Allegations of Abuse in Institutions
	Waiouru (NZ Army) - Index (3) Oct 7 2004 Index
	Waikato Times October 7 2004 Classmates angry at Waiouru accusations by Andrew McAlley Some classmates of the man who has helped launch hundreds of claims of abuse against an army cadet school are unhappy with his stance. Les Marston, of Hamilton, was in the same class as Ian Fraser, who this week claimed cadets at the former army school in Waiouru were beaten and sexually assaulted. Te Awamutu man Grant Bain was also shot and killed. Mr Fraser says 300 former cadets had contacted him to say they were assaulted. But Mr Marston said that if anyone was likely to be subject to abuse it was him. "I was at the cadet school from 1971 until August 1972 and while there I went AWOL twice, on the first occasion for 12 weeks. "If anyone was going to get it then it would have been me. I had my own personal problems and I bucked the system a lot." Mr Marston said he cried on his first night at the school, but soon adapted to the environment. "It's important to realise we are not talking about 2004 New Zealand," he said. "It was a time when if you got in trouble with the coppers, you'd get a clip around the ear and sent on your way." Mr Marston works as a social scientist and disputes any suggestion of systematic abuse at the school. "I never once saw a beating or sexual attack," he said. "What you did have, like in any other boarding school in New Zealand at the time, was a lot of peer pressure." "You had the normal clash of personalities you would encounter at a boarding school with 15 to 17-year-old boys, each testing their mettle against each other." Mr Marston said he, and many cadets of that time, had a better life at the cadet school than at home. "It would be fair to say that my father was a strict disciplinarian," he said. "If I stuffed up, I'd end up wearing his belt round my backside." New Zealand First MP Ron Mark, also a classmate of Mr Fraser, denied there was a culture of abuse at the army school. "I recall nothing different to what happened in boarding schools of the same era," Mr Mark said. "Any suggestion of a culture of abuse at the school is simply wrong."