Scores of children were abused at Whakapakari camp on Great Barrier Island, leading some to take their lives and the survivors to battle lifelong demons.
This article is part of The Quarter Million, exploring the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. Read the introduction here and the rest of the series here.
Content warning: This feature describes physical, sexual and emotional violence, child abuse and neglect. If this is difficult for you and you would like some help, these services offer support and information: Auckland specialist service Help, 0800 623 1700; specialist men’s service Male Survivors Aotearoa, 0800 044 334; and Snap (Survivors network of those abused by priests). Please take care.
When Scott Carr heard the National Party wanted to restart boot camps for troubled youths, he threw up. Carr, now a 40-year-old father and husband, went to one of those so-called camps, Whakapakari on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) when he was 15 years old. The camp – so isolated it was only accessible by boat – was billed as an outdoor and te ao Māori-focused rehabilitative refuge for difficult-to-manage state wards and youth offenders. But Carr wasn’t rehabilitated at the camp. After he left Whakapakari he was more broken than upon his arrival, and the ill effects, including PTSD, still cripple him decades later.
Whakapakari was supposed to be a wilderness boot camp to rehabilitate troubled teens back into law-abiding citizens before they were old enough to be tried and sentenced as adults. Founder John da Silva saw outdoor education and barebones camp living – including no artificial lighting and residents catching their own kai – as the means to rehabilitate the teens. The government funded da Silva’s camp at Mangati Bay so he’d take on youths they’d given up on.
For most, Aotea – with its beautiful beaches, friendly locals, sheltered harbours and yummy kai – is an idyllic island respite from the mainland’s hustle and bustle, only a 30 minute flight from Auckland. Yet for some others, Barrier was the site of unatoned abuse experienced as children in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Sonja Cooper, a lawyer representing clients who were abused in state care, uses the word “torture” to describe how residents at the Whakapakari youth boot camp on Aotea were treated.
Carr’s childhood before Whakapakari
As a kid, Carr’s parents worked hard to support their family. His father worked two jobs, and his mother worked 12-hour shifts. Both parents were so busy putting food on the table that they often weren’t home, or if they were, their batteries were flat. But someone mistook his parents’ hard work as neglect and tipped off the government, which eventually became as Carr’s neglectful caregiver.
At 14, Carr was suspended from high school, after which the board refused to let him return but wouldn’t formally expel him either, putting him in education limbo – he couldn’t enrol in a new school but couldn’t attend his existing one. Carr was lonely and bored at home, and started hanging around an older crowd on the streets, drinking. The police kept an eye on him and asked Child Youth and Family Services to follow up. Yet CYFS did not attempt to get Carr back into the classroom, and he never attended another day of school.
Eight months after his suspension, Carr’s state of being eventually led him down a spiral of attempted suicide. He was removed from the care of his parents and placed with CYFS-approved caregivers, who he ran away from on day one. When he returned to his parents’ home, he was put under court-imposed conditions, like a curfew, and only allowed to associate with approved people.
Out of the family home and into ‘the system’
Carr was considered a naughty kid. But he wasn’t committing assault or theft. Instead, he did things like pull flowers out of gardens. Nonetheless, after he ran away from home, CYFS put Carr in the state care system. “On paper, they took me off my parents for neglect, but that doesn’t explain how the government stopped me from going to high school and then punished me for being on the streets,” he says over the phone. Carr is grateful that “my parents always provided for me,” adding that being taken away from them “felt like a kick in the guts because it was not their fault”.
He says CYFS lied to his parents in court, telling them he’d go somewhere akin to Outward Bound, where people are encouraged to reach their potential through outdoor education. But the opposite happened during Carr’s time in state care, where his potential was violently beaten out of him. These days, Carr is physically unable to work because of abusive injuries he sustained almost three decades ago while in state care.
Epuni Boys’ Home
Before Carr went to Whakapakari, he had three stops at Lower Hutt’s Epuni Boys’ Home. Violence – committed by residents and staff alike – was a constant at Epuni. Upon his first arrival, a camp bully attacked Carr. Carr says the bully was one of the “older and bigger residents” used by supervisors “to dish out violent discipline”.
“If I misbehaved, staff members would threaten me with a mean hiding from one of the bigger boys”. When residents had issues with one another, staff encouraged them to “scrap it out” while they watched, says Carr.
