A bill that would make it easier for people to leave an abusive marriage has passed its third reading, and the Navy makes progress on the clean-up of the sunken HMNZS Manawanui.
Three former staff members are on trial for alleged physical and sexual abuse at a South Auckland boys’ home.
Crown prosecutor Charlie Piho outlined disturbing allegations from 10 complainants, aged 6 to 17 at the time.
Defence lawyers called the allegations “distasteful and perverse”, urging jurors to evaluate evidence dispassionately.
WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
For nearly a decade, a South Auckland home for at-risk boys – operating for a time out of a remote former psychiatric hospital building – was the site of disturbing physical and sexual abuse, jurors were told today as the trial began for three former staff members.
On one of the alleged occasions, a boy who was about 14 years old refused to engage in sexual activity with a female staff member who had used threats of violence to coerce sexual abuse in the past, Crown prosecutor Charlie Piho said during his opening address in the Manukau District Court. The boy said he was held down and urinated on by the woman in retaliation for his refusal, the lawyer alleged.
The complainants – between the ages of 6 and 17 while residents at the home – also described to authorities being tied to a fence post or stairs and left for hours, frequent beatings, being forced to fight other youth residents, being ordered to disrobe as a form of punishment and other sexual abuse. One person said his eyebrows were shaved.
“There are things that happened at this boy’s home ... that stayed hidden away for many years,” Piho said, explaining that the six-week trial is expected to involve allegations from 10 complainants – all now adults – who cycled in and out of the two facilities between 2007 and 2014.
“These very people that were meant to look after these boys took advantage of them and abused them.”
Two women and two men were initially arrested last year following Operation Annalise, a two-year police investigation into the Tirohonga Hou Mo Nga Rangatahi Charitable Trust that was prompted by a referral from Oranga Tamariki. None of the four, including a woman who is not currently on trial, can yet be named for legal reasons.
The defendants, who all have interim name suppression, are accused of multiple counts of physical or sexual abuse years ago of boys between the ages of 6 and 17. Photo / Michael Craig
The trust was established in 2002 and was later contracted by Child, Youth and Family Services – the agency now called Oranga Tamariki – to look after boys with troubled backgrounds. The facility initially operated out of a former Kingseat Hospital residence on the same grounds, but in a different building, as the haunted house attraction Spookers.
The boys’ home later moved 15km away, operating out of a house and garage in Pukekohe.
The female defendant has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges including sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, kidnapping, indecent assault, doing an indecent act on a young person and sexual connection with a young person.
Another defendant, a 36-year-old male, has pleaded not guilty to charges including cruelty to a child, injuring with intent to injure, doing an indecent act on a young person, kidnapping and ill-treatment of a child, while the other male defendant, 39, faces kidnapping and cruelty charges pertaining to a single complainant.
There are 31 charges in all before the jury but details of some have been temporarily suppressed by Judge Yelena Yelavich.
The Tirohonga Hou Mo Nga Rangatahi Charitable Trust boys' home was run out of one of the many structures on the former Kingseat psychiatric hospital grounds.
Piho said the charitable trust was, on paper, devoted to providing corrections programmes and education for youths with troubled backgrounds who were ordered by the court to live at the home. But allegations against the trust started surfacing as part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and police decided to track down and interview each person who had been to the home as a boy. That, Piho said, was “how these men finally ended up finding their voices”.
The prosecutor did not go into much detail about the allegations other than what was outlined in the charges – some of them already very graphic, even in truncated form and surrounded by legalese – read aloud to jurors at the outset of the trial.
More details will emerge, the prosecutor said, as each of the men is called to give evidence.
“I note that some of these things might be quite unpleasant to hear,” he warned.
On that point, lawyers for the three defendants didn’t disagree.
“The nature of the allegations are truly distasteful and perverse,” said Susan Gray, who represents the female defendant. “But at this stage that is all they are – allegations.”
She emphasised jurors’ obligations to put aside feelings of sympathy, prejudice, “revulsion and distaste” and to evaluate the evidence with dispassion. She also urged jurors not to automatically lump the case before them with other allegations of abuse in state care institutions that have been in the media lately.
“Every one of us in this room will agree that it’s a truly awful and shocking state of affairs,” she said of the recently released Royal Commission report. “This case is not what you have read about. This case is different. [The report] is completely and utterly irrelevant to this case.”
Defence lawyers Oliver Troon (standing) and James Olsen represent one of the three people accused of abusing boys who were in state care. The trio are on trial in Manukau District Court. Photo / Michael Craig
Defence lawyer Oliver Troon, who represents the younger of the two male defendants, joined Gray in suggesting that the complainants were not to be believed.
“These claims, accusations, allegations are no more than their words – they are false,” he said.
Lawyer Devon Kemp, representing the older male defendant, also concurred.
His client, who worked at the facility for about six months nearly 20 years ago, never used force to control the children nor did he lock them in their rooms, he said.
“The boys were naughty – that’s why they were sent [there],” he said, noting there were frequent fights and rule violations at the property. But none of that, he said, involved his client.
“He respected them in the same way they respected him,” Kemp said, suggesting that his client’s accuser might have been motivated by a potential Royal Commission restitution payout or a discount off a sentence he was about to serve.
“The allegations are made up ... They’re either deliberate lies or perhaps mistaken for whatever reason.”
None of the complainants has yet testified.
Instead, jurors heard today from two professional witnesses.
Detective Michelle Clark described the process of tracking down each of the former residents at the facility, and the questions that each person was asked. Each person was prompted to tell police about the staff they remembered working there, she said.
“What are the good things you remember about the staff?” each person was asked, before the follow-up question: “What are some of the bad things you remember about the staff?”
Clinical psychologist and professor Julia Ioane also spoke to jurors, outlining reasons some child victims don’t raise an outcry until years later. Boys are statistically less likely to talk, but when they do it’s often because they are either looking for protection or support from services, she said.
A delayed outcry, she said, “doesn’t tell us whether a complaint is true or not true”.
Testimony is set to resume tomorrow.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the United States and New Zealand.
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