Kiwiblog

The NZ Herald focuses on the departure of Vanda Vitali:

The trust board was also keen to see the museum throw off austerity and become part of an international trend typified by Te Papa. Part of this was a restructuring that left 46 personnel, many of them senior staff, without jobs.

Amid accusations that this meant core museum displays were being downgraded, the board backed Dr Vitali to the hilt for most of her tenure. Its support began to waver late last year, however, after a series of public relations disasters.

It is questionable who should bear the responsibility for these. Did the board, having appointed Dr Vitali and provided a mandate, fail to give sufficient direction and guidance?

Did it not recognise sufficiently that, as a Canadian, she was operating in an unfamiliar cultural context? Or did the director, like many set on instituting change, not see finesse and heedfulness as part of her job description? …

It must not become fusty and tradition-bound. Dr Vitali’s achievement can be measured by comments lamenting her resignation.

One of the more notable came from Naida Glavish, of the Ngati Whatua Runanga, who said she had brought the museum “back to life”. An initial reservation about Dr Vitali was her sensitivity to the Maori and Pacific exhibitions.

Museums are always seeking a balance. In Auckland’s case, that involves using flair and imagination to attract local people, while also catering for overseas tourists’ major interest, the Polynesian treasures.

Dr Vitali wrought major change in a short time. With a little finesse, the correct balance can be struck.

Is Te Papa still looking for a CEO?

The Dominion Post is unhappy with Israel:

The timing of Israel’s announcement of a new 1600-house Jewish development in East Jerusalem was the equivalent of a one-fingered salute to the United States and to the peace process.

It demonstrates a contempt for the Obama Administration so withering that it diminishes the American ability to broker any deal. The administration had last year demanded a freeze on Jewish settlements, but eventually got only a partial, temporary halt – except in Jerusalem.

Why should the Palestinians pay any heed to what Washington wants, when the Israelis clearly don’t? It will also raise questions even among those sympathetic to Israel whether its current leadership has any intention of reaching a negotiated settlement.

I am a friend and supporter of Israel, but on this issue I agree they are wrong. They really should stop building new settlements. It makes the job of achieving a peace agreement a lot lot harder, for little gain.

The Press focuses on bad driving:

It is the common complaint of many New Zealand motorists. Truck drivers hog the road and, being oblivious to other road users, are responsible for accidents and near misses, both in urban areas and on the open road.

Those who subscribe to this jaundiced view should be taking a hard look at the video footage on The Press’s website. This footage, which was taken from cameras mounted in Canterbury Waste Services (CWS) trucks and which has created great public interest, has graphic images of other road users behaving recklessly and illegally.

It includes video images of one car overtaking a truck and forcing oncoming traffic to take evasive action. Other footage shows motorists not stopping at red lights or compulsory stop signs, failing to adhere to the give-way rule at other intersections, adopting some appalling driving techniques at roundabouts, and skidding due to a failure to drive to the conditions.

Luckily Wellington drivers are better than that

The ODT looks at child abuse in the Catholic Church:

It is hard to believe the senior ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, increasingly under siege in Fortress Vatican, have any real appreciation of the extent of the calamity facing them.

For if they did, surely they, and Pope Benedict XVI, would be cutting a radically different course from that now being offered to a confused, disappointed and sometimes angry congregation.

Prominent among the strategies it has adopted in the face of what is beginning to seem like a perfect storm of recent revelations – of sexual abuse cases and “cover-ups” in Brazil, the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Germany and, periodically, in this country and Australia – has been the time-honoured tactic of attacking the messenger. …

It just reminds me of the South Park episode where a priest calls on the gathered Cardinals to stop priests having sex with little boys, and the response back is that as they can’t have sex with women, if they stop having sex with little boys, then they’ll get to have no sex at all!

Abstinence is not natural in my opinion!

Bloody Jadis. I turn my back for a few hours and she does a post on sterilisiation of child abusers after listening to Michael Laws on Radio Live. David Garrett comments, and suddenly it is in the newspapers, on Morning Report and all over the blogosphere.

