Abuse like being put into ‘cage of lions’

A young girl put into state care in Wellington continued to be sexually abused by her father when he took her out for a visit because authorities refused to believe she was telling the truth.

That girl, now a 70-year-old woman, testified before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care at a public hearing in Auckland yesterday.

The woman, identified only as ‘‘Ms T’’, was the second-eldest daughter of a British man and a Ma¯ ori woman. The family lived in Lower Hutt at the time.

T’s first experience of racism was in her own home, where her father racially abused her and her seven siblings.

He started abusing her in the 1950s when she was only four or five years old. She was in her 30s when she found out her father had sexually abused some of her siblings and their friends too.

Her mother did not believe her. When she was 13, someone told her she could go to social welfare for help.

‘‘I got talking to a lady there, and I was trying to tell her what was happening to me, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She told me to get the hell out. She said I was a liar.’’ T ran away the next year, but was soon picked up by police.

She told a police officer and a social worker that she was being sexually abused but again she was not believed.

T was put into the Miramar Girls’ Home in Wellington for ‘‘not being under proper control’’.

She was later taken to a Children’s Court hearing in Lower Hutt, where the magistrate did not believe her allegations.

‘‘He called me a juvenile delinquent and a liar. How could I tell such filthy lies about my father?’’

T was made a ward of the state for being ‘‘a delinquent child not under proper control’’ and taken to Strathmore Girls’ Home in

Christchurch. She spent about a year at the home where she was physically and emotionally abused. She described the home as ‘‘a place of mental torture’’.

On one occasion, T’s father visited and forced her to write a letter saying she had lied about the sexual abuse. He was then allowed to take her on an outing. ‘‘He had a hotel room in the city. He took me back there and molested me.’’

She told staff about the abuse that happened at the hotel but was again accused of lying. T refused to see her father again.

T spent some time in foster care and was later released back to her parents’ home, but stayed in the care of social welfare until she was 18.

As an adult, T spent 19 years as a support worker for people with disabilities in Lower Hutt. She stopped working when she was diagnosed with cancer at 67.

T told the inquiry much of her psychological damage stemmed from her time at Strathmore Girls’ Home. ‘‘I lived in fear as a child, then was put into this environment built on total fear,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s like being lifted off the table and put into a cage of lions.’’

When she was finished with her testimony, Judge Shaw told T: ‘‘Your story has touched me deeply. You are believed.’’