My name is Michael Smith. I spent 14 and a half months in prison for sexually abusing my son. My case is so horrific that I can't show you my face or tell you my real name ` court orders won't allow it. I've asked an actor... ...to tell you my story. It's his voice and face, but my words. This is my story. Copyright Able 2015 METAL DOOR CLANKS DRAMATIC THUMPING RAGGED BREATHING WIND CHIME JINGLES The court order is for life ` to protect our lives. (BREATHES RAGGEDLY) Before all this happened, there was no reason to hide. I was a taxi driver. I used to work untold hours to support my family. Uh, we moved to Sydney when Arthur was, I think, 9 months old, and my other son was born in Australia. Give us a smile, darl. 'Arthur was` He was just a wonderful child.' Ooh! 'He was outgoing. He was happy.' All right. All right. Hi, Dad. He loved giving his dad and his mum cuddles. When our other son came along, they got on really really well. Uh, there was always laughter; there was always happiness. 'My ex-wife used to make regular trips back to NZ to see her family, 'and she'd take the kids, because, uh, I used to work a long night shift. 'That's never any good for any relationship.' Is it? Is it? Yeah. On one of her trips back, she'd met an old boyfriend, and that flourished. She rung me and said, 'The marriage is over.' She decided that she'd had enough, and she didn't wanna be with me. That was hard. I came back to NZ permanently to be closer to the boys. Things started to go wrong for Michael when he and his wife separated in January of 1993. She informed me on the phone that Arthur was evidently playing up, and sexual games with other kids, and she discussed the possibility of ADD, but I wasn't at all concerned. You know, I just thought he's just a normal kid. I remember Mum taking me to get medication. I remember having to take these little` little white round pills. KNOCK AT DOOR Hey, it's my boy! How are you, mate? Come on. Come inside. 'When my sons used to come and visit me and it was my weekend to have the boys,...' Go sort out your clothes, OK? Go sort out your clothes, OK? OK. Go sort out your clothes, OK? OK. OK. '...they used to arrive with a bag of meds. 'I always questioned why. Why do they need a bag of meds?' Arthur became hyperactive and disruptive at his new school. He was also caught playing rude games with some boys in the park, sucking each other's penises and urinating on each other. My oldest brother is a trained counsellor, and my ex rung him, described what she thought had happened, and my brother said, 'He` He needs counselling.' The first counselling session with Arthur was specifically, uh, designed to look at his sexualised behaviour. I would've been, maybe, like, 6, 7-ish. Somewhere around that age. I mean, my Mum took me, but I never remember her actually being in the` the room itself. It was always just me and the counsellor. She was, maybe, middle-aged. Uh, I remember dark hair. At the end of the first session, Arthur's mother was advised by the counsellor that it was likely that the boys had been sexually abused, and it was possible that the abuser was their father. Arthur, I'm gonna ask you... This led to at least 60 counselling sessions over the next two years. One thing I always remember is, like, this big, brown, leathery-type chair, uh, that I was too little to sit in. But it felt huge. It was almost like a throne, almost, you know, uh, when I sat on it. I thought it was a very strange thing to do ` to, sort of, sit there and talk to this person that I don't know and tell her about stuff. She said that it would be good for me, said that I needed to do it, said that it was gonna help me, but I remember the counsellor asking me to describe what it was that was going on. RAGGED BREATHING Go, go, go! The counsellor noted that Arthur's behaviour was getting worse. She also noted that she believed the worst behaviour was reflected when he had had time with his father. INTRIGUING MUSIC Around that time, Arthur's mother took out a protection order against Michael. They considered me a threat to the children. She banned me from coming within a hundred metres unless it was properly supervised, but I didn't want that. I certainly didn't want anyone ever telling me how to raise my children. To be told that you're a threat to your children, it's like you're this monster; you can't be trusted around your own children. I never saw them. In June of 1994, Arthur dropped a bombshell. He said that I'd abused him by touching him and playing with him. I remember saying it to her ` uh, that it was him that was doing it. She would say, you know, 'Was it Dad that was doing it?' And I would say yes. You know, 'It` It was him that was doing it.' I was at work. They came, and they said, 'We wanna have a chat,' so I went back to Central. They asked a lot of questions, and they kept saying, 'Why would Arthur lie?' And I said, 'I don't know.' I said, 'As far as I know, kids lie all the time.' Are you hiding back there? Are you hiding