"Am I going to die today?" It was a question Hemi McCallum asked every day of his life between the ages of nine and 13.
The Southland man first went into foster care when he was just a toddler because of his parents' 'Once were Warriors' lifestyle. After years of being shunted around various foster homes, he had learnt to keep his emotions suppressed. But in 1969 he said the "worst of my nightmare started".
The details of which he wrote in a testimony read by niece Tania Carran on the opening day of this week's foster care public hearing. Written before he died of cancer in March this year, his story will help inform the Royal Commission on the experience of those in foster and family-home placements between 1950 and 1999.
The hearing will see 13 survivors and other experts share their testimonies across five days. It is part of the ongoing inquiry into abuse in state care, due to wrap up next year.
Placed in the care of a family in Orawia, just north of Tuatapere, a young McCallum lived in constant fear for four years. Treated like a slave, he was forced to sleep in a storage shed outside, beaten daily, and made to watch as his foster father tortured and killed animals.
"My regular day would be getting up between 6am, lighting the coal range, cooking breakfast for them all, timing it all so that I would be pouring their tea as they came into eat... I would come home from school and do more chores like chopping wood to fix the house that was covered in bullet holes from violence towards me and the animals."
Threats of death were constant.
"My frame of mind while living there was one of terror. [He] would threaten to put me up on the hook like the sheep when they were slaughtered."
The impact was life-long - not just on him, but on the rest of his family who lost out on years they could have spent together.
His eldest sister, Dannette Carran, said the abuse created a "monster" out of her baby brother. He would lash out violently, ending up in jail on more than one occasion.
It was not until many years later that she learnt of the abuse he'd endured as a young child.
She said she felt sadness and a sense of helplessness that she wasn't able to stop the abuse, despite being little more than a child herself at the time. But she also blamed the system for failing to protect them.
"We were there for the care and protection in other people's families, but it wasn't like that."
Carran was now hoping that, decades on, their stories will help drive change in the system today.
"What [my brother] wanted most from giving his statement, his story, his life, is to give young people, children, teenagers, a chance to have a proper life, and be brought up as children, enjoying life and not being afraid to look over their shoulder."
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