Camille Keyte, left, after being arrested in November 2020 for drug dealing offences and at right, three years later helping recovering addicts as a peer support worker. Photo / Supplied and Mike Scott
Warning: This story deals with sexual abuse, violence and drug addiction, and may be distressing.
Camille Keyte scrolls through her phone and stops on a haunting image.
The woman on the screen looks as though her entire world has been turned upside. Blotchy skin and sunken eyes, with dark rings under them, staring listlessly into the camera.
“That’s my mugshot,” Keyte tells the Herald on Sunday.
“Just look at those eyes. I look sad, miserable. I remember thinking ‘I look okay’ but everything is just so distorted. You don’t see that until you get clean.”
It was November 2020. She was addicted to meth, stuck in a toxic relationship, and had just been arrested for dealing drugs for a senior member of the Waikato Mongrel Mob.
Life doesn’t get much more hopeless than that.
But a little over three years later, vivacious and with a contagious laugh, Keyte is barely recognisable from the woman in the mugshot.
That’s because, in so many ways, the 33-year-old is a completely different person.
Instead of selling drugs to feed her own habit, Keyte is now employed as a peer-support worker to walk alongside addicts through their recovery journeys.
“I have a PhD in addiction, right. I know the manipulation. I know the ways and means that we have to survive. And it’s very valuable because you can connect to people and relate to their suffering and their struggles,” Keyte says.
“And the best way I can put it, is that if you can chase your recovery just as hard as you chased your drugs, miracles happen.
“I never ever dreamed that I’d be where I am today. No longer causing harm. Helping people.”
Camille Keyte was born overseas but raised in Waikato by a supportive and loving family.
Life was normal, and moving into her teenage years, even her rebellious vices would not surprise most parents: Chasing boys, drinking too much cheap booze at parties, puffing on cigarettes.
Reflecting on her formative years, Keyte believes she was already showing signs of addictive behaviour, even before she started smoking meth.
“When I start something, I’m all in - or not at all. I started smoking cigarettes when I was 12 because I thought it was cool, but I’d just keep chasing that dopamine hit,” Keyte says.
“I started smoking cannabis when I was 14. But it was heavy. It was never just one or two joints.”
That same year, she tried methamphetamine and a 15-year battle with the drug began.
Looking back at how her addiction began, Keyte says the separation of her parents affected her more than she realised.
Even more traumatic was being sexually assaulted at the age of 13.
“I tried it once and yeah … that made a lot of the pain go away. Yeah. And so I continued to use it as often as I could, to numb my emotions,” Keyte says.
As a 15-year-old, she started drug and alcohol counselling but wasn’t able to stop using meth until, at the age of 21, she fell pregnant.
The birth of her daughter, with all the routine and responsibilities of being a parent, kept her clean for the next five years.
She threw herself into physical exercise, in particular the strict regimen of body building, in pursuit of the perfect figure.
A hairdresser by profession, Keyte had started her own salon and was working long hours to get the business up-and-running.
With a laugh, she recalls a particular appointment which illustrated her twin obsessions.
“I put a hair colour on the client and knew she had 45 minutes to process. I also knew that I needed to burn 400 calories. So I left the client in the salon, went for a run, and returned all sweaty to rinse off their hair. That’s nuts.”
While some would see that dedication to work and fitness as healthy, Keyte believes the compulsiveness became harmful - it was her addictive behaviour playing out in a different forum.
It was another traumatic experience that led her back to drugs.
Burning the candle at both ends, one day Keyte had a seizure in the middle of her salon and was paralysed down the right-hand side of her body for a fortnight.
The 26-year-old had a bleed in her brain, caused by a tumour.
While the tumour was not cancer, doctors told Keyte that anything which pushed her blood pressure too high could trigger another brain bleed - which could be fatal next time.
She wasn’t allowed to exercise at the gym on medical grounds, and had to cut back her hairdressing hours. Her emotional state became more fragile when the relationship with her partner ended.
“When something you are addicted to is taken away, of course you’re going to throw a tanty,” Keyte says.
“My life just fell apart because I didn’t know who I was anymore … it all spiralled out of control from there.”
To cope with the stress and pain, Keyte started using methamphetamine again. Just socially at parties every second weekend or so, at first. Within six months, she was smoking every day.
During the previous five years of sobriety, along with work and exercise, Keyte says she was also addicted to relationships.
Always having a boyfriend or partner was another harmful obsession, Keyte says, but coupled with an insatiable appetite for meth she was now “chasing after the bad boys”.
One in particular was enmeshed in the gang world, and it wasn’t long before Keyte started dealing drugs with him to fund their own expensive habits.
“You learn pretty fast in that world and how to make money. I was so heavy in my addiction, and I got deeper and deeper in these organisations,” Keyte says.