back there? Hi, Dad. Are you hiding back there? Hi, Dad. Oh! Arthur's younger brother, Tom, had also made some disturbing revelations. With Tom, I was allegedly playing with him in the showers, and then it just got to this ridiculous situation where they said every time I was picking him up, I was touching his bum, and I was playing with his willy. ENGINE RUMBLES As a part of the investigation, both boys were examined by a medical practitioner at Starship Hospital for signs of sexual abuse. On the 13th of June, Arthur had his first evidential interview, as did Tom. I remember sitting in a room doing a video interview where they would ask me questions with a video camera on me. I'm pretty sure that the police rung me and said, 'We need to have another chat.' So I said, 'Yeah, fine. No worries. I'll come in. When do you want me there?' And they said, 'Now.' I went through another interview process ` seemed like forever ` and then at the end of it he says, 'I'm... 'I'm charging you with abusing your son,' and I said, 'You can't be serious, can you?' (STAMMERS) 'Why are you charging me with that?' Then they took me down to bloody district court and threw me in a bloody cell by myself. Because of the charge, they said I couldn't go into the general population. And you just wonder, 'What the fuck?! 'What am I doing here?' You are charged with abusing your son. It doesn't get any worse than that, does it? How do you tell your parents, who you've loved and admired? Mum said to me, 'Did you do it?' and I said, 'No.' Dad was in the background. He says, 'Well, that's good enough for me.' My sister and my older brother didn't believe me. I rang my second brother and told him what I'd been charged with. That phone call was a phone call I'll never forget. It was a phone call that, um, I just couldn't believe ` just couldn't believe what I was hearing. His first words were, 'What a load of shit.' I just thought, you know, 'Good on you, bro,' you know? You've been branded, you know? I've been officially charged. Your whole life just changes. You walk down the street, you walk anywhere, and you think, 'My God. Do they know?' And I still had to earn; I still had to live as a functioning male, even with this hanging over my head. I'd gone out, and I met this lady, Julie. I thought, 'I've gotta tell her,' so I sat her down. I said, 'Well, this is your chance to go,' and she said, 'No,' and I thought, 'My God. That was... (CHUCKLES) That was amazing.' She was my rock. (MUTTERS INDISTINCTLY) Over all of this time, the counselling of the boys concerning sexual abuse continued. Further allegations were made, and this time it was sodomy. CHILDREN CHATTER He was charged with indecently assaulting and sodomising both of his sons. Well, they said that I was playing with them and abusing them, and when they hopped into bed, I was... SOTTO VOCE: Yeah. I'm thinking, 'Oh well. This is it. We're finally going to court. The truth will come out,' and you walk into this foreboding building ` this huge powerful building that just resonates power. It has so much power emanating from it. They call your name, and here you are in this box. I'd seen it a thousand times in movies, and I'm thinking, 'My God.' He says, 'How do you plead?' And I said, 'I'm bloody innocent,' and then the process starts. The prosecution evidence against Michael was the interviews with his two sons, the evidence of the counsellor and also the evidence of Michael's ex-wife. PROSECUTOR: Michael took Tom into bushes and pulled his pants... OVERLAPPING SPEECH OVERLAPPING SPEECH Michael stood outside the shower behind Tom... ...Arthur's penis... Michael also rubbed Arthur's bottom with his hands after rubbing his penis. It was ridiculous. You sit there in total disbelief that these things are being said about you, and you're so angry. You are so angry, but you can't show it, because you've got 12 people judging your life. You've gotta show no emotion. Then there was the evidence from the medical practitioner who'd examined the boys saying there was no obvious signs of sexual abuse, but it couldn't be ruled out. None of it ever happened. None of it ever happened. None of it. As is usual in cases like this, the most compelling testimony before the jury was the evidence of Michael's two sons. It was very confronting to hear them say it ` that I'd done all of these things to them. I remember sitting in a room doing a video interview while they were asking me questions, with a video camera on me, and not being in the actual court itself. Just had somebody asking me who was playing rude games with me and` and who was touching me. Seeing my boys on video tape, I could see how much they'd grown in the last three years, cos I hadn't seen them. I felt love for the boys. I just felt love. You know, I'm` I'm` What I'm thinking of is that... (INHALES SHARPLY) once I'm found not guilty, I get to see my boys again. LOCK TURNS, KEYS JINGLE It was after the court session that day. I get put into a cell. I was so wound up, because the next thing to come out is the verdict. You know, obviously, they're gonna find me not guilty. The truth would come out. I mean, this is NZ. This is not Uganda; this is NZ. We're a proper country. Innocent men don't go to jail. TENSE STRING MUSIC When the jury gave their verdict, it was not guilty for the youngest son. I felt a sense of relief. They go, 'How do you find the defendant on the second charge?' (SOBS) They go, 'Guilty.' I think I dropped to the floor. It's like hearing about someone you've heard die. You just can't believe it. STAMMERS: That's the feeling I had. 