I suppose time to add my own 2c to the debate:

1. Absolutely against any compulsory sterilisation. Apart from the fact no surgeon will operate on a non consenting patient, the state should not have the power to remove someone’s fertility.
2. Not supportive of the proposal to pay child abusers to get sterilised, as it will only target poor child abusers, and may be thin end of wedge.
3. However am open to having a debate on whether one could have it as an early release incentive for people who have been convicted of child abuse and actually gone to prison.

One of the reasons we send people to prison is to protect the community. If someone is sentenced to three years jail for child abuse, then is the community better protected by having them come out at 2.5 years and unable to have more children, or at three years and likely to have more children, whom will grow up abused, and in turn probably becomes abusers themselves.

By not having a monetary incentive, it removes the potential problems of being more attractive to poor child abusers.

Also by limiting it to people in prison, and convicted of child abuse, it means you target the worse of the worse.

I’m sure there are strong arguments against such a policy also, and I am not saying I support it without question. But unless one just wants to wring your hands about the child abuse problem, it may be a more palatable option than monetary incentives which I would not support.

The Herald reported at the weekend:

Making it a crime for adults to turn a blind eye to child abuse or neglect by others in their homes will help to prevent cases such as that of the Kahui twins, a child welfare advocate says.

Justice Minister Simon Power announced yesterday that the Government will make a raft of changes to child abuse laws, including a new offence of “failing to protect”.

It will make adults criminally liable if they do not intervene or tell the authorities that someone else in the house is abusing or neglecting a child or other “vulnerable” person, such as the elderly.

It is sad that this law is needed, but it is.

The Herald reports:

Abused Maori children in state care will be monitored to see whether they do better with their own whanau or another family.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has asked Child Youth and Family to compare the progress of the 50 per cent of children placed with extended family and the 50 per cent placed elsewhere – normally with foster families or permanently with a new family – to see what works better.

This is a very sensitive area, and each placement will have its own circumstances. But in terms of overall results, it is a question that should have been asked before now.

The idea stems from her concern at the high re-abuse rate for Maori children and anecdotal evidence that some placements with extended family can do more harm than good.

Last year almost 1800 children were re-abused within six months, an average of five a day. Almost half of all abused children are Maori.

1800 a year is huge, when you consider that is just the number of kids who are re-abused.

The Maori minister admitted the question was “hugely controversial”. For 20 years New Zealand social work had been based on the philosophy that children should be kept with their blood relatives wherever possible.

“In my opinion it works when that extended whanau are taking full responsibility for that child.

“When it gets a bit blurred is when we know who it is that’s doing [the abuse], when we’re keeping them daily involved, and it all starts getting mixed.”

Detective Sergeant Megan Goldie, the child abuse team manager for Waitakere police, echoed her local MP’s concerns about the dangers of staying too close to parents accused of abuse.

“The family that the child is going to may be perfectly OK but they may not be able to keep the offending parents … away from that child.

That is probably asking a lot from the extended family.

Child abuse specialist Dr Patrick Kelly said it was a hard call: foster care also had a patchy safety record and permanent placement was a huge step.

But he agreed it was common for an abused child to be sent to an aunt who turned out to be no better than the original mother – and the case was renotified.

“By then the child’s been living in an abusive or neglectful environment for another year.

“Sometimes you can go through five or six cycles of that process before CYF is forced to concede that this entire extended family is dysfunctional.

“But by then this poor kid has been in that situation for four or five years.

And by then it is too late – the next generation of abusers has been created.

The Dom Post reports:

Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws says giving the “underclass” money to be sterilised will address our child abuse problem.

Critics last night labelled the suggestion “totalitarian”, “draconian” and “reprehensible”, and questioned his appropriateness as a city leader.

Mr Laws said the children of beneficiaries, drug addicts and criminals had little chance in life. He offered his observations after he was approached for comment on the death of two-year-old Wanganui boy Karl Perigo-Check, the son of a convicted murderer and gang member.

“If we gave $10,000 to certain people and said ‘we’ll voluntarily sterilise you’ then all of society would be better off. There’d be less dead children and less social problems.

