SAM: Rape, Spouse Abuse and Child Abuse, A
Case Study.
Compiled by Simon Overall, Hamilton, New
Zealand.
address........SPO@Waikato.ac.nz
or visit my home page at geocities.com/spo_nz/index.html
Table of Contents
Introduction
Background
information about New
Zealand
1/ Sam's
record of abuse.
2/ First
example of abuse of six year old.
3/ Second
incidence of abuse of six year old.
4/ Primal
element to his violence.
5/ Mindset
of defiance.
6/ Third
incidence of abuse of six year old.
7/ Boys
being socialised to violence.
8/
Legitimising rationale behind his abuse.
9/
Summation of abuse intervention.
10/
Questions of sociopathology.
11/ Both
systemic and systematic violence.
12/
Ancillary elements to his abuse.
- Nihilistic sex
- Paternal socialization
- Persona of father like son
Summary
Introduction
This is a record of my conversations with
and observations of a man who alleges that, he and his brother between them,
have committed over a hundred rapes. I have confidence in the truthfulness of
his claims. The descriptions of the offenses are sourced directly from the
offender, or from observations I made personally of his violent acts towards
people or objects. Over a period of eighteen months to two years in 1992-1993 I
worked in the same firm and shared recreational activities with the offender
"Sam", and intermittently shared the same abode at times with him. In
the latter part of this period he was renting a dwelling owned by my parents on
a section adjoining their home. I was a frequent visitor to this dwelling and
on one occasion stayed overnight there.
My first experience of his violence was
when I travelled to his home for birthday celebrations of his de-facto wife in
June 1992. I found her absent and Sam explained that "Janice is staying
with her parents for a few days..." or some such story. However, later
that day a policeman arrived on the premises and arrested him for assault, and
while he was being processed at the police station she appeared at their house
and collected her belongings. There was a discoloured bruising on the side of
her forehead where it transpired he had pushed her head through the wall board
(called Gibraltar or "gib" board) of
the dwelling they shared. My last experience of his violence was after an
assault on another spouse in October of 1993. She had removed her glasses to
expose a black eye, and subsequently, when wearing a short sleeved shirt great
bruises on her arms were visible. She did in conversation make reference to his
kicking her and smashing a chair over her head. He had in the process damaged
the enamel surface of the stove and holed the wall board of this dwelling. My father,
the owner of this property, subsequently had to pay over a hundred dollars for
the repair. In the interim period of eighteen months between these two
assaults, my discussions with Sam revealed the history and character of
violence in his life. On one of these occasions he made the revelation that he
and his brother had between them committed over a hundred rapes .
.....................
Background
New Zealand is a country of 3.8 millions, living on two main islands in the
South Western Pacific. Its indigenous inhabitants were Polynesian, referred to
as 'maori', whose homeland was colonised by Britain in the nineteenth century.
It has a single chamber parliament, elected triennially, and a tradition of
stable Westminster
type government. Its judiciary and police are not tainted by corruption. The
dominant culture is the European "pakeha" culture, and it is a
western society in technology, political phenomenon and living standards.
At the turn of the twentieth century, by
both fair and foul means, the majority of NZ's landmass had passed into
European ownership. It became an agricultural economy with high living
standards attained by the export of commodity produce. At one time in the
fifties it had the highest living standard in the world, measured by indices of
material wealth, health and life expectancy etc. Full employment, universal
education and social security benefits featured the social and institutional
structure from the late thirties to the late sixties. There was a wide dispersal
of wealth with a progressively higher tax regime of up to 66 cents in the
dollar for those on higher incomes. The buoyant economic life thus funded a
welfare state for those who were not participants in its prosperity.
Complementing these social facts was an
ideology within popular wisdom that New Zealand was a fair and decent
land, where respect for people prevailed, and with an egalitarian ethos where
"jack was as good as his master". Integrally part of this was a
collective self-assurance that relationships with the maori minority were
beneficent, and thus "race relations" were deemed to be positive. I
was raised in a rural community where such facts did prevail. My father, who
had maori origins, had been able to achieve ownership of a dairy farm and I
experienced a community where children were nurtured, and youths were indulged
rather than abused. The decent society was for me, not ideological but real.
Since the seventies, a pattern of social
change has seen the sense of predictability about life diminish, and elements
of callousness and contention which were previously nascent, have become
apparent in community life. Violent crime has increased such that murders,
which were once an extreme event, are now regularly reported in the media and prosecuted
in the courts. Violent crime often has a commonality with ethnicity, in that it
inheres in the lower socio-economic groups where maoridom is represented.
As well as the disparateness in the overt
realms such as the economic, there is also a disparateness between peoples in
ethical and moral and psychological realms. It is one of the tenets of
'ethno-psychology' or cross-cultural psychology, that between different
cultures, there can be a disparateness in ethical and moral and psychological
realms, something which inevitably obtains between peoples despite that they
are each part of a totality of a larger society. This character of difference
can be profound although not apparent because of the outward and very real
commonalities between groups in a larger population. Such is part of my
exposition of the pathological violence of the offender Sam, as his abuse
occurs within a moral and ethical context of a larger society that eschews
violence, but these constraints he is impervious to.
On a positive side, in the last generation
activism by maori(who number about 12% of population) and on behalf of maori,
has occurred. Tribal entities known as iwi have been recognised as part of the
institutional and political structure of the country, and are often the
conduits of service delivery to their members. Whereas previously a
mono-cultural ideology, "we are one people", prevailed, now a
multicultural pluralism is emerging. A term used in this respect is the
'fourth' world of development. Indigenous or colonised peoples are said to be
part of a fourth world, a group identified by ethnicity and culture, and with
an economic and material welfare disparate and inferior to the larger dominant
culture. New Zealand,
referred to by her indigenous inhabitants as "Aotearoa", now has her
own fourth world of development.
