One man's rough road to salvation

By Carroll Du Chateau

Martin Hemomo was a rebel from the start. The oldest of five children brought up on a diet of Sunday school and Bible studies laced with strict discipline including the odd beating, he was stealing, shoplifting and smoking when he was still in primary school.

"I rebelled against authority - parents, teachers, police - anyone in authority."

Looking back, it was the classic recipe for disaster.

"It was about the same time of the whole urbanisation thing," he says. "Maori came to the city. My Dad was from Kawakawa Bay and we moved to a [state house] development in Papakura."

While his Dad worked as a truck driver and labourer and his mother was busy with his younger brother and sister, he started getting into trouble - big trouble.

He remembers: "My father tried keeping me in line, but I was a rebellious little kid. There were half a dozen of us in the group I was running with."

Today he sees the behaviour as depressingly ordinary.

"We weren't running around at night," he says. "This was all during the day. It wasn't brutal violence - just schoolboy fights. Always about proving yourself. No matter how terrified you were, beating the other fella in a fight.

"Violence crept on to the rugby field because I was proving I was tough. In the end, people expected me to fight because I wouldn't take no shit. I had to start living up to that image."

But what even Martin Hemomo considers unusual was that he didn't grow out of the staunch, rebellious behaviour as most of his mates did.

By the age of 9, even though his parents hated them, he was running on the edges of gangs.

From there it was a "natural progression" to the Mongrel Mob.

"By my late teens I was prospecting," he says.

For that particular chapter of the Mob, the entrance hurdle was quite low - just "doing things like robbing someone, beating the hell out of them, then bloodying them up and taking what they had."

And for Martin Hemomo, who was quite tall and 110kg by then, there was no problem.

Like Jake the Muss, he was big enough, staunch enough and experienced enough to hold the respect of even patched members.

"I didn't have to worry about other gang members," he says slowly. "You start building an image about yourself and who you are. Then you start to live up to that image. Then what you do is make it meaner, badder and harder.

"The most violent people I know are in their late 20s. They're really vicious cats. In their teens and 20s they're trying to prove themselves ... impulsive. By your late 20s you have a different capacity for violence."

The turnaround began when his girlfriend got pregnant.

"I'd never wanted a child. First, because this world isn't a good place to bring kids up in; second, because I didn't think I could be a good father - being a gang member, going to jail."

But, when the prospect of parenthood loomed, he found his attitude changing. He gave up the gang, got a job, tried to be a good husband and father.

But despite his newfound Christianity, it was not an easy transition. The relationship broke up - "it was doomed because I was violent. An abusive husband."

He walked out on his job at Logia Fires in East Tamaki after two years because he simply couldn't hack it.

"I hated going to work every day. I couldn't see why the worker who works and produces gets paid less than the manager who sits on his butt and does nothing. I thought it was the biggest con out."

Lifelines were tossed to him by "a community social development officer, a doctor who does Bible school and counselling, and Sam Chapman, the organiser of Hou Hanga Rongo [reconciliation]."

"They helped me understand [the way the world works]."

His parents, who had kicked him out when he was a teenager, welcomed him home.

He is still there now, working on the computer, keeping the house in excellent order ("I learned housekeeping in prison"), looking after his three children.

Although his life is still in transition, after probably 20 years on the margins, he is now a valuable member of society.

"When I was young, they gave up on me - kicked me out," he says, sitting in the relaxing sitting room surrounded by family photos, 21st keys and all the signs of a loving family.

"I'd never kick my kids out. I don't believe in tough love. Teenagers are thrust into a world that seems unloving, unjust, unfair, and they see no reason for living - that's why we see so many committing suicide."