Journalist Sally Wenley revisits the school bus crash that changed her life about 40 years ago. What happened to the girls? And why was the crash brushed aside?
When 16-year-old Sally Wenley – a top sports student at a Havelock North boarding school in 1987 – returned as a paraplegic after a fatal school bus crash, it was strangely quiet.
“No one spoke about it,” Wenley tells Nine to Noon. “It was just quite bizarre. I tried my best to fit in. But it was just horrific going back there and seeing all the girls in the sports fields, and just not knowing what to do or what to say or how I should react. So I just charged on as all of them did.”
Nearly 40 years later, the award-winning RNZ journalist examines the crash that killed two students, two teachers and the driver, and why it was never acknowledged when the students returned.
Wenley had long wanted to write about it, but after falling from her wheelchair three years ago and smashing her pelvis, she realised it was time.
“I was unconscious for a couple of weeks [after the school bus crash] and I've got big blanks because I had pretty critical head injuries.
“I think I was too scared to do it [until now] and I was too angry still. We were brought up with the stiff upper lip and you don't talk about these things.”
Her investigation revealed that some students weren’t allowed to attend funerals, and during chapel, the principal told crying girls it was time for school. Parents weren’t permitted to take daughters home either, she says.
“It was confronting for me to learn how awful it was for everyone else too and I just felt so sad.”
Read the full story and listen to Sally’s interview with Kathryn Ryan on RNZ here.
