Loading Docs 2021 - When Nobody Was Looking

From 1970 to 1986, I personally advocated on behalf of scores of children, whose cases I drew to the attention of one cabinet minister after another. It didn't matter whether they were Labour, it didn't matter if they were National, they weren't really interested. The department was rejecting it. [Department of Social Welfare executive] Robin Wilson said it was untrue. Well, what he was saying was that the children were untrue.

– Oliver Sutherland speaks at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, near the end of this documentary

I was not consulted by a lawyer. The police told me to plead guilty. The whole room was full of Pākehās telling me what to do. At the age of 13, all I said was "guilty."

– A member of the Polynesian Panther movement, at the opening of this documentary

He was the first person who came to my house when I was a young child and helped me.

– Lake Alice survivor Hake Halo on Oliver Sutherland

Racism's a pretty stubborn beast, as I'm pretty sure Oliver would agree...

– Journalist Aaron Smale

These data were impeccable, and showing that the Pākehā system was a racist system.

– Doctor Oliver Sutherland on presenting data on racism in the New Zealand justice system, at a 1973 conference

..through his networks, he hears of this psychiatric hospital where children were getting sent to, and they're being electrocuted.

– Investigative journalist Aaron Smale on Oliver Sutherland's discoveries

They would get these electrodes that had been soaked in salt water, and they’d be applied, and then they would proceed to fry the shit out of these kids.

– Investigative journalist Aaron Smale describes the use of shock treatment at Lake Alice Hospital

I have been given electric shock by the people, Mum. The pain is very bad.

– Lake Alice survivor Hake Halo fools the authorities by writing a message in Niuean, while at Lake Alice

I just said 'hey look, racism is not our problem. It's your problem, do something about it'.

– Ex Polynesian Panther Party chairman Will 'Ilolohia on challenging Oliver Sutherland, at a conference in 1973

The judicial system in those days would prosecute eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds for vagrancy, for being idle and disorderly, for being a rogue and a vagabond at the age of 10...

– Doctor Oliver Sutherland on the New Zealand justice system in the 1970s

One guy I know, he got ECT for not eating his vegetables.

– Journalist Aaron Smale on the use of electroconvulsive therapy on children

...children from the age of nine went to Lake Alice. They were being given shock treatment from the age of nine.

– Oliver Sutherland

When you looked at those politicians, I mean, you knew that it wasn't going to change.

– Ulla Sköld explains that despite trying, the politicians wouldn't make any change

The butcher up in Ponsonby wouldn’t serve us. We weren’t popular, let's put it that way.

– Ulla Sköld on how fighting for a cause had a downside for her and her husband Oliver Sutherland