Carr was also seriously assaulted by his Epuni case worker. He “assaulted me because I had refused to turn around when he told me”, says Carr with a shake in his voice. The supervisor wrestled Carr to the ground and smashed his knee into the wall several times, the last of which broke the wall. Carr was forced to pay for the repair. “Outside of Epuni, violence was considered bad, but inside Epuni, it was encouraged,” he recalls. “I had never used violence before… it was incredibly traumatic.”
Psychological punishment, like solitary confinement, was also inflicted. On three separate occasions, Carr was locked up in a “pitch black room with a fucking bucket as a toilet. No daylight, no fresh air, no nothing”, for around three days each time.
When the Epuni supervisors learned Carr was going to Whakapakari, “they trained me three, four-hit combos to prepare”, he says, because they knew how brutal it was on Great Barrier Island. The camp on Aotea had a reputation as a particularly rough spot, and those who went there gained a badge of honour among the other youth camps, and inside adult prisons too as residents came of age.
Whakapakari camp on Aotea (Great Barrier Island)
Whakapakari residents lived in tents with no lighting. Carr’s task was chopping and carting firewood, and his punishment for misbehaving was carrying sacks of stones up a rocky hill barefoot, even though his parents had sent him shoes. Being barefoot on sharp stones cut Carr’s feet, leading to infections. “This was not only painful at the time but has caused me ongoing feet problems into my adult life,” Carr says.
At Whakapakari, punishment was abundant while food and running water were scarce. “I was often hungry because the staff made me and the other boys responsible for catching our own fish to eat,” remembers Carr. “If we did not catch anything, we were only provided with potatoes and porridge.” Parental food parcels were intercepted and eaten by staff or distributed to favoured residents. Carr and his peers could only shower for two minutes every four days “despite being forced to do hard physical labour every day. I felt disgusting and dirty.”
A few weeks into Carr’s stay in 1998, Mita Mohi replaced John da Silva as camp leader. Mohi had received an MBE for services to youth in 1995 and was a renowned taiaha teacher alongside a rugby league star. Da Silva was awarded a QSM for community services in 1994 after a career as one of New Zealand’s most successful professional wrestlers. Despite their government awards for helping children, Cooper notes that both men – now deceased – had grave allegations of child abuse lodged against them from their time at Whakapakari.
“I read a lot about what Mr Mohi had achieved in helping other troubled young children and wondered why he chose to torment me instead,” Carr says worryingly. When Mohi found a letter Carr wrote to his mother revealing the violence at Whakapakari, it was thrown into the fire. “He told me he’d send his nephews to rape my mother if I talked about what was happening,” Carr remembers – and rape was not an idle threat at the camp. Cooper notes that “Whakapakari had a lot more sexual abuse” than other camps at the time. The evidence of another Whakapakari resident, Mr PM, recalls the vivid episodes of rape he experienced on the island prison. Carr was never sexually abused, but both staff and residents physically assaulted him. One hiding particularly stands out: being beaten unconscious by his supervisor after Carr asked him to stop calling him derogatory names.
“He started headbutting me,” Carr remembers. “He grabbed me, threatened to kill me, and placed me in a headlock. [He] then threw me off the balcony we were standing on. He chased after me, threw me headfirst into the ground, before throwing me down a bank, where I was knocked unconscious… [He] left me lying there covered in blood. I woke up around lunchtime, feeling groggy. I had been there all morning… I was covered in bruises and had lumps all over my face and head. I still have multiple scars across the back of my head.”
The aforementioned letter Mohi discovered detailed the above incident. Mohi forced Carr to repeatedly apologise to his supervisor until he cried, then the supervisor choked Carr to stop him from crying. Mohi blamed the beating on Carr, telling him it was because Pākehā subjugated tangata whenua (Carr is of European descent, and his supervisor was Māori). The assault had Carr considering suicide and motivated him to sleep with a knife. The same supervisor “continued to harass, bully, and assault me during my time at Whakapakari,” recalls Carr, which included throwing firewood – that Carr chopped – at him. Carr was assaulted by other residents on several occasions as well.
