Koi Boy Kevin - What I Wish I'd Told My SOn

The singer lives with regret

- Julie Jacobson

Kevin Keepa reckons he wasn’t the greatest of role models. He was, he says, not a good dad. A member of Queensland based Kiwi trio The Koi Boys, Kevin lost his teenage son Kaylin to suicide in 2005. Twelve years later, his 21-year-old niece also died by suicide.

Heartbreakingly honest about the tragic loss of his son at just 17, Kevin tells how he blamed himself, Kaylin’s mum, the church, anything.

“He and his younger brother were living with his mum at the time – we hadn’t been together for a while,” recalls Kevin. “I never really had a lot to do with them after I moved to Australia. So all I could think of was there were things I didn’t do that I should have done.

“His mum probably thinks the same, but actually she was the true hero of the two of us. I talked to his brother trying to work out what went wrong. A whole heap of things might have tipped him over the edge.”

Tragically, Maori suicide is at its highest level since records began, with new statistics showing 685 people died by suicide in New Zealand to June 30. Of those, 169 were Maori. The suicide rate for Maori males is twice as high as for non-Maori males, three times higher than the rate for Maori women and six times higher than that for non-Maori women.