Last message from Mason
Mason Pendrous’ first year at university should have been an exciting chapter in his life. Instead, his decomposing body was discovered in bed at his student accommodation weeks after he died. Sam Sherwood and Blair Ensor investigate
Avid online gamer Mason Pendrous had just finished a match shortly before 10pm on August 24 and sent a message to other players joking about the result.
They were not to know it was probably the 19-year-old’s last contact with the wider world.
A month later, on September 23, Pendrous’ decomposing body was found in bed in his apartment-style room at Sonoda, a hall of residence at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.
Police believe the teenager had been dead nearly four weeks. The circumstances are not believed to be suspicious and inquiries to date have found no evidence of selfharm or drug use.
The delay in finding Pendrous’ body in a university hall, where parents are entitled to expect some oversight and pastoral care, has created global headlines. It has prompted several investigations and an urgent, Government-led review of the regulatory framework that applies to student accommodation.
The university’s Vice-Chancellor, Cheryl de la Rey, says it is ‘‘inconceivable to imagine how these circumstances could have occurred’’.
Stuff has been looking into the case in an effort to piece together how a first-year student living away from home could fall through the cracks.
A new adventure
Pendrous was born into an affluent family. As a teenager he boarded at Scots College, a private school in Wellington. He was tall and well built – physical attributes that were suited to his chosen sports of basketball and rowing.
However, Pendrous had to contend with some significant challenges in his short life. His parents separated when he was very young, and, in 2014, his mother died of breast cancer. He called his stepfather, Anthony Holland, who helped raise him from the age of 4, ‘‘dad’’.
Those who knew Pendrous at secondary school say he was friendly and outgoing.
Away from the classroom, he spent many hours immersed in the world of online gaming, a hobby he took with him when he moved to Christchurch earlier this year to study e-commerce at university.
Pendrous was accepted into Sonoda, a hall of residence run by Australian-based company Campus Living Villages (CLV).
He paid about $400 a week to live in a five-bedroom, second-floor apartment, in close quarters with at least three others. The kitchen, bathroom and living area were communal. Cleaners only tended to shared spaces.
CLV staff found it difficult to contact Pendrous, who was known to be struggling academically.
In May, they had concerns about his whereabouts when he was the only person not to have collected a new key card allowing access to Sonoda. Direct messages advising him of this went unanswered.
He eventually showed up, but staff discussed the need to check on him regularly.
It’s unclear whether Pendrous made many friends at university, but he always gave the impression to those watching from afar that he was enjoying himself.
On August 24, the day after lectures ended for a fortnight-long mid-semester break, the teenager was sitting at his computer playing a strategy game and communicating with friends who lived in other parts of New Zealand.
It was the last time they heard from him.
At first, no-one thought anything of it. Pendrous was known to play games offline for days at a time without contacting anyone.
However, as the days turned into weeks and messages to him went unanswered, friends began to worry.
By that time, alarm bells were ringing for Pendrous’ stepfather, who was being pursued by CLV for unpaid bills.
A grim discovery
Holland told RNZ this week that the pair last spoke on the phone about 11pm on July 19. During that conversation, Pendrous sounded happy and seemed to be having a good time at university.
In the weeks that followed, Holland said he tried unsuccessfully to contact his stepson by text, email and phone.
It wasn’t unusual for the pair not to talk for lengthy stretches. He put the lack of response down to typical teenage behaviour and ‘‘student life’’. Pendrous was independent and had made it clear that he wanted to be left to his own devices.
Holland told RNZ that his suspicions were aroused when he called his stepson’s phone and, instead of being greeted by his voicemail, he was told the number was no longer available.
Not knowing that CLV ran Sonoda, he contacted the university on about August 19 via an email address. It’s not clear if he ever heard back.
In the past Pendrous had bought a new phone, so Holland thought he might have a new number.
However, several weeks later, when he still hadn’t heard anything, he contacted one of his stepson’s friends in Auckland, who in turn contacted someone they knew in Sonoda. That person, Holland told RNZ, climbed over a roof toward the outside of Pendrous’ room and realised something was wrong.
A CLV duty manager made the grim discovery about 11pm on September 23.
It was clear Pendrous had been dead for some time, but determining exactly how long wouldn’t be easy.
