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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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Former Army major Kev
Smith managed to "box off" bullies during his cadet training, but
is prepared to return from Australia to testify for those left traumatised by
brutality. Mr Smith, who retired
from the Army in the late 1980s after 20 years and is a civilian trainer for
Queensland police, says he would be very happy to return to give evidence to
a inquiry which Defence Minister Mark Burton is promising into the former
Waiouru cadet school. Mr Burton hopes to be
ready today to seek Cabinet approval for some form of "appropriate
independent process". "I'm not into this
for monetary gain," Mr Smith, 56, said of a decision to put aside
natural feelings of loyalty to the Army and join former cadet Ian Fraser in
speaking up for hundreds of men who claim to have been bullied and brutalised
over three decades from the 1960s. Two claim to have been
pack-raped by senior cadets. "I am doing it
because there were people who were traumatised by this - it should not have
happened. The Army had a responsibility and a duty of care, we would say
today, to those cadets," Mr Smith said. "They did not
exercise that duty of care to those boys - and we were all boys when we were
there." He said he did not
blame the senior cadets involved as the Army should have exercised more
responsibility. "There was a whole atmosphere of intimidation and
violence throughout." Mr Smith recalls being
summoned to a room one night in 1966 "on some trumped-up charge"
and forced to fight a senior cadet or be bashed by 12 to 15 others there. "They said, either
fight fair dinkum and put on your best fight, otherwise we'll all bash
you." Having had boxing
experience, he surprised them by winning the fight and escaped further
victimisation, but says both he and his victim were the losers. "You cannot do
something like that and not be traumatised by it." One of his best friends
was hospitalised after a bashing, for which a senior cadet was sentenced to
detention at the Ardmore military prison. But Mr Smith recalled
travelling home on leave with his friend on the same northbound train as the
culprit, who was being escorted to prison in handcuffs until his
regular-force guards started drinking and freed him to renew his assault. "He gave my friend
a hell of a flogging ... when we got off the train at Hamilton, my father
came to meet us and didn't recognise [him]." Mr Smith said it was
common for seniors to inspect junior cadets' laundry bags "and if you
had skid marks in your undies you were forced to wear them over your head and
you'd cop a flogging - it was just vile". One victim rose to
become a senior Army officer, but Mr Smith said every time he came across him
later in his career, all he could visualise was "this bloke when we were
boys, with his Jockeys over his head, being paraded up and down and ridiculed
and scrubbed". Despite his
institutional criticism of the Army, he said he had no problems with the
behaviour of individual regular-force soldiers, including former All Black Stan
"Tiny" Hill, who was regimental sergeant major in charge of drills
at the cadet school from 1963 to 1966. "He was the
epitome of what an RSM should be - he was tough but fair." But another former
cadet also living in Queensland, John Garrity, recalls how a youth standing
next to him on parade in front of Mr Hill fainted and dropped his rifle.
"We got this huge lecture on how this rifle was worth more than we
were." Mr Hill was reported in
the Herald on Sunday as saying complaints by former cadets were made in hope
of compensation and that most of those claiming to have been picked on were
weaklings who could not handle life at the school. |
