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I suspect we are one gob-smacked little
nation after last week, reeling from the revelations of the Inside NZ
documentary Relative Guilt (TV3, Wednesday). For the first time we met the
extended family of a certain well-known New Zealander -- and what fine folks
they transpired to be; eloquent, well-educated and liberal. Our celebrity came from a family
of 13. Ten brothers and three sisters. All -- we were told -- were put
through the private Catholic school system by a father who laboured 15 hours a day to give his kids the best start
possible in life. We met also the lovingly devoted
wife of our celebrity, and his two fine sons whose intelligence and dignity
again reflected on the high ideals of their parents. However, the family --
both extended and nuclear -- was under intense stress, and has been for 10
years. For the celebrity in question is David Tamihere.
More facts about David Tamihere, I venture, came out in this hour-long
documentary, than in his trial and its appeals: that he even had a wife, for
example, and two boys. That he looks quite spiffing
in a dark suit and shrewdly analyses TV comedians (during his weekly
15-minute phonecall home). These were hitherto
unknown sides to the guy who has been built into our awareness as a sort of
feral Mike Tyson-cum-Elephant Man of the northern bush, invariably handcuffed
-- for our protection -- to a self-important cop. This horror story has never been
officially addressed and has been left to fade slowly, like the grin of the
Cheshire cat. As have, of course, the stories of Tamihere's
equally famous co-villain Peter Ellis, in which, if I remember, Ellis
transported 2000 naked boys to a UFO parked behind comet Globbit-Spry
where he poured tadpole jelly into their belly buttons while singing Bad to
the Devil on ET's cellphone. I don't even think my preposterous
example is as wacky as some of those bandied around I'll prove it by personal
reference to the Tamihere case: I remember being
horrified when a Swedish body was found, and on its wrist was a watch Tamihere was supposed to have stolen. "Ye
gods!" I yelped to my equally ashen pub mates, "he'll get off, and
then, mad as hell, he'll come after us all!" I regained equanimity only
when Tamihere's appeal was rejected and he was
clamped safely away again. I was secretly unsure he'd had a fair suck of the sav, but he was a "monster" and just too evil
to be out here. How I'd gained that impression, I
forget. Whether it had been intentionally created I will never know. All I do
know is I daily saw the beautiful face of the Swedish girl, juxtaposed with
the swarthy Quasimodo of David Tamihere. Where was
the splendid photo of him in his black suit with his sons, just for a change?
The younger son, Craig -- who, at
nine was given a new identity for a while, has gone inwards and is angry --
but nobly so. The elder son, John, in a poignant metaphor, has become a clown
who masks up and brings happiness to others. Tamihere's
wife said, "I've done 10 years of his life sentence too, and we're still
a family." While there's fusion in the
nuclear family, there's been a bit of fission in the extended one; the depradations of the IRD and Social Welfare on cousins and
uncles has taken a toll on family unity. A toll most now regret. The de-demonising
of David Tamihere was a trial for all who watched,
for it was unlikely to have overturned many verdicts in people's minds. But
while he has caused his family to "walk down the aisle of cameras, going
off so loud I can hear them to this day" -- the cameras of TV3 showed us
an embattledly close group of good people who have
never had a monster in their midst. |