The police’s disaster victim identification team, which specialises in identifying people through DNA, fingerprints and dental records, was called in to help with the investigation.
Investigators narrowed the timeframe from nine weeks, when Pendrous last contacted his father, to eight weeks, when he last logged into the university computer system, to four weeks, when he messaged friends while gaming online.
They also have swipe card data, which should show when the teenager last entered his apartment.
While details of Pendrous’ last days and weeks alive remain murky, the more serious issue is how his body lay undiscovered for so long in a university hall where parents expect someone will look out for their child.
‘‘I need to know this isn’t going to happen to another dad,’’ Holland told RNZ.
‘A ticking time bomb’
In 2005, Campus Living Villages took on a 35-year lease worth $1 million a year to run several university halls – Sonoda, Kirkwood, University Hall and Ilam Apartments.
Sydney-based CLV also offers student accommodation in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, and is owned by a consortium of Australian pension funds.
The New Zealand arm of the business, Campus Living Villages NZ Ltd, made a $4.3 million profit after tax in the year to June 2018, according to its most recent set of accounts.
Since Pendrous’ death, Stuff has spoken to CLV employees past and present, who paint a picture of a company more concerned about lining its pockets than student care.
They say a series of restructures have eroded the company’s staffing in Christchurch and it was only a matter of time until a serious incident happened.
A former CLV manager, who had oversight of the halls for several years, says he quit in about
2011 because he didn’t want his name ‘‘associated with a disaster’’.
When he started, about 25 residential assistants (RAs) looked after more than 1000 student hall residents.
By the time he resigned, he says, that number had reduced to about
17.
‘‘I couldn’t believe what was happening. Each year the number of RAs went down as the job got harder,’’ the man says.
Reducing the number of residential assistants – senior students whose accommodation is subsidised to keep an eye on assigned groups – meant CLV had additional rooms it could fill with paying customers, therefore increasing its profit.
The man says it got to the point where staffing was dire and he had to work late, often until about 2am, dealing with ‘‘dangerous situations’’ – students lighting fires, grossly intoxicated students and, in one incident, a student who threw a microwave out of a window.
He was increasingly worried the stress of ‘‘being mixed up in a student disaster’’ would finish him off.
‘‘I went home and told my wife ‘I’m going to die in this job’.’’
The man says CLV executives in Australia appeared detached from the situation in Christchurch.
‘‘They were sitting behind a computer ... counting the money.’’
When he quit he delivered a letter to his Christchurch-based boss outlining his concerns.
‘‘I said, ‘I can’t work in these conditions any longer – I don’t want my name associated with a disaster’.
‘‘I called it a ticking time bomb ... and they didn’t like that.’’
The man says his manager did not seem to be interested in his concerns and appeared happy he was leaving.
He says he was sad to learn of Pendrous’ death but it came as no surprise.
In his view, ‘‘some people knew something like that was going to happen’’.
‘Irresponsible changes’
Since 2011, changes have continued at CLV’s Christchurch-based operation, including at least two restructures and a high turnover of middle management.
In May this year, concerns were raised with both the company and the university about proposed changes that would make several staff redundant.
Those affected warned the restructure would place increased pastoral care demands on residential assistants, a move they
said carried ‘‘significant risk’’.
Staff said pastoral care was a specialist role that required professional training and the proposed changes were ‘‘irresponsible’’.
They also flagged that the CLV security and community team was understaffed, particularly in the wake of the March 15 terror attack, and some members were showing signs of burnout. They stressed it was a matter of when a serious incident would happen, not if.
The restructure would have an impact on the health and wellbeing of staff involved in other Christchurch-based CLV teams, which were also under-resourced, the staff said. The company went ahead with the restructure in June.
Welfare issues
In the wake of Pendrous’ death, the university and CLV have confirmed Sonoda will not cater to first-year students next year. Information about the hall has been removed from the tertiary provider’s website to avoid confusion among those enrolling, a spokeswoman says.
The university’s
2020 accommodation guide, created before that decision was made, says Sonoda would have capacity for 108 students supported by two residential assistants.
Stuff understands that unlike other CLV-run accommodation, none of the company’s fulltime staff are based at Sonoda during the day. Meals are cooked at University Hall and brought to the site. Residential assistants are rostered to work there in the evenings.
Sonoda was only recently converted to first-year accommodation.