“There were so many dangerous situations. I had my car stolen. I was kidnapped. I was sold to a meth cook. Someone got killed. It was really scary shit.
“I thought I was safe, that I was protected, in those environments with guns and drugs and violence. I had a sense of security, that’s how distorted my thinking was. The complete opposite is true …you’re just as disposable as the next person.”
Camille Keyte won’t talk about who she worked with in the criminal underworld, for despite leaving that life behind, there is always that lingering fear of retribution for perceived “narking”.
She also doesn’t need to reveal anything. The inner workings of the drug ring she was involved with is laid out, chapter and verse, in court documents obtained by the Herald on Sunday.
Keyte was a street-level dealer of methamphetamine, supplying the drugs to customers on behalf of her “boss”, according to phone communications intercepted by police.
That was Sharon Marfell, herself a prolific drug dealer, whose partner was Mark Griffiths - a senior member of the Waikato Mongrel Mob.
The couple was the main target of a covert investigation, Operation Oakville, as detectives in the Waikato police believed “Griff” oversaw a criminal network moving drugs around the country.
Marfell was flat-out dealing most nights, from 12am until the wee hours of the morning, with text messages indicating a gram of meth cost as little as $400.
She also supplied larger amounts to other members of Griffiths’ dealing network, for on-sale, as well as GBL, a Class-B drug.
But in the early stages of the investigation, there was nothing to prove where the drugs were coming from, or more importantly, the role of Griffiths.
Nearly all of his communications were through encrypted phone applications like WhatsApp, Wickr, Signal and Facebook Messenger.
And in text messages or phone calls which the police were able to intercept, Griffiths was careful to never talk about drugs.
That is until October 12, 2020 when everyone panicked.
A parcel had been sent from the United States to a Hamilton address, arranged by Griffiths, with written instructions for the DHL courier to leave the parcel at the door if no one was home.
For whatever reason, the courier driver paid no attention.
The intended recipient, a man in his 70s whose son was an international drug dealer, received a text message from DHL advising that the delivery was unsuccessful.
Flustered by the missing package, the pensioner contacted Griffiths who instructed him to call the DHL depot and authorise one of his drug dealers to pick it up on his behalf.
That task was given to Keyte, but Operation Oakville beat her to the punch.
The investigators managed to get an urgent search warrant signed by a judge and uplifted the parcel, which was still in the courier van.
Hidden inside printer toner cartridges was 2kg of methamphetamine.
For the next week, Keyte (under the supervision of Marfell, who was keeping Griffiths updated) made several attempts to uplift the package from DHL headquarters, without success.
The drug dealers gave up when DHL confirmed it no longer had the package.
Finally, the detectives had something to implicate “Griff” in serious drug offending. A few months later, Operation Oakville caught him and Marfell red-handed with five ounces of meth biffed from the car they were driving.
Back at the couple’s home in Te Kowhai was more evidence of their lucrative enterprise. Nine bottles of gamma-Butyrolactone (GBL), each holding 1 litre of the clear liquid, worth about $5000 each.
Analysis by a forensic accountant for the police Asset Recovery team has revealed over a nearly four-year period, January 2017 to November 2020, the couple had access to at least $713,441.96 from an unknown source.
Marfell and Griffiths eventually pleaded guilty to numerous drug dealing charges and each received long prison sentences.
Camille Keyte went on the run when Marfell and Griffiths were arrested, but handed herself into custody at the Hamilton station a week later.
That’s when the police mugshot of Keyte was taken, sad and miserable, her sunken eyes staring into the camera.
She was put under suicide watch in the cells, wearing nothing but a padded jacket (not even a hair tie) and sleeping on a thin mattress. Keyte had hit rock bottom.
“I was in a pretty bad state of psychosis and withdrawal coming down off a lot of drugs,” Keyte says.
“I felt desperate. I got to that point where I was ready and willing to do whatever it took to change my life. And the only person I wanted to talk to was my mum.
“I just begged her for another chance.”
That was November 30, 2020. A week later, Keyte was released on bail to live at her mother’s home in Matamata under strict court-imposed conditions.
After three years of living in a drug-fuelled state surrounded by gangs and guns, the now 29-year-old struggled to adjust to a sober reality.
“I can remember, on day four, being at home rolling around on the bed crying because I had no idea how to be normal. How to eat well, how to sleep, when to shower or what to wear.
“Addiction rules your life and so when you’re in recovery, you don’t know what to do. I had to learn how to live again, literally.”
She attended the Hanmer Clinic, a rehabilitation centre in Tauranga, and signed up to a 12-step fellowship to help guide her recovery.
At first, she admits, this was a box-ticking exercise to appease the court process. After three months of keeping clean of drugs and alcohol, Keyte realised she could do it.
