Man sent to mental hospital as 9yearold

WELLINGTON: Where are the cherries?

This was the constant thought going through the mind of a 9yearold boy who was sent to the former adult psychiatric hospital, Cherry Farm.

Now aged 59, Toni Jarvis gave evidence yesterday in Auckland to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care’s inquiry into residential state care.

Adopted at birth, Jarvis was severely physically abused by his adoptive father.

When he was 7 and 8 he ended up fostered in various family homes before, five days after turning 9, he ended up in Cherry Farm, north of Dunedin, awaiting a placement at Hokio Beach School, in Levin.

Mr Jarvis said the doctors advised Social Welfare that they did not have the facilities for a 9yearold boy and that he would be placed and locked with adult patients and that the patients would corrupt him.

‘‘Social Welfare sent me anyway. For as long as I remember, Social Welfare had the attitude of doing what they wanted and not what was best throughout my childhood,’’ Mr Jarvis said.

‘‘I didn’t have any understanding of why I was taken to Cherry Farm. I was not told where I was going, apart from the name of the institution. When we drove there I noticed it was a massive complex, but being the 9yearold I was, I was looking for a plant with cherries.

‘‘I was excited to go to Cherry Farm. All I could think of was tins of fruit salad, where there would be one cherry.’’

He was taken to the main area and then locked in with the adult patients.

‘‘It was like, welcome to the horror show for a 9year old boy. All the adult patients stopped and gave me sickening looks.’’

The patients were very disturbed and mentally ill, he said.

‘‘They were making noises, wailing and making unusual movements with their bodies and faces. I remember thinking to myself ‘what the hell is this’ and I was still wondering where the cherries were.

‘‘I went into a foetal position and the patients starting coming at me in every direction.’’

He was constantly medicated at Cherry Farm to keep him quiet and then discharged six weeks later without having ever received a mental illness diagnosis.

He first went to the Epuni Boys’ Home and then Hokio Beach School.

At Hokio he was raped hundreds of times by older boys.

‘‘I can’t exactly say how many times I was raped while I was there but my guess is 200 times, based on my experience of being raped every day and every night and the amount of boys who were doing it and, as I stand here today, how would anybody like to be raped 200 times in just one place?’’

Mr Jarvis left school at 16 and ended up doing two stints in borstal and time in Paparua Prison.