After being expelled from Australia, a young child with HIV was welcomed with open arms in New Zealand. This weekend that young girl, Eve van Grafhorst, would have turned 40. Katie Harris watches how the brave child changed Aotearoa forever.
Eve’s mother, Gloria Carey, bursts into tears when she thinks of her.
Though her daughter’s legacy now extends far beyond our shores, before she became a New Zealand darling, the family was “kicked” out of Australia.
“It was a pretty horrible experience, it was an incredible experience.”
After being just 28 weeks pregnant, Carey gave birth to Eve on July 17, 1982. As the premature baby fought for her life, she received several urgent blood transfusions at the Royal North Shore neonatal ward in Sydney.
Although they kept her alive at the time, one of the transfusions also contained blood from someone with HIV.
“I don’t have any animosity or anything against that person because nobody knew,” says Carey from the UK.
The family did not find out for years, assuming their daughter’s short stature was due to her being premature, but when she was 3 years old, in 1985, they were diagnosed.
They kept going after the news, but trouble arose when the family notified the manager of a kindergarten in Kincumber, New South Wales, where Eve was going to attend.
“It just exploded from there and they wanted to throw Eva out. Actually, they didn’t want her to be there, but I thought she had every right to be there.
“She got kicked out, she came back, she got kicked out.”
The family had not expected the response, and Carey says doctors who had previously told them the virus did not spread easily refused to support them amid the public outcry.
“They wouldn’t support us at all.”
When Eve’s health problems became public, it was “horrific,” especially for their oldest daughter, Dana, who had to endure “terrible, terrible things” at school, Carey says.
Eve, on the other hand, didn’t really know anything was wrong, other than that her family was upset and she was on TV.
“She didn’t see the bad in anyone, we as a family had to deal with it.”
Public understanding of HIV/AIDS was low at the time and stigma, discrimination and homophobia against people with the condition were common.
The situation soon caught the attention of the Australian media and with the family sharing their plight, the news quickly reached the New Zealand coast.
Kiwi journalist Robert Stockdill launched an appeal in early 1986 to raise money for the family’s move to New Zealand. They made the switch a few months later.
Carey thought they had been bullied by Australia and says they moved to New Zealand because they couldn’t take it anymore.
“Eva was not allowed to go to school, Dana was abused and bullied.
“When you have the whole country against you and there’s only a handful of people supporting you, it’s very difficult.”
From the moment they stepped off the plane, she said it was the “absolute total opposite” of Australia in every way.
Places were offered at schools in the Aotearoa area, and they settled at a Rudolf Steiner school in Hawke’s Bay, where Carey grew up.
Prior to Eve’s arrival at school, there were three meetings with parents, and while five decided to take their children out, three returned.
“It just wasn’t like it was in Australia… to this day I can’t really explain it, it was just awful, you wouldn’t expect that from anyone.”
Once Eve landed in New Zealand, she was medically cared for by Dr. Richard Meech, who was then the spokesperson for the health department (now the Department of Health) on HIV/AIDS issues.
“We knew how it was transferred, [but] we had huge gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the virus,” he said.
“There was no medical intervention to treat AIDS as there was at that stage. Diagnosing AIDS was basically a death sentence. Ignorance was extreme.”
When he was appointed to the position, Meech said tensions were high, as the Gay Law Reform Act had just been passed.
At the time, he said that counseling about HIV/AIDS meant dealing with three issues that people were “uncomfortable” with: homosexuality, injecting drug users and sex workers.
“If we’re going to have to deal with AIDS in New Zealand, these are all things that are high on our agenda and while society isn’t good at it, we need to be able to deal with it.”
Before Eva, there were only a handful of people living with HIV/AIDS here, the first being a young man who had worked in London and died just a week or so after returning home.
The second case was handled in Hawke’s Bay, where Meech was and still is.
“We had him in and out of Napier Hospital as it was then, three or four times over the course of the year and the press was absolutely adamant that they wanted a case out of New Zealand. And they would chase me every time this man was hospitalized.
“We managed to keep the press at bay and we looked after this young man’s needs and it resulted in me being in contact with the health department from the first admission of him to the hospital.”
In this whirlwind came Eve.
Meech, who retired in 2009, says her experience changed the picture previously presented abroad about AIDS, often showing graphics of people with the disease.
He recalls images of a grim reaper that is the predominant image in Australia, and heartbreaking photos of young men maimed by the virus.
Meech says he takes his hat off to broadcaster Paul Holmes, who continued to present Eve’s story on his 7 p.m. show.
