|
|
Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
|
|
|
|
We have all heard the
sentiments. "Put them in the Army, that will straighten them out. What
that boy needs is a good dose of discipline. Put him in the Army. Make a man
out of him." And boys were (are?) encouraged to be Army cadets for no
better reason, sometimes, than to instil some personal standards and strength
of character beyond the efforts of parents and schools. Quite how the Army
could work such transformations was never entirely clear. It had to be more
than the tedium of parade ground exercises and the ability to clean the
barracks. But survivors did not tell tales in too much detail and
non-survivors, it turns out, were too ashamed and traumatised to publicise
their ordeal. Until now. Times change and
mistreated people no longer feel they were somehow to blame for brutality
they could not endure. They are telling tales on all sorts of institutions
once entrusted with care of the young or the weak and the regimes of
yesteryear are exposed as shockingly abusive by the standards of today. It
was only a matter of time before the Army came under scrutiny. Even so, the
revelations of the past few days have been shocking. Few, surely, would ever
have imagined incidents at the Waiouru cadet school as appalling as that
described by Bert Robinson, of Rotorua, yesterday. He says that when a
16-year-old at the school he was assailed one night by eight men who beat his
testicles with spoons until he passed out. The injury left him sexually
impaired for years afterward. He and others testify to cadets having their
skin scoured with yard brooms under hot showers and soldiers taken from their
beds for punishment in the middle of the night, returning in the morning so
severely beaten they were unable to walk. It is no consolation
that these various acts seem to have been perpetrated by youths not much
older than their victims. More senior staff must have known the culture
prevailing in the barracks and were content to turn a blind eye in the
belief, presumably, that this sort of sadism "sorts out the men from the
boys". That was once a common delusion. The only "sorting"
that brutality achieves is to retain sadists and drive civilised,
self-respecting people out of the service - people such as Aucklander Darryl
Nightingale, whose personal account of the cadet school we published
yesterday. He endured the ritual cruelty as a first-year recruit but quit the
Army when he heard his cohorts planning how they would make life miserable
for the next intake. The revelations have
been prompted by a former Army communications officer, Ian Fraser, who has
compiled his own dossier of incidents he says the Army has swept under the
carpet over three decades. Defence Minister Mark Burton ordered an urgent
investigation. Mr Fraser says he does not want a witch-hunt against those
responsible but wants to help those whose lives have been scarred by their
maltreatment. First, though, the
country needs to be assured the culture that produced this behaviour has
changed. The Waiouru cadet school functioned until 1991. We need to know what
sort of training replaced it and whether immature soldiers are still in a
position to maim and terrify the rank below. We need, in fact, an inquiry
more independent than the Army is able to produce for Mr Burton. The concern
here is not so much that young men given a little power might have grossly
misused it, it is that such people were given that power and might have had, or
believed they had, the tacit support of their superiors. We need to be
assured that if they ever had reason for that belief they have it no longer. The modern Army should
be an organisation in which commanders are respected, not feared, and
soldiers at all levels can expect to be treated with ordinary human dignity.
There is no need of a witch-hunt. This was more than likely an institutional
failure, a reflection of its times. But we need to be sure. A credible
independent commission could restore our confidence. |