'This is just not happening.' My mother yelled out, 'He's an innocent man,' and I remember looking at my mother and just... (SIGHS) saying sorry. ENGINE HUMS Next day, my parents come along, and my partner and my second brother come along, and, of course, that's emotional. You can't even touch them. You` You're now officially a prisoner. He looked so helpless, and I remember him saying, 'Just get me out of here. 'Just get me out of here. What do I do?' HELICOPTER BUZZES In prison, you get your rights taken away from you. You get told when to piss, when to eat, when to fart, when to shit, when to take pills, when the lights are out, and that's your world. MAN SHOUTS, METAL CLANKS A sentence date comes up, and they call your name, and the judge goes blah blah blah, and then I heard him say, 'Six years and two and a half years,' and to me, that was eight and a half years' jail. I was put into the protection wing for known paedophiles, for white-collar crimes ` basically, for a lot of white boys. MEN CHATTER At night you could here the boys in the general wing ` 'We're gonna get you kiddie-fuckers. We're gonna kill ya.' PENSIVE MUSIC Mum, Dad were just working tirelessly behind the scenes getting lawyers, getting information. Mum, she was... she was just amazing. I could call her at any time. She was paying for everything. Mum and Dad had worked hard all their life to get a mortgage-free house and had a bit of savings to enjoy with the grandchildren, but that went pretty quickly, all the savings they had, and they raised... I think it was about $60,000 to pay for the lawyer. Mum had retired, and she was` she was pretty healthy, but when this came around, she put on weight; she did start smoking. It just consumed her. The appeal came up. You steel yourself for the worst news. You never prepare for good news, cos that's the hardest to get over, and it came back, 'Appeal dismissed.' They chucked it out. There's no new evidence. Nothing had been disproven from the original case, and I'm thinking, 'My God. This is it. I'm inside for the whole time.' Birthdays, Christmas Days... It was terrible. Ready, ready, go! ALL SHOUT That's another reason why you have kids ` just to shower them with gifts and make them feel special. And they had that` they had that taken away from them, because I couldn't be there for them. I always wanted to see my father, but I knew that there was no way that I could see him. Um, I was almost 10, and I knew that my father was in prison, but I didn't fully understand what prison meant at the time. I just really missed him, and that's why I was so upset. I felt almost... alone. There was nothing happening. Nothing happening on the appeal side. There was nothing happening. I was dealing with the fact that I'm gonna be inside for the full six years, and then one day the screws come to get me, and they says, 'You've got a phone call,' and it was Mum. She says, 'I've found him.' I say, 'What do you mean?' And she says, 'I've found him. 'His name's Rob Harrison. He's your new appeal lawyer,' and her voice was just lifted. She was on cloud nine again. LIGHTS CLICK, BUZZ I got a call from Michael's mother, and she told me what it encompassed, which was counselling of her grandchildren, and once you get that sort of counselling happening, and from what she described to me, I thought, 'This doesn't sound quite right.' For example, she had talked about two years, nearabouts, of counselling of these young fellows before they actually made an allegation, um, to the police. Once I heard that, I thought, 'There's something not right here.' And they said it happened all the time together ` how the fuck can you find someone guilty of one charge and not guilty of the other? It means that they were both bullshit. I do remember speaking to Michael when he was in prison, and during that conversation, what was coming down the line to me was a real strength of character which was saying, 'Look, I` I just haven't done this. I haven't done this.' That, coupled with what I'd heard about the counselling involved, suggested to me that, you know, this man may indeed be innocent. ENGINE HUMS A critical new piece of evidence came to light. That evidence actually came from Arthur's mother. We were just driving along with my mother. Uh, she had an old, white Mitsubishi Chariot that had sheep skins on the` on the seats. I was just sitting in the car thinking about everything that