In a profound polarity from the positive
maori renaissance alluded to above, the last generation has seen the inception
of the phenomenon of ethnic gangs. They have a similar structure to motorcycle
gangs known in all Western Countries. They have a distinctive regalia with
patches, which the gang members acquire after a period as
"prospects". These require certain service to the gang to acquire and
can involve serious crimes. Two of these gangs, the "Black Power" and
"Mongrel Mob" are represented in all main centres and often in the
country towns of New Zealand.
Where the maori population of these towns is high, the presence of the gangs is
proportionally and visibly greater. The appearance of gang patches; of their
frequenting particular gathering places and the existence of a "pad",
are part of the social life of these communities.
Supplementary to the motorcycle gang
structure which Hunter S Thompson has described, within the maori gangs of NZ
there is a character of violence which represents the cultural survivals of a
previous age. A tradition of warfare between tribes was part of the history of
pre-european NZ. The ethnic gangs of NZ manifest a synthesis of twentieth
century gang phenomenon with intra-tribal solidarity and inter-tribal enmity of
a past age. Between two gangs in one town where I lived, the proscription of
one gang from another’s turf was enforced with abject ferocity. This I
witnessed personally, the offender mercilessly beaten.
One case which illustrates this enmity
involved a fire-bombing of a van load of employees of a brewery firm which were
dressed in their company’s colours, which unfortunately resembled that of a
rival gang in one of the towns through which they travelled. A petrol bomb or
some kind of incendiary device was thrown into or at this collection of people,
and one of them was seriously burnt, lying scarred and injured in hospital.
However a case against his assailants never came to court or was not prosecuted
successfully, as no witnesses were willing or able to testify.
Whatever its origins, there is within the
gangs a perverse character of callousness directed towards the
"other", an absence of consciousness and a propensity for violence,
allied to the character of gang life, with solidarity with one's staunchly
loyal associates and a perverse enmity to one's defined enemies.
But on a raw personal level, John Banks, a
former Minister of Police, when interviewed on National Radio noted that the people
who gravitate to these gangs and figure in offending, have commonalities of
experience as children which are a portent and source of anti-social and
violent proclivities in later life.
It goes right back to the family.... They
have many fathers, sometimes several mothers; they are taken from pillar to
post...
Banks describes the outcome of the
dysfunctional and abusive upbringing these individuals experience in the
following phrases.
“They are like
savage dogs, if you tied a dog to a tree and if everyone who passed it was to
kick it, when it was let loose it would bite everything in sight."
Bank's exposition about people with canine
characteristics is more than mere imagery. Rather I believe it has a literal
correctness. Human beings are mammalian creatures ennobled by culture. In
clinical and social science realms, children without socialisation to culture
are termed or described as 'feral'. Cases where parents have kept children in a
room or cellar or otherwise isolated and incommunicado for years on end, have
been documented and described. I consider the turning of children into
"savage dogs" as per Banks' exposition, is a variation on this theme
of feral children.
Two NZ offenders who are a living
exhibition of this process, are Malcolm Rewa and Joseph Thompson, each of whom
raped multiple numbers of women. They both had childhood experiences which are
consistent with the process described by John Banks.
The character of the perverse socialisation
of Joseph Thompson is recounted in Jan Corbet's book "Caught By His
Past". With separated or divorced parents, he had no stable home and
experienced the process of being shuffled "from pillar to post" as
per Banks' exposition. He would turn up on the doorstep of one parent and then
be placed in a taxi and sent to another destination. He was repeatedly
sodomised by an adult relative; his elder sister introduced him to intercourse
at a tender age.
A peculiarity of the coverage of Malcolm
Rewa's case is the toothless smile of the countenance revealed in photographs.
In a country where dental care was free to school age children, it is a mystery
why he should suffer this. Allegedly, after his mother's death he was placed in
homes of relatives, one of whom had occasion to slam his face into the kitchen
bench top. Hence the missing teeth of the man being a testament to the abuse of
the child.
Such victims of an abusive socialisation
can make it into adulthood with a detachment and reservation from the mores of
the community at large. They have not been socialised to be part of an
intuitive and empathetic human realm. Without nurturance they are non-citizens
and thus occupy a marginal realm of dysfunction and criminal offending.
The combination of such individually feral
personalities, combined with the collectively feral character of the gang
association, results in an extreme character of callousness which is
undeniable. The cases of the brazen violence of the gangs which these
personalities can gravitate into are extant within court records and crime
reporting in New Zealand.
Two such cases are of individuals who were killed because they dared to testify
against gang members involved in crimes or allegedly informed on their
activities.
Within the community at large there can be
a perverse non-cognisance of the potential violence of these gangs. They are
the enclave of criminals, but their freedom of association is sanctioned as
they are innocent until proven guilty of crime, despite that the crime which
individuals perpetrate often inheres in their association with the gang.
In the 1980's during a Mongrel Mob
convention at Ambury
Park, Auckland, a woman was raped repeatedly by
twenty assorted brown penises, a torch and a beer bottle. This betrays a musk
character of callousness that is hard for us to apprehend, without an inward
shudder of revulsion. The victim was a young woman, walking her dog in the
evening. I presume her kidnappers merely drove their car beside her as she
walked on the footpath and grabbed her and bundled her into the car. Given the
strength of Polynesian males, with powerful limbs and torso, this could have
been accomplished with little in the way of altercation or struggle. But as
they approached the venue of the gang convention, they could not gain entry
with their prisoner without concealment. They concealed her under a blanket in
the back seat of the car, pushed onto the floor while they sat erect and
innocent, and the car drove into the convention.
