Abuse in care: Family releases '50-year-old secret' of unlawful arrest during dawn raids

Tuesday, 20 July 2021

Survivors of abuse from the Pacific community will give evidence before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. (First published July, 2021)

A Tongan family in Auckland can finally share their 50-year-old secret, decades after an unlawful arrest in the family for overstaying brought shame down on their name.

Tesimoni Fuavao was 20 years old when four palagi (Pākehā) police officers barged into the family’s Grey Lynn home at 4.30am, entered his parents’ room and handcuffed them, accusing them of overstaying their visa.

They were carted away, leaving him and his 6-year-old brother alone for 30 hours while his parents were in custody.

Tesimoni Fuavao, standing third from right, is surrounded by his family who supported him as his testimony of abuse by the state was played to a royal commission of inquiry on Tuesday.

Fuavao has been battling anger and resentment ever since that era of dawn raids, and he only recently told his parents’ 19 grandchildren what had happened.

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Tesimoni Fuavao gave his testimony to the royal commission of inquiry this week, sharing how his parents' arrest for alleged overstaying in 1976 had scarred them, him, his siblings, and now his own children.

When his own son was invited to join the police force, he couldn’t bear it.

“If you go and be a policeman you are not my son,” he said at the time. But he wants that anger to stop.

Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio talks about his family's experience of the dawn raids.

That’s why he came forward to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care, which is this month tackling the Pacific experience of abuse.

For 66-year-old Fuavao, the best way to overcome the past was to confront it. And to avoid backing out on the day, he agreed to film an interview with the commission. He sat in the witness seat at Fale o Samoa (Samoa House) in Māngere, South Auckland, while the video was played.

As he shares exactly what happened that night in 1976, his voice breaks.

“Everything happened so quickly. One police officer walked towards my mum to try and handcuff her. The officer pulled Masiu away from her arms when he handcuffed her.

“The officer said that they deserved it because they had overstayed. The officer then took my parents to their car, and they left.”

His own parents stopped talking about that experience pretty quickly. And neither he nor his five siblings talked about it either, until Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the Government would formally apologise for the dawn raids.

“I think that what the officers did to my family was very wrong. Why would the police do that to a family in the early hours of the morning? It should never have happened.”

“Regardless whether my parents were overstaying or not, no-one had the right to separate my mum like that from her 6-year-old son at the time.

“Since then it created in me a lot of hatred towards police. I just don’t like them … just because of that incident.”

Present for the testimony hearing were Fuavao’s nieces Siutaisa Manuopangai and Sonia Pope, who wore special T-shirts for the day.

Printed on black cotton was an article from 1976 about Fuavao and his little brother, whose parents, Setaita Tūpou and Sione Mafi Fuavao, were wrongfully torn from them over a “mix-up”, according to the headline.

“Our grandparents were so strong to keep that a secret for 50 years,” Pope told the commission. “We called it our 50-year-old secret in our family that our grandparents took to their grave.”

The Pacific hearings, part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care, are being held at Fale o Samoa (Samoa House) in Mangere.

Prison a ‘natural next step’ after care homes

Later on Tuesday, two men shared how their entry into state care marked the beginning of a life of crime that took years to turn around.

Once a fluent Samoan speaker and culturally immersed child, a survivor of violence and sexual abuse says he feels lost without his language and culture.

Mr CE, whom the commission agreed to keep anonymous at his request, gave his testimony in a pre-recorded interview.

He described how as an 8-year-old he struggled to acclimatise to life in English-speaking New Zealand and acted up in school in response.

Finally, his parents handed him over to the state when he was 11 or 12, leaving him with two social workers on the pretence of them taking him shopping.

For the next few years he bounced between Weymouth, Hokio Beach School, the Owairaka Boys’ Home, and The Glade.

“Going to prison after being in care was a natural next step for me. To me, that was normal given the environments I was in while I was in care,” he said.

“If I had a social worker that was there for me when I was younger, if someone had come to check up on me or someone spoke to me to find out why I was behaving a certain way, then this could have prevented me from going down the pathway I ended up on.”

Ngatokorima Allan Mauauri was present in the fale but opted to share his testimony via video recording too. His mother’s side are Cook Islanders and his father is Māori, from Waikato.

His parents were gang members, and he was taken into state care as a child after he stabbed someone beating up his mother.

Mauauri lived at Whakapakiri, the Dingwall Trust, the Weymouth Boys' Home and in foster care. Like Mr CE, he faced all kinds of mental and physical torture.

Tigilau Ness, a founding member of the Polynesian Panthers, was the first witness to give his testimony of the state’s abuse on the second day of a special inquiry into the Pacific experience of abuse in state care.

He was forbidden to speak either of his home languages, rapped on the hands for not knowing how to use a knife and fork, and sexually assaulted. He says he has blanked out much of exactly what happened to him.

“I came to the royal commission to be heard and to heal, to acknowledge the past but also to encourage others who have been abused in care and that are afraid, that it's OK to come forward and speak up,” he told the commission.

“I had to grow up so fast; I saw things people should never see. I'm not proud of it, but it made me the humble person I am. I've seen ugly; I've been ugly myself. I've seen the impact. I feel remorseful for hurting anybody in the process of me navigating my life, and now I want to help others and that's what I've always done,” he said.

‘Dragged and taken away, yelled and sworn at’

For Niuean-New Zealander Tigilau Ness, a founding member of the Polynesian Panthers, an unwelcoming New Zealand was the foundation for Pasifika children ending up in state care and ultimately facing abuse.

The Pacific investigation into abuse in state care will run for two weeks.

On Tuesday morning, he told the commission of inquiry that throwing Pacific Islanders behind bars on trumped-up “idle and disorderly charges”, and later on allegations of overstaying a visa, all constituted abuse in state care, he said.

“The treatment of our Pacific people by police and immigration officials when they were dragged and taken away, held in the cells without proper necessities, yelled and sworn at – that is abuse in state care.

“We knew the dawn raids was a racist attack purely because of the colour of our skin, nothing else,” Ness said.

“It seemed like it didn’t matter to the authorities if the children's parents knew what was happening. It didn’t seem to matter that the young people being arrested understood what was happening to them.

“Some of our children would be taken. They would spend days, nights or some even weeks in the cells and then charges simply dropped. This treatment is abuse in care.”

As a child, Ness was surrounded by signs he was unwelcome, he said. Segregation ran rife in parts of Auckland, with Māori banned from bars, clubs and even barbershops.

Young teenagers, arrested on charges of being “idle and disorderly”, were put in police custody or sent to state boys’ homes for weeks on end, often without their parents’ knowledge.

On Sunday, August 1, the Government will formally apologise for the dawn raids. Ness said it would bring healing to the survivors of that era.

“There's no guarantee that something like the dawn raids won't happen again. But if the truth is told, then we can learn from that and move on from there. Our numbers are increasing – our Pacific youth are the fastest growing population in New Zealand. There's no turning back from here.”

The public hearing continues until Friday, July 30.