"Their version is that he has gone to hit the cop and that's when he [the cop] has smashed him in the face with the torch and knocked him to the ground, after pepper spraying him, for God's sake. What possible harm can he have really done to them?" Ms Gillies said.
She and her partner arrived at the scene and saw their son in an ambulance. They at first thought he had been in a fight. She said the extent of his injuries were horrific.
"I was horrified, it hurt me to see him like that. I was absolutely devastated," she said.
He was taken to Wairarapa Hospital and told he would probably need surgery. He was then transferred to Hutt Hospital and eventually Wellington Hospital to see a specialist, where he was told he had a broken eye socket and haemorrhaging behind his eye.
"His eye will never be the same and he has to see an eye specialist for the rest of his life because they're now worried about glaucoma. He needs to be seen by a specialist once or twice every year."
Ms Gillies lodged a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Authority in 2011 and made a statement at Masterton Police Station last year. She has not had a response despite, she says, being told by an officer that police had failed her by not making contact.
She said she just wants the officer to take responsibility for his actions.
"I'm hoping they'll come to the party and that they apologise for a start, not for myself - for my son -and that he [the cop] isn't still doing that sort of thing out there. If we don't do anything about this, what is this saying to my son?"
Her son was not arrested or charged after the incident.
"He was the one who was most violent, so they said, but yet he wasn't arrested and he wasn't charged with anything, which doesn't make any sense at all," she said.
Senior Sergeant Warwick Burr said the complaint was currently under investigation.
"It is unfortunate that the investigation is taking longer than expected, due to other work pressures.
"Police are hopeful that the investigation will be completed in the near future," Mr Burr said.
He said police did not deny that Moana Gillies' son was hit with a torch.
"The investigation is centred around whether that force was justified in the circumstances.
"It is always regrettable when someone gets injured by the police, no matter how the series of events have eventuated.
"No one wants to be causing damage to someone's eye socket," he said.
Mr Burr said Ms Gillies' son was not taken into police custody because he needed immediate medical attention.
