The last days of Reiha McLelland
heard the case against Back and Mepham in February 2016. During the hearings, Ackroyd and Back met for lunch at least once during the noon adjournment.
The council’s tribunal was much tougher than Gisborne Intermediate’s. It struck him from the Register of Teachers and gave Mepham a caution.
The tribunal described Back’s evidence as “a curious mix of self-regard, lack of selfawareness and exculpatory material”.
Bruce McLelland says he listened and thought: “Every question he was asked, he had a spin on it.”
Back told Reiha’s parents at the hearing: “I apologise wholeheartedly for any pain and frustration my actions may have caused you. I tried my best with Reiha. I treated her with respect, and had the highest of hopes for her.”
While the McLellands are convinced Back — metaphorically — pushed their daughter off the cliff, they can’t understand how every other safety net failed as she fell.
Reiha’s struggle with the ‘burden of secrets’
Reiha’s world changed on April 4, 2014.
That day she wrote in her diary of her frustration she could not contact Back and Mepham. The content of the diary is subject to a nonpublication order from the coroner but her frustration was strongly expressed.
Her mobile phone had gone when she was admitted to the adolescent inpatient service at Porirua — house rules for the privacy of other patients. It would be put in storage until fetched by Hinemoa, who searched it to find furtive messaging between her and Back.
Frustration turned to devastation when Reiha learned the temporary ban on contacting the teachers had become permanent. Again, the words are subject to a nonpublication order but it is clear she was adrift, bereft.
Her psychiatrist would later tell the inquest the separation was akin to a “divorce”.
Reiha’s life changed massively simply through the reduction in contact. The police investigation revealed almost 4000 text messages between Back and Reiha between the end of December 2013 and the beginning of April.
An analysis of the text data done for the McLelland family shows they texted dozens of times a day, sometimes sending more than 50 messages between early morning and late evening.
In some cases it was onesided. Reiha didn’t text Back for two weeks in March when she was at boarding school. He texted her constantly, once telling Reiha she was making his feelings “sore” by not responding.
By the time the ban on contact had been established, Reiha had support in the form of family and mental health care. Yet no one had the necessary information to give Reiha the help she needed.
The extent of the communication was known only to police. The medical experts, Reiha’s parents, guidance counsellors at her new school — all had little to go on to understand how intense it had become.
Her psychiatrist later spoke of Back “grooming” Reiha, through a relationship that was “increasingly intimate” in which “boundaries . . . were gradually eroded by . . . keeping it secret”.
And while he had assumed the relationship was sexual, he was unaware of the depth of the email and text conversations so was unable to grasp the extent of what the teenager was dealing with.
He believed, though, that Reiha was not unwell.
“I saw her struggle with the burden of secrets which I did not see as a mental illness.”
The psychiatrist would write how “Reiha struggled with conflicting emotions and allegiances. She was racked by guilt at times regarding her part in the relationship, fearful of seeking help, and of being open and honest with mental health professionals.”
The refusal to disclose, if discussed with police, might have shown how optimistic the investigating constable was when she arranged an interview with Reiha for midMay.
It became an awaited and pivotal event for Reiha, with her expressing a determination to take her life in a diary entry on May 1, 2014 — after she had spoken up for Back and Mepham in the police interview.
As it happened, Reiha refused to speak to police. Cameras were never turned on, the trained interviewer couldn’t pry anything from the girl.
At home, though, Reiha had started to open up. Hinemoa believes the fact that the secret was out was a great relief to Reiha, who felt “a sense of less burden” because she no longer needed to hide the existence of the relationship.
“She could talk to us about it,” says Hinemoa. “I could see how sad she was.”
She recalls saying to Reiha: “I know you’re missing him.”
And the look her daughter gave her? “She was glad I knew it was hard but she couldn’t say anything.”
She talked to Reiha about boundaries and the rules which governed teachers. Reiha already knew because — she said — Back had warned he could lose his job over their friendship.
She remembers Reiha saying: “Mum, that just goes to show you how much he must love me if he’s willing to lose his job because of his love for me.”
Hinemoa: “At that point I remember thinking, ‘You absolute mongrel bastard. You’ve completely manipulated her.’”
How hard it must have been, Hinemoa says. “We all remember our first love — normally you have someone you can share the pain with . . . she had no one she could share this with for fear of him losing his job.”
At that stage, the McLellands had hope. Reiha’s diary, on June 16, 2014, reflects a positive upswing in her mood.
On June 20, the McLellands were told the police inquiry was over and no charges would be laid.
Three days later, Hinemoa filed a formal complaint with Gisborne Intermediate.
The complaint led to a board of trustees disciplinary hearing on July 15. Back was told in writing on July 28 he had been found to have committed serious misconduct and was on a final warning.
Over the next three days, there were three calls to Reiha’s phone from an unlisted number. The McLellands believe it was Back attempting to reach Reiha. Back denies he placed any calls, or made any attempt to contact Reiha.
Reiha attempted to take her life on the evening of July 31 and died the following day. There was no attempt by police to check phone records after Reiha’s death. The identity of the caller remains unknown.
