A 67-year-old South Canterbury man made a formal complaint to the Royal New Zealand Navy about abuse he alleges he suffered while serving as a teenager, but a meeting with representatives has not resolved anything, he says.

The former captain's steward said he had decided to speak out about his experience, because he wants other victims to know they are not alone.

He said his whole life had been turned upside down after he was forced to perform sexual acts on a senior ranking person after joining the Navy as a 16-year-old.

Fifty years on, he says he is still suffering from the effects of that assault and others that followed, on ship.

He said he had made a formal complaint last year, but feels he has not been listened to, and the matter has been swept under the carpet by the Navy.

“They won’t give me the apology I think I deserve.”

He said he had just left school when he was recruited for the Navy, becoming a captain’s steward after six months’ training at Tāmaki and Philomel, ​in Auckland in 1971.

He said he became aware of sexual abuse on the ship, after seeing another junior forced to perform a sexual act on a senior ranking person.

He said he had pretended to be asleep at the time, but believe another person – more senior ranking than he – had also witnessed the incident.

“I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what sex was then,” he said.

Instead of the perpetrator being put off ship, the victim was moved onto another Navy vessel a few days later.

“We never saw the young fella again. If they had put the instigator off, then it wouldn’t have happened to me. Instead of hiding it, the Navy needs to take some responsibility. I wonder how different my life would be if they had got rid of him [the perpetrator] then.”

He said he had tried to contact the other victim years later, but never found him.

He said the sexual assaults occurred when few or no people were around, as there were only about six of them who lived in the mess. Often the incidents happened when the perpetrator was intoxicated after being on shore, he said.

He said he applied for a medical discharge after three years, when he realised he could not stop what was happening to him and felt no-one would help or believe him.

He pretended his asthma was worsening and was medically discharged, after being assessed. He went on to work in hospitality and counsel people with Aids, as well as working with young people who had been abused.

“I helped victims to feel important and clean again ... I buried what happened to me and never told anyone until last year. I should have concentrated on myself.”

After having nightmares, he would wake with scratches all over his body.

His life has been fraught with relationships that didn’t last; anxiety, stress, depression, self-harming, two overdoses, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“A lot of days I wished I hadn’t survived.”

In the past few years, he said he has had the occasional collapse, believed to be caused by years of anxiety and stress.

In 2020, he finally gathered the strength to tell some family, as well as a few close civilian and ex-Navy friends about what he had been through.

“This has affected my whole life. I felt sick, dirty and ashamed and hoped the feelings would go away, but they didn’t.”

He lodged an official complaint with the Ministry of Defence in November 2020.

No one responded to his complaint until May, six months later, he said. A meeting was then arranged with representatives of the Navy.

The meeting, which was held in Timaru in June, 2021, had left him feeling empty and insulted and he was not confident anything would change.

“They offered to give me a book and a plaque. How was that supposed to help?”

His had decided to speak out publicly so anyone else who had suffered would know they were not alone.

“I want peace of mind and closure and I want to leave a letter of apology from the Navy for my daughter, so she can understand what was wrong with her dad.”

A New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) spokesman would not comment on whether an apology was likely, but said the force was continuing to engage with the man over the matter.

“The NZDF does not yet have a formalised procedure for dealing with historic complaints and has contracted an external barrister to develop a process for NZDF to support ex-serving members who experienced sexual violence.”

The spokesman said the NZDF established Operation Respect in 2016 to eliminate harmful and inappropriate behaviour. An independent review of the programme, released in 2020, had 44 recommendations including increasing trust in the processes. The NZDF had implemented some of those recommendations and was considering others, he said.

“The NZDF is committed to ensuring victims of sexual assault are provided the appropriate support. The NZDF encourages any member of the Armed Forces who is currently serving who is a victim of sexual assault to seek support from a Sexual Assault Prevention Response advisers (Sapra), report the incident to a member of their command team or report the incident to the New Zealand Police.”