In the subsequent raping of this young
woman, they preserved the occasion with photographs, taken by a gang member
designated for the task. This camera was the rapist's undoing because when
police officers examined the site, a car was moved and beneath it were found
rolls of film. When developed they preserved the scene and faces, of the one
victim and her many assailants.
The Ambury park rape demonstrates a
particularly feral character in the contempt for women and contempt for the
mores of the community and its institutions, which the gang members thus manifest.
But on a personal psychological level, the
individual actions of maori assailants is of an extreme character. I have
witnessed an altercation between two maori males in a bar in Hamilton city where, within the first second
of the violence erupting, one combatant grabbed a glass beer jug and smashed it
into the side of the head of the other. His ear required many stitches. Maori
violence is often like this, completely direct or only cursorily disguised. It
can have an intense "psycho-cathartic" quality whereby every fibre of
the protagonist's psychological and physical being is tested and indulged. This
boil over of violence is what I call a psycho-cathartic fit or convulsion where
the offender is only able to react with aggression and without any cognitive
control of their actions.
.....................
It is in this context of demonstrable
potential for violence, of contempt for women who are the frequent victims,
perpetrated by offenders whose lives are independent of community mores, that I
advance as the context of Sam's socialisation to offending, the antecedents to
his later extreme battery of domestic partners.
The personality Sam, which I have come to
know, is an exhibition of contrasts. He is cognitively sophisticated, yet possesses
a perverse propensity to violence against women. These women, unlike the
victims of rape, were integrally part of his life as spouses, and one victim is
the mother of his several children. His violence has the afore-described
"psycho cathartic" quality, where all of his being is focused and
indulged. He is, when caught up in this rage, incapable of restraint from it.
It is elemental and feral, like a dog or cat fight.
List of Characters
Sam - the offender
Jane - Sam's first spouse.
Jason - Sam's younger son, a seven or eight
year old.
Janice - Sam's second spouse(no children)
Locations - Waihi, Thames,
Moerewa...(small towns in NZ)
- South Auckland, the poorer suburbs of New Zealand's
largest city, Auckland.
These are lower socio economic areas and Maori and polynesian population
numbers are higher than their mean in the general population.
.....................
1/ Sam's record of rape and abuse.
Historians are conversant with the exploits
of one Hongi Hika, a Chief of a northern tribe of New Zealand, who, in the early
nineteenth century, travelled to England to visit a certain King
George. There he was presented with gifts which, on his return trip, he cashed
in at Sydney,
buying muskets in their stead. He then went, in company with his Northern
cohorts, to visit depredations on other tribes.
A more recent incident which, in its
brazenness, shares commonalities with the exploits of Hika, was the fire
bombing of a van load of employees of Lion Breweries. This case, reported in
the courts in 1993, involved members of the Black Power gang of Kaikohe, who
mistakenly took the red company colours of the van’s occupants, to be that of
Mongrel Mob members. The trial of these throwers of molotov cocktails was
abortive because a witness or witnesses feared too much for their safety to
testify. Yet a victim suffered severe life changing injuries.
A previous gang confrontation in the town
of Moerewa,
about 1979 I believe, resulted in a policeman’s teeth being kicked out, the
torching of an ambulance or some other vehicle, and one gang member being shot
in the leg by police.
I have come to know quite well a maori
abuser, raised in Moerewa and a teenager at the time of the above mentioned
fracas. He claims to have been a patch wearing member of the gang involved. As
well as his small town socialisation, he is a product of South
Auckland suburbs as well, he and his brother both spending a
significant time there as youths through some family connection. Evidently they
were not intimidated by the city environment, as his (my informant Sam's)
descriptions of his exploits in pubs there were not of shyness. They would
commute to their home town in the weekends and took with them a commodity that
they must have found available in the city... women. Sam describes an extreme
phenomenon of taking woman from this suburb in their cars, travelling with them
to Moerewa or parts North, and "selling" them (for their sexual
favours) to their associates there. Does this sound credible, woman bought and
sold in this Aotearoa? He speaks of one deal of a sum of $2.00 changing hands,
for the company and favours of a woman. He was a buddy and thus the sum was not
exorbitant. Inevitably this story has elements of bragging and embellishment,
but is also of some substance.
One corroboration that I have seen with my
own eyes occurred
on a visit to his brother’s former spouse.
His brother is now
resident in Paremoremo prison (New Zealand's
maximum security prison) after a conviction for rape, and the spouse is now in
another relationship. She is not without mementoes of him however. She was
toothless, having had her teeth punched out by the now incumbent of a cell in
prison.
Well back to the business of the selling of
women. At some point in our visit a woman who was part of the afore-described
"trade" came to the house. She recognised my informant but did not
greet him effusively, her reaction was subdued. She was a subdued personality,
There was a passive reticence about her, she seemed an inarticulate maori woman
of only mediocre intelligence. My impression of this "sexual favours as
commodity" trade, taken from his description and my own inferences, is
this...
Presumably these two brothers were a bright
and brutal combination, and would gather around them male cohorts like
themselves, and inevitably some young maori women. Packed into Sam's Chrysler
Valiant car, they would migrate North for the weekend and stop to indulge in
booze stops in different locations, which also included sexual activities with
the woman followers. Well the party would make its way to the northern town
which was their stamping ground, and the phenomenon of "polynesian peer
solidarity" would be played out as they greeted and socialised with their
mates, in pubs or other environs. Inevitably the women accompanying the group
could be a focus of conversation and it is in this context, of male camaraderie
and empathy, that Sam alleges he bequeathed the company of one of these women
to a buddy for a sum of $2.00.
The raping proclivities he described to me
are barely believable except that, in the context of this guy's penchant for
violence, which I have personally witnessed, and his dispassionate rendering of
stories of such violence, I don't disbelieve him.