was going on. I said to my mother, 'Does God know when you're lying?' And, uh, she said, 'Yes, he does,' and I said, 'Well, I've been lying about everything that's going on. It's not Dad,' and I just remember being in a lot of tears. This was a real critical point for Arthur's mum. At this point, she starts to question what the counsellor was telling her and starts to question whether Michael actually ever did anything to her children at all. I remember the counsellor being very... I don't wanna say persuasive, because I can't really remember that much, but I remember her asking me a lot of the same questions. Once I took over this case and started preparing it for appeal, I continued to work with Dr Jane Rawls. She's a child psychologist who has, as part of her continuing studies, examined the methodology we use to elicit information from very young children. I'm a hidden person. I'm never seen, and I never` and I never meet the parties, and so I've never met Arthur. I was given the court documents ` documents that covered the transcripts of the evidential interviews that the children had had, affidavits that the counsellor had made. She took to the counselling session that if children behaved in a certain sexual way, then the cause of that could be, and was highly likely to be, that they had been sexually abused. He didn't actually, for quite some time, say that he'd been sexually abused. She introduced the idea of abuse. She asked him... to imagine what it would be like to be abused. Now, we know that children who are asked to imagine something can sometimes get confused between what they've imagined and what has actually happened. She would say, 'Was it your dad that was doing this?' And I would say yes, that it was him that was doing it, because, you know, he was mean to me at some stage, or, you know, maybe I wanted to get back at him for it. Like, I'd heard it so much that... Or maybe she had put doubt in my mind that it was my father, that, you know, finally I just thought, 'Well, maybe it was.' The counsellor used closed questions, and by closed question, it's one that only will allow the answerer to say yes or no. In this case, there was a massive amount of closed questions, which meant that it was potential to guide the child in a direction rather than letting the child give an account. The question forms that she used and the procedures that she used raised real alarm bells with me. By the time the police become involved and interview these children, they're not looking back to see what input has been, uh, given to these children; no one's questioning the wisdom, if you like, or the evidence that these children are giving, and that was a real flaw. Arthur and his brother had two evidential interviews six months apart. When I analysed each of the evidential interviews,... I want you to answer 'yes' or 'no'. ...the first interview had something like 47% closed questions. I'll tell you one of the leading closed questions that was used ` 'Has there ever been a time when Dad put his winkie or his hand up your bottom?' Now, that's a very closed question and has no` reduced risk if that's already been described by the child. Obviously, the risk goes up, um, if that has not been described by the child, which it had not at that time. As a result of the conversation in the car, Arthur's mum prepared an affidavit for me, and in that affidavit, she told us that there had been retractions prior to trial, and now there'd been this retraction in the car. That said to me, 'Here's a young man trying to say, "This hasn't happened to me," 'and everyone saying, "Yes, it has."' The series of retractions that Arthur tried to make were not taken seriously. I remember being angry at her ` like, 'Why is she not listening to me?' Really trying to convince her that I knew what I was talking about and that it wasn't my father. Once the counsellor had heard that these children had retracted, she put it to one side in terms of the significance of what the children were telling her. To her credit, she did advise the police that the children had retracted, but the way in which she did that suggested to the police that this was just normal ` that occasionally children go into denial about what's occurred to them. I remember the counsellor saying, 'It's natural to think that it's not your father, 'and, um` and maybe you're just trying to protect him.' The most significant flaw in the way in which the police handled this was that they had information of the retraction from the counsellor, but they did not pass it on to trial counsel. What that meant was a trial counsel went into trial with a statement, uh, from a young boy that he didn't know the boy had resiled from previously. So what the police did in withholding that information is deprive the defence counsel of an entirely appropriate and necessary part of the cross-examination ` both of the counsellor and of the two boys ` and the jury were left unaware that this boy, on a previous occasion, had said, 