The inquest of Reiha McLelland
And that’s how we got to a Gisborne courtroom in 2016 where everyone had lawyers.
The McLellands were led through their testimony by their lawyer, Moira Macnab. She’s a fierce advocate who was unrelenting in her crossexamination.
The coroner’s office had a lawyer. There was a lawyer for the psychiatrist who testified that he believed Back’s actions were grooming; and there was one for the psychologist.
The hospital was represented by Paul White, an Auckland lawyer with a speciality in medical cases.
The police were represented by Steve Manning, who usually prosecutes cases for the Crown.
There was Gisborne Intermediate, represented by local barrister and energy company trustee Vicki Thorpe.
Back and Mepham also had a lawyer, the charming and suave Adam Simperingham, who wore a cheerful smile that became fixed, at times, when he rose to question Reiha’s crying parents about whether any failures as parents helped to kill their daughter.
The questions were generally informed with things Back claimed to have learned about McLelland family life from Reiha. At times, the coroner intervened in the questioning — as she also did when Macnab pushed boundaries.
Then Back testified, talking of Reiha turning up soaking wet in Gisborne’s driest month and how he hoped the summer holiday would end his contact with her even as he sent her gushing text messages.
After she stayed at his home on December 30, 2013, he wrote: “I’m so glad you got to come and stay. It has made my holidays so wonderful. You’re the greatest friend anybody could ask for and I feel so privileged to have you in my life.”
When asked about the effusive text, Back responded: “Yeah, that’s very kind of me to say isn’t it?”
He told the court that he had no training in how to deal with a student like Reiha. His teacher training in Christchurch had no lessons on how to run a “safe” classroom or the professional role of a teacher.
Yet the Herald obtained the course outline during Back’s time there which shows he could not have qualified without taking exactly those classes.
Back repeatedly claimed he urged Reiha to seek help. One lawyer, exasperated, said: “I just find it surprising that in the 632 pages of written communications where you speak very freely with Reiha on all sorts of matters, you omit that one key thing — and that’s the one thing that you say you only ever said in words.”
Macnab tried to cut to the heart of it, asking what he was doing swapping emails, poetry and text messages with a 13-year-old.
Back told Macnab she wasn’t thinking of his feelings.
“I don’t think you’re really trying to consider the situation that I was in and what I felt, because for me, those emotional pleas, the things that she talked about that were troubling her, they cut me deep too.”
She asked him why he sent Reiha a song with specific descriptions of a method of suicide, asking: “Who is the adult here? Don’t you think that it’s really your role to be thoughtful about these things?”
Back: “I suppose that’s possible.”
We thought we were making progress
They were nearly there, they think. Reiha had turned the corner, separated from the two teachers and — as can be seen in her diary — was feeling happier.
Hinemoa: “While she was looking ahead we still knew she was in a sad place. We weren’t on track yet but we were getting there.”
Bruce: “It was just going to take time. We thought we were making progress.”
There was no time after the evening of July 31, 2014, the night Reiha died. Since then, life has been about surviving while peeling back their daughter’s secrets.
The pain is such that they wonder how others endure. Hinemoa says: “You start to wonder, if it was a car crash or a sickness, would that make the pain any different?”
In the end, the coroner ruled that the relationship with Back did not cause Reiha’s death but was the “most startling of the factual matrix preceding her death” and a “primary stressor to Reiha in the last three months of her life”.
Reiha had been suffering “low mood and emotional disregulation” through 2013, she found, and when Back became aware of this he should have encouraged her to speak with her family or seek professional help.
By trying to act as a mentor and counsellor, Back “isolated her from her family” and gave her a way to focus on her pain and distress.
Back could have ended contact, na Nagara found.
Instead, he worked to encourage further “entanglement” and to have Reiha keep their developing relationship secret from her family.
And when the relationship was revealed, the failure of Back and Mepham to reveal what they knew of Reiha’s struggles damaged efforts to help her.
Sam Back is now 43. He and Mepham are still a couple. They have left Gisborne. Most recently they visited Canada, where Back’s father is said to be ill, and Nelson, where Mepham has family.
The Herald made repeated requests to interview them for this piece. Eventually, Mepham emailed responses from the couple.
“We believe we mattered to Reiha,” she wrote. “She came to us for support, and she was appreciative of the support we provided. We also believe that the loss of that support was difficult for Reiha.
“However, the role we have been placed in with regards to the events that led up to Reiha’s death is inaccurate. There is no truth to allegations that we tried to isolate Reiha from her family or develop any kind of relationship past one of compassion and support.”
Asked how they viewed the relationship with Reiha, Back said: “My relationship with Reiha was one of support. She reached out for support and I treated her as I would treat anyone: with respect, kindness and compassion.”
Mepham added: “I agree; we allowed Reiha the space to be herself.”
Neither would rule out teaching or working with children again. Mepham wrote: “Our future is open.”
If she had lived, Reiha McLelland would be 16 today.
The names of Reiha’s psychologist and psychiatrist are suppressed, as is the method by which she took her life.