Jeremy's story

Soft piano music plays continuously in the background for the duration of the film. On a black screen is the text ‘Warning. This video contains coarse language and discussions of violence. Viewer discretion is advised.’

Jeremy sits in the lounge of his home, being interviewed by someone off camera. He has short, grey hair, and is wearing a black Adidas t shirt. There are small paintings on the wall, behind him is a black leather couch and a wood burner.

Jeremy: “Kia Ora, my name is Jeremy. I'm 57 years old, father of three, grandfather of four, great grandfather of one, that's me.”

Cut to a shot of Jeremy from below. He is facing away from the camera,  standing outside in a wooded area with very large trees.

Jeremy: “As far back as I can remember a lot of psychological abuse from a parent um and physical as I got a little bit older.”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “I was in a room by myself and so I remember feeling I guess lonely but also bored. To alleviate the boredom my two sisters used to draw pictures and read books but unfortunately that wasn't in me and, so I would engage in behaviour that my mum decided was naughty.”

Cut to slow motion scenes of Jeremy walking around his house. Standing in the kitchen, we see him from behind, with the fridge on his left, and framed photos of children on the apricot-coloured wall. There is a hanging pot plant to the right and another on top of the fridge.

Jeremy: “I just asked questions, asked for a drink of water all the time, just things like that to get some attention. Instead of getting the attention that I was looking for I would get punished.”

Cut to Jeremy wearing a T-shirt and beanie, standing on an empty white sand beach, casting his fishing line into the ocean. He slowly reels it in. The sky is blue and he is cast in shadow by the sun.

Jeremy: “So, 18 years old I leave college and my belief and my value system is well instilled in me, that if you want to get anything in life you yell and scream to start off with, and if that doesn't work then you use your fists.”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “Getting away from home and going to college and stuff like that where I sort of I guess was looking for a reprieve. I think definitely again, the psychological stuff um there just the intimidation of older boys and stuff like that it was that was societal restraints put upon us, it was just ‘you've … just gotta be tough’ you know. And if you're not tough … When I look back there were some boys there that were sent there by their parents who just weren't cut out to be in a place like that. They were quite sensitive and stuff like that, but you learned pretty quickly to be tough.

Cut to Jeremy, standing outside among tall trees. He is wearing a green polar fleece with a ‘Hunting & Fishing’ logo. His lip quivers as he stares off into the distance lost in thought.

Jeremy: “And then … the sexual, stuff the shame that came with that. A sixth former in my dormitory started to sexually abuse me or use me for his self-gratification, and there's a whole lot of other boys here, how come me how come you pick me?”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “You know looking back I lost some self-worth. always also wanted to … still that attention seeking. I wanted to gain everyone's approval of what I was doing. And that … went into my adult life … in a young teenage life. So I devoted to sports. And when I looked back in my life the sporting grounds was where I got the praise in my life.”

Cut to Jeremy in an old wooden shed. He walks towards a bench which holds various buckets, containers, and pots. Three fishing rods are mounted on the wall in front of a window. Jeremy reaches up and picks up a rod and walks out of the shed. The scene is in slow motion.

Jeremy: “So I dedicated a lot of my growing up years … to sport because I was good at and the praise and stuff like that came from there. So I was always looking for acceptance for just who I was.”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “Up until that stage in my life all … I was feeling and the way that I was behaving only ever affected me. But once I started to look or move into a relationship then it seemed to become everybody's else's around me's problem as well. It was definitely around … ‘Jeremy will look after Jeremy’ so you take a power and control role. I didn't recognise it as that, but when I look back now, just about everything that I did around my relationships and my family was to make sure that everything went my way, how I wanted it, when I wanted it. Even when I started to change my behaviour, or start to look at changes in my behaviour, I didn't see myself as a power and control freak. It would go from nice and quietly like this, to just a full-on verbal attack to start off with. Because it was only verbal when I was just yelling and screaming … half the time I couldn't even recall after I'd calmed down what I'd said.”

Cut to the beach, Jeremy is in the distance walking away from the camera up a completely empty white sand beach, there are beach grass blowing in front of the camera and in the distance rocks breaking through the sand. A close up of his dark brown suede leather jacket focuses on a white metal ‘white ribbon’ pin (a symbol for standing against violence).

Jeremy: “There was definitely people within my working environment and in the public that would upset me sometimes, but I wouldn't react with them the way that I did at home.”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “And the bottom line is again you know it's hard because I'm not consciously thinking like this, but in my castle I'm the king and nobody else in my home has the ability to stop me or my behaviour.