It is a fact there are some people who are not fit to be parents. And when they do have more children, the kids get removed from them at birth. I’m not sure how many are in this category, but there are a few.

I doubt anyone sensible advocates compulsory sterilisation. No state should ever have that power. Even the thought makes me shudder.

But if a parent has a history of child abuse (for example), should there be an incentive for him or her to get sterilised – such as a cash payment as Laws suggests?

Personally I don’t think it is a good idea. For one thing people can end up as parents, even if sterilised. They partner up with someone who had kids for example.

But also it is still pretty creepy to have our own version of China’s toasters for sterilisation policy. Now sure China was aimed at everyone – to keep overall population down. But I don’t think bribing our own citizens to get sterilised if a great innovation.

Also many sterilisations can be reversed anyway.

But Laws is right that something needs to be done. He hasn’t got the solution, but the status quo is not acceptable.

An interesting article on the Vic Law School blog by Nessa Lynch:

All will be aware of the relentless drive by officialdom to eliminate “risk” to children by requiring those working with children to be checked or vetted. Seemingly ridiculous requirements such as the banning of all spectators from school sports days, or a ban on parents taking pictures of the children at kindergarten graduation regularly appear in the newspapers. While the practice in New Zealand appears to be only to require a Police records check (still commonly known as a Wanganui computer check, revealing convictions and pending charges) for those who volunteer or work with children, other jurisdictions have considerably more onerous requirements. The United Kingdom’s Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, is as Catherine Bennett beautifully puts it, is “a law that now requires every adult who engages, even fleetingly, with children to prove they are not a pervert, and to pay for this privilege where possible” (Observer, 20/9/09).

I wonder how you prove you are not a pervert. Do they give you a copy of Madonna’s book or a Lolita video as a test?

From a legal perspective, there are real concerns about the operation and underlying principles of such schemes. While undoubtedly it is vital that those who have convictions for violent and sexual offending are excluded from working with children, the remit appears to have shifted from barring those with convictions to a much wider net.

For instance, the newly established UK Independent Safeguarding Authority has as their motto “Our aim is to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults” (my emphasis).

I spent yesterday afternoon reading the Northern Ireland guidance document on vetting procedures worryingly entitled “Sharing to Safeguard: Information sharing about individuals who may pose a risk to children (my emphasis)”.

This guide helpfully points out that “maintaining a focus on only those who have been charged or convicted, for example, of an offence listed at Schedule 1 of the Children and Young Person Act (1968) can be unhelpful, as it often defines the individual by their offending history, rather than determining what are the ongoing risks the individual may pose to a child/children” (Circular HSS CC 3/96(Revised), p1). Further, at page 5 the guide defines “potentially dangerous person (PDP)” as “someone who has been interviewed by the police for an alleged or suspected sexual or violent offence against a child, or a serious sexual assault on an adult, or violent offence against a vulnerable adult and a case has been referred to the Public Prosecution Service for a prosecution decision (my emphasis)”

Innocent until proven guilty seems to have lost all meaning. It appears as if one could ruin another’s career simply by making a false allegation of sexual abuse.

As sometimes is the case.

What is altogether more concerning is that from an empirical perspective, there is no clear evidence that these vetting programmes actually reduce harm to children. The cliché that it is more dangerous in statistical terms to be in the family home rather than in a room with complete strangers has merit. An examination of the case studies or sentencing reports on child maltreatment and sexual abuse demonstrate that the perpetrators are almost certain to be related to, or co-habiting with, the child victim, and thus will not be affected by the vetting net.

Further, experts such as Professor Gary Melton are increasingly coming to the view that rather than treating all adults as potential abusers, the more adults that are involved in a child’s life, the chances of the child being maltreated or abused are reduced. This makes sense. Think back to the cases of egregious child abuse in New Zealand. A common thread is isolation: not knowing the neighbours, moving address frequently, not being enrolled in childcare or school and so on.

I think this article is spot on. Luckily in NZ we have not gone so far down the paranoia path as