“I think [it] helped to allay much of that tension that the public perception of AIDS had.
“Holmes kept bringing this to the people, so there was a rising hope, so there wasn’t this equivalent of the fear and revolution that I could see in other overseas countries. And it was because of all that that we were able to move far beyond Eve itself, the field of injecting drugs, and even in the [sex worker] territory.”
Prior to Holmes’ death in 2013, the broadcaster said his work with Eve was the most memorable story he’d covered.
Meech says the public image of HIV/AIDS in New Zealand has long been of Eve, a “selfless little kid” who did things everywhere.
“If you were on a flight with Eve, she’d hand out the lollipops like any other kid.”
Carey also says that Eve was the ‘human face’ of HIV/AIDS in New Zealand and helped people see that the disease did not discriminate.
Even though she was just a child, Eve gave lectures in schools, teaching people about HIV/AIDS and why they shouldn’t be afraid.
One memory that Carey still has in mind is a time Eve took part in a “hug-a-thon” in Hawke’s Bay.
“There were people there who openly told Eva they were afraid to hug her, but she just held out her arms and said you can’t get AIDS from me.
“She was an old soul with a small body and so much wisdom.”
Eve also had a strong influence on Meech, both professionally and personally.
“Eve would have been the first person in the country to try at least three antiretrovirals; the position I was in allowed me to contact the drug companies directly.”
As she was known, he says the organizations went the “extra mile” to get the drugs to New Zealand.
Policy-wise, Meech says her situation softened public perception, allowing them to push through related harm reduction initiatives like the needle swap, which was controversial at the time.
In addition, they were able to meet political parties and convince them not to make HIV a political issue.
“I believe it was because… [of] the calming effect the image of Eva had on the public perception of AIDS.
“I think New Zealand owes a lot to this kid.”
On a personal level, even today, the memory of his last visit to Eve’s house melts his heart.
Just as I walked out the door thinking I’ll never see this child alive again, a little voice from the bed[coughs] Dr Meech, I love you.”
Eve’s story also touched people around the world, including Princess Diana, who sent her a birthday present for a year. In the documentary All About Eve, the child lovingly tells about the meeting with Elton John, Jason Gunn and Helen Clark.
Positive Women, a support organization for women and families affected by HIV, National Coordinator Jane Bruning told the Herald on Sunday that Eve’s experience reached so many hearts because it showed that HIV can affect anyone, including children.
“I don’t think it stopped people from feeling discriminated against injecting drug users or gay men, but I think it just brought about a mental turnaround. People suddenly thought this wasn’t what we thought. It just opened the doors to a mind shift.” .”
People, she says, viewed Eve as something of an “innocent victim,” and while it didn’t matter whether someone contracted the virus through intercourse or a blood transfusion, it did.
“Because she was a kid, it had a bigger impact, but it didn’t just impact kids, it impacted everyone.”
Although Bruning warns that discrimination continues today, Eve’s life has caused a “huge shift” in attitudes toward people living with HIV in New Zealand.
Yet stigma remains the biggest barrier to their work, despite medical advances that prevent people with HIV who are taking drugs from being contagious.
“If you tell someone they have cancer, you don’t fear what the reaction will be. If you tell someone they have HIV, you never know what will come back to you.”
Not long after Eve’s family came to New Zealand, her father made the decision to move back to Australia.
Some time later, Carey met Peter Richmond, who became “the best” stepfather of Dana and Eve, with whom Gloria had three more children.
“Eva absolutely cherished her siblings and she also met her cousin before she died, Timothy, Dana’s firstborn.”
While every year of Eve’s life was a blessing, “especially being told she wouldn’t live past 5 years,” the year she died, 1993, at age 11 was “extremely heartbreaking,” as Carey knew that her daughter struggled every day, but never once complained.
To the end Eve gave her everything, planning her own funeral, including the fabric and color of her coffin, the service, the music and all her classrooms and friends were involved.
“She wanted to come home and have all her friends and family with her for the funeral because she said they will support each other and all of us through our grief.”
In quiet moments when she would give Eve massages, tears of sadness welled up in Carey’s eyes, wishing she had a magical wish to heal her and free her from HIV/AIDS.
“We always cried and cuddled together. Eva, my beautiful brave child died in my arms. And Peter, Dana, Karl, Charlotte, William and Timothy were all there too, beside her and holding her as she passed and receiving her angel Wings .
“Our dear Angel Eve.”