In a 2015 book, Berhampore: Stories of a School and Suburb, early residents recall harsh punishment from both male and female staff members including beatings with straps and wooden spoons, and being locked in a coal cellar. The Berhampore Children’s Home, a looming old building on the corner of Wellington’s Morton St, had been established decades earlier with charitable intentions, although from the outset its child-rearing approach was far from gentle. I can remember climbing up the stairs with my younger brother Steven and my grandfather saying ‘get those kids out of here!’ He kicked us out and so my mum turned up at Berhampore.” But my grandfather didn’t want to know us. She took us to her parents’ place - they were quite wealthy, it was a big flash house. “Next thing I know, our mum took us away, down on the train, to Wellington. To him, for the first six years of his life, they were just a loving mum and dad to himself and his three siblings. He believes his mother also struggled with her mental health. He’d been in an army truck when it exploded, killing a close friend and leaving him, Peter suspects, with “shellshock” or what would now be termed PTSD. “I can remember running around and playing outside in a gas mask.” To me, on the phone from his home in the South Island, he snatches at untroubled fragments. “As far as I knew we were a happy family,” said Peter in his testimony to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. Later they moved to the military town of Waiouru where his dad worked as an accountant for the government. That was in Motueka where his parents had a farm. Peter’s earliest memory is of riding a cow. Never analysing his fear of relationships, or the strange dark images that still weave their way into his dreams. Never thinking about certain chapters of his childhood.
He’s spent much of his life running, he says. Even at the age of 70, Peter Morgan isn’t entirely sure what flipped his family from small-town, 1950s happiness to a later state of misery and chaos. It’s said all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family reaches that state in its own unique way. If this is difficult for you and you would like some help, these services offer support and information: Auckland specialist service Help, 08 specialist men’s service Male Survivors Aotearoa, 0800 044 334 and Snap (Survivors network of those abused by priests). Read the introduction here and illustrated first person narratives here.Ĭontent warning: This feature describes physical, sexual and emotional violence, child abuse and neglect. This article is part of The Quarter Million, exploring the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. Decades later, the survivors are still picking up the pieces. Established with lofty Christian morals, the Presbyterian Berhampore Children’s Home degenerated into a hellhole of emotional, sexual and physical abuse.
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