'It wasn't Dad.' Rob said, 'This is it. If this does not set you free for something you haven't done, 'you are inside for the whole period of your sentence.' The conversation in the car, where Arthur tells his mother that he'd been lying about his father doing this, that was explosive; that gave us, uh, the` the king hit, if you like, to get rid of this charge. PENSIVE STRING MUSIC Well, the day of the appeal, that was a big day. (CHUCKLES) It was a very very big day in my life. I was sitting in my cell, and I get the call, 'Michael, come to the office,' and I think I ran the 100m in about eight seconds that day. You pick up the phone, 'Hello, Rob,' and he goes, 'You're a free man.' The 17th of October 1996, the court of appeal quashed the convictions and didn't order a retrial. I was gonna see my boys again. You know, it's what you` you fought so long and hard for was gonna happen. Rob says, 'You're a free man.' I go to the screws, 'I'm a free man. You gotta get me outta here.' They says, 'We can't until we get the paperwork through.' You fight, you fight, you fight, and they still find another reason to keep you in an extra night. I mean, it doesn't sound like a big thing. It's a huge thing, you know? They keep you in an extra night because of their processes. DOOR CLANKS, KEYS JINGLE STRING MUSIC CONTINUES ENGINE HUMS They're due to pick me up the next day, and we found a private, secluded spot, and lo and behold, there's a helicopter circling above us, and we were thinking, 'Oh, they're coming to get me.' (CHUCKLES) Actually, I didn't care. It was` It was just so good to see her, and the joy, and I rung my ex-wife, and I said, 'I'm coming up to see the boys,' and she said, 'Fine,' and we arranged a time, and I remember going to the front door,... BIRD TWEETS I was in the lounge, uh, and I heard a knock at the door or a doorbell, uh, and I go down to open the door, and I was, like, 'Mum. Mum. It's Dad.' (LAUGHS) Look at my boys! Oh. ...and there they were. (CHUCKLES) Just gave him this huge hug, and Dad was crying, because he was` he was happy, and I was happy to see him. I was just so happy to see him. And they'd growing into, you know, like, two wonderful boys. Once Dad was out of prison, I just felt really close to him. Things got back to normal. You know, the main thing was going down the road to get a bottle of milk any time I liked. (CHUCKLES) My ex remarried; he worked with children ` with IHC kids. The boys seem happy. Everything seemed perfect,... and then my life changed again. We found out that my boys were actually being abused. After 14 and a half months in prison, I was free, allowed to go after the court of appeal quashed my conviction for paedophilia against my own son. But then things got really bad. TENSE MUSIC My ex-wife rung me on a Friday night and said that she'd caught her husband with a mentally disabled boy, masturbating him, and I just thought, 'My God. He hasn't been doing that to my boys, has he?' By the time I got over there, he was gone, and she goes, 'My God. I think he's been playing with our boys too,' and I` I just wanted to kill him. I just wanted to kill him. I just wanted to hurt him. What else would a father think of some bastard who touches your kids? TAPE WHIRRS, CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS My stepfather would every morning just come in and say that he was tucking me in for school, and he'd leave his hands down the front of my pants for a while. Um, the biggest thing that I remember is him saying, you know, um, 'This is our little secret,' basically implying that he didn't want me telling anybody else. Um, I was just really confused. I thought it was really weird, but it had gone on for such a long time, I guess I just got accustomed to it. You know, it was a part of getting ready for school ` the same as putting a shirt on or pulling your pants up or something like that. If he's not being believed by his counsellor about his dad or about sexual abuse, then why should he bother to say about what actually was going on? So he was easy prey. TAPE WHIRRS CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS I remember giving this evidence as just describing what my stepdad was doing to me but saying that it was my father that was doing it. I'm saying what actually happened, and, I guess, imposing my father as the one that was doing it, um, and using it as if it was him that did it. I think by then, I'd just come to believe that it was Dad, because saying that it wasn't wasn't getting anywhere, so maybe I'd got it wrong; maybe I was confused. What was going on at home with the stepfather all the time should've been revealed in the counselling sessions. SOBS: That's what really upsets me is all that time, while he was in jail, that prick was there with them, mentally blackmailing them. He must've been smiling all the way. PENSIVE STRING MUSIC When he was tucking Arthur into bed, he would put his hand down and touch him. (SMACKS LIPS) With Tom, his thing was the shower, and, 