Some of the tales told to myself are
reproduced below.
Anecdote 1: The character of gang life I
understand to have an integral element of multiple sex with a single woman. Sam
describes an incident when an associate of the gang visited their gang house
with his girlfriend and when after some time or debauchery he fell asleep, the
guys there decided to collectively have sex with the woman. This was
accomplished without violence as "she loved it".
Anecdote 2: The character of gang life I
understand to have an integral element of multiple raping of a single woman. He
recounts how he and his brother or a buddy from the Stormtroopers grabbed a
lady from a house and took her to an isolated site somewhere and had sex with
her, and left her standing naked, with moisture dripping from her pelvis, lit
up in the headlights of their car. They sat inside it and laughed at her
degradation and torment. They had thrown away her clothes. When asked about
this incident "Was she a willing participant?" "No...".
"Well did she yell and raise a...?" "No, nobody would have heard
her. We raped heaps of chicks, we called it blocking, it was a way to spend the
weekend". "Well if they were pakeha(European) ladies they would have
pressed charges?" "No they were too scared"
Anecdote 3: Was his description of a woman
dragged naked on her bare buttocks on a metal or sealed road, a Stormtrooper
heaving on each leg. She was then thrown into the back seat of a car and raped
there.
Because of Sam's ability to project himself
as he wishes, all these tales could be just fantasy, rendered plausible by his
animated exposition. But a more pertinent consideration is that given his
capacity for extreme violence, which I have seen with my own eyes, they could
all be true. His proclivities of violence and intimidation of people provoke
one to look for elements of socialisation that could make him do such things,
things that have occurred in his formative years that are consistent with what
he is capable of now in a more mellow period of his life. The raping
proclivities and depravity he describes then, seem consistent with the
unearthly thuggery that he practices in his domestic relationships of his life
now. That they were the precursor to his later proclivities which only become
intelligible in the context of his teenage socialisation to violence.
Well there is more of his tales of
depravity I could reproduce, replete with the grim imposition of unwelcome sex
on women, and the unnerving sense of the "strength" of these
personalities. A corruption of the common meanings of the term
"strength" - strength in the sense that the extreme psychic violence
of what they do does not impact on their equilibrium. That they are of such
unearthly obdurateness and non-cognisance of the mores of the community. They
live their lives as pariahs in the consciousness of the community but by day
rub shoulders with the populace at large, living and interacting with them, yet
all the while they are not part of the moral and existential consciousness
which the larger community shares. Professor David Bettison, of the
Anthropology Department of University of Waikato, NZ, spoke of the mental
reservation and detachment of members of a minority culture as they interact in
the realms of the majority culture, yet all the while they know its
"mores" and presumptions are relative and in another alternative
realm, don't have the same currency.
This detachment Sam focuses on the agencies
of the law and a pertinent tale of this concerns the aforedescribed and
reported riot in Moerewa. He said at some point he left and removed his
"patch" then returned to watch proceedings as a bystander. He's a
brute but butter doesn't melt in his mouth. He exists within the populace but
with a sardonic detachment from it. An element of this is that he is, in terms
of the law, only a first offender, despite being involved in countless crimes.
...................
This bizarre rapacious lifestyle gave way
to a semi-permanent relationship with a lady, Jane, the mother of his four (now
five) children. She is maori and came from the same Northland community as he
and thus, I presume, was reasonably acquainted with his past and proclivities.
In this first relationship, when she was
pregnant with their first baby, he was abusing her such that her brother was
provoked to beat the shit out of him in turn. Jane recounted to me that if the
brother hadn't intervened Sam might have killed her. She said this in
conversation but I think she meant it literally rather than rhetorically. At a
point when there were two boys in the family and a daughter had been adopted by
Jane's sister, there was a separation. Sam who was then driving big articulated
trucks, was outside their house or a house where she had taken refuge or was
currently living, and threatened to drive through the place with his huge
Kenworth or whatever. He told me "my sons were inside..." and like
General Patton, he was going to bludgeon his way through.
At some point they moved to Australia with
their two boys. There, there was a separation, possibly one of several by now,
except this was of longevity in that Sam took up with another lady, by the name
of Janice.
The short story of this relationship is
that he beat Janice up several times, to a point where he was arrested one
night after giving her a black eye, and was charged by police (they were back
in NZ by this time). At some point the charges were dropped but he had
allegedly threatened Janice's mother with a firearm and she obtained a
non-molestation order against him. But consistent with his pattern of
contrition and ingratiation back into the lives of his victims, the
relationship with Janice was resumed.
In respect of violence in relationships,
the story thus far is of a succession of assaults, but few are brought to the
attention of the police and the courts. A pointed element in his abuse is that
in successive relationships he has been able to abuse women but despite this,
they will not leave him. He has been described as having that "X
factor". Tall, dark, muscular, of handsome features, and of a cognitive
fluency. These qualities combine to give him a definite presence if not
magnetism. His attractiveness, in the eyes of two spouses at least, is
consummate. In conversation with me, Jane has recounted the tremendous bonding which
she had for Sam in the early period of their relationship - the fact that they
had only a single bed was not a hardship but a bonus.
The relationship with Janice ended when he
beat her up on the morning of her birthday (late 92). I arrived on the scene
for the party, but he had actually begun the day by shoving her head through a
gib' board wall. He was sentenced to a period of supervision, and went, under
direction of a Community Correction's (probhation) Officer, to Men's Education
Network in Thames, a small town in New Zealand.
Through this association with a reformist initiative, he was able to insinuate
his way back into the life of his original spouse Jane, by phoning her in Australia and
assuring her he was on a path of reform. Well she took him at his word,
severing a relationship in Australia
and returned with their children. She tried to make a life with him again.
