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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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One Army cadet at
Waiouru Army Camp had a burning cigar pushed into his ear while others
"copped it on a weekly basis", says one former Regular Force cadet.
The man, now a
47-year-old Palmerston North contractor, was a cadet at the Waiouru Army Camp
in 1973 and 1974. He joined with the intention of completing a
fitter-turner's apprenticeship. He did not want to be named, to protect his
family and business. He did, however, agree to publication of a recruitment
poster for which he posed as a cadet. But his 18-month
experience of cadet life left him "quite disillusioned" with the
Army and he left about halfway through the first year of his apprenticeship,
having done one year of "educational". He told of regular
abuse meted out during "gunge parades", and rituals known as
"running the gauntlet". During "gunge
parades", non-commissioned officers would inspect cadets' barracks
areas, often after the youths had been doing physical training. If dirty
laundry was found, the offending cadet was taken away for "a little
private session". That meant "pretty
much a beating", he said. The man received one beating during his stay
at Waiouru. It was inflicted during what was known as a "stand to
beds". NCOs would inspect the
cadets' living spaces. If anything was out of place, a beating would follow. Some cadets who broke
the rules were led away to shower blocks, where their fellow cadets would be
forced to scrub them down with hard-bristled scrubbing brushes. "Your mates would
have to do it, and if you didn't do it vigorously enough, you would be
next." On other occasions, a
group of as many as 32 cadets would be made to line up along each side of a
corridor in a procedure known as running the gauntlet. A cadet who had done
something wrong was then forced to run through the middle as his associates
punched at him. He said he saw the
gauntlet performed "probably three times", but other abuses "a
few more times than that". Perceived
transgressions by cadets often provided "another pitiful excuse for a
barrack-room beating", often inflicted by NCOs barely a year older than
the cadets, the man said. He said he had heard
rumours of sexual abuse such as "spooning" - where a cadet was hit
about the genitals with a spoon - but he never saw such behaviour first-hand.
On one occasion, the
man saw a cadet jabbed in the ear with a lighted cigar. "A corporal was
sitting on a set of drawers smoking, and he says to this guy, `Come over
here.' Then he just poked it in his ear." He said he and another
cadet had complained to a lieutenant about the abuses, "but we left
there thinking `We should not be saying anything.' " The man said he got
through cadet life relatively unscathed, as he had "kept his head
down". Other cadets, often the "goofy" ones or the socially
inept, would incur the wrath of the NCOs. "If you got
offside with them, your life was pretty much miserable." The man said his time
as a cadet left him "kind of disappointed". "I saw the Army as
pretty exciting. It had a lot to offer for young guys. All the potential was
there to be awesome and grow a sense responsibility ... but our guys were
really disappointed, and that's probably the worst part about it." |