'I'll take extra-special care of your genitals.' That's what he did. He also masturbated over them and came over them while they were asleep. I was more than shocked; I was devastated for, uh, Michael, but I was also devastated for his sons. I hadn't opened my mind to the concept that maybe someone else had been abusing these boys. In November 1997, the boys' stepfather was jailed for two years and four months for their abuse and that of another child in his care. He admitted molestation had occurred regularly over three to four years. TENSE MUSIC When Mum found out, she was just sickened. I feel disgusted at him for what he did and angered at the pain he caused my family ` my whole family. TAPE WHIRRS We were in court, uh, in, like, a little side office, and I remember saying to my mother, 'It wasn't dad that did it; 'it was my stepfather that was touching me and playing rude games,' and so my stepfather looked at me, gave me the most evil look that I can remember ` it was a sort of, you know, 'shut the hell up' type look. But it gets worse ` when Arthur went in to give his evidence in court, his stepfather was the support person ` the victim support person who sat beside him. JANE: His support person was, in actual fact, his abuser ` the real abuser. You're completely trapped, so either you're gonna go nuts, or, um, you're gonna shut up and, um,... implode. I cannot imagine the pressure that was put on him. I'm in awe of my son's strength of mind ` after all they put him through ` to still come up with, 'Does God know when you're lying?' He's an amazing boy. Absolutely amazing boy. < WINDOW WIPERS WHIRR Eventually, the Commissioner of Police, Rob Robinson, wrote a letter of apology to Michael, which apologised unreservedly for what had occurred. 'I accept, without reservation, you've been proved innocent beyond all reasonable doubt,' and you cannot get any better vindication than the police, with an official letterhead from the NZ Police and the government, admitting they were wrong in what they did. We applied for compensation on the basis that we had a man who'd been proven innocent, who was innocent when he was convicted, that spent 14 months in jail separated from his children, vilified throughout everyone who knew him because of what had occurred, uh, and he deserved compensation for that. Unfortunately, the government had brought in some criteria, and his case sat outside that criteria. REPORTER: ...one of the criteria that cabinets come up with is it requires a person who qualifies in terms of the above mentioned eligibility rules... We went and saw Phil Goff, who was the opposition spokesman on justice. He was really supportive and took up Michael's case on his behalf. Well, I think both this case and the David Dougherty case were a turning point in the NZ justice system. REPORTER: The government is changing the law so compensation can be sought if people have their convictions quashed on appeal in the High Court. Compensation was awarded, plus 7,500 damages for the extra night he was kept in prison after his convictions were quashed. That's a total of around $578,000. When I first found out I was in line to get some compensation, I immediately thought, 'Great. I can support my parents ` set them up for life,' and that just brought me so much joy. Michael's mother was a former school teacher. She was a hard-working, you know, straight sort of a citizen. She and her husband, uh, had to remortgage their home. They, uh, paid up` All of their money that they had put aside for their retirement was gone. Uh, she was ending up apple-sorting in terms of getting sufficient money together just for them to get by. Just before the money came through, my brother called me about 10 o'clock at night and said my father's been rushed to hospital. He's not in a good way. So I get over there as quickly as I can. There was my father, lying on a coffin in the funeral parlour, and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God.' Five weeks after still getting over Dad, and my mum dies. She just got up one morning, lit a fag and keeled over on her bed and died. After all the stress and... and everything that went on, Mum and Dad and died within weeks of each other. My biggest regret was that the money was for them. That was the whole point of it. It` It was for them. GENTLE MUSIC BIRD TWEETS Rob calls me and says, 'The compensation's come through; the money's in your account.' We went on a few trips, holidays. I bought a new car; I bought Julie a new car; we fixed Julie's house up, and we gave the boys some money. Yeah, well, I enjoyed playing golf, and he said, 'Right. I'm taking you down to the Newmarket Golf Centre.' (CHUCKLES) 'You can choose whatever clubs you like.' I said, 'Yeah?' (CHUCKLES) The money was nice ` there's no denying it ` but it became blood money, given that I never should've had that money in the first place if they'd just done their job properly. We went out to the casino one night with some friends, just for a night