Erotic ‘evils’ ignite Mazengarb’s report
Oswald Mazengarb’s 1954 ‘juvenile delinquency’ inquiry sparked conservative reforms as Kiwis wrestled with moral outrage, finds Jessica Long.
In 1954, ‘‘sensational’’ press reports of ‘‘wild teenage sex orgies’’ and ‘‘erotic’’ evils shocked the country. Lower Hutt and Auckland youths faced strings of indecent assault charges and two ‘‘abnormally homosexual’’ 16-year-old Christchurch girls were charged with the grisly killing of Honora Rieper.
As sexual crimes across the country doubled per head of population to those reported in England and Wales, schoolaged Kiwis become the focus of a government ‘‘juvenile delinquency’’ inquiry, lead by lawyer Oswald Mazengarb.
The investigation looked at changed patterns in misbehaviours; visual and auditory influences; community, home, and school impacts on minors; as well as law, religion and morality.
On September 20, four volumes and more than 70 pages of witnessed evidence were handed over to prime minister Sidney Holland.
Bound copies of the Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents were distributed across the country to become immortalised as the ‘‘Mazengarb Report’’.
‘‘The situation is a serous one, and something must be done,’’ the report said.
It shamed the ready availability of contraceptives, alcohol and gambling, and young women enticing men for sex.
The report blamed the ‘‘first major shock to respectable society’’ on the New Zealand Army when it distributed condoms to troops during World War I.
And, there was a ‘‘moral drift’’ amid the number of people ‘‘who entertain the nebulous idea’’ that sex before marriage was acceptable.
The country’s youth, particularly girls, were blamed for ‘‘sexual laxity’’ and promiscuity. Mothers who worked were told their actions equalled ‘‘thoughtlessness’’, but fathers were not ‘‘free of blame’’.
‘‘Sexual immorality among young people arises, in part, from the fact that mothers are frequently absent from their homes at times when their children need their care and guidance.’’
The report included evidence of ‘‘an amazing sex cult’’ in Sydney involving a ‘‘bodgie high priest’’ and a number of ‘‘pretty teenagers’’ who were found ‘‘indulging in wild orgies’’.
Solutions recommended to solve the problem included increased censorship, amendments to the Crimes Act, and a ban on contraception for under-16s, as well as a return to Christianity and traditional values.
Petone girl’s confession
On June 20, 1954, a 15-year-old girl was reported missing from her Petone home, the report said.
Hours later she called the Petone Police Station with a story that haunted Elbe’s Milk Bar, in Lower Hutt, for years after its closure.
The girl said students arranged ‘‘erotic’’ encounters at the bar and drank milkshakes, before heading to the Hutt River for sex. It was close to Christmas when she joined the ‘‘Milk Bar Gang’’ because she’d been ‘‘unhappy’’ at home with her stepfather, she told police.
But, after six months, she grew ‘‘tired of the sex life’’ and became concerned for its younger followers, saying the gang should be broken up.
It wasn’t long before 65 children were captured in cases of a ‘‘shocking degree of immoral conduct which spread into sexual orgies’’, the report said.
The groups met at private homes while parents were away; other times they met at ‘‘second-rate’’ Hutt Valley theatres ‘‘where familiarity between youths and girls was rife and commonplace’’.
However, the young people of Hutt Valley were ‘‘as healthy-minded and as well-behaved as those in other districts’’, the Mazengarb Report later found.
‘‘It just happened that, through the voluntary confession of one girl in Petone, many cases were immediately brought to the knowledge of the police,’’ it said.
Inquiries led to Auckland where a series of investigations began over ‘‘an accumulation of sordid happenings’’ involving 40 children, some as as young as 9 years old.
Several girls found having ‘‘intercourse with older men’’ sparked two court cases.
One man was imprisoned, while the other awaited trial over the murder of a 14-year-old boy, the report said.
‘‘Police, welfare officers, a headmaster, and social workers in Auckland . . . people who regard themselves as men of the world could scarcely believe [the cases] possible in this Dominion.’’