But he systematically beat her up. The
circumstances were of such mean spiritedness. There were three beatings and
temporary separations in the six months after their reconciliation in January
1993, to the point where the spouse, Jane, opted for poverty in a women's
refuge as the violence escalated. She obtained a tenancy order and a
non-violence order and Sam had to vacate their flat and found an abode about
three hundred yards from the original residence. Within a fortnight he had
insinuated his way back into her home and life.
First example of abuse of six year old: The
first of these `temporary' splits occurred when the husband came home from his
driving job one evening and started screaming or yelling at the six year old,
such that he became distressed with deep sobbing or paroxysms of sobbing. The
mother sent the kids out with their older cousin and they spent the night at a
motor camp. The mother left that morning. The next occasion, in which the boy
was not directly involved, the spouse moved to her cousin's home for several
days. This time the elder boy opted to stay with his Dad. When I pointed out
that it was untenable for him to look after the boy, because he worked twelve
hours a day he said. "I'll get a sheila(vernacular for women, as in
'broad', 'dame', etc) in". After a period, a reconciliation on his terms
occurred.
The third separation followed his attacking
her cousin (male), with a chainsaw, one Saturday night, during a drunken brawl.
The victim required several stitches with the attendance of an ambulance and
police, but the attending Constable did not think two drunk maoris having a
fight were worth too much drama and paperwork, and opted to charge the father
with intentional damage of a door, instead of damage to a human being.
Second incidence of abuse of six year old:
The family were at my flat and the boy wet his trousers and sneakers from playing
in water when he was supposed to stay dry for an outing. Sam chastised him with
a severity far outweighing the circumstances. He kicked him in the buttocks in
a way which was very frightening for the boy. The boy ran to his mother who was
sitting at a table. He was weeping. Then Sam who had sat at the other side of
this table, reached across and pulled his hair, yanking and twisting it, and
with a parallel dialogue that was yanking and twisting at the boy's feelings,
calling him "arse fucker" among other things. The mother was
intimidated by this, her feet were tap dancing her dismay at this abuse but she
is not able to verbalise her disgust without risking a confrontation.
Primal element to his violence: Sam's
teenage socialisation or whatever reason he is what he is, has left him with a
primal character to his intimidation and violence. Thus in the incident above,
of yanking and pulling at the six year old’s hair, there is a viciousness that
can't readily be conveyed on paper. He can't feel the victim’s feelings and he
can't feel the bystander’s reaction to what he is doing. Like a criminal
without remorse, he stands in the dock of people’s accusation without turning a
hair, without butter melting in his mouth. Thus when I called on him after he had
beaten his wife, and she had kept herself in a room for a week or more to
conceal her injuries, he said "Jane is indisposed".
Mindset of defiance: The majority of the
above events occurred when Sam was under a Supervision order for assaulting his
previous spouse, Janice, and contravention of this order would have seen him
re-sentenced for this assault, with a presumption on the part of his probation
officer that he would go to prison. But because Sam is bright and engaging
(when not being primitive), people warm to him, and are not wishing to take the
ultimate step of reporting him to the police for assault which will see him go
to jail. He has an ongoing debit balance in fines for drunken driving and
possibly another offence(again occurring under the supervision order) of wilful
damage, where the police deferred laying charges if he paid reparation. This
involved kicking some lady’s stereo to bits. The powers that be are not
appraised of the accumulation of offending that has occurred. The Waihi police
were appraised of the offence involving the stereo, and the Thames
police, in turn, are appraised of another offence, (intentional damage with a
chainsaw). He was ordered to pay compensation to the victim of the assault
(Janice) he was convicted for, whether this sum is still outstanding or not I
don't know. He sees the constraints of the police and the courts as simply
something to be accepted with forbearance and to be countered and manipulated
by drip feeding compliance of their fines or whatever. He drip fed his
attendance and engagement with the Men's Education Network.
Third incidence of abuse of six year old:
This occurred one weekend, and involved Sam’s attitude and focus on the boy
over that weekend, rather than a specific action. From memory I think he had
already assaulted the spouse as she was injured with a black eye. She had,
through me, sought to contact some support people who could transport her to a
women's refuge - she was without a phone in her flat. This could not be
arranged until early on the Monday morning. In the meantime she was living in a
kind of siege with one of her boys, Jason, in one room of the flat, nursing her
injured face. Once again Sam had been yelling at the boy or some such
intimidation, and when I saw him (the six year old) he was very demur.
Meanwhile Sam had ensconced himself in the other bedroom with the other boy of
ten or older. Thus he seems to be able to form polarised relationships,
focusing enmity on one child and embracing the other. At the end of this weekend,
it took only a few minutes conversation with his spouse to dissuade her from
going to the refuge. She thinks each time that he means to reform and things
will improve.
Boys being socialised to violence: Sam has
only a vague sense of childhood as a time of nurturing, instead it is a time of
shaping.
"Eat up son so your cock will grow big
so you can stick it in things".
This sense that childhood is an opportunity
to brutalise the boy, so that he can model him in his own image is demonstrable.
Having lived with him intermittently for eighteen months I am able to
confidently assert this. Like most of us there are several elements to his
personality. This summary focuses on his thuggery which in combination with his
often 'considerate' side, makes for some very confused socialising messages.
Thus the boys are living in an outwardly
'normal' domestic life, but they also have had to share a bed with their
injured mother. The elder boy was involved in a fight or assault at his primary
school (in late 93), the nature of which was very telling. He struck his victim
such that he was on the ground then gave him an adult gangland type kicking.
His mother has been called to the school to discuss this incident and the boy
is risking expulsion.