A former CLV staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, says they ‘‘strongly advised’’ against the change as the hall wasn’t properly equipped to deal with younger students who were resource-intense to care for.
Working with students at such a vulnerable time in their lives was an ‘‘extremely taxing job’’.
Staff across all university halls spent many hours looking after atrisk students, often in the middle of the night. Sometimes they had to accompany them to hospital.
Senior management appeared more interested in ensuring rooms were full than in student and staff welfare.
A ‘daunting task’
CLV-run halls at the university have a lower residential support to student ratio than those run by others.
Sonoda’s ratio is 1:54, Ilam Apartments’ is 1:53, University Hall’s is 1:42, and Kirkwood’s is
1:16.
By comparison, the ratios at the church-run College House, Bishop Julius, and Rochester and Rutherford halls are 1:10, 1:16 and
1:32 respectively.
A residential assistant in one of the CLV-run halls told Stuff he is meant to work at only one hall, where he looks after about 40 students, but often finds himself doing shifts at other sites.
Some of his colleagues look after students across multiple floors and they find it difficult to keep track of those assigned to them.
It is a ‘‘daunting’’ task having responsibility for so many people, he says.
‘‘Keeping an eye on my own key group is really difficult. It’s pretty easy for them to be lost in the crowd.’’
Of the 40 students assigned to him, he says he knows about 30 of them well.
If one of them went missing, it would be a matter of days, not weeks, before he realised.
Communication from CLV has at times been poor, he says.
For instance, he learned a new student had been assigned to him only when he bumped into them in a corridor.
Thankfully, he says, he hasn’t had to deal with any adverse events. Other residential assistants, however, have had to look after students who have selfharmed. Mental health is a serious issue in the halls, he says.
Problems include homesickness, depression and anxiety.
The residential assistant believes CLV is understaffed and, as a consequence, pastoral care is lacking.
‘‘The RAs (residential assistants) are the ones on the frontline who see the issues. At the same time [those in management and beyond] don’t take our concerns into consideration.
‘‘There’s almost zero interaction with ... corporate staff in Australia. They don’t know what it’s like here.
‘‘There’s more to running a hall than money in and money out.’’
Before Pendrous’ death, it ‘‘felt like something bad was going to happen’’. ‘‘Not necessarily a death, but something serious,’’ he says.
In the wake of the tragedy, residential assistants were told to do regular welfare checks on students, something that wasn’t communicated earlier in the year.
‘‘It seemed a little disingenuous ... like they were ticking a box.’’
‘How did we miss him?’
CLV this week declined to answer a series of questions from Stuff regarding Pendrous’ death.
In a statement, the company’s group managing director, John Schroder, said it was not appropriate to publicly discuss ‘‘sensitive matters’’ that were being considered by the police and an independent investigation commissioned by the university.
‘‘As a father of five university and school-aged children I am deeply perturbed and want an answer to the same question the investigation is considering – how was this young man missed?
‘‘As we have already stated, should the findings of the investigation recommend changes, CLV will undertake the necessary changes to the way we operate our services. We can never eliminate all risk, but we can and we must do all we can to minimise it.’’
Schroder said the company had checked on all students living in its Christchurch accommodation to ensure their whereabouts, and counselling was available to students, residential assistants and staff.
Staffing had been boosted and additional security staff rostered on at night.
‘‘Our priority is and always will be the wellbeing of our students and staff.’’
Former High Court judge Kit Toogood is leading the investigation commissioned by the university.
The inquiry is looking at the circumstances surrounding the delay in finding that Pendrous had died, whether anyone from the university, CLV or elsewhere raised concerns about his welfare, and any response to such concerns.
It is examining the policies, processes and procedures for monitoring and responding to student welfare issues both at the university and at Sonoda, and whether those policies were adhered to.
Toogood began work on the inquiry last week. He is expected to report back with his findings and any recommended changes by midNovember.
The university also declined to comment while the various investigations were ongoing.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins says that, as a result of Pendrous’ death, he’s looking ‘‘as a matter of highest priority’’ at whether the regulatory framework that applies to student accommodation is fit for purpose.
‘‘Keeping an eye on my own key group is really difficult. It’s pretty easy for them to be lost in the crowd.’’ A residential assistant in a CLV run hall