Solitary confinement destroys people, but New Zealand continues to inflict it on our most vulnerable and damaged people, including children, as a matter of course. Aaron Smale reports on the practice that won’t go away and the people that are psychologically annihilated and physically disappeared in state institutions.
Shane was locked in a concrete box at Hokio Beach School in Levin in the early 1980s. The only sentient creature he could talk to for the whole day was a spider. Even for this innocent and desperate amusement he was punished.
He was already severely damaged when he got there. The state picked up where his parents left off, inflicting harm and trauma repeatedly throughout his life as a child and continuing into his adulthood. And central to that harm has been solitary confinement.
“I remember getting a lot of beatings from both my parents. Most of the time I took the blame for my siblings and took their punishment too. I can recall being belted with a jug cord or the belt buckle end of a belt. I can also remember being chained to a leg of the dining room table by my parents and being forced to eat from a dog dish.
“I can recall my sister being thrown against a mantlepiece. I think that she has suffered an intellectual disability as a result. She had webbed fingers. I think one was cut open with scissors.
“I remember being thrown into a shed that sat on the rear of our section, after being beaten, and locked in it. It was full of rubbish, dog faeces and mice. Our pet dog had her throat cut. Her name was Lassie, and she was in there, dead.
Eventually Shane was put in the dog kennel.
“I was locked in a kennel with a black and white dog. I used him for warmth. I think I was in there for a week… I heard someone coming up the gravel driveway and yelled out. An old Maori lady came around and found me locked in the kennel. I heard her say, ‘Oh my god’. She unlocked the gate of the kennel and I crawled out and ran away. Despite her calling to me to come back, I ran and kept going.”
The Department of Social Welfare stepped in and took Shane from his parents. If the premise of the state’s intervention was to make his life better, it failed.