More evidence has emerged about former PSO chief executive Gillian Bremner’s decision to instruct a staff member to destroy records of children and young people in the care of Presbyterian Support Otago (PSO).
The evidence showed PSO staff believed the records contained information which could damage the organisation and the records were destroyed to protect it.
The evidence is included in Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care hearing transcripts, which referred to comments made by PSO staff about the destruction of the records by a senior decision-maker, since identified as Mrs Bremner.
A statement signed by a PSO staff member and dated December 2020, detailed a conversation with other staff members as they worked on a spreadsheet of information requested by the commission.
"A staff member stated that I wouldn’t find anything because in relatively recent years a senior decision-maker had ordered that all records that were held in relation to the children’s homes previously run by PSO, apart from the register of names, were destroyed and that she had stated at the time that this was advice given", the statement said.
"I indicated my surprise at this situation and why files would be destroyed and that there must have been something in the files that could have been detrimental to PSO, and he said there was, very detrimental."
Another document, an email correspondence between staff members from 2021, said the destruction of records was done under the senior decision-maker’s "explicit instructions".
"The staff member stated that she did not agree with the destruction of the records as although we were not legally obliged to keep them for longer than 10 years, she had kept them in good faith and guarded them with intensity as she knew their importance to the children concerned.
"Her feeling on the destruction was that the senior decision-maker did this to protect the agency."
Notes from an investigation by current PSO chief executive Jo O’Neill say Mrs Bremner "indicated that an adviser was involved and that they had signalled that having the records was too much of a risk to PSO".
"A staff member also stated there had been some sanitising of notes because people wouldn’t understand the treatment that was dealt out back then", the notes went on to say.
"The staff member stated examples of this treatment as being washing a child’s mouth out with soap and water, clipping them around the ear, locking them in rooms."
This staff member had "said that kind of thing was OK then but people would be horrified now", and the decision by the senior decision-maker to destroy the documents "wasn’t questioned by anyone because she said she’d received advice", the notes said.
It went on to say the decision-maker "did it to protect PSO" and "people weren’t careful about what they wrote in notes back then, they were too honest".
Further evidence submitted to the commission by Cooper Legal detailed the experiences of a survivor given the pseudonym, "Ms PN" — who was at Glendining Home, in Dunedin, from the ages of five to about 14 years old.
She was subjected to severe physical and psychological abuse, including "being beaten by staff with objects, being locked in a broom cupboard overnight on multiple occasions and being tied naked to a flagpole as a punishment for grieving over her father’s death", the evidence stated.
"In addition, Ms PN described being pulled from bed and molested, raped and sodomised on multiple occasions as well as being passed around a ring of paedophiles, who she recalled were parishioners of the Presbyterian Church.
"These individuals raped and sodomised PN, often when she was made to visit them for meals, or after Church services.
"[Ms] PN also described being repeatedly raped by the orphanage gardener and having her breasts fondled by the orphanage manager."
Mrs Bremner, who is believed to be living in Botswana, did not respond to further attempts to reach her yesterday.
