NEVILLE PHILLIPS

Saviour for lost boys

One broken-down racehorse, a crocked colt with bad legs, and a greyhound that outran its previous owner’s patience. Neville Phillips saw something in all of them. He didn’t give up and his persistence paid off.

It’s paying off for hundreds of troubled teens and young men as well. Many of them are broken down when they turn up on his doorstep. They’ve pushed the patience of parents, police and the courts. They’re on that path to prison, maybe worse.

But like his horses, dogs and anyone else he comes across, Phillips sees the potential and knows how to lure it out of its vulnerable, surly host.

‘‘Think of your worst day as a child, the worst thing that happened to you, think how much that terrified and scared you,’’ he says. ‘‘These kids go through that every day of their lives; every day they suffer those traumas . . . these kids don’t need punishment, they need help.’’

That’s what Phillips and his team have been providing at START Taranaki for the past 15 years. The programme he developed and leads as chief executive takes hardened teen offenders, gang prospects and crime’s young apprentices into the bush for three weeks, follows up with an intensive community transition at its Kaponga base under the mountain, and then a year of mentoring.

Phillips wants to give these kids a sense of the love and community support he had as a child, growing up in the coastal Taranaki village of Pungarehu.

Mum Jean was the postmistress for close to 30 years, and dad Eric a builder who ended up leasing and then buying a small farm behind the post office. ‘‘You could go into every house within the village and be welcomed like you were wha¯ nau. You left home at daybreak and came home when it turned dark for a feed; most of the time we were in the rivers eeling and chasing trout or down the sea fishing or in the surf; the rest of the time we were hunting.’’

Later he would get to see how the other half lived. As a teen fresh out of high school, Phillips got into ‘‘a bit of strife’’.

‘‘I spent the odd night in jail for various things – fighting in public places, underage drinking in pubs, crazy driving in the car . . . ended up in court a couple of times.

‘‘I saw people in the cells and in the court system who were treated a lot less fairly than me because I was clever enough and privileged enough to use a lawyer and know when to say the right things and when not to. It did help shape me a little.’’

That social conscience was developed further as a young reporter in Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty. ‘‘I was a little blown away, being a naive country boy, in the courts, at what was happening; it was my first real look at how poverty affected families.

‘‘It wasn’t until then that I realised; I wasn’t from a wealthy family, but I realised how bloody lucky I’d been, brought up in that kind of environment.’’

It was a loving, passionate and supportive environment he would eventually share with many young men lost beyond its warm glow.

They would be drawn back into the light, around campfires deep in Taranaki bush and even the heater in his own home, shared with wife Marilyn and their two daughters.

‘‘We were trying to transition them into the community, but the reality was that with a lot of them there were no homes for them,’’ he says. ‘‘I can’t say enough about my wife, what she went through, and my daughters, just so used to having no dad for a month at a time.’’

That would be when he took his troubled young charges into the bush. ‘‘It was really getting them away from all the things that interfered with them being a normal child: the peer group, the dysfunctional families, the drugs, the alcohol, fast foods, technology; to try to find the real kid inside.’’

There would be tears, tantrums, and plenty of sweat. ‘‘You tramp them a bit, make them sweat a bit, put some fresh spring water through their system and get them through the angry part where you know the drugs are kicking in and they’re going to throw their packs on the ground, stomp off, swear at you and everything.

‘‘Get through that, which usually takes the best part of a week, and then coming out of the heavy part of the bush you’ve usually got a kid who’s just realised that he’s achieved something huge.

‘‘They really start to open up about why they got angry; they start talking about their issues and what bothers them, and from that you can start drawing a picture for this young man.’’

Phillips’ own picture was one revealed slowly, over a number of years. Disillusioned with journalism, he returned to Taranaki, working at the lactose factory in Kapuni.

And he resumed an interest in breeding horses. ‘‘I bought a broken-down racehorse and bred her, and the first horse I bred was a group winner called Sea Dreamer, one of the better 2 [and] 3-year-olds of her generation.’’

That horse won more than $100,000, including a Group One race in Australia.

‘‘Then I bred a little colt out of Cetacean; it was a bit of a crock, had bad legs, but it won a Waikato Cup for me.’’

Those successes helped him buy a bit of land in Kaponga, next to the property his parents had moved to. He bred the horses there, and his father and a brother would train them. Eventually that included greyhounds.

Another neighbour was Hebron House, based in the former Kaponga hospital, which took in 15 to 25-year-olds struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

Phillips soon discovered he wasn’t the only one interested in horses. ‘‘The kids would jump over the fence and say, ‘Can I give you a hand, mate?’

‘‘Then when I’d finished I’d either be going surfcasting or getting a feed of pa¯ ua, hang out at the beach, and ended up taking them along with me . . . building a good rapport.’’

When Hebron House closed and Choice Taranaki took up the challenge of working with troubled youths, Phillips was the one jumping the fence to lend a hand. ‘‘They were struggling with nightshift and trying to find staff, so I just became more and more involved.’’

And when Choice went the way of Hebron House, he went from involvement to the ultimate commitment, opening START Taranaki in 2003.

There have been setbacks: burnt out and struggling for staff and funding, Phillips closed the doors five years later. ‘‘I hit the wall, got to the point where I couldn’t hold it together.’’

But he’d developed a reputation. Local MP, former policeman and future courts minister Chester Borrows stepped in. Principal Youth Court judge Andrew Becroft added his support.

Funding and programme secured, Phillips and his staff set about saving young lives once more. They’ve had plenty of success – young people who’ve stayed out of trouble, found work and started their own loving, supportive families.

‘‘But there are kids who break your heart. I had one boy who lived with me and my family for two years; he worked every day that he was with us, in the racing stable, and did really well; out of bed early in the morning, I drove him to Stratford just about every day for two years.

‘‘Then his mum contacted him and said, ‘I’m dying, you need to come back to Wellington and help me, support me.’ He got that guilt put on him and went back to his fully fledged Mongrel Mob family.

‘‘The kid ended up in jail. It broke our hearts because he was a beautiful kid.

‘‘Four-five years down the track he contacted us from jail and said, ‘The one thing I can remember you saying, Dad, is that you can always come home,’ and I said of course you can.

‘‘When we got him out of jail he came home. He’s done really, really well working on a farm; the kid’s 26-27 years old now, he’s got a partner with a couple of kids. He’s had trouble and issues since. But he’s not a statistic.’’

‘‘These kids don’t need punishment, they need help.’’