The victims were identified through an extensive Royal Commission of Inquiry.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, which spanned nearly six years, was established to investigate the abuse within state and faith-based institutions.
Haami (Sam) Chapman is the co-founder of the Awhi Community Development in Ōtara, through which he and his wife Thelma have helped rehabilitate dozens of Mongrel Mob members. He is the 2010 recipient of Kiwibank’s New Zealander of the Year Local Heroes Award. He offers his viewon the importance of the Government’s apology for the abuse in care scandal.
OPINION
Can a government apology heal wounded hearts, wounded families, and a wounded society? That’s the question facing us this week as we await the state’s response to the Royal Commission’s report on abuse in state and faith-based institutions.
Over many years, my wife Thelma and I, now 74, have made it our life’s work to help gang members, young people and at-risk communities – welcoming them into our home and choosing to show love to them when they have lost hope and been rejected by society.
Which is to say we have spent most of our lives seeking to answer the question: “How do we heal?”
We come from Māori and Irish backgrounds and have chosen to connect the spiritual and physical worlds that we share and to follow what we feel our Christian faith calls us to: loving both our neighbour and our enemy.
The abuse in care report has revealed to be true what our experience has told us – that abuse has led many people to a life of crime. Many of those who came to us had ended up in the difficult positions they were in in part because of the pain of their youth.
The late futurist Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, identified the greatest crisis we face as a society as “the inability to cope with the pace of change”.
It is this crisis that has led to what I believe is the root cause of all abuse – separation of the spiritual from the natural, and of people from people, neighbour from neighbour, family from family.
We are all made of the same stuff. At times we love and care for each other; and at times the things we want to do, we can’t. At other times, the things we don’t want to do, we do all the time. This crisis of separation is everywhere – in our homes, among families, in our institutions, and in our communities.
When we first met, the president of one of New Zealand’s biggest gangs said to me, “We want to change, but we don’t know how.” Puzzled by his statement, I asked him, “Why do you want to change?”
He responded: “We are fathers, grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers, and we don’t want our kids to grow up and go through what we’ve been through – the separation from family because of years locked up in jail, the anger and the violence, belonging to a world where to hug your kids and your wives is a sign of weakness. How do we change?”
We spent the next 20 years journeying together in Ōtara, South Auckland and seeking answers to that question. We discovered that even in the most hardened criminals there is a longing to love and be loved.
Haami (Sam) Chapman is the co-founder of the Awhi Community Development in Ōtara.
Sadly, this desire for belonging is one of the great attractions of gangs. Someone in the arms of a stranger longs to hear the words, “I love you,” even if they know it’s not true, just as a young prospect longs to be praised for committing a crime because they want to be valued.
They receive a patch because they’ve earned the right to claim somewhere, something and someone to belong to, often by doing heinous things. Family and society become the enemy they are at war against because they are consumed by the memory of their abuse.
In our work, we have discovered the pathway to healing is one of exchange, not change; of inclusion, not exclusion. It’s about restoring the memory of spiritual, practical, loving relationships, and exchanging that for the brokenness in our everyday lives.
It’s the experience of an open front door, an open cupboard, an open fridge, and an open heart of inclusion to one another just the way we are – not exclusion based on performance. It’s discovering that love is not earned, it’s given freely.
Exposure to this experience allows people the time and freedom to fail – which ultimately allows them the time and freedom to succeed. We have been privileged to see this exchange take place in many lives. Some have lasted, others have struggled and need more time.
But this we do know: when people are given the right environment, healing from abuse is possible – and the cycle of anger, violence, shame, guilt and isolation can be broken for future generations.