You don't go into a relationship ‘full blazes’ so to speak. You’re not physically harming or yelling and screaming straight away. Actually, that partner meets a nice guy who's quite sweet and charming, and knows the right things to say and stuff like that. They don't initially get to meet the whole you. You're holding stuff back from them, hiding stuff from them, how you're truly feeling. And again, when I look back, this reinforced to me that I chose to use that behaviour when I started to use it. Because there was stuff that my partner would say or do to me, when we were first courting or going out together, and I didn't react to it. When you're in these relationships you're not an a***hole 24/7. Every once in a while, you give your kids or your partner a glimpse of the fulla that they fell in love with. And that's how some of our victims get trapped in the relationship. Because they know that guy's in there and just hoping that he's going to come back.

Until that stage in my life no one had ever intervened or told me that my behaviour needed to change. None of my close mates or anything like this. They certainly supported me through stuff … but no one sort of said ‘Hey man [ ___ ] maybe you should do something about this,’ A lot of people will get some good advice, particularly victims as well, it's about timing. ‘You need to get out of this relationship, he's going to hurt you, he's going to do this or whatever, you need to get some help mate, get some change.’ Nah [ __ ], until I'm ready to hear it, no thought of changing any of my behaviour. ‘I don't have to go into a relationship - there's nothing wrong you - just need to take me - hopefully this girl’ you know, whatever. You just continue in that vein, so relationships come and end.

When I came back down to Foxton, I started hanging out with a fulla who's quite extreme, he's out there. And this I started hanging out with this guy who I considered violent. So as long as I'm not as bad as him, I'm all good.

His level of aggression changed. He wasn't as angry and wanting to be in conflict all the time and everything like that, so I'm like ‘[ ___ ] what's the matter with you man?’ and he finally said to me, ‘Oh actually bro I've been doing this anger management course.”

Cut to close up of Jeremy in the longue grinning and laughing at himself.

God, I don't know what possessed him to, but he just called in on his way to course one night, and he goes ‘what are you up to? Why don't you just come for a ride for something different. They've got coffee and biscuits.’ ‘All right then man. I'll come for a ride. I'll support you’, I'm still, yeah, ‘I'll come for a ride to support you then bro, come on then.’

Cut to Jeremy sitting at a table outside his house, drinking coffee with another man. There is a hanging pot of flowers in the background. The man is in his forties, pākehā, with a brown moustache and short, and nearly shaved head. He is wearing a black sweater. They chat inaudibly.

Jeremy: “So I jumped in this car, and we walked into this room, and I got introduced to a group of people, but particularly start off with to a couple that ran the Horowhenua violence and prevention program, Ngaire and Bob Thomas.”

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “One night … five or six weeks into it, she asked me to role play with her. And this role play was to act as her aggressive partner. I said ‘oh yeah I can act that.’

I ended up, I mean like to me I'm acting, but I just dropped into this role. I'm crossing the room, I'm yelling at her at the top of my voice. She wouldn't look at me, so grabbed her by the chin - and don't forget this is a 60-year-old pākehā lady - pulled her face up to make eye contact with me, and I'm going ‘what are you crying for?’ She was pretending to cry because she'd blown the car up, this was the scenario. It ended up she was getting a bit frightened of me. It becomes so ingrained in you. I was just getting so frustrated because she wouldn't talk to me that I whacked the seat she was sitting on, and she went ‘stop’ and then my mate jumps up and he's like ‘calm bro, calm down’. And I'm like ‘bro I'm acting’ and he goes ‘you need to calm down man’ and something clicked in my head. [long pause]

And what it was, was my kids. [he swallows hard] When they were little, particularly my daughter, when I used to be yelling and screaming at them, and standing over the top of them, and everything like that. And sometimes they would go ‘stop Dad you're scaring me’ and I'd be like ‘don't be so [ __ ] stupid, I love you I'll [ __ ] never hurt you.’

And I'd started to trust this woman a little bit. I just looked at her. I thought to myself ‘this woman's got no reason to lie to me.’

‘Am I scary Ngaire?’

She goes ‘Jeremy when you get like that, I can only imagine what it's like for those around you in your house.’

And then I did something that I hadn't done since I was a kid. And when you've been an angry fella for a long time it becomes quite scary. And I just burst into tears [Jeremy gestures with his hands indicating tears falling] and I couldn't stop crying, and I'm just sitting like ‘what the [ __ ] is the matter with me?’ trying to wipe it all away. Then she made it worse because she came and put her arm around me. [Jeremy holds out his arm, demonstrating]

You know at that stage in my life and still to this day - I don't know whether it's something … mentally or anything like that - but I don't recall ever being hugged by my mum. All I remember [swallows] is the hidings. I don't remember any birthdays or stuff like that. But this woman, she came and put her arm around me, and then she sat me down. The rest of the boys went back into the course with her husband. And then she just sat on the porch with me, and she asked me a question that no one had ever asked me in my life. None of my teachers, none of the police that I'd interacted with over the years, none of the people around me that knew. And she just said to me ‘what makes you tick Jeremy? Why are you so angry? Tell me your story.’

