Brain disease linked back to abuse while in state care

The effects of the abuse still plague Scott Carr’s daily life today.

In a small military tent where he slept with at least five other boys, young Scott Carr kept a stolen filleting knife in his sleeping bag – it was the only protection he had against a supervisor he thought would kill him.

The supervisor, at the state-funded Whakapakari Youth Trust on Great Barrier Island, had assaulted and threatened to kill him before throwing him down a bank, knocking him unconscious.

When he woke up hours later covered in blood, bruises and lumps, he was told other residents had been ordered not to help or check on him.

‘‘This assault left me so distressed that I seriously considered throwing myself off a cliff, as I could not face the prospect of remaining at Whakapakari,’’ Carr said.

The incident is one of many harrowing memories of Carr’s time in state care, which he shared with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care at a public hearing in Auckland yesterday.

Now, more than 30 years on from his three-month stint at Whakapakari, Carr is kept up at night due to flashbacks of the violence and of waking up down the bank.

He is no longer able to work due to the physical effects his post-traumatic stress disorder has had on his body.

A few years ago, he was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease similar to multiple sclerosis and while it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause, doctors have told him his health issues could be triggered by post-traumatic stress disorder from his time at Whakapakari.

The abuse at the camp started from the moment he arrived, when he was forced to ensure a strip search where his genitals were touched.

He lived in a tent with five to eight other boys and worked doing laborious tasks from about 7.30am until 6pm.

In letters home, Carr wrote of being constantly hungry, being provided only porridge, soup, vegetables and fish. How much they ate depended on if the boys had caught fish that day. ‘‘I was only allowed to shower once every four days ... I felt disgusting and dirty.’’

For years, Carr struggled to wear shoes, due to trauma his feet endured from being forced to walk in bare feet over stones. At yesterday’s hearing, Carr became emotional reading letters he had written to his mother at the time, detailing the abuse. When one letter detailing the violence he suffered from a supervisor was discovered, Carr was made to apologise repeatedly until he cried and then he was choked until he could not breathe. The supervisor then told him he had his mother’s address and was going to ‘‘make her pay’’. The same supervisor made him dig holes in the ancestral graveyard to bury old skulls and skeleton bones.

‘‘[He] told me if I did not behave and do exactly as I was told, I would end up there too.’’

Carr said while he was never abused at home, he was neglected. His parents worked long hours and sometimes weeks would go by without him seeing them.

In August 1997, someone alerted CYFS that ‘‘something wasn’t right at home’’.

Shortly after, Carr was suspended from a school which later would not allow him back but also would not expel him, meaning he could not enrol in schooling elsewhere. Then at age 13, Carr stopped attending school and his behaviour deteriorated. ‘‘I was home alone while my parents were at work. CYFS did nothing.

‘‘I was very bored and lonely. This is when I started drinking and hanging out with an older crowd,’’ he said.

Carr also did three stints at Epuni boys’ home in Lower Hutt, where he experienced bullying, violence, intimidation, and ‘‘demoralising’’ strip searches.

He was put in a secure unit without windows or natural light three times, for three days each time.

The effects of the abuse still plague Carr’s daily life today and while he is sober now, he suffered years of alcoholism.