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A right that’s fundamental

Rosemary McLeod Award-winning journalist and author

Tarantulas are scary, but your own kids can be scarier. You can’t run away from them as they grow up, however challenging they become, and dread what could happen to them if they walked out.

But you sometimes desperately wish they would because you’re only human.

Miraculous and saintly parents stand up to 14-year-olds’ hysterics without quaking in their slippers. I’ve known a couple, at most.

Turmoil goes with the hormonal hell of growing up, maybe even more so if you’re living in poverty.

Kids love you and hate you, and the feeling at times is mutual.

Imagine, then, working with other people’s difficult kids for a living.

There was a glimpse of that this week when the National Union of Public Employees told members who work for Oranga Tamariki, and who they say are abused by troubled kids regularly, to ‘‘put themselves first and if need be, let the whole place burn’’.

That looked like exactly the sort of infuriated over-reaction parents get trapped in.

A worker raised a fist at a young person after they kicked him, and lost his job, is the context. He didn’t hit him.

The kid made a complaint, the man was suspended for serious misconduct, and he’s still arguing the toss.

The union says, in effect, that kids have too much power if they can get an adult sacked, and it is wrong.

The right to stand up for yourself is fundamental whatever your age, and whether you’re seen to ‘‘deserve’’ it.

God knows that right is long overdue for problem kids.

The history of the many ways we’ve locked them up, and mistreated them, is long and nasty, and we’re discovering boys are as often victims of predatory behaviour as girls.

No wonder they act up. Confusion and powerlessness will do that.

This week a former music teacher at Auckland’s Dilworth School has been on trial on charges including sexual violation and indecent assault.

Several men associated with Dilworth, including a former assistant principal and a former chaplain, have already been convicted of sexual abuse against boys.

The school’s headmaster reportedly ignored complaints.

Dilworth is a live-in school for fatherless boys and those from troubled backgrounds, which made boys vulnerable to male staff who seemed to be kind.

The story was the same in the state’s welfare homes, and the boot camps beloved of former governments who imagined a bit of hard living and military-style discipline would turn into paragons boys who’d faced violent ‘‘discipline’’ and hard living all their lives.

Before that there were borstals, where the harsh conditions were supposed to be a warning of future jail time.

There were psychiatric hospitals, like Lake Alice, where we now know young kids with serious problems got shock treatment as punishment for misbehaving and were also sexually and physically assaulted.

That’s the sort of thing that happens when victims have no rights, but ‘‘experts’’ do.

The records tell harrowing stories, and it’s not the kids who lied.

‘‘Homes’’ set up by various churches attracted paedophiles to their workforces, with the Catholic church identified as harbouring abusive priests by moving them on when people complained.

I wonder what attracts people to such work, and how well vetted, trained and supervised they are.

If they like the idea of being an authority figure no good will come of it.

A raised, clenched fist is imminent violence and should not have happened. Surely the union knows that.

There were psychiatric hospitals, like Lake Alice, where we now know young kids with serious problems got shock treatment as punishment for misbehaving and were also sexually and physically assaulted.

Opinion

en-nz

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281646783763444

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