Only two years ago politicians from across the political spectrum were feigning bipartisan empathy when the final report of the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care was tabled in Parliament, telling the victims they’d been heard.
Now? They’ve made a subset of those victims a political smear. I’m talking about the Mongrel Mob.
The Royal Commission had a whole volume on the connection between the violence and abuse of welfare institutions like Hokio and Kohitere. The title of the report volume speaks for itself: “Cauldron of Violence: Hokio Beach School and Kohitere Boys’ Training Centre – A case study of the State’s role in creating gangs and criminals.”
Yet National leader Christopher Luxon and his party have seized on Te Pāti Māori and the Greens having posted photos of themselves posing with the Mongrel Mob to try and win a few votes.
If it’s crime Luxon wants to talk about, how about the crimes of the state against children who who ended up in the Mongrel Mob and other gangs when they became adults.
Here’s a sample of the impact from that volume of the Royal Commission’s report.
“Abuse in Hokio School and Kohitere Centre was systemic. From the top down there was little oversight, or accountability. Not for the State, the institutions, the staff, nor for perpetrators. Survivors’ lives were profoundly altered by their time at Hokio School and Kohitere Centre. “
Survivor David Williams told the Inquiry: “The things that happened in those places, I don’t really know how us survivors can let go of it. You can’t, it’s there for life until you go to your grave.”
The report also documented horrendous crimes through this volume and the other 15 volumes. Here are a couple of examples:
“In one incident at Kohitere Centre in the 1980s, a boy was showering when a staff member put a plastic bag over his head and raped him. Two survivors describe being anally penetrated with broom handles by staff in the secure wing of Kohitere Centre. Hokio School cook Michael Ansell, who sexually abused many boys at the residence, once tied a survivor to a coffee table and anally raped him, and at other times penetrated him with different objects. The rapes were rough and caused significant pain.”
This was the same Michael Ansell who was at the centre of a civil case that the Crown aggressively defended. It’s the same case where the judge found the victim had been sexually abused and raped at least 13 times but wrote in his written judgment that the sexual abuse was “embarrassing, but not traumatic.”
Luxon and co have been overturning laws and court decisions regularly but they’ve left that court decision alone. Probably because it protects the Crown from liability for the tens of thousands of victims, that includes members of the Mongrel Mob and other gangs. So much for getting tough on crime.
The Royal Commission drew a direct link between the violence of welfare institutions like Hokio and Kohitere and the gang and prison populations, a link that Luxon has never wanted to acknowledge. When I asked him about it during a press conference, he reverted to tired rhetoric, even after I pointed out that they were children when they were abused.
The Royal Commission said: “Almost a quarter of registered survivors (with the commission) who were at Hokio School and/or Kohitere Centre identified as being, or having been, in a gang or as gang whānau. Professor (Elizabeth) Stanley has shown how children’s homes, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, were places where gangs emerged. Some children and young people came from families with gang connections and would recruit other children and young people once in care. Survivor Paora (Paul) Sweeney (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Hako) told the Inquiry: “Kohitere was the start of it all, the gang problem in the country today comes from there.”
The commimssion concluded: “Hokio School and Kohitere Centre were places where gangs were formed. The State placed children and young people who were already vulnerable in these places, allowed abuse and neglect to occur, and provided no assistance to survivors to work through the impacts of abuse, neglect and trauma. Instead, many survivors found protection, connection, support and understanding by joining gangs.”
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