As he lay in a hospital bed days before Christmas - preparing for his fourth surgery in 10 days while doctors battled a deadly sepsis infection - a former police officer decided he didn’t want to go to his grave holding another man’s shameful secret.
So, he revealed to his wife how 45 years earlier, after being sent to a Catholic boarding school in Auckland following his mother’s death, his Marist Brother teacher tried to rape him under the guise of the school’s harsh disciplinary regime.
The 59-year-old, whom the Herald has agreed to refer to only as Phillip, had never said the words out loud before.
Somewhat to his surprise, he survived the health scare.
Now, after months of sleepless nights, he has decided to speak out more broadly about his trauma with the hope it motivates other possible victims of the same “monster” to step forward before it’s too late.
He claims his abuser was Charles Afeaki - a now 82-year-old inmate at South Auckland Corrections Facility who left a trail of confirmed victims at Marist Brothers Primary School in Invercargill and St Paul’s College in Ponsonby in the 1970s and early 80s.
Afeaki’s most recent trip to court was last week, when a judge ordered a two-month extension to his existing 25-month prison sentence after he admitted guilt in abusing an eighth boy in the 1970s. New charges, still pending, were filed in March after a ninth accuser stepped forward with allegations from the same period.
If police file charges in relation to Phillip’s allegation, he will be the tenth person to come forward.
Defence lawyer Roger Eagles said he was unaware of the latest allegation against his client and, even if the details were put to Afeaki directly, it’s unlikely he would be able to deny or accept the allegation firmly.
Afeaki also had surgery in December and his frailty has worsened over the past six months as he recovered in prison, he explained.
In an interview with authorities before his most recent sentencing, Afeaki said he didn’t remember that accuser or the allegation he had pleaded guilty to, but he accepted he must have done it because it matched so closely how he had victimised other boys.
Details Phillip shared with the Herald - and, just days ago, with police - also had many similarities with Afeaki’s prior offending, as outlined in 30 years of court documents.
“I just don’t want him to get away with it,” Phillip said of his reason for coming forward now, explaining that he hopes he, too, can at some point look the defendant in the eyes and read aloud a victim impact statement.
“I don’t care about the penalty - even if it’s two extra days - I just want him held accountable.”
Phillip’s mother died of cancer in 1975, when he was just 9 years old, and had specified in her will that income from their Glenfield house was to be used to send her two sons to boarding school.
He lived in Ōtāhuhu with his father, whom he had met for the first time a few months before his mother’s death, until he was old enough to attend St Paul’s around 1979. He became a weekly boarder, taking a train or bus home to his father’s South Auckland home on weekends.
He recalled Afeaki supervising shower time inside his dormitory, telling the queue of boys when to get in and out, but saw nothing untoward until the alleged interaction some time between April and June 1980 that would result in the former straight-A student running away and eventually leaving school permanently at the age of 14.
“I can’t recall what led me to giving Brother Charles the finger on that day, but I had done so while in the dormitory,” he said, explaining that no one else had been around.
He claims Afeaki noticed the rude gesture and responded by grabbing him by the arm and pulling him into his personal quarters, closing the door behind him as he began to inflict a series of hard and painful slaps.
“Do you know what the finger means?” Afeaki allegedly asked the young teen. “It means f*** you. So you want me to f*** you, do you?”
The accuser alleges he was then forced to his stomach, as Afeaki began pushing his groin into the boy’s backside.
“I was crying, saying, ‘No, no, I’m sorry, please stop!’” Phillip said. “He then rolled me over and said, ‘Oh, so you don’t want to f*** me then, well did you want me to f*** you? Because that’s what giving the finger means, that’s what you’re telling me.’”
He alleges Afeaki then tried to pull down his shorts, slapping him in the head when he resisted.
“I tried to stop him by putting my hands over my head, but when I did that he would continue to try and pull my shorts off,” Phillip claims. “Believing I was about to be raped, I started to yell abuse at him telling him to f*** off and get away from me, screaming as loud as I could.
“Shortly after, he got off me and told me to just sit there till I calmed down. About a half hour later, he let me out of his quarters.
“I did not know what to do. I had no family to call as I did not have a close relationship with my father.”
The incident, he said, “destroyed me”.
“I didn’t want to go near Brother Charles, didn’t want to be at school and just wanted to run from everything,” Phillip explained.
Phillip recalled running away from school a few days later, spending a few nights in Karangahape Road Cemetery before a good Samaritan took him in for a few days. He then took a bus to Dannevirke, secretly sleeping in a barn belonging to his aunt and uncle for several more days before getting cold and hungry and deciding to knock on their door.
He was shuffled to another uncle’s house in Hastings for a few weeks before he was flown back to Auckland.
“I remember being picked up at the airport by my father,” he recalled. “When I saw him, he looked at me in disgust.”
Phillip said his father immediately took him to meet with the school’s headmaster, but the student didn’t give an explanation as to what had caused his sudden departure.
“I feared not being believed and still had in my mind, ‘Was it just a punishment? Was I at fault?’” he said, explaining that fear he won’t be believed gnaws at the back of his mind even now.
He didn’t stick around the school for long. About a week later, it was agreed he would leave permanently to work at a sheep and beef station in Hastings - a job arranged by his uncle. He stayed in farming for about a decade before later establishing a career in law enforcement.
And as the years passed, he tried to forget. But he couldn’t.
Then came his near-death experience, followed by what seemed like an omen just two months later. He randomly came across a story about Afeaki in the Herald following the defendant’s most recent guilty plea.
For the first time, he realised there were others. Any lingering doubts vanished.
“Now I know he was an active sexual predator at St Paul’s,” he said. “I ask myself, ‘Was I too old for him, too loud and fought back too much so he stopped when he did rather than be caught?’”
For years, Phillip said he had thought about calling St Paul’s College to report his experience. But he never did, remembering that the incident took place in the context of an era when caning students was still acceptable.
“I honestly thought I was the only victim,” he said. “I had no idea.”
Now he worries there might be others that, like him, either haven’t realised Afeaki’s history or are still working up the courage to speak out.
“I think back, watching all us boys showering every night must have been like a kid in a lolly shop for him,” Phillip said. “Did he join the Marist Brothers because he was an actual believer in God or was it to prey on vulnerable young boys? I was a mixed-up, lonely boy back then and was supposed to be protected while at St Paul’s.
“I have read about some of his other victims and my heart goes out to them. At first I thought, ‘Well I’m one of the lucky ones really, and my case is nowhere as bad as some others experienced.’ But now I believe if I hadn’t of fought back as I did, well then, yes, he would have probably continued to rape me.”
Afeaki’s decades of legal troubles began in 1993, when his first accuser came forward to describe abuse from years earlier. By that time, he was no longer a Marist Brother.
Before filing charges against Afeaki later that year, police cast a net looking for other possible victims. Three others agreed to give statements.
Afeaki disputed the allegations, trying without success to convince jurors at his trial that the complainants were seeking revenge on him for having been a harsh schoolmaster. Justice Ted Thomas, who oversaw the trial, later characterised Afeaki as a “wretched and self-dedicated hypocrite” who had lied under oath against “immensely strong“ evidence against him. The Court of Appeal echoed the sentiments, describing Afeaki’s explanation as a “conspiracy theory” seeming to “totally lack any foundation”.
He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment and was released on parole in 1998. He returned to court in 2003 after a fifth accuser came forward, reporting abuse from the same period covered by Afeaki’s previous trial. This time, he admitted the offending and the judge granted a sentence of home detention.
A third tranche of historical charges, concerning accusers six and seven, was filed in 2021. Afeaki again opted for a trial but changed his pleas to guilty in December 2023 after listening to one of the accusers in the witness box.
Auckland District Court judge Kirsten Lummis sentenced Afeaki in August last year to 25 months’ imprisonment, explaining that she was restricted in part by the lower punishment ranges for such crimes at the time of Afeaki’s offending.
Because all of Afeaki’s accusers are from the 1970s and early 80s, the judge also had to consider what the overall sentence would have been had a judge known about all the victims at once. The 25 extra months reflected what she figured the judge overseeing the 1990s trial would have settled on had he had all the facts.
Afeaki’s eighth accuser came forward late last year, resulting in his guilty plea and sentencing this week to a two-month sentence to be served cumulatively with his existing sentence.
“There does need to be some additional penalty to recognise the harm to the victim,” Judge Lummis explained.
Just days before the latest sentencing hearing took place, Afeaki appeared before the Parole Board for the sentence that had been imposed in August. Parole was declined, a Parole Board spokesman told the Herald. His next parole hearing is scheduled for November.
But in the meantime, there’s another case Afeaki must deal with. Charges involving his ninth accuser, filed in March, remain pending in the Whanganui District Court. He has pleaded not guilty and awaits a judge-alone trial.
Phillip told the Herald he hopes his allegation will go through the criminal justice process as well.
Charges have not yet been filed, but that’s not unusual given he only spoke to police in the days leading up to Afeaki’s most recent sentencing.
He’s recently started thinking about what he might say if ever permitted to give a victim impact statement.
“My biggest regret to this day was not exposing you back then for the paedophile you are,” Phillip expects he might say. “I believe it wasn’t religion that led you to being a Marist Brother - it was the freedom to prey on young boys, allowing you time to choose the most vulnerable and less likely to expose your sadistic abuse against them.”
Afeaki’s lawyer, meanwhile, has applied for a stay for Afeaki’s Whanganui charge based on his declining health.
“Mr Afeaki is now struggling with his memory to recall some of these very aged incidents,” he told the Herald, adding that he feels both for his client - who is believed to have stopped offending decades ago - and for the complainants.
As Afeaki’s condition and memory worsens, it becomes more and more “difficult to deal with these matters”, Eagles said.
Phillip said speaking out hasn’t yet given him the peace he hopes for. But he believes there would be a satisfaction in knowing that Afeaki was held to account for an incident he either thought he had got away with or completely forgotten, Phillip said.
“If there is a heaven and hell, he must surely realise he’s booked a one-way ticket to hell,” he said.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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