A man who experienced abuse at two separate state-funded facilities as a teenager is worried the Government does "not understand what they're getting themselves into again" with the imminent boot camps trial.
Scott Carr, 41, gave evidence during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and spoke to 1News about his experiences at Epuni Boys Home in Lower Hutt and Whakapakari on Great Barrier Island.
When the Government announced it wanted to bring back boot camps, Carr said he felt he was being kicked in the face.
His stint as a teenager in state-based care left him broken and he is worried that it will happen to other youth too.
"Well that's the whole point of it, isn't it? Break them down to build them back up but they don't do the build them back up," he said.
"I don't think they understand what they're getting themselves into again. There was a reason why it's never worked before."
At age 14, Carr was suspended from school for six weeks after he was caught smoking a cigarette.
"Everyone kept on saying that they wanted me to get back to school but nobody would actually talk to the school about unenrolling me."
He said his home life was normal but that his parents were often working, so he would wander the streets with mates and would avoid going home.
"There were numerous times that I was left in the police cells for numerous reasons. It was never good.
"Always by yourself. They still make you shower in the shower block same as everyone else, as the adults and everything."
Epuni Boys' Home
In 1998, Carr was taken to Epuni Boys' Home.
He said social workers told him on the ride down it was "just like a strict boarding school".
"As soon as we got there you get strip-searched, get demoralised, walk past everyone on the way to your room, just put on show. Basically the start of the breaking you down so they can build you up, I suppose.
"Certain staff members would hold a towel up in front of you, but other ones wouldn't, they'd just tell you to strip down and squat and cough."
Carr told the Commission there was a mixture of confused young people at Epuni, some of whom were "aggressive, violent, and intimidating."
He said some wanted to "make a name for themselves".
"Children that have got facial tattoos, gang signs on their face and everything, they're not hiding from anything, they're ready for the life of being in the system. So they're going to take your shoes, take your jacket, take your food, take whatever they want."
Staff encouraged the boys to "fight out" any ongoing problems rather than letting it escalate.
"I kind of stayed away from them. I tried to stick to myself, I got dragged into some stuff and that, and ended up getting beaten up for it. Yeah, they were pretty crazy people."
Carr recalled not joining the White Power group and being assaulted by one of the members before a staff member dragged him down the hallway.
"Manhandled me up against the wall, everything that I was doing he was telling me to stop doing but he was making me do it. So it's like screaming 'stop resisting' while he's thrashing me around when I wasn't resisting. He smashed my knee through the wall."
Damage to the wall was paid for by the limited pocket money Carr received while at the home.
Epuni also gave Carr his first insight into drug use. He started snorting prescription medication and using marijuana.
"I developed I suppose what you'd call jail mode, where you just don't give a f**k. You just end up being a different — that bad person that you know you're not supposed to be ended up being the natural sensation."
Whakapakari Youth Trust
Carr then went to the Whakapakari Youth Trust on Great Barrier Island — lured by the promise on the brochure of "people abseiling, kayaking and doing outdoor adventurey-type things".
The reality was anything but.
On arrival, Carr said he "started crapping myself because I knew what we'd been told was completely different to what I was seeing".
"Flax bushes, that's all you could see when you come around. There was guys either side of the bay doing the haka as you're coming in, really, really intimidating, echoing through the hills.
"There was a pōwhiri, a quick meet and greet with everyone, and then got strip-searched."
He said it was "really degrading" to have another man grab his genitals. "I never expected that something like that was going to happen."
The teenagers would eat porridge for breakfast, fish head and fish tail soup for lunch, and fish and vegetables for dinner.
"If we didn't catch any fish that day we'd just have potatoes," Carr said.
Tents were the sleeping quarters. Each accommodated between five and eight of the teenagers.
"Going from Epuni where we had heaps of food, access to the showers, and that and going to a situation where the complete opposite, no food, no access to showers, we weren't allowed to shower. It was like every four days I think it was we were allowed access to clean clothes and to shower and to brush our teeth."
One of his tasks was chopping and carting firewood. His punishment for misbehaviour was to carry sacks of stones barefoot up a rocky hill, even though his parents sent him shoes.
Carr recalled an incident where he was assaulted by a supervisor.
"He woke us up, it was still dark in the morning, and told us we were going to go wash our clothes in the stream because that's where we had done our laundry, and I was questioning it, and he told me to keep my ballhead shit to myself, I told him to get f****d and then he just attacked me, crazy."
The man headbutted and choked Carr, screaming that he was going to kill him.
Carr was thrown off the balcony and he landed on the back of his head which still has scars on it.
"I was just on self-defence mode. I was so confused, just didn't want to be there anymore, wanted to kill myself, wanted to kill them, just didn't know how I could put the flags up so that people knew. At the same time, I thought it was my ticket home, so I thought 'ride it out, I'll be going home soon anyway' but I didn't," he said.
The same supervisor intercepted Carr's letters to his mother which detailed the above incident and burned them.
"Before he burned them he took my mum's address down and her name and told them if I told anyone about it he was going to send his nephews around and kill her."
Carr said he still has flashbacks of the violence he suffered, and can't work due to post-traumatic stress disorder.
He's also been diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease, similar to multiple sclerosis.
'Doomed to fail' - human rights lawyer on bootcamps
Human rights lawyer Sonja Cooper said she is "absolutely and implacably opposed" to bootcamps.
"There is no research that supports them having any long-term benefit for anyone and particularly children. The people they want to send to bootcamps are children and these are vulnerable children who have been brought up with abuse and economic poverty."
Cooper said the intensive monitoring after the initial bootcamp phase was "where the sentences have failed in the past".
"There aren't community organisations or professional organisations yet contracted to do this, so it's already a failure."
She said she can see it "repeating the mistakes of the past where it's all done haphazardly".
"Where organisations are contracted to run the intensive monitoring that have not been properly vetted, that are not properly supervised. It's in those contexts where we get abuse of vulnerable children, who don't have a voice. This is doomed to fail again.
"There is nothing that will ever make me think that this is a good idea. None of the research and none of those who actually work with vulnerable children support this going ahead."
Children's Minister Karen Chhour said she expects the Government's military-style academies pilot would involve up to 10 young males aged between 14 and 17 years who are already in youth justice facilities.
She said they will have been sentenced to a 'supervision with residence' order and previously been in a youth justice residence.
"During the intensive three-month residential component, the pilot will involve a well-developed syllabus that is targeted at understanding and addressing criminal behaviours and establishing structure and routine, something many of these teenagers will not have experienced before.
"The programme will include military-style physical activities, personal discipline and teamwork, education, vocation, and employment pathways, as well as gaining life skills that the teenagers need to succeed and change their life path, and therapeutic and cultural components weaved throughout."
The residential component will be followed by nine months of intensive transitional support in a community setting, and the teenagers will have a "structured and staged transition from the residential to the community component with an individualised, achievable plan".
Chhour said the entire programme is underpinned by intensive case management for each participant, as well as thorough health and medical assessment, including identifying neurological issues.
The Commission's final report would be publicly released on July 24.
Carr wanted the Government to read it thoroughly and follow every single one of the recommendations put forward.
He said after seven years of hearing evidence, he hoped for real change to protect some of New Zealand's most vulnerable.
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