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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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Defence Minister Mark
Burton has ordered an urgent inquiry into allegations that Army cadets were
physically, sexually and psychologically abused at a Waiouru cadet school. Former cadet Ian
Fraser's report, posted on the internet, which detailed abuse of cadets as
young as 15 at the school during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, yesterday prompted
other cadets to reveal more allegations of abuse. Some said those
responsible should face criminal charges. The report detailed the
1981 fatal shooting of 17-year-old cadet Grant Bain, for which Corporal
Andrew William Read was charged with causing death by carelessly misusing a
firearm. Yesterday, the
policeman who handled the case, retired Detective Sergeant Piers Hunt, told
the Herald Read should have been charged with manslaughter. But Mr Hunt said his
superiors would not allow the more serious charge. Auckland man Eric West,
who attended the school in 1964 when he was 15, told the Herald about a
beating at Waiouru which left him hospitalised for a week with a displaced
coccyx (tailbone) and led to a complete mental breakdown. It was the first time
he had told anyone, including his wife, about the incidents. "You feel ashamed
of yourself. To a degree it's almost like being raped, because you think
somehow it was your fault, when of course it wasn't," he said. Late yesterday, Mr
Burton took the unusual step of requesting the office of the Chief of the
Defence Force to conduct a preliminary investigation into the allegations. "The issues that
Mr Fraser has outlined are serious and they deserve to be looked into
seriously," he said. Mr Burton urged other
people with knowledge of abuse at the school to contact his office or the
Chief of the Defence Force's office. Mr Fraser, who attended
the school in 1971, said he was pleased the truth was finally coming out
about the school, attended by 5000 cadets between 1948 and 1991. "They are
compensating prisoners for the hard time they had in prison. We were serving
our country at the time and this is what they did to us." For the past six months
Mr Fraser, who lives in Perth, has researched alleged abuse at the school. Besides the fatal
shooting of Grant Bain, he found reports of cadets being sodomised, or
sexually assaulted with broom handles, leading to more than one suicide. Mr Fraser said that
while he was at the school all wardrobe doors were removed in the barracks
because cadets were often left inside them "bleeding, unconscious and
unattended to". He spoke of a climate
of fear, the constant threat of violence and neglect by the Army. Mr West, now an account
manager at a telecommunications company, said he was psychologically and
physically terrorised for six months, until he had a mental breakdown and was
discharged from the Army. On one occasion he was
charged with conduct prejudicial to military discipline. "My alleged
offence was to have wax in one ear. So I was a 'dirty little boy'. I was
placed on restrictions [confined to the barracks] and I was also ordered by
the commanding officer to be scrubbed. "That evening,
about 10 cadets grabbed me, took me into the showers, stripped me naked and
threw me into a cold shower. They then scrubbed me with the kind of brush you
use to scrub concrete." Mr West believes the
men responsible should be prosecuted. "For some of the
things that were done and some of the things that were encouraged, these guys
should go to jail. "At the time I
thought they were making men out of us, but I wonder what kind of men they
made." - additional reporting,
Nicola Boyes |
