High cost of racist attack

By Carroll du Chateau

Nine years after he was beaten up in a Newmarket carpark, Tsugito Tam is still partially blind, still living with his sister, still unemployed. The former world-champion hairdresser, classical pianist and swimming instructor will probably never work again.

The attack was severe.

Seven strapping, well-educated young men shouting insults, punching. Then, when a ringleader shouted, "Attack him," they came at him with bottles.

Even when the 157cm Malaysian fled into the sanctuary of his car in Teed St, they kept on hitting - one blow through the window striking his temple so viciously he blacked out and drove the Honda City into a concrete wall.

And if that doesn't matter much to most of you, think again.

Over the past years, the mindless violence has cost you, the taxpayer, heavily.

At the time of the attack anti-Asian feeling was fierce in Auckland.

The crime went largely unnoticed. But for Tsugito and his family the effect was calamitous.

After 24 hours when the doctors at intensive care were convinced he wouldn't make it, he in lay in a coma for seven weeks. When he regained consciousness he was blind.

Today, after four operations and 10 months of careful nursing, Tsugito has regained most of his motor skills.

But because he has lost his peripheral vision he can no longer play the piano or work successfully as a hairdresser.

Undaunted, he's sent off 200 applications, attended dozens of interviews and tried retraining as a hairdressing teacher.

But he simply cannot get a job, apart from a little mobile hairdressing work at a Mt Eden rest home.

He describes himself as the acrylic man. His collarbone is acrylic, his head still grotesquely misshapen under the thick, black hair, his employment chances virtually nil.

Before the bashing he was making $700 a week at Cut Above.

Today, with his $20,000 accident compensation payout well gone, he's surviving on $194 weekly dole payments.

Roger Earp, the then 17-year-old Auckland Grammar School student who bashed Tsugito over the head, was ordered to pay $850 reparation and a $1500 fine ($1000 of which went to his victim) and sentenced to eight months' jail.

After an appeal one month into his term he was paroled.

Justice Barker said at the time that it would be counterproductive for Earp to spend any longer in the company of hardened criminals.

According to police records, Earp has not reoffended.