One family's intergenerational fight to escape abuse in state care and return home
Thursday, 17 March 2022
Torn from the safety and love of their parents, the eight Harris siblings spent the rest of their childhood running, trying to escape the abuse inflicted on them in state care.
But the trauma didn’t end with that generation – the cycle of abuse in state care continued into the next.
Survivor Stuart Harris was clear in his evidence to the Abuse in Care Royal Commission Inquiry for Māori: Whānau must not be stripped from each other and placed in harm’s way any more.
“The effects and affects of everything that has happened to us, we are the affected, we are the living proof, and we’re still out here, we are surviving.”
**READ MORE:
* Abuse in Care: Effects of state failures echo down generations, inquiry hears
* 'I don't want their voices silenced': Last surviving sibling speaks at Abuse in Care hearing
* Abuse in Care: State falsified woman's birth certificate, erased Māori identity
**
He is the son of Joyce Harris, one of the original eight children taken suddenly from their parents in the 1960s after a neighbour – who was frustrated at their mother – called the police and shifted the lives of two generations.
The eldest, Te Enga Harris, who gave evidence at the commission, was 9 when she watched as her mother was thrown to the ground and cuffed. Her siblings screamed for their mother as strangers flooded their home, taking them away from what she says was a happy home.
Their father was at work, providing, Te Enga said.
“It was horrific. We were just ordinary children having a really good life with our parents.”
Separated from one another, they didn’t see each other or their parents for years. Sisters Joyce and Mereani Harris, who also gave evidence at the inquiry, were taken at 2 and 5 years old respectively.
They didn’t even know how many siblings they had.
Social Welfare took them on a journey that shaped their lives through abuse.
Joyce was pregnant by 12, raped and abused by her foster father, as was her twin sister Toni. Joyce’s pregnancy was discovered only when she was moved to a new foster home and her foster mother found her throwing up every morning.
“We didn’t know what sex was, it was like a swear word.
“I was pretty scared and crying because I thought they were angry. I was only a kid, really.”
It was almost the same story for Te Enga, who was raped by an uncle at 11.
While she was physically abused by her aunty with the closest weapon she could find, her greatest fear was of the man who came to her in the night.
“He turned it around and made me out to be promiscuous.
“Any time any man comes near me with the smell of alcohol l think I’m being raped at gunpoint all over again.”
She, like her siblings, told their social workers about the suffering they had endured. They expected help, anything that would take them away from the horrors of their “home” life and back to the safety of their parents, but nothing was done.
Rather than accepting the abuse, they made a childhood of running from their abusers. From the boys’ and girls’ homes, the foster parents, the state that failed to protect them, to get back to their parents.
For years they battled, and sometimes succeeded, but never truly made it home until they were released from welfare at 17.
Te Enga said her parents wanted them to return, and finally, for one day only, they did when Social Welfare organised a family reunion.
“The whole eight of us were in the one room with our parents and the kids. We [didn’t know at the time] it was for them [Social Welfare] to tell my parents, Joyce was having this baby to her foster father.”
Time moved forward, but the imprints of the mamae (pain) remained, Te Enga said.
“Us eight are the black sheep and the outcasts of the Harris family.
“It put a big wedge, it’s like us and them. We’re still the welfare kids, that stigma stayed with us.”
Joyce’s son Stuart said he carries her pain and his own after he was taken into state care, as well.
Growing up, he was surrounded by aroha and tikanga, learning te reo Māori before being taken by the state, placed in boys’ homes and foster care like his mother.
His parents tried to get him back, and he tried to run to them, but the barriers faced by his aunties and uncles remained in his way.
The state had moved forward by this point in the 1990s, offering te ao Māori placements in places like Eastland Youth Rescue Trust near Te Urewera and Whakapakari Youth Justice Programme on Great Barrier Island, but its vetting of carers had not.
At 14, he was sent to Eastland where he was beaten and abused, scared “the boss” would murder him.
He watched as “the boss” tied up another boy and poured diesel on him before setting him alight.
“If it wasn’t for us chucking it in the river, he wouldn’t be alive today.”
At Whakapakari he was raped by a staff member. He remembers looking at the other boys staying at the facility, recognising the same experience in their eyes.
“I see them now and it still sits there – that same look in their eyes from when we were kids.”
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He did eventually find his way back to his whānau, but he, like the others, carries the weight of their trauma.
“My parents, they always blame themselves. ‘Sorry we let you down, sorry we failed you kids.’
“For me, you weren't given the right tools to help you with your children, to help us, so that we didn't have to go through all that.
“I want something good to come out of all this hurt and mamae, and sadness and brokenness. I want something good and healing and light to be shined, not just into my life but to all the people that any of this has happened to, some sort of light on to their lives.”
On Friday a panel will convene to discuss recommendations to support Stuart and the wishes of the others who have come forward to share their experiences to ensure something good can come out of the mamae.
The hearing continues.