The younger boy has nearly mugged me. This
incident is of note. I said the boy, a six or seven year old, nearly mugged
me... It doesn't seem plausible does it. Well it went like this...
He can be a fiery and feisty kid. When a
preschooler, possibly only three or four, he was a handful. When I travelled in
a vehicle with him on my lap on and off for an hour or two, he was so full of
energy and contrariness it was difficult to support him like this. The
'mugging' occurred whilst walking about a railway yard close to our
neighbourhood, and I came upon Jason in company with some of his buddies. Jason
had an inspiration - "Lets beat up Simon". Well they were like dogs
'worrying sheep' or pig dogs on a 'bail'. Darting in and kicking me in the
shins or where-ever they could. Well this all was quite disconcerting but I
tried to keep my dignity and headed for home, hoping to shake them off. Well
they didn't tire of it, and I couldn't escape them and in exasperation and
anger grabbed each and administered a kick to each of their little six year old
backsides. This had a salutary effect with the other kid... but not Jason. The
force was enough to dislocate their little hips I thought, but the response
from Jason was more defiance, and a hail of stones. The size of the missiles
and the intensity of the defiance was unnerving.
Legitimising rationale behind his abuse:
Sam bought the boys a powerful gas pistol, and they wave it around and fire it
willy nilly at targets, leaving me with fears that one of them will lose an
eye. When I voice my concern he says "if they get hurt then they will
learn". When once trying to teach this tiny child to swim, and he wouldn't
kick when commanded, he dunked him under the water in a ghastly way, leaving
the mother distressed and the boy spluttering and crying. He is dumbly cruel
and harsh like this - it is reactive, without any cognitive determination
beforehand. Like smashing his spouse’s head through a gib board wall, the
gravity of what he does not impact on him - and she had to pick herself up off
the floor, gib plaster material about her person no doubt, and run for her
life.
Summation of abuse intervention: At a point
where Sam’s abuse had resulted in another separation he told me of some
finality of the extent of his abusing. It is not easy to report clinically this
conversation as the content was so extreme, so I will describe the scene and
context which will make it easier for me.
Sam is a heavy truck driver, which means he
drives one of those powerful, multi-axle units which have two articulated
trailers behind the cab. Because Sam is of great energy and single mindedness,
his prowess with this contraption is consummate. This was the employment he had
had in 1993, the period of his abuse, then reconciliations with Jane. I spent a
lot of time travelling with him in his cab and when he began abusing Jane I
noted the progression of events. While, in the days after each incident, she
had taken refuge with relatives, he carried on in his driving job. A phenomenon
on two occasions was that she rang him on the truck cell phone to arrange to
return, with the family, to their rented house.
In the meantime he would have been making
cursory plans "to get a Sheila in" or examples of some other cursory
indifference. Thus, on each of these two occasions he was unperturbed. On the
second of them, which was quite serious as he had attacked one of her cousins
with a chainsaw, he made the following summation of the process of abuse
intervention that we had been engaged in. He told me of some finality of the
extent of his abusing. He had previously mentioned participation or
perpetration, in company or i combination with his brother, of up to a hundred
rapes, and he now described a teenage experience that occurred when I gather
they were in their incipient raping career.
It went like this... Sam and his brother
were in some location where their activities were shielded from the public
gaze. They were in the company of a twelve year old girl who they attempted to
have sex with, but could not do so, because of her age and lack of development.
So through means of a candle they enlarged her vaginal opening, raping her with
this, then they were able to have sex with her. Telling her at the conclusion
of this assault that she would suffer dire consequences if she told anyone.
I don't see any reason why he should invent
such a story of diabolical degradation. It was in a conversational context
where boasting was unlikely. He'd just assaulted a man with a chainsaw (my
chainsaw) a few days previously and still retained his freedom. His actions in
the last week were of such boldness that he needed no embroidery of his past to
gain notoriety. It would have been superfluous.
He indicated with some revelation and
finality that it was pointless considering that he would ever change. He had no
intent to stop abusing. The summation of this process of twelve months
intervention and counsel (through the supervision order imposed by the courts)
was this simple admission, that he was never going to modify or alter his
perceptions of his own actions, and that it was almost inevitable that Jane
would be suffering the same abuse in the future. This he told me in his own
words, but with the same literal meaning and finality that I reproduce here.
Questions of sociopathology: The concept of
sociopath becomes pertinent in the light of this history and herstory thus far.
My understanding of the term sociopath is the layman's version. It was a term I
noted in the TV mini-series "The Deliberate Stranger", which dealt
with the exploits of one Ted Bundy who killed multiple numbers of women (He
died in the electric chair in Florida).
A character in the movie, whilst watching Bundy's indignation at one of his
trials, made this observation/definition... "that sociopaths can feel
their own feelings very intensely, but they can't feel other people's
feelings". Another characterisation of violent offenders is that they are
"big, dangerous babies", a description I acquired from a magazine
article about offenders in New
Zealand's maximum security prison. His
psychological world was like a baby's, his consideration of others could be
limited and his assertion of his needs was immediate and communicated
physically, by a violent aggression, or iconic intimidation.
This term iconic I gained from an
anthropology text and I presume it has pertinence in psychology as well. A
dog’s snarl is iconic or indicative of an attack. Thus when staying with him
and his former spouse (the one he beat up on her birthday) I witnessed a
bizarre exhibition in the kitchen, when he smashed pots and pans together in
front of her face such that she froze up with shock. I have been a victim of
this kind of intimidation from a maori thug myself at one time, it involving
only the feint of an attack, but hauling up short at a critical time. The
obvious intent is to shock and intimidate, and to control, without recourse to
actual attack.