out, and I discovered the poker tables up there, and I thought, 'Well, that looks interesting.' Well, I was hooked. I then became totally addicted to gambling. MOODY DOWNBEAT MUSIC Well, life had really slapped Michael around. He'd been convicted of abusing his children, which he had never done. He'd been thrown in the prison as a paedophile. He had been then acquitted after 14 months. Then he discovers that the stepfather, the man who stepped into his shoes in his original family, has been abusing his children. His parents died. He then has to fight for three years to get compensation. I just thought, 'I don't want this money.' It's hard to explain, but it was like a progression. I got addicted to gambling, and that was my way of getting rid of the money. I told him to invest it, put it in a house, but it didn't happen. SIREN BLARES IN DISTANCE I used to wake up every morning thinking, 'I've got to get to the casino.' So, basically, I spent all my time there, and I was losing very heavily ` like, $1000 a night. I'd met a hot Danish woman at my gym, and then that progressed into a full-blown sexual affair, and that was one of the most stupidest things I ever did. I couldn't live with myself after it finished. I said to Julie, 'I've been having an affair. 'I'll move out,' and she said, 'Damn right, you'll move out.' HORN HONKS IN DISTANCE After that, I just went to the casino, worked, tried to go out with as many women as I could on dating sites. I was just horrible. Just absolutely horrible. Didn't wanna know anyone. Didn't care about anyone. He was bitter. He was aggressive. He was not pleasant to be around. MOODY MUSIC CONTINUES Called my brother about 1 o'clock in the morning and said to him, 'I've gotta get outta here or I might not be around.' I had nothing. I was actually in debt. I got a phone call saying, 'I'm broke. I've got a gambling addiction,' and I said, 'Right. Ban yourself from the casino. Get yourself down here as quick as you can. 'Just get away from it,' and that's what he did. When he came down, he was still angry ` shouting a lot. I had to have lots of talk to him. 'Let's just settle down and` and just talk about things.' BIRD TWEETS I decided I had to get the family back together because we were fractured from what had happened to me, so I said to my brother, 'Let's organise a barbecue, and let's get everyone over here,' and to their credit, they all turned up, and we haven't looked back since, actually. We're, uh, back as a happy family ` me, my two brothers and my sister. To get the family back, which was all my parents ever wanted, was a major thing for me. I started a job. I'm on a trial period, and part of the contract is that I have to consent to a police check, which I never gave any second thoughts. My manager comes up to me, and he says, 'Uh, look, the police have flagged you, uh, you know, 'because of your convictions there.' (SIGHS) That was hard. That was really hard. I had to advise them that there was a letter from the Commissioner of Police saying, uh, this man is totally innocent. I had to advise them that he'd been compensated. I had to try and explain again what had happened to this man. I think this case is at the worst end in terms of the` the scale of injustice that is done to` to any person. It cost my parents five or six years' relationship with my children and my brother's other brother's and sister's children. Ready, ready, go! ALL SHOUT ALL SHOUT (LAUGHS) They had his whole childhood, youth, just taken away from him. He had little patches of good stuff, but the majority of his life was consumed of guilt of what he did to me, and he did absolutely nothing wrong. (SOBS) Nothing. It's taken 20 years of my life ` just, um, guilt ` Are you hiding back there? CHILDREN CHATTER so much guilt, because I-I felt like it was all my fault, like I had` it was all because of what I said. Go, go, go, go, go! It got so bad that I didn't wanna get to know anybody. I just locked myself away. I kept very quiet. I stayed in my room until it got too bad that I just went outside and... and tried to cut my wrist with a knife, because it just felt too much. It just felt like it was too much. Not once did I even think that he was the cause of this problem. Not` Not once did it even cross my mind. I` It was just the professionals that let us down. I want him to know that it wasn't his fault. I know that a lot of sons say this, but my dad is my hero. Knowing what he went through,... ...um, what it was like for him inside prison, coming out on top of it and being strong... (SOBS) and listening to him say, 'You're not gonna beat me. You're not gonna get me.' I'm just inspired by him. I don't think Arthur's ever been told what they did was wrong. No one's ever come` They've apologised to me,... ...you know? But they've never apologised to him. Arthur's never received an apology. Now, wasn't he the main victim here? Captions by Sarah Maiava. Edited by Glenna Casalme. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015