Warning: This story contains details of abuse
Home was like the movie Once Were Warriors for 59-year-old Kath Coster, who is the third generation of her family to have been in state care.
Kath Coster gives her evidence to the inquiry. Photo: RNZ / Andrew McRae
''I experienced and saw a lot of violence.''
She has given evidence of her time in state care to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care.
At home she suffered so much abuse that she shut down into a dream-like state to try and cope with it.
''I used to pray to die because I figured if I was dead at least I wouldn't have to endure any more of the abuse.''
Coster was removed from her home in 1974, when she was 11.
Her first placement in foster care went well and she felt part of the family.
That did not last and she then went through four placements in quick succession.
While in foster care she suffered abuse and racism.
In one home the two daughters of the foster parents were not happy she was there.
''They weren't happy mum had taken a dirty child in. A dirty child is someone who doesn't come clean when you scrub them. My skin colour.''
Coster overheard her foster mother talking to friends about the possibility of bleaching her skin.
''Maybe we could bleach her skin to make it lighter. I didn't really understand because I was young, because to be honest until then I didn't understand I was brown.''
At her next foster home, which was with an older couple, the father was abusive to her.
''My behaviour changed. I had never seen a penis in my life let alone having to put my face near it, so I started to freak out.''
It was impossible to complain to anyone, she said.
''I'd gone from being this normal child to this abusive situation where it was drummed into me that if you told anybody, your life was threatened.
''You go to places where you hear they don't want you, and then you have to pull yourself together the best way you can and my way was shutting down.''
Abused by both foster parents
At 12, she was sent to another foster home, this time in the country.
''As time went by things changed for the worst.''
The mother used to hit and scratch her, pull her hair and swear at her.
''Her abuse became my abuse because I started to fight back.''
She said because they were in the country they rarely saw a social worker.
''She [the rural mother] should never have had children under any circumstances.''
The father was also sexually abusing her.
''A lot of the abuse happened on the farm, in the milking shed, on hay bales, everywhere we went, the truck, the lot.
''I would be very violent and abusive to try and stay home, but that never worked at all.''
The sexual abuse was so bad that she had to come up with different ways to try and prevent it from happening, because no one was believing her, she said.
''I just switched off, I just switched completely off.
''Sometimes I could see what was happening to me, but I wasn't there.
''No one gave a hoot about what I was going through.''
She was eventually taken from the foster home and was put into Strathmore Girls' Home in Christchurch.
She spent a lot of time in an isolation room after refusing to be photographed.
''I had done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing.''
Evidence given 'to have a voice'
Coster said she gave evidence to the Royal Commission because of someone she loved who was still in care today.
''The reason I have shared this story is because there is a little me that needed to have a voice.''
She said in taking her away from her parents, even though they were not perfect, the state did more damage to her spirit.
''The state to me, I thought it was going to be a good thing.
"I thought it was going to save me and it did in some ways because the physical abuse stopped but from a sexual point of view being a female when you have been victim to predators time and time again you end up wearing a mask and every predator out there knows you are a victim and they take advantage of that.''
State care was a life sentence, she said.
''It is not something you can think: I am 16, I'm 18 , I'm out of here and it's gone. It's embedded in your soul.
''The state took my life. It allowed damage to a child that was already traumatised when they got it and they continually traumatised it in one or more ways.
''It takes your soul and your spirit because when you are a child and you can't function, it is your spirit that is not functioning.''
Hit with brooms, walking stick
Mrs EJ was abused in foster care in the late 1990s. She first went into care at the age of nine.
One placement she was in she described as a house of horrors.
The foster parents were pillars of society, but she said it was all a front.
''You know there was no way that other people would have even have realised what was going on there in that house.
"Seriously, you would think they were just good community people who were looking after children, but really what they were doing was just taking advantage of it and just using us kids pretty much to abuse us.''
While she was sexually abused by the foster parent's son, the foster mother was controlling and the father violent.
''He would hit me with alkathene pipe, brooms, his hands. The worse thing was this very thin walking stick that he would hit us with that.''
She said time in care taught her how to survive, not how to thrive, but that she was a survivor and was proud of that.
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