But aside from this functional
intimidation, he commits violence on sensate beings for both control and indulgence,
he commits violence also on inanimate things. He beat the shit out of Janice's
rottweiler bitch, such that it pissed itself with fright whenever he came near
it. He can focus the same cathartic violence on inanimate things, yelling at
them all the while as if they are conscious. I have seen him destroy a fridge
door in this kind of temper. When his car was jerking along due to a frayed
electrical connection, he ran it into a bank saying, "I'll run you into
the bank you bastard".
Also he has the abuser's idiosyncrasy of
'the look', or 'the phrase'... "What did you say Janice?".
Both systemic and systematic violence: This
brings to mind a statement by Neville Robertson of the Psychology Department at
University of Waikato - who has spent a significant
part of his career investigating domestic abuse - that "violence continues
because violence works". Thus the mother of his four children could never
anticipate that his habitual abuse of her would ever cease. When interviewed on
National Radio his observation about the character of the relations which
prevail in the families where abuse is endemic is this...
"Its part of the pattern by which
these men verify their sense of self worth."
In one paper "What's Love Got to With
It", co-authored by Neville and Ruth Busch, both staff members of the University of Waikato. the authors noted that the
assaults which bring offenders to the attention of the police or other agencies
are merely the precipitating incidents in a whole matrix of intimidation and
dominance of the partner or family. They described the culture of unease in an
abusive home where the children manifest elements of fear of consequences to
their actions, such that the tenor of their lives is of intimidation. The
mother will listen in trepidation for the sounds of a vehicle which indicates
the spouse is returning home, and thus they will soon become subject to the
risk of abuse which is implicit in his presence.
To be abusive is systemic to his persona,
"its part of the pattern by which abusers verify their sense of self
worth", but his violence is so brazen, that as well as being systemic to
his psyche, it is systematic in its application. Initiating reconciliations
with a spouse(spouses) only to inevitably alter his persona when they have
re-integrated their lives with his or as a satellite of his. As his flatmate I
witnessed this dramatic change, from contrition to callousness after achieving
a reconciliation, in the space of forty eight hours.
But when his own interests are threatened
he becomes demur. In this latest escapade, which is truly an escape from the
consequences of his actions, it went like this. The events anteceding the
assault, as revealed to me by Sam and also the victim Jane, are these. They
were both at a hotel on a Saturday evening. At some time through the evening
Sam left Jane at the hotel, requiring her to return home in a taxi, in the
company of a third party, Kelly, at about midnight.
Sam did not describe the assault itself but
the conversation was an implicit reference to, and acknowledgment of it, saying
"I kept my cool all night but when she returned home..." and left
unstated what one was to assume from his words - that he restrained himself
until she had returned from the hotel, and then the boilover of violence
occurred,
He then stated that he may be able to avoid
conviction for the assault by obtaining an alibi through convincing a
"witness" Kelly to state that Jane had been injured prior to
returning to their flat and before any alleged assault by himself had occurred.
I heard from the complainant Jane reference to the details of the assault, that
of his kicking and smashing a chair over her head. She also removed her glasses
to demonstrate her injured eye, and subsequently, when wearing a short sleeved
shirt, great bruises on her arms were visible.
The police in Paeroa anxious to see Sam get
a jail sentence for this assault, deferred his appearance until a time when
Judge Rice would not be sitting. - Judge rice was known were the mercy and
leniency of his sentencing. - This did not pay off. It gave Sam time too
insinuate his way back into Jane's life (they crossed paths at his father's
funeral). He arrived in court accompanied by his alibi Kelly, and confident of
Jane's non-appearance and had the services of a lawyer with a spring up his
arse, jumping up and defending Sam's innocence, vehemently denying any
suggestion of intimidation of witnesses, and attempting to have the charge
heard that day (without the evidence of the victim). Despite his lawyers best
efforts, the police had the case withdrawn and in order to get her to testify,
sought a warrant for her arrest. But in the meantime she is gestating another
one of Sam’s babies. Thus she will be obliged to haul herself into the witness
box heavily pregnant with his fifth child. This because he doesn't know what
its like to be accountable for his actions, and doesn't want to start now. -
The police eventually dropped the charges.
ANCILLARY ELEMENTS TO HIS ABUSE. 1/ Women
as Satellites : His two successive spouses were both blessed with an IQ above
average, engendering a sense within me of human sensitivity and unexplored
potentiality. Yet he still sees them as only adjuncts and complementary to the
considerations of his own life. This is primarily about his work as a truck
driver, other gratifications being secondary. Thus seated in his truck and due
to pass his home, he will use a cell phone to order food to be collected in a
quick stop, then carry on the business of truck driving. Not realising the real
business of life is to preserve and promote his and his family's well being.
2/ Nihilistic sex: Another of his
attributes is his penchant for anal sex. It is of real pertinence that he
acquired this proclivity from Penthouse Magazine ie. he was exposed to this
activity by pornography then determined to try it. Part of male culture is to
recount sexual activities to male peers, and part of female culture is to have
to suffer the experimentation/appropriation of what is being talked about. Thus
Sam would remonstrate about his sexual proclivities to his associates, and if
they were as impressionable as he was when he read about anal sex, I presume
some of them would have been moved to try it. I have, in a hotel bar, heard the
spouse of one of his former flatmates speak of this experience. We were quite
intoxicated and the conversational ambience had got past the stage of being
discrete. In a remonstrative tone she spoke about the business of being
"fucked up the arse" or getting a "root up the arse". Thus,
the association of this woman's spouse as a former flatmate of Sam’s, meant she
was subject to this indignity.