“Throughout my entire stay at Whakapakari, I was exposed to serious violence,” Carr recalls shyly. But it was swept under the rug. Camp staff lied to Carr’s CYFS case worker and his parents, covered up his medical records and doctored his letters back home. Staff dictated what residents’ wrote in letters home, and Carr’s medical record states that when his supervisor beat him unconscious, he simply “received treatment for a painful shoulder after running into a tree”.
Long-term effects of abuse in state care
Some former state wards have taken their lives, and Carr understands why. “I feel for the families whose children aren’t here… How many of them are there? We are supposed to respect people who died in war. Those kids died in war too – they fought for their lives.”
Carr’s abuse caused lifelong repercussions, including crippling PTSD. His PTSD devolves into seizures around the anniversary of his supervisor beating him unconscious, which was close to Carr’s birthday. “To this day, I can barely acknowledge, let alone celebrate, my birthday,” he adds. “Instead, my birthday is depressing and anxiety-inducing.”
He also says the abuse caused him to be hateful, aggressive, confrontational, disconnected and isolated. Although he has been sober for many years, Carr initially used alcohol to cope. A few years ago he was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease caused by PTSD. Doctors also say that Carr’s physical inability to work results from his trauma.
Carr momentarily gets lost in thought before describing himself as “a man with no dreams”, because of the lifelong effects of the abuse he suffered. He also worries about the intergenerational effects. “I have never hugged my kids; I’ve never changed any nappies”, Carr recalls. “I don’t have the skills to bring up my teenagers because my teenage life went off the rocks”. Just as he thought it was unfair that his parents were labelled neglectful, Carr recognises how unfair it is that “everything I’ve done my kids get judged by too”.
What is fair compensation for the lifelong effects of abuse?
Does Carr think the compensation ($35,000) he received a few years ago from the Ministry of Social Development was fair? “Fuck no,” he answers. Cooper, the lawyer, says the government is “low-balling” survivors. Those low-balls are take-it-or-leave-it proposals with expiry dates. “What happened to these kids was torture,” Cooper says loud and clear over the phone – adding “that compensation is insulting”. Carr agrees, saying, “tortured as a child, and no one was held accountable. I get 35 grand, and then it’s OK? That’s not right.”
Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry
Carr’s story is only one of many experiences of abuse state wards received while under the neglectful care of the government. But he is grateful that sad stories like his are coming to the forefront because of the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, whose job it is to research this kaupapa and design a way to move forward. “I am really thankful for the support the royal commission has given me”, Carr says, referring to six weeks of free counselling. “To me that’s worth more than the $35,000 pittance the government gave me.”
Although the Commission has “helped more than any other organisation in my life”, Carr still has some criticisms of it. For one, the questions they ask survivors are very selective, so Carr could only answer about certain experiences. Also, he says his evidence “was dumbed down, suppressed and manipulated”.
“The state has done everything it could to bury these stories in holes as big as possible,” Cooper affirms.
The differences between the Commission’s statement on Carr and the kōrero he and I had are stark. The statement hones in on his parents being neglectful (whereas Carr categorically refutes that idea to me) and underplays how violent Epuni was (the wall-breaking hiding he received there was just as bad as his Whakapakari supervisor beating him unconscious). Despite these smoke-and-mirrors critiques, Carr is grateful to the Commission for bringing experiences like his into mainstream discussion.
Scott Carr: survivor
Being kept out of school, stolen from his parents and then abused in state care didn’t stop Scott Carr from becoming an articulate, aware and intelligent adult. When we spoke, Carr joked about tax intricacies and knew the nuances of Australia’s equivalent to the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry. If he had been able to return to school, Carr ponders aloud, “what could I have been? I was told I was a fuckwit, a monster and a horrible person – but I’m not.” Although Carr says his troubled past “robbed [him] of any opportunity in [his] adult life”, he broadcasts his story to encourage other survivors to come forward.
Varying degrees of abuse occurred at Whakapakari for roughly three decades between its opening in the 1970s and its closure in 2004. Yet serious complaints about the abuse residents experienced at the camp were being lodged long before the camp shut down, as early as 1995. As the debate around youth boot camps fires up again in 2023, Cooper is unequivocal. Experiences like Carr had at the Whakapakari are “good lessons in where not to put vulnerable children,” she says.