There are some real challenges in writing an autobiography, in relation to what you should or shouldn’t share. I’m starting off with this mention, really as a note to self, in consideration of people that are still alive, potentially descendents of people, who have no responsibility for what their predecessors did.
When I was 9, I started performing at the Titirangi Folk Club. My parents became members before it even became a public club. I sang and played on the mandolin banjo because my fingers couldn’t get around the wide neck of my father’s nylon string folk guitar. The mandolin banjo was tuned the same as the top 4 strings of the guitar. I performed songs like Shady Grove that went well with the instrument. I’m not sure where I first heard that song, I think it might have been at a Mike Seegar performance, in Auckland. This would have been the first concert I ever went to, aged maybe 8.
The mandolin banjo was small and easy to get my fingers around. It was a fun instrument, even more so after hearing a couple of George Formby 78’s. But soon I would start playing folk songs on guitars, and even singing harmonies accompanying my mother, who had a great voice.
When I was 10, during the school holidays, I heard there was going to be a talent quest for youth, called “Search for a Star” at Lynnmall, which was the nearest shopping centre to where we lived in Titirangi, in Auckland, New Zealand.
I decided to enter and took my father’s guitar on the bus to the mall to enter the competition. I must have been in my father’s good books at the time, because this was not long after I had smashed in the soundbox of his previous guitar. Long story short, the first time I ever played the guitar publically was at the Titirangi Folk Club probably less than a year earlier. I did well, got a hearty applause, and couldn’t wait to tell my mother when I returned home with my father.
We lived in Scenic Drive which was in the bush, and we had long steps, which were wet and slippery, although I hadn’t figured that out yet. I jumped out of the car and started running up the path to the house. I slipped on some moss or algae, and fell landing half on the concrete and half on the guitar, on the edge of a step, smashing the sound board of the instrument, leaving the neck of the guitar looking like the neck of an origami swan.
This got me in trouble, because my father loved the guitar, even though it was one of the cheapest mass produced guitars on the market. My mother told me that my father cried himself to sleep that night over the loss of the guitar. One of their trademarks was guilt trips. I do get it, I love my guitars, but I wouldn’t cry if I broke one and if one of my downline accidentally damaged one (which has happened), I would not make them feel bad over a genuine accident. My success celebration didn’t even make it to the front door of the house.
Anyway, I entered the song contest and won the first heat. My music was of course totally influenced by my parents at that time. I’m not positive any more, but I think I may have played something like Blowing in the Wind, which was on my parents regular playlist at home, on a record by Peter Paul and Mary.
After the show, I was told by the man who organised the competition that I should come back the following week for the finals of the competition. He said the winner would receive a photo of themselves performing on the stage. I went home pretty excited and practiced hard to go back.
Something went right, because I ended up winning the competition. My photo was taken and the compare told me that I would receive the photo, and took my details.
I never heard from him again, no certificate, no photo, and I was rightly miffed, because it was the first time I had done anything like that, outside of the folk club, and it was quite something for 10-year-old me to get up and perform in front of a crowd of shoppers, let alone win the final!
Later, I asked around, about the man, thinking that I should ask him about my photo. He turned out to be fairly well known. He was a local church minister, and was often featured in local newspapers for his involvement in running youth camps and being a mentor for vulnerable children, telling them he could help them achieve success in the entertainment industry.
You may have read from a previous post, that I could have been considered vulnerable. Not hearing back from him was lucky for me.
I didn’t hear anything about him again for about 6 years. This was just months before I left home. My bedroom was a caravan, because my grandparents brought me back from Holland, just before I turned 14, and stayed for 6 months. There wasn’t enough room in the house for all of us and my room became the caravan they bought to take my grandparents on a trip around New Zealand.
One morning, I was woken by an urgent rapping on the caravan door. It was a woman from a few doors down over the road. She was probably no more than 5 years my senior, recently married and her husband had left for work. She was absolutely distraught, barely coherent, and in tears. I brought her up the drive to my parents house, where they settled her with a cup of tea.
She told them that she had looked out of her window and saw a neighbour in the backyard naked, doing something unmentionable with a goat. She didn’t know what to do, and perhaps knowing that I slept in the caravan, figured I was the closest person to where she lived, that she could run to.
Of course the police were called, although it transpires that no charges were laid. The man was considered to be a pillar of the community and he had assured the police that it was all an unfortunate misunderstanding. The young couple didn’t stay in their rented house very long.
What was interesting to me at the time was that when I learned the man’s name, it was the same name as the person who had hosted the talent quest I had won, those years before. Of course, despite the lack of interest from the police, this story circulated the community. Not much of anything newsworthy happened in the area.
Rumours starting coming out suggesting that this man was a sexual offender, preying on young boys who went to church camps he was involved with, where he isolated them from peers and family’s support. Nothing was proven, it was all just conjecture.
Until, in the late 1990s, former victims, now adults, started coming forward to Police with information about things that this despicable man had done to them. In 2002 he was convicted on dozens of charges involving more than 20 victims, and it was suspected that this was the tip of the iceberg. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
In hindsight I was very lucky that he hadn’t taken more of an interest in me, and that I hadn’t chased him for my certificate. I was not destined to be a statistic of child abuse. It was a real shame that he was able to convince police about the terrible and unfortunate misunderstanding over the road. It may (or not) have saved a lot of children from experiences that no doubt had a serious impact on their lives.
Back in the 70s, things like this were not discussed, and I suspect many of the victims didn’t even tell their parents. But in the last 20 years, the number of men, in high trust positions, like the church, boarding schools, boy scouts and the like who have been convicted for child abuse is staggering.
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