Home abuse trial of South Auckland boys begins for former staff members

“Things happened in this boy’s house… that were hidden for years,” Piho said, explaining that the six-week trial is expected to include allegations from 10 complainants – all now adults – who moved in and out cycled. of the two facilities between 2007 and 2014.

“The same people who were supposed to care for these boys took advantage of them and abused them.”

Two women and two men were initially arrested last year following Operation Annalize, a two-year police investigation into the Tirohonga Hou Mo Nga Rangatahi Charitable Trust following a referral from Oranga Tamariki. None of the four, including a woman not currently on trial, cannot yet be named for legal reasons.

The trust was established in 2002 and was later contracted by Child, Youth and Family Services – the agency now called Oranga Tamariki – to care for boys from troubled backgrounds. The facility initially operated from a former Kingseat Hospital residence on the same site, but in a different building, as the Spookers haunted house attraction.

The boys’ home later moved 15km away and operated from a house and garage in Pukekohe.

The female defendant has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including sexual offense by unlawful sexual connection, kidnapping, indecent assault, committing an indecent act against a young person and sexual connection with a young person.

Another defendant, a 36-year-old man, has pleaded not guilty to charges including cruelty to a child, wounding with intent to injure, committing an indecent act on a young person, kidnapping and assaulting a child, while the other defendant is male Defendant, 39, is charged with kidnapping and cruelty in relation to a single complainant.

There are a total of 31 charges before the jury, but the details of some of them have been temporarily withheld by Judge Yelena Yelavich.

Piho said that on paper the charity was committed to providing corrections programs and education to young people from troubled backgrounds who had been court ordered to live in the house. But allegations against the trust emerged as part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Healthcare and police decided to track down and interview every person who had been in the house as a boy. That, Piho said, was “how these men finally found their voice.”

The prosecutor did not go into much depth about the allegations beyond what was outlined in the indictment – ​​some of which was already very explicit, even in abbreviated form and surrounded by legal texts – which were read to the jurors at the beginning of the trial.

More details will emerge, the prosecutor said, as each of the men is called to testify.

“I note that some of these things can be quite unpleasant to hear,” he warned.

The lawyers for the three defendants did not disagree on that point.

“The nature of the allegations is truly distasteful and perverse,” said Susan Gray, who represents the female defendant. “But at this stage they are just accusations.”

She emphasized the jurors’ duty to put aside feelings of sympathy, prejudice, “dislike and disgust” and evaluate the evidence with emotion. She also urged jurors not to automatically lump the case presented to them with other allegations of abuse in state care facilities that have appeared in the media recently.

“All of us in this room will agree that this is a truly appalling and shocking state of affairs,” she said of the recently released Royal Commission report. “This case is not what you read about. This case is different. (The report) is completely and utterly irrelevant to this case.”

Lawyer Oliver Troon, who represents the younger of the two male defendants, joined Gray in suggesting the complainants were not to be believed.

“These claims, accusations and allegations are nothing more than their words – they are false,” he said.

Attorney Devon Kemp, who represented the older male defendant, also agreed.

His client, who worked at the facility for about six months nearly two decades ago, never used force to control the children or locked them in their rooms, he said.

“The boys were naughty – that’s why they were sent there,” he said, noting that there were frequent fights and rule violations in the building. But none of that, he said, involved his client.

“He respected them in the same way they respected him,” Kemp said, suggesting his client’s accuser may have been motivated by a possible compensation from the Royal Commission or a reduction in a sentence he was about to hand out to sit.

“The allegations are fabricated… They are deliberate lies or perhaps they are wrong for some reason.”

None of the complainants have testified yet.

Instead, jurors today heard from two professional witnesses.

Detective Michelle Clark described the process of tracking down each of the facility’s former residents, and the questions asked of each person. Everyone was asked to tell police about the staff they remembered working there, she said.

“What are the good things you remember about the staff?” each person was asked, before the follow-up question, “What are some of the bad things you remember about the staff?”

Clinical psychologist and professor Julia Ioane also spoke to jurors and outlined the reasons why some child victims only express outrage years later. Boys are statistically less likely to talk, but when they do it’s often because they are seeking protection or support from services, she said.

Deferred outrage, she said, “doesn’t tell us whether a complaint is true or false.”

The testimonies will resume tomorrow.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has been covering courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the United States and New Zealand.

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