A 35-year-old West Auckland man is suing the Attorney-General for $300,000 for sexual and physical abuse he alleges he suffered in foster care more than 20 years ago.
"The amount claimed is modest, considering he has lost his childhood," lawyer Barry MacLean told Justice Noel Anderson in the High Court at Auckland yesterday.
Peter Kilmister was taken from his abusive parents when he was six.
At the age of seven, he was placed in foster care with a 62-year-old woman already looking after her four grandchildren in a remote settlement on the East Cape.
Mr Kilmister, a computer engineer, told the judge that he had been sexually abused by two of the grandchildren, one male and one female.
He alleged he was beaten for wetting the bed, given scraps to eat while the others ate normal fare, and humiliated by being dressed in rags.
He claimed he was bullied and tormented, required to do excessive chores around the house, and forced to use rags for towels.
Mr Kilmister told the judge he was treated quite differently from the woman's mokopuna.
"I wasn't family and not entitled to privileges."
Even sitting on the upholstered sofa was considered a privilege.
He claimed that he and another, female, foster child, who arrived later, were forced to turn their backs on the television while the rest watched programmes.
In the eight years he spent in the foster home, he was not allowed to watch television.
At night he had to use the long drop, while the grandchildren could use a toilet on the porch.
Mr Kilmister claimed that when he arrived at the home, his clothes were taken from him and he was given old hand-me-downs to wear.
He was given good clothes and shoes only when a social worker arranged a visit, and he was the butt of ridicule at school for the old, badly patched clothes he wore.
Mr Kilmister also claimed that birthday and Christmas presents brought by social workers were taken from him and given to the other children.
Corporal punishment, he told the judge, was a "family affair." He was tormented and bullied and the children hit him and the other foster child any time they felt like it.
They had to slave in the garden while the grandchildren did little work other than order the two foster children around.
He claimed they were "little more than servants" for the family.
The grandmother once made him eat a maggoty chicken carcass and the children made him eat a dead rat. They often spat and did other unspeakable things with his food.
Mr Kilmister said he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree at the property, but fortunately the branch broke.
Mr MacLean, appearing with Leah Wati, told the judge that the woman was not a fit person to be a foster mother and the house was not fit as a foster home.
The Director-General of Social Welfare had a duty to ensure that the boy was placed with a suitable person.
Mr MacLean said that no inquiry, or at least an inadequate inquiry, was made into the woman's suitability.
His client had been deprived of his childhood, exposed to suffering and had become psychologically disturbed.
Mr MacLean said that at the age of nine or 10, the boy complained to a social worker about the abuse.
"But his confidence was betrayed and he was severely beaten by [the foster mother]."
Mr Kilmister claims the Director-General was negligent in placing him with the woman and was in breach of his statutory and fiduciary duty.
But Hamish Hancock, representing the Attorney-General with Chris Mathieson, said the allegations were strongly denied and that Mr Kilmister had been unfair to the memory of the foster mother, who was now dead.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Margaret Honeyman told the judge that Mr Kilmister was suffering from borderline personality disorder.
There was a close relationship between the disorder and the type of abuse Mr Kilmister alleged, though she said that earlier incidents, such as his being separated from his parents, may also have been factors.
Justice Anderson ordered interim name suppression of the foster mother and her grandchildren.
Court told of rags, scraps and beatings
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