'I was a child at the mercy of a monster': Survivor of abuse in state care launches royal commission's Māori hearing

Monday, 7 March 2022

From the age of 5, Tupua Urlich was exposed to a childhood of abuse and a lifetime of trauma under the protection of the Crown.

Speaking through tears to the Abuse in State Care Royal Commission for Māori, Urlich told his story in the hope that tamariki (children) across Aotearoa won’t suffer the way he and thousands of others have for generations.

Monday marked the first day of a two-week hearing in which 25 survivors and their whānau will share their lived experiences of physical, mental, spiritual, sexual, and cultural abuse and intergenerational trauma and racism faced over decades of care at the hands of organisations trusted to keep them safe.

While the inquiry only covers historical abuse from 1950-1999, survivors who experienced abuse in care as late as 2018 opened the hearing to highlight the harm Māori continue to face in state care and provide recommendations for change.

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Urlich (Ngāti Kahungungu) described his experience with state care as a 5-year-old as the opening of the “gates of hell”.

In 2000, he was moved away from his mother in Auckland to live briefly with whānau he’d never met in Heretaunga (Hawke’s Bay) before he was sent into state care.

State care delivered Urlich’s first encounter with brutality, as he was subjected to daily physical and mental abuse from the man who was meant to be looking after him.

“I was a child at the mercy of a monster that nobody cared to check on to make sure they’d made the right decision.

“I still get flashbacks every now and then, when he hooked me in the head – a full-grown, heavy-built man hooking a 5-year-old in the head.

“This caregiver went beyond physical abase, he was cruel. How anyone could deem him as safe enough to take care of me, I'll never understand.”

The man would beat him with his fists, wooden planks and poles, Urlich told the royal commission.

For months the abuse continued, with Urlich identifying a key moment of cruelty when, after a beating, his caregiver opened the door and told him his father had died.

“He said, ‘Oh yeah, your dad’s dead by the way,’ and the door closed behind him.”

At 6, Urlich found the courage to take the man to court for the beatings he had received. The court acquitted the caregiver of all charges except one, for kicking him, and taught Urlich that he was on his own.

“He was sentenced to 30 hours’ community service. Even though I was incredibly young at the time, for me, it was clear that even then I was up against the system protecting another system.

“The second you open your mouth, the state just seems to push you from pillar to post. After that I didn't have any stable placements. I’d go to school one day and the next thing you know, I’m going home to a different town or different place.

“The abuse, the hopelessness, and the loneliness was terrible. You top that off with absolutely no stability, no direction, so many things suffer, my education, but most importantly my mental health.”

In 2010, after being shifted around family homes and multiple suicide attempts, Urlich, then 15, tried to get help from the Children and Young Persons Office where he faced the reality of the staff who controlled his future.

“One of the youth justice workers said to me, ‘Oh, are you youth justice?’ I replied, ‘No, I’m care and protection.’ He replied, ‘Oh, future justice then.’

“That is the attitude of people we have employed that are put in charge and are given a whole lot of power over our young people’s lives.”

Urlich told the commission that the impact of the disconnect from his whānau, his iwi, and his Māoritanga, with no efforts to help him learn about his heritage, left him isolated and without identity.

“Being Māori and raised in a system that is determined to separate you from your culture and knowledge is modern-day colonisation.

“They want to detach us from our people, from our culture, and let us fall into a system that feeds their privilege.

“In the context of my childhood, whakapapa is where I should have been and who I should have been with.”

Urlich stressed that the suffering he endured in state care had not ended just because he was no longer a part of the system.

His father, who was also in state care, was just one example of the intergenerational effects the Crown placed on Māori who have passed through the system, he said.

“Most of the impact goes unseen by those who aren’t affected by it, but those who are affected by it suffer every day.

“Whilst a lot of this impact is on us directly, so many people that were close to me have been hurt, and I’ve hurt as a result.

“My only hope in my life is to raise strong, confident, loving people, but I’m having to do that off a foundation of pain, of anger and of suffering at the hands of the Crown.

“I love my tamariki, but the system has taken something from them that you cannot deny.”

Urlich said it was important that Māori who have experienced suffering in state care speak up, are heard, and that their thoughts about how to change the system become part of a reform to protect future generations from the “beast that the Crown has created”.

“This is real life, this is real people, and it doesn’t just age out like the system thinks.

“You’ve been treated so poorly for so long that you start to believe that you deserve what you’re getting.

“This pain and the anxiety that I carry, it’s not my fault. I should not be embarrassed, I should not be ashamed, the Crown should be, it’s theirs. They are responsible.

“I see our role being the most vital of all, right from the architecture to the rolling out of it. The state needs to step up and make the whole process more inclusive of whānau.

“There’s a lot of musts on us as tamariki growing up that the state doesn't seem to have. There has to be accountability for reaching outcomes. There has to be a desire to achieve an outcome.”

The commission’s assisting counsel Julia Spelman​ detailed the significance of the hearing to improving outcomes for tamariki Māori in care, and the lifelong and intergenerational consequences of the disproportionate disconnection of Māori children from their whānau.

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The loss of connection to Māoridom, of whakapapa, reo Māori, and identity, as well as the physical and mental abuse of Māori in state care and the racism many faced were key themes across the hearing, Spelman said.

“Everyone and everything has a whakapapa, a genealogy and lineage, and the Māori experience of abuse in care can also be seen as having a whakapapa in context.

“As a consequence of Crown breaches in Te Tiriti, Māori land was taken and therefore the ability to govern and control communities in accordance with tikanga was lost.

“The overrepresentation of Māori in negative social and economic spheres are unavoidably linked to the history of colonisation and the failure of successive governments to honour Te Tiriti.

“While the experiences to follow in the following weeks are raw and harrowing, for many survivors, theirs is a story of power, resilience, reclamation of autonomy and hope.”

Crown counsel Melanie Baker told the commission representatives would be listening carefully to the experiences of survivors over the course of the hearing and would not question survivors.

“We are committed to being held to account by survivors,” Baker said.

“We are hopeful that this hearing will be a platform for survivors to tell their truth and can be the start of meaningful change.”

The hearing continues.