3/ Paternal socialization: Pertinent to
this story of relentless abuse is the paternal roles that Sam experienced. Well
it may be helpful here to reiterate the character of Allan Duff's model of
abusive maori male in "Once Were Warriors". The ambience of Sam’s
abusive persona is portrayed better in the movie rather than the book, the
printed page not being able to illustrate the other-worldly ambience of
viciousness in the way the screen presentation did. A pertinent scene is when
Mrs Jake Heke informs Jake that their boy Boogie is in a social welfare home.
"Good it will toughen him up a bit,
the boys soft."
4/ Persona of father like son : Well in
Sam's case he describes a kind of nihilism akin to this statement. He speaks of
sometimes dumb provocativeness, like the occasion when his Dad threw some fish
and chips at a vendor because he wasn't satisfied with them. More sinister is
the tale that his Dad took him to a pub and sat him down and proceeded to beat
the shit out of three other guys there. Another sordid occasion was when he was
disciplined at primary school where his father also worked as the school
caretaker. Upon being appraised that his boy had been in trouble, he then gave
him a thrashing at home to supplement whatever the teachers had administered.
He had a nihilism about the values he
should be pursuing in life, like "what you need is a full guts boy and a
roof over your head". But complementary to this was the presumption that
he could do whatever he liked in this abode, and that this extended to violence
to whoever he chose within it. This extended to Sam's mother I believe. I had
the opportunity to meet her and she replicated the passive and subdued persona
that I described in respect of the maori woman who was allegedly sold by Sam,
to one of his Northland cohorts.
Apparently at his own father's funeral
(Sam’s Grandfathers), he would not approach the coffin, he would not yield to
his feelings, instead watching at a distance with tears in his eyes. This
situation was not lost on Sam who does not yield to his feelings either (except
of course his violent self indulgence and predatory sexuality).
Well the summation of this story of the
manner of his life is the manner of his death. He was in Whangarei hospital
with some kind of serious stomach complaint with a build up of fluid which, if
untreated, would have been life threatening. Well after the progression of this
complaint over several months and perhaps a succession of visits and then
discharge from the hospital, it did become life threatening and the Doctors
said that an operation was the only option to arrest it. Instead he opted to
die, saying that he was sick of being old and ill. Well he was only in his
sixties I believe and his widow who I met was still youthful for a pensioner.
It is illustrative I think, that this opting for death instead of seeking time
in the evening of life, and leaving a comparatively young spouse, demonstrates
that he simply did not love life like he could have. He lived it with nihilism
and violence and opted out of it prematurely when he reached an age and state
of health such that he couldn't dictate to the environment around him.
It was supposedly staunch but it was
actually a life of crude cowardice in that he wouldn't be cognisant of the
terrorist activities of his teenage sons and what they had done to a succession
of defenceless women in New
Zealand.
..................
SUMMARY
Phenomenon 1: Gang Socialisation. Sam
experienced a socialisation in or on the periphery of an ethnic gang. An
integral part of the activites of the gang was the multiple rape of women.
Phenomenon 2: "Psycho-cathartic"
Character of Violence. This is the drug like "hit" which violence
gives him. Two witnesses who happened upon an incident in which Mongrel Mob
members had just beaten the shit out of someone, noted a dull stare of
endorphin exhaustion or something, after they had accomplished this ritualistic
bashing. This in a town where members of the Mongrel Mob gang tortured unto
death a supposed informer, by the name of Cochrane I believe.
Phenomenon 3: Systemic and Systematic
Violence. Sam's violence is systemic - endemic in attitude rather than
circumstance. "I kept my cool until she got home from the pub
then..." In its application on the victim it is systematic.
Phenomenon 4: Neutralising of the Courts,
Police and Intervention process. Sam had only a reluctant and cursory
participation in the abuse intervention programme, prescribed by Community
Corrections, a mere twelve weeks in total, where the systemic life of violence
which is his antecedent experience and socialisation could not hope to be
addressed. Also the perverse ability to ignore or manipulate the constraints of
the courts, such that their penalties were only incidental to his life. He
obtained the service of a very energetic, insistent and pernicious lawyer to
represent him in one of the assault cases described above. The performance of
this legal jack in the box was unnerving; in his theatrical hopping up and
down, protesting his clients innocence and how inconvenienced he was as a busy
truck driver to be detained at court etc.
Phenomenon 5: Dependence of spouse. Another
element is the dependence of the spouse. The perverse willingness to believe
the unlikely, that he may stop; that she will plan a getaway to a refuge only
to abandon it in the light of a few grains of remorse that he will perform or demonstrate.
Both "spouses" were attractive intelligent women, outwardly worldly
and rational. Yet they stayed with this guy after significant bashings from him
in the past, and knowing the risk of more in the future.
Phenomenon 6: Intervention putting spouse
on emotional roller Coaster. - One significant outcome of the intervention
programme, was that Sam used the notion of reform to entice his spouse to
abandon a life in Australia,
and return to a lions den with him where, she was subject to the following.
He beat the shit out of her. A series of
assaults including kicking and smashing a chair over her head.
Over this period she was on that emotional
roller coaster of hope, then anguish, then hope again.
He subjected their children to all the
trauma and instability which accompanied his violence, and the serial breaking
up, then reforming of their home.
Phenomenon 7: Abuse and Negative
Socialisation of Children.
Another is the socialising of the children
to replicate Dad's attitude and achievements. "Eat up son so your cock
will grow big and you can stick it in things". He insinuated his way into
a position of influence with his elder boy who opted to stay with Sam after one
altercation and separation.
Phenomenon 8: Selective Abuse of One Child.
More sinister to this instructive exhortation, was the deliberate intimidation
and abuse of the boy Jason.
...................
I would invite any responses or
observations which readers may have to the tale of Sam at my email address........SPO@Waikato.ac.nz
or visit my home page at geocities.com/spo_nz/index.html
Simon Overall
Hamilton,
New Zealand.
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