KEY POINTS:
Peter O'Connor is nearly 50 but on the stage he's a 12-year-old boy who tries to hide his bruises. His stage mum hits him. She lashes out in anger and frustration and Bernie, the boy, leans on his sister not to tell.
This is a play about siblings
from a violent, broken home and has been performed to mainly decile one and two schoolchildren up and down the country.
The role of the watching students is to comment on what they see and sometimes enact what they feel. In doing so, many are commenting on their own lives - of absent fathers, of being hit, of adults and step-parents who know children are being abused but who do nothing.
What kids conclude may surprise:
Adults who do nothing when they witness abuse are also abusers.
Absent fathers who fail to follow through on promises to see their children are as abusive as parents who hit.
The internal hurt from emotional abuse is every bit as damaging as physical abuse.
And, despite all the anti-violence and education campaigns, young people think adults still believe it is not okay to talk about abuse whether it's inside or outside the family
Over five years 20,000 11 to 13-year-olds have seen, interacted with and commented on the CYFS-funded project called Everyday Theatre.
The project finishes in July but has provided rich, if concerning, information on how children think and feel about abuse.
The theatre was conceived as a way of engaging them in discussions about issues that affect them and that adults debate vigorously but the children don't get a say in, says O'Connor, an associate professor of theatre education and co-founder of the company which runs the project. He's also one of the actors in a cast of adults with backgrounds in education, psychology and sociology.
It's very clear, he says, that children are left feeling confused and distressed by what he calls the "noise" of often heated adult debate.
Of late, there have been some alarming changes in what children are saying.
One of the most worrying, and potentially dangerous, changes is an unintended consequence of what O'Connor believes was good legislative change.
Before the debate around the so-called "anti-smacking bill", which he points out is an erroneous label, students had consistently advised the fictional children in the play to tell about the abuse they were suffering.
Now they say, don't tell.
It's no wonder children are confused. Every time a child is beaten to death the nation goes into outrage over the abuse of children.
But when a section of the law (Section 59 of the Crimes Act) which had allowed the use of reasonable force in the discipline of children was repealed in 2007, with the intent of sending a zero tolerance message to a country with shameful child abuse statistics, out came outraged parents who described themselves as loving and caring but who vociferously demanded the right to smack their children.
It is not the legislation that is at fault, says O'Connor, who wholeheartedly supports the removal of the defence of reasonable force.
At fault is the quality of the adult debate, because children are now so confused they think if they say what is going on in their family they are sending Mum or Dad to jail.
O'Connor thinks children have picked up this message because a lot of the debate centred around the idea that loving parents smack their kids.
"I don't want to have a bash at the Christian groups but their language is often wrapped in that love and caring parents stuff, so you've got the confusion of that and the confusion of 'it's okay' [to tell], when they know that it's not okay to tell because most adults don't think it's okay, coupled with the risk of 'if we tell the only thing that happens is Mum and Dad go to jail'."
The messages are further clouded by the concepts that children have about what love is and means. "[They think] if you're going to send your parents to jail, clearly you don't love them. Kids who understand that their parents do love them, even parents who hit them, become very confused by that whole section 59 debate."
O'Connor thinks back to the first two to three years of performances, when children always advised the fictional children to tell, and how that has changed.
"Suddenly we'd be sitting there as those fictional characters, and the kids were saying 'don't say anything, your parents will go to jail'. School after school, kid after kid, area after area through the country."
As the bill settled in and parents have not been hauled off to prison for lightly smacking their children, the fear has softened, but O'Connor is worried a planned referendum on the Section 59 repeal will increase the noise of the debate once again. If children believe their parents could go to jail, and it's a risk anyway to speak out about what's going on in your home, then family violence will be forced further underground.
O'Connor says another big concern which emerged during performances came in the aftermath of the murder of three-year-old Nia Glassie, also in 2007.
When they realised adults who knew of the abuse of Nia did nothing to help her, children watching the play challenged the adults in the fictional family, who knew about the abuse of the fictional siblings, about why they, too, did nothing
O'Connor explains that children understand a lot about the dynamics of abuse. They understand some of the pressures which lead parents to hit, and they understand why they might be left at home alone because of work and financial pressures, which they don't see as abuse. The angriest they get is when an adult who knows about abuse does nothing. This they can't forgive and they are almost contemptuous of these adults, he says.
Again, mixed up in it all are issues around love. O'Connor says children fear that if they speak out, they believe they risk rupturing the relationship with the parent who hits and think they will not be loved anymore.
He recalls a little boy in the audience at a performance at a West Auckland school who brought this home to him. In the play, the children's stepfather knows the mother is beating the children and at one point O'Connor asks the audience why they think the stepfather doesn't say anything.
The real boy replies that this is because the stepfather knows what it will cost if he tells.
Asked what it will cost, the boy replies: "More than he's prepared to pay."
Asked what that is, the boy then explains the stepfather loves the mother of the fictional children and to risk losing that love you have to be really brave.
O'Connor said to the boy, yes, he imagined that would indeed take a lot of bravery and the boy looked at him hard and said: "Braver than you know, Mister."
O'Connor says there are many moments like these when the actors in the theatre realise the children are talking about their own lives.
One time a 12-year-old boy who had not said a word shuffled up to the actors and said to O'Connor, who was playing the fictional mother at that time, "do you love Bernie?"
O'Connor was struck by the desperation in the boy's face. He came out of role and asked the students if they thought the mother still loved Bernie, and every hand went up.
The boy sat silently until O'Connor asked him if he thought in turn that Bernie still loved the mother "and he sat and he said 'yes, she's his blood'."
That child was clearly being hit by his own mother, O'Connor says. "Kids understand this issue of abuse and love really, really deeply."
They understand the cyclical nature of abuse and ask the "mother" if she was hit as a child, worrying about what this means for them - whether they, too, will hit their children.
O'Connor and his partner Briar, who is a director of the theatre company, have written a report of their findings over their five years of performances, which has been given to the Ministry of Social Development.
They hope the voices of the children will help inform the next part of the Government's "It's Not Okay" campaign on family violence. So far the campaign has targeted men who abuse. Given what children are saying, they would like to see the next part looking at adults who know about abuse but do nothing.
Because abuse is for life. O'Connor used to carry in his wallet the writings of an 11-year old-girl who had seen the play. She said: "If you are hurt even once you will be sad for the rest of your life."
He hopes the adults listen.
