Murray Burton still remembers the horror of the first phone call from police on the evening of the tragedy. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
In University of Auckland research fellow Ying Wang\u2019s eyes, schools throughout New Zealand are ill-prepared to address trauma because of the strain on school counsellors and lack of support for frontline mental health workers.<\/p>\n
A study conducted this year by Wang involved speaking to 29 professionals, including psychologists, school counsellors, social workers and forensic doctors, who were working with young Asian people affected by sexual violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people I interviewed were school counsellors and when they have a disclosure for sexual violence, for example, they don\u2019t even know where to refer it to; and also many of them don\u2019t have enough trauma-informed training,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The response Wang heard repeatedly was: \u201cI don\u2019t know how to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In cases in New Zealand\u2019s recent history, the Education Ministry has responded to a traumatic event at a school by sending in expert staff. Despite this extra help, for principals facing the aftermath of a tragedy, the weight of responsibility is enormous.<\/p>\n
Principal Murray Burton knows this fact better than most. In 2008, he was left to grapple with the deaths of six of his students and a teacher after a canyoning trip on the Mangatepopo Stream in Tongariro National Park went tragically wrong.<\/p>\n
A flash flood that rose quickly through the high walls of the canyon resulted in seven of the group of 10 drowning in the raging waters.<\/p>\n
Burton still remembers the terror of the evening phone call from a police officer who told him, \u2018at this stage I can tell you that you\u2019ve definitely lost four, but you can\u2019t tell anyone\u2019.<\/p>\n
Protocol required the police officers at the scene to formally identify the bodies and travel to each household to deliver the news.<\/p>\n
That night, many of the families had already arrived at Elim Christian College in Auckland and Burton was faced with the task of meeting anxious parents whose children he already knew were dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew they didn\u2019t need a principal who was ashen-faced or wouldn\u2019t come out of the office, they needed a sense of empathy. They needed me to give them a hug and tell them we are trying to get to the bottom of this,\u201d Burton says.<\/p>\n
University of Auckland research fellow Ying Wang believes New Zealand schools are ill-prepared to address trauma. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
When a young person dies or is hurt in a school setting, anger is also an emotion that can rise quickly to the surface for parents.<\/p>\n
In the Abbey Caves tragedy in 2023, schoolboy Karnin Petera, 16, died in a swirling current that swept through the network of caves in Whang\u0101rei, while the rest of the students managed to escape.<\/p>\n
At a sentencing in the Whang\u0101rei District Court, his parents expressed frustration at the school\u2019s handling of the tragedy and the fact they had made repeated phone calls to the school expressing concern over heavy rainfall.<\/p>\n
Following the event, Whang\u0101rei Boys\u2019 High School was ordered to pay more than half a million dollars to the victims, including Petera\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
Andre Petera (left) and Alicia Toki with son Jordan and their beloved Karnin, known as Tino, who died in the Abbey Caves tragedy. Photo \/ Jodi Bryant<\/p>\n
Burton said he observed during the years following the Mangatepopo canyoning tragedy the muted anger and many stages of grief the seven families of the victims went through \u2013 made harder by the drawn-out court process and follow-up investigations.<\/p>\n
Choosing forgiveness was a hard road that required constant work every day, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll never get over it, but they will walk through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ying Wang has found using art and visual expression are effective ways to communicate or process trauma. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
\u2018No fixed timeline\u2019 for healing<\/p>\n
Practising psychologist Sehar Moughal says it is often assumed that therapy support for trauma is needed immediately after an event; however, trauma processing can be delayed or happen months or even years later.<\/p>\n
Moughal works with survivors of family and gendered violence and those with traumatic brain injuries (TBI).<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople forget that it takes a while for a person to move away from the fight-or-flight response and it can take a long time for them to try to make sense of the traumatic experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere might be short-term funding or support for a group of people or a community immediately after a traumatic event. But, let\u2019s say six months down the line, that\u2019s when the psychology and therapy services really need to be in place as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately after a traumatic event, the brain\u2019s focus is on basic functioning for survival; people are not always ready for recall and reflection at that stage, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHealing is a process; there\u2019s no fixed timeline after a traumatic event. Some people still grapple with it years later.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Cave Creek disaster in 1995, 13 Tai Poutini Polytechnic students and a DoC worker died after a poorly constructed viewing platform collapsed into a chasm.<\/p>\n
Almost three decades on, a sibling of a victim in the tragedy spoke of the continuing grief<\/a> and constant wondering about what might have been different had her brother survived.<\/p>\n Burton said in the immediate aftermath of the canyoning tragedy he was able to remain strangely calm, but it was an effort not to crawl into a hole and let the grief consume him.<\/p>\n Burton\u2019s advice to other principals who found themselves facing enormous tragedy was to centre their thinking on those who were closest to the grief rather than worrying about the school\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n \u201cMy plea would be to read the room, know your community. Know yourself. Don\u2019t get ahead of yourself, but be that sure, dependable person that the community needs when it\u2019s been rocked and torn apart.\u201d<\/p>\n A consideration that weighs on Burton\u2019s mind, who now works as a leadership consultant, is how social media would have changed the way the <\/p>\n This month\u2019s terrorist mass shooting at Bondi Beach involved the quick dissemination of videos and images on social media in the minutes and hours after the attack.<\/p>\n That included AI-generated images used to spread false narratives about the event and identity of the shooters.<\/p>\n Burton believes that if the canyoning tragedy happened now, there would be videos popping up online from the kids that were at the camp and the story would have unfolded exponentially faster.<\/p>\n \u201cI just shudder to think \u2026 it would have made the job a lot harder, I think.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople would have been forming conclusions, making judgments. I think that\u2019s one thing now for all school leaders, you\u2019ve got to make the assumption that it will be out there before you know it. And therefore, you\u2019re essentially running on the back foot.\u201d<\/p>\n The long wait times and shortage of professionals within the mental health system could contribute to difficulties in helping schools recover from traumatic events.<\/p>\n Wang says many of the professionals she spoke to felt powerless because they might be able to see a young person desperately in need of support only once a week or less, and it left professionals feeling lonely, overwhelmed and frustrated by the system.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople working in the schools have beautiful hearts and are really caring towards our young people, but they don\u2019t have support. They are working in a really fragmented system,\u201d Wang says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey need to look after all these students, many of them who have multi-layered challenges such as peer pressure or family conflict. The teachers, do they have enough training to work with that?\u201d<\/p>\n In one instance, Wang heard of a school counsellor whose reaction of shock to a young person\u2019s disclosure of sexual violence silenced the victim and prevented them from speaking out again for some time.<\/p>\n Schools are also left to comfort families and inform students when young people die by suicide and this can give rise to feelings of guilt or weigh heavily on the entire school population if left unaddressed.<\/p>\nPhotographs of the six Elim Christian College students killed on the Mangatepopo Stream displayed in the school chapel. Photo \/ Kenny Rodger<\/p>\n