And so I sat on the porch and I just told her about my childhood. The first person that I'd opened up to about it, you know like fully, about what used to happen and stuff like that. She didn’t interrupt me or anything, she just sat and listened to me. And at the end of it she goes ‘Oh well, now we’ve got something to work with aye.’

I went ‘I suppose’ and I went home. … I’d been sitting in the background, taking stuff in, listening to stuff, I went back and it just … that night opened me up to the type of man that I didn’t realise I was.

When you’re trapped in this world, you don’t ever take an inward look at yourself. I would have protected my partner, and my partners over the years, and my kids, with my life. As most partners and fathers would. Never ever did I take an inward look and think that maybe my kids and my partners needed some protection from me and my behaviour.

I got Ngaire's attention and just apologised to her for the way I'd been last week. I just said ‘It just made me realise I don't want to be that man that you showed me I am last week. I don't want to be him anymore. Can you help me?’

And she just went ‘Of course I can.’ And she just put her arm around me and walked me into the course. So I sat there, and I did a 20-week course, and then I did another 20 weeks because I was still picking stuff up.

It was particularly around the psychological and the emotional abuse. If you liken it to a tradesman, a tradesman likes to have all the tools that he needs for a job to get through something. It's the same with life. If you don't have all the skills and tools, at some stage you need to get to a place where you go and look for that, or someone leads you to a place where you can start finding the tools and the skills that you need to operate differently to you have for the rest of your life. I had a tool kit with only half the tools and skills that I needed in it. And the top skill in that bag, once I got old enough and big enough, was violence.

What you have got to understand too is that you don't just suddenly become magically violence free. It’s not going to be plain sailing from that day. When you decide to make changes you're still going to make some backward steps along your journey. I think the biggest thing that I found was … even when I was making the backwards steps … and there'd be the odd time that I just still lost the plot, I started to take responsibility for my behaviour and any apology was a genuine apology.

Cut back to Jeremy and the other man having coffee outside.

Jeremy: “Having and keeping that support around you would be really important to help you maintain that new change, until you can take all your new skills and tools and start using them as number one.

Cut back to Jeremy in the lounge.

Jeremy: “So how's my life and my relationship with my kids and family now? It's 90% better than it was. I can't take back the hurt and the damage that I've done, and that definitely will affect my kids for the rest of their life. But it's got to a place where I believe that it's the best that it can be. We're able to tell each other that we love each other, and be there for each other when need it. And they're not too frightened to ring me if they get in any binds or anything like that. Because back in the day I would have just yelled at them you know [laughs] so that relationship's there.

I've always I've been a bit of a collector as an adult, so I always had nice stuff in my house. And my kids are never allowed to touch it like ‘don't you touch.’ And they knew … and [I was] so regimental that I could tell if it was moved. I'd be like ‘who touched that?’ and … they'd be genuinely scared of me, and so they wouldn't touch anything.

So when my daughter started bringing my grandkids to my home, before I was too far along on this journey of change, she'd be running around the house. trying to grab them to stop them from touching things. And I'd be like ‘Becs it's okay, don't worry about it.’ And she's like ‘what?’ … and I'm like ‘yeah nah,’ and I just take my grandkids over, I go ‘here, do you want a hold of it? But you know, just hold it when Koro is around.’ And she's like [Jeremy has a confused look on his face, imitating his daughter’s expression] ‘Oh how come you weren't like that with us?’ And I'm like ‘well, this is it.’ So she noticed, she saw the benefits for her kids.

[Jeremy pauses, looks into the distance and swallows} I just um. Yeah, It’s um, it’s just different. I’m just not carrying the level of rage that I used to carry in my life. They can see that, and they know that, and they trust me now enough to come back in. For me that’s a big one is just gaining their trust back. And I guess, the last thing is that I believe anybody's possible of change. I don't believe there's no throw away the key cases.”

Cut to Jeremy and the other man walking across sand dunes towards the beach. They smile and chat inaudibly.

Jeremy: “All it takes for change to initiate or to happen is the right person, at the right time, with the right words. And anybody has the potential to be that person for someone they're trying to help.”

Cut to a black screen.