She ended up throwing herself into her addiction recovery with the same fervour of her previous drug dealing, with the support of her family, an empathetic probation officer and professional therapists.
“The opposite of addiction is connection,” Keyte says, “and I surrounded myself with the best people. Everything just started to change my perception, like I was rewiring my brain.
“Because I’m an addict, I want things to happen yesterday. If there was a magic pill to solve things, I’d take 10 of them, you know. But I just had to work hard and trust the process.”
That faith was put to the test on May 13, 2022 when she was standing in the dock of the High Court at Hamilton for sentencing.
She had pleaded guilty to supplying methamphetamine, as well as offering to supply the Class-A drug, supplying GBL and participating in an organised criminal group.
They are serious charges which would often end with a term of imprisonment; an outcome that Keyte had prepared herself for.
Justice Christine Gordon outlined the details of her crimes, followed by all the steps the former drug dealer had taken to turn her life around.
The monitoring report provided to the judge was “overwhelmingly positive”, and Justice Gordon made specific mention of letters written by Keyte’s parents and her peers in the recovery groups she joined.
“The common themes in the letters of support from your peers are respect and admiration for your commitment to making a complete recovery from addiction and transforming your life,” Justice Gordon said.
“You are described as warm, kind, open, honest and willing to be better. Exceptional, dependable, compassionate, inspiring, dedicated, selfless, indispensable, loved and valued, and a pillar of strength.
“Ms Keyte, it is frankly not common to read such a positive [pre-sentence] report in the context of drug offending.”
Instead of several years in prison, Keyte was sentenced to six months of community detention with an additional two years of supervision.
“The reports and letters before me show that you are capable of leaving your addiction and offending behind you,” Justice Gordon said.
“You are fortunate to have such a resilient and caring whanau. Their support has made a significant difference to the Court’s decision today.”
It wasn’t until the very end of the hearing that Keyte realised she would walk free from the courtroom.
Relief turned to reflection.
“The gallery was full of these beautiful women from recovery, as well as my family. I had had to learn how to be honest, not only with other people, but honest with myself,” Keyte says.
“It’s like having to look at the parts of yourself that are ugly. Not only face them but take responsibility for them. That takes humility.”
Camille Keyte scrolls through her phone again. This time she brings up a 10 second video clip.
The camera pans to an oblivious Keyte, seated at a table with her colleagues at an awards dinner for the Addiction Practitioners’ Association of Aotearoa New Zealand annual conference last year.
“Clap for your mates, it’s a special moment,” the MC says. “The first winner is Camille Keyte”.
The table erupts in cheers, as a stunned Keyte stands to her feet to receive the award for excellence in peer support.
“Crazy eh,” a grinning Keyte tells the Herald on Sunday.
She had been nominated for her work as a peer support worker at Care NZ in 2023, an addiction treatment service in the Waikato where Keyte had previously received counselling during her own rehab.
After putting the court process behind her, and being clean for two years, Keyte considered returning to hairdressing. That was all she had known, but even cutting her family’s hair at home triggered negative feelings.
Her own peer support worker suggested she complete some training in the field, just to try it, before CareNZ offered her a part-time position.
The hope that Keyte brings is “immeasurable” says Rachel Shaw, the clinical manager for Care NZ in south Waikato.
“From her own lived experience that she shares, coming to us as a client to where she is now, brings hope to other clients. But also her energy, her enthusiasm and her heart for everyone she meets… she’s amazing.”
Keyte works out of clinics in Putaruru, Tokoroa and Matamata, supporting recovering addicts to “learn how to live again” - just like others helped her.
As well as organising and facilitating drug treatment programmes, she helps clients re-establish routine in their lives, such as taking them to medical appointments, shopping for groceries or even just a walk in the park.
It sounds simple, but Keyte says having someone to talk with - someone who knows exactly what they’re going through - can be the difference between success and failure in recovery.
“When there is someone there for you, walking beside you, you realise ‘I’m not alone…I don’t have to do this on my own’,” Keyte says.
“Because every time I did it on my own, I failed, flat out, because I thought I knew best.”
It’s more than a job for Keyte, it’s a calling.
Not only has she turned her life around, rebuilding connections with her parents and children, Keyte now feels she is helping the vulnerable people that she once harmed.
And there’s a lot of work to be done, particularly in poorer rural communities awash with alcohol, methamphetamine and other drugs.
What’s her advice to families watching their loved ones stuck in addiction?
“You can’t enable them. You have to let them hit rock bottom… those in active addiction need to decide ‘I’ve had enough’ and they put the shovel down,” Keyte says.
“Once they’re on the other side, and show some commitment, then come back and walk beside them. So they’re not alone.
“But families have to realise they can’t save addicts. We have to save ourselves.”
Jared Savage is an award-winning journalist who covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006, and is the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.