Violence scars five generations

The Whakarurus have become a symbol of New Zealand's problem with child abuse. SIMON COLLINS traces the history of a family living through a nightmare.

When the Whakaruru clan gathered at Wanganui for a family reunion at Christmas, brothers Rangi and Enoka Whakaruru appeared to be on good terms.

A short time before, Enoka had watched Rangi arrange to film a television advertisement for the Children First Foundation's campaign against child abuse.

The two brothers had seen little of each other since Rangi left home as a teenager to escape his violent father. Much slimmer than he is now, Rangi became a Polynesian dancer at Disneyland.

Enoka, the elder brother, developed what he calls an "association" with the Mongrel Mob.

What brought them together last year was the tragic death in 1998 of Enoka's 4-year-old grandson James Whakaruru.

Enoka's daughter, Te Rangi Whakaruru, pleaded guilty to cruelty to a child and assault with a weapon in connection with her son James' death. Her partner, Benny Haerewa, was convicted of manslaughter.

For the family, James' tragic death has been the start of a humiliating nightmare. A year ago, photos of the boy's bruised and battered body appeared in North & South. Last June, Commissioner for Children Roger McClay published a comprehensive report on how doctors and welfare workers who saw James let him stay in a situation where he was eventually killed.

This week the television campaign against child abuse, which was inspired by the McClay report, brought out more of the family's story and set brothers Enoka and Rangi against each other publicly.

Jamila Dlala, a daughter of Rangi's former partner "Hine" (not her real name), told TV3 that he had beaten both her and Hine - charges which Rangi admitted.

Enoka was reported as saying he had urged Rangi not to make the TV advertisement. He said later that he supported the TV campaign, and his brother's involvement - after all, he was there when Rangi agreed to take part. But he resented the decision to use a picture of his grandson James.

"There are lots of children who have been abused. Why use my grandson?"

But, unfair as it may be, the Whakaruru family's story has become the symbol of New Zealand's family violence problem. And this week's revelations show that what happened to James was not isolated.

Thirty years ago, when Enoka and Rangi were growing up near the marae at Pakipaki, south of Hastings, they were already living with violence. A relative, who declined to be named, says their father, Sonny Whakaruru, was "the violent one out of the whole family."

Denise Ferris, a distant cousin who also grew up at Pakipaki and later had a relationship with Rangi, says Sonny beat most of his nine children.

"He didn't talk much. He just hit. When he was drinking and his temper flared, he was not nice."

Rangi still has a wound on his head where his father attacked him with the blunt end of a tomahawk.

"I wasn't moving quick enough," he says. "I was doing work. He told me to get on with it and he hit me when I didn't move fast enough."

Sonny himself lived with an injured eye sustained when his own father, Shima Whakaruru, attacked him with a rake. Denise Ferris' grandmother told her that she had saved Sonny on that occasion.

Years later, Rangi recalls, Sonny suffered whenever there were loud noises because of the early rake injury to his eye.

"He always wore a towel round his neck. We were kept away. We never had personal radios ... And if we screamed loud or yelled loud he wouldn't put up with that."

Yet the same man who could savagely turn on his own children when he was drunk or angry later became a model grandfather.

When his son Enoka and wife Suzie had a child, Te Rangi, the baby girl was taken in by Sonny and his wife, Rita.

Denise Ferris, who was by then back in Pakipaki as a teacher, saw Sonny "just soften" into "a doting grandfather."

She believes it is a tragedy that Rita, died when Te Rangi was pregnant with James seven years ago.

Shortly before she gave birth, Te Rangi also broke up with James' father, Kevin Campus, and tried to kill herself.

Shortly after James was born, only a few months after his wife's death, Sonny Whakaruru died. Te Rangi was grief-stricken. "She never recovered from that."

Meanwhile, Rangi had returned from Disneyland to Australia, where he began a successful career in waste management, cleaning and travel.

It was in Australia that he met "Hine," a woman 20 years his senior who already had a daughter, Jamila Dlala. In 1986 Hine and Rangi had a son, who was also passed on to Sonny and Rita Whakaruru to bring up.

Jamila, now 25, was 11 when Hine and Rangi met. She says that the first time she met him, Rangi "sat me on his knee and said, 'I'm your new father now.'

"I remember saying to him, 'You are not my daddy, I have a daddy."'

Her father, a Moroccan, kept in touch with her until Hine met Rangi, then Jamila did not see him for 10 years.

At first, she says, life was "like a big new fairytale." Rangi Whakaruru "did all the right things, said all the right things."

But it was not long before violence started. When Hine was eight or nine months pregnant with her son, Jamila saw Rangi beating her.

"I remember sitting there and I cried - my mother was on the floor in the corner, pregnant. There were other members of my family who saw all this too, but did nothing because they had obviously been through the cycle of abuse and it was 'normal.'

"I can remember saying to my mum so many times, 'You've got to leave, you've got to leave."'

After every beating, she says, Rangi apologised and said it would never happen again. There was no alcohol involved.

"This is purely about control and domination and making sure things are the way he wants them to be."

As Jamila grew into her teens, conflict with Rangi developed over staying out late at night. "I was not allowed to do the things that normal young people do. I had to go home every night and cook and clean."

When she disobeyed, she was beaten. "I remember going to school having to wear stockings after one incident because I had welts on my legs."

In the late 1980s, Jamila filed an assault charge against her stepfather. Rangi had never been in court before and he was let off with a warning. He says this was "the turning point in my life."

"I showed her the remorse that I felt," he says. Under court orders, he underwent counselling. He says he never hit Jamila again after that.

But Jamila says: "It continued. He laid off me a bit, but still it was there. My mother more than anyone got it. When you are in a family like that, you tend to cover it up because you think it's shameful. We did that for many, many years."

When Rita Whakaruru died in 1990, Hine and Rangi took their son back, and in 1993, when Jamila finished high school, they returned to New Zealand, leaving Jamila to go flatting in Australia. Hine and Rangi both became involved in businesses at Auckland Airport.

But by this time their marriage was breaking up. Hine became involved in a lesbian relationship, and Rangi began a relationship with his distant cousin, Denise Ferris. For one extraordinary six-month period, both couples lived together with Rangi and Hine's son in their Hillsborough home.

Denise Ferris says this is when Rangi "became abusive." She says Hine also kicked and punched her.

"She kept saying, 'You ruined my life."'

After six months, Hine moved to another house in Pokeno, and then to Whakatane, with her son.

In March 1999, Rangi sought a court order giving him access to his son every second weekend. But this was never honoured.

Denise Ferris says she is worried for the boy's safety. A February 1999 report to the Family Court by a Whakatane lawyer appointed as counsel for the boy, Stephen Clews, said Hine acknowledged using the boy as a "pawn" in what had now become her conflict with Rangi.

However, the Family Court has since granted an order denying Rangi access to Hine or their son.

Last July, Rangi and his new partner breached this order by visiting the boy at his Auckland school on his 14th birthday. Police warned Rangi not to breach the order again.

It was in this context that Te Rangi Whakaruru, James' mother, came to stay with her Uncle Rangi and Denise Ferris for a few months around the time James was born in 1994. She was, says Denise Ferris, "a brilliant mother."

But she soon returned to Hawkes Bay where she met Benny Haerewa. His parents, Matt and Violet Haerewa, welcomed her to their family.

Even when Benny, Te Rangi and James shifted to southern Hawkes Bay in 1997, and later to Havelock North, they came back for the weekly Friday night knees-ups which the Haerewas hosted.

The Haerewas saw "a couple of bruises on his jaw" when Te Rangi and Benny said James had "fallen off his bike."

Another time he had a cut lip. "He was supposed to have fallen down the stairs."

When his penis was torn, "we were told he fell off his bike."

"I didn't know what to say," Matt Haerewa says. "They were into drugs." But "there was no serious injury to the boy that showed us to get involved."

But the medical record assembled by the Commissioner for Children shows that James' injuries had started by at least October 1995, when he was treated for a cut lip at just 16 months old.

In July 1996, he was taken to hospital with bruises on much of his body. Benny Haerewa spent four months in jail for this incident.

Te Rangi told the police, in a video screened in court after James died, that he received only "normal discipline."

In March 1999, she said, she got out the vacuum cleaner pipe "to give him a hiding" for going down the road to play while she was asleep. James moved, and the sharp end of the pipe cut deeply into his lip. She told Havelock North GP Dr Maurice Jolly, who stitched up the lip, that it happened when he stood on the vacuum pipe and it sprang up and hit him.

Two weeks later James was dead, again bruised on almost every part of his body. According to Te Rangi's later evidence in court, James had refused to call Benny "Daddy." Benny punched and kicked him, and hit him with a hammer, electric jug cord and the vacuum cleaner pipe.

For Benny and Te Rangi, the nightmare will always be with them. With Benny in jail, Te Rangi has moved to Auckland where, Denise Ferris says, she has had counselling and has "turned a leaf."

Rangi Whakaruru believes the key lesson from his family's experience is about education, especially about "skills on how to run a marriage, skills on how to run a wife and a home, skills to bring up children."

"I had no parenting skills," he says. When he met his partner Hine, "I had the pressure of becoming a husband, caregiver and parent of a 6-year-old daughter all at once."

He believes we need to learn the skills required to maintain a long-term, "meaningful" relationship.

"That is an adult skill and a life skill that needs to be taught when you're young."

For Jamila Dlala, the lesson is harsher. She says she spoke out to force Rangi to deal with his own past.

"I think it indicates how complex the problem is," she says.

"It indicates that abuse is a learned behaviour. I know for myself, from what I have seen over that period of 11 or 12 years [when Hine and Rangi were together], that when I get angry I have to stop myself and say, 'Calm down.' Otherwise those behaviours are repeated.

"If New Zealand wants to tackle this issue and do something about it, it needs to educate the people on the complexity of the issue and not just deal with hitting.

"I hope that my revelation will assist other people. I hope it has helped the cause, and that it will empower people to see how complex this issue really is."

Herald Online feature: Violence at home

Donations to the Safe and Sound Appeal can be sent to PO Box 91939, Auckland Mail Centre

Free phone: 0800 946 010