Child abuse memories led Huddersfield Giant's Paul Whatuira to breakdown

Jan 19 2010 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

RECOVERING Huddersfield Giants star Paul Whatuira has revealed his high-profile breakdown was sparked by memories of abuse he suffered as a child.

And the 28-year-old New Zealander has told how the crisis pushed him to the brink of suicide.

Whatuira, known as Fatz to his team-mates, was locked up at a secure mental health unit in Bradford in October after attacking two innocent men.

He carried out the assaults after checking himself out of St Luke’s mental health hospital in Crosland Moor, where he was already receiving treatment.

At the time Whatuira’s fiancée, Venessa Almond, was expecting their first child.

Their daughter Gabrielle Kaea Whatuira was born on Friday.

Now the Kiwis star has revealed imminent fatherhood triggered flashbacks to abuse inflicted on him as a six-year-old.

“I hit rock bottom,” he said.

“Things that were in the past, when I was a kid, came back.

“It was something that I swept under the mat and it came back to bite me with a vengeance – it nearly finished me off.

“Once I was about to have my own kid – what was the happiest thing of my life – it brought back my childhood memories and brought up the past that I had never really told anyone about.

“It all crept up on me and drove me to unfortunately what happened last year.”

Whatuira admitted himself to St Luke’s after falling into a deep depression and suffering severe insomnia.

But he discharged himself on October 13.

At the time, he said, he thought about taking his own life.

He said: “I sat under a tree and thought about those things. I was on the brink.

“For some reason I got up and started running.

“Unfortunately I did attack those two people.

“I got out of the hospital and I didn’t know what I was doing.

“I was just running and bumped into those two guys and unfortunately I hit both of them.”

One of his victims suffered a broken nose and other serious facial injuries including broken teeth in the incident, which happened outside engineering firm TWL at St Thomas’ Road, Folly Hall, on October 13.

Whatuira was arrested and spent 13 days at the unit in Bradford. But he was never charged.