The Bay of Plenty carpenter has set off from Bluff with his sights set on Cape Reinga, a pilgrimage of sorts following a mental breakdown in 2020 that left him out of work and on ACC.
Mr Troth is a sexual abuse survivor, and 25 years on, the emotional, mental, and psychological toll has continued to have an effect — his breakdown being a result of that.
His journey to walk the length of the country will take more than two million steps — he has worked it out to be 2,721,840 steps — and take about 55 days to complete and is the last phase of his healing journey.
"Raising awareness of sexual abuse is my number one goal, to destigmatise abuse and to encourage victims to seek help."
"And on the walk, I’ll just process the last things that I need to process and flush out what emotions, and go through everything while I’m on this walk and I’m not around my family, I’m not committed to anything, but just putting one foot in front of the other and to just wrap it all up."
Having tried several avenues over time, Sam reached breaking point in 2020 and reached out to ACC.
He was referred to a psychologist, and through intensive therapy and then through ongoing counselling with Bruce Montgomery from Male Survivors Bay of Plenty (MSBOP), he began his path to healing.
In New Zealand, 62% of males in psychiatric care were sexually abused as children and 90% of Kiwi males who commit suicide before age 14 have been sexually abused.
An estimated one in six boys up to age 18, experience sexual violence, many of whom never disclose their abuse — a fact that Mr Troth wants to destigmatise.
"So everyone just suffers in silence, and then we lose good men to suicide, we lose good men to addiction. We lose good fathers and good brothers and sons. We, as a society, I feel that we just lose out on the whole," Mr Troth said.
He said he doesn’t want to be "the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff," and is also focused on education and awareness.
"When Sam reached out to MSBOP to continue his recovery journey he stated his motivation. For his next block of work he wanted to be inspiring to other male survivors. Sam came up with the idea of increasing the awareness for males who have had the experience of being abused by walking from Bluff to Cape Reinga," Mr Montgomery said.
Mr Troth will be stopping at several Male Survivors branches around the country to share his story and inspire other survivors to keep pushing forward.
He to visit parliament and share his story with ministers and officials, to advocate for support for survivors, education and sensible sentencing.
