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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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Michael Everett doesn't
want compensation. "Nothing will
recompense for what went on there," the Woodville fencer, 39, says of
his days as a Regular Force Cadet at Waiouru. Mr Everett joined the
cadets at 17 in 1982, in response to "a very rosy picture" painted
by recruiters - a picture that turned out to have a dark side. "My life since 17
has been a troubled one," he said yesterday. "I've had
post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, loss of relationships - family and
friends - loss of jobs. And I've had a problem with alcohol for a time. "I'm
bankrupt," he went on, "and I'm bankrupt mentally, physically
emotionally, spiritually. "I'm on
antidepressant prescriptions and counselling". He is glad the current
public outburst has brought life in the RF Cadets into the open, but says it
has brought back a lot of memories he thought he had come to terms with. Mr Everett said
violence against himself by the senior cadets, who had the powers of
non-commissioned officers in the barracks, was limited to his early cadet
days. After a couple of
beatings - "they discovered I could take it" - they left him alone.
But those less able
were targeted in what Mr Everett calls a long-standing culture of casual
barracks, perpetuated as cadet victims themselves became the seniors who
ruled the after-hours barracks and dealt it out. He "ran the
gauntlet" (a line-up of cadets who punched the offender), and he
suffered the "gunge" parades (a beating if a cadet's barracks area
was found to be untidy during inspection). When his bed space was
so clean the corporal could find no dirt, it was produced from the corporal's
pocket and thrust into his mouth before his head was pinned to the floor by
his ears. One cadet, he said, was
held down and had a hot clothes iron planted in the middle of his naked back.
"He's probably still carrying the scar. . ." Another was stuffed
into his own barrack box (a lock-box at the foot of the bed), which was then
hoisted up on top of a wardrobe and toppled to the floor with him in it. "Those responsible
for the abuse know who they are, and may have suffered their own penance as
grown men for what they did as youths all these years later," Mr Everett
said. "But I don't want
compensation. I want to see justice." He said he is ready to
identify perpetrators to any formal inquiry. |
