Ten years ago New Zealand’s last psychopedic institution was closed. The Kimberley, once known as the Levin Farm and Mental Deficiency Colony, had 300 residents at the time it was shut in 2006.
Kimberley was the last of the country's big state-run institutions to close in favour of community care.
Robert Martin, who was born with an intellectual disability and grew up in various institutions and foster homes was placed there when he was just 18 months old.
Mr Martin is the first person with learning disability to be elected to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
He says institutions like the Kimberley Home were not the places of care they were billed as.
“The people that put us in these places thought we were being well looked after, but we know what happened in these places; the abuse, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse. All kinds of abuse happened in these places”
Martin recently returned to the derelict Kimberley Home and RNZ captured his memories of a childhood spent in such places in a video by visual journalist Alexander Robertson.
Robert Martin Photo: RNZ
