He said abused Pākehā boys turned to self-harm while Māori "attacked" - many of them hauled off to Porirua Hospital or Lake Alice and "I never saw them again".

Waikari also spent time at Hokio Beach and Kohitere boys' homes where he was forced to participate in a "fight night", learning to deal with everything in his life with his fists.

He endured constant racism, being called "dirty, dumb, a little black bastard" and the only culture he experienced was one of violence.

Standing "on line" in the quad of the Epuni Boys Home in Lower Hutt was punishment for bad behaviour. Photo / Alexander Turnball Library

Eventually he graduated to a borstal in Invercargill where he learned how to jack cars and steal safes.

"The criminal intent in me really grew in those places. We were different now. Our innocence was gone and the world was showing us it was a shitty place."

Waikari, (Ngāti Porou) now a social worker, felt rejected by his whānau and joined the Mongrel Mob, abusing alcohol and drugs to suspend reality.

His upbringing meant he didn't know how to love. He had 13 children and was violent to five of their mothers.

Many of his cousins who were also institutionalised during childhood went on to join gangs, including Black Power and Nomads.

He said many of them did not escape the life as he has now, and some had committed murder.

Waikari told the Royal Commission he believed the explosion of gangs in New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s was a direct result of the way young Māori were treated by the Crown years earlier.