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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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When Auckland man
Darryl Nightingale heard that the abuse suffered by cadets in Waiouru had
finally been made public he felt compelled to break his own silence on the
nightmare he experienced first hand. Through tears, he described
to his wife for the first time the horrors he both witnessed and suffered as
a 15-year-old cadet. Those horrors ranged from being grabbed by the testicles
and threatened with a beating to hearing the screams of another boy in the
shower room. After waking yesterday
morning feeling a depression he thought he had long ago shaken, Mr
Nightingale decided it was time to put his experiences in writing so that
others could learn the truth about the Waiouru Cadet School. * * * Last night I read an
article in the Herald in which it was reported that an ex-soldier has alleged
that Army cadets at the Waiouru Cadet School were subjected to violence and
abuse. This allegation is true. I was there in 1976 and was subjected to
abuse myself and witnessed the abuse of others. The abuse was not a
mere matter of tough training, hard work, or discipline. When I joined the
Army, I expected these things as a necessary part of army life, and even
looked forward to them. I thought that army discipline would make me into a
man, and a good citizen into the bargain. However, I also thought that my
decision to serve my country would be appreciated and garner some respect,
that I would experience the camaraderie of men-at-arms, the legendary esprit
de corps. Instead, we were treated like vermin and (sometimes literally)
ground underfoot. Even now, some 27 years later, I am moved to tears by the
injustice of it all. The various forms that
the abuse took will no doubt be well documented as more accounts come to
light, but to give a few examples of what I saw and experienced, I submit the
following: * On several occasions
I was forced to stand at attention alone in the middle of a very large, flat,
black asphalt parade ground, in the hot Waiouru summer sun, wearing a
fibreglass helmet liner that could not breathe, until I fainted. One would
often fall forward and, being unconscious, be unable to do anything to break
the fall before smacking face-first into the tarmac. On one occasion I was
hospitalised with sunstroke. * Almost every night we
were ordered to line up in the corridor which ran between the two sleeping
quarters of our barracks. We had to stand at attention, our noses an inch
away from the wall. We were then ordered to raise one or both arms to
shoulder height and had to stay that way until ordered otherwise. It may not
sound like much, but it becomes excruciatingly painful after a short while.
In addition to the searing pain, one's vision would swim from being so close
to the wall and, becoming dizzy, one would inevitably begin to sway. When the
NCOs striding up and down detected this motion, they would slam our heads
into the wall, kick us in the back with booted feet, or jab us hard in the
anus with a drill instructor's cane. Perversely, these sudden attacks were
almost welcome as a respite from the agony of trying to stand rigidly with
arms extended. Sometimes this treatment lasted until somebody fainted. * One night we were
woken by the sound of blows and screams of pain in our room. About half a
dozen masked NCOs had entered while we slept and proceeded to inflict a
severe beating on one of our fellows as he lay helpless. The rest of us, only
15 and 16 years old, were too terrified, and felt too powerless, to do
anything and had to lie there pretending not to see until finally they left.
Of course they were careful not to mark his face. * A couple of days
later, three or four NCOs, for no reason I could discern, crowded me into a
corner near my bunk and one, grabbing me hard by the testicles, said they
would be coming for me next. To this day, I sleep every night with a torch
next to my bed in case somebody attacks me. * The boy who was
beaten in the night made the mistake of reporting the incident to a senior
officer. A few days later a group of NCOs walked into the ablution block
while he was having a shower. They had yard-brooms, the kind with stiff,
sharp bristles. They held him under the shower with the brooms and ordered
everyone else out. We went back to our rooms, but weren't far enough away for
his screams to be muffled. I don't know what exactly happened, but later I
heard one of the NCOs boasting that they had scalded him like a pig. We never
saw him again. He was apparently hospitalised and then discharged. Although severely disillusioned
and desperately unhappy, I didn't want to fail. I was, in fact, deeply
ashamed of my almost constant urge to run away. I clung desperately to the
light at the end of the tunnel, that after the first year I would be promoted
to cadet NCO and would no longer be subject to the worst of the abuses.
Accompanying this thought was the notion that, as an NCO, I could demonstrate
the nobility and chivalry I thought a soldier should embody. I would treat
the new first-year cadets with the decency and respect that they deserved. I
assumed my fellow snots, who had been subjected to the same abusive system
that I had, would feel the same way. One of the worst
aspects of the cadet school was that it successfully produced more abusers.
In fact, cadets who were in their second year and had been promoted to cadet
NCO, carried out most of the abuse. But, somehow I felt that my intake would
be different, that we would treat people better. The final straw came
when I walked into the bunkroom one day and heard several of my fellows
discussing with glee what they would do to terrorise next year's snots. I
realised at once that the whole place was rotten, that it would never end,
that the light at the end of the tunnel was a mirage. I wanted out. I made an appointment
to see the commanding officer. When I spoke to him a day or so later, I
didn't go into details about the abuse because I knew what had happened to
the last guy who had done so, but I told him in general why I was unhappy and
wanted to leave. He talked to me for quite a while. He told me that things
would get better, that if I left I would be letting down not only myself, but
my parents, my friends, and my community. I would be branding myself a
failure for life; no employer would want me. I would be wasting the expensive
training I'd had lavished on me, and throwing away a rare opportunity. I
agreed to give it another go. It didn't last much
longer, though. Of course nothing had changed, and a couple of weeks later I
went again to the CO. This time he was livid, accusing me of wasting his
time. Eventually, he grudgingly told me that if I got my parents' permission
he would have to release me. That evening, I called
my parents. Meanwhile, the CO had called them and tried to persuade them to
make me stay, telling them that I was potential officer material.
Consequently, my parents were initially reluctant to give their consent
(despite having not been keen on me joining up ), until I said that if they
didn't, I would go AWOL. At that point they agreed, and a few days later I
was free. But that's not the end
of the story. My experience at the Waiouru Cadet School had a lasting
negative impact on me, the effects of which I have only been able to manage
with any consistency in recent years. As the CO predicted, I
did feel a failure when I got home. I was ashamed to go out in public and saw
disappointment and condemnation in every glance, so much so that I fled to
Australia, alone and only 16 years old, just a few weeks later. For two years
in Australia and for many more years back in New Zealand, I had a succession
of jobs, which I would always begin with the best of intentions but which
usually lasted only days or weeks. My self-esteem was so
low that even a hint of criticism would bring on a bout of depression so bad
that it all but paralysed me, making the simplest of tasks, like walking out
the front door or picking up the phone, impossible. After reading
yesterday's Herald story, the feeling of doom which plagued me for years and
kept me poor, visited me again. However, I now understand why; that as a
vulnerable 15-year-old, I was taught to feel powerless and treated as
worthless until I believed it, victim of a vicious and effective process of
indoctrination. I believed in the NZ
Army as a bastion against cruelty and oppression, saw it as a noble
institution, defending the rights and freedoms of free citizens. How much the
worse then that this very pillar of freedom should inflict barbarism on those
who only desired to serve it? How would you feel to have your 15-year-old
faith shattered in this way? It's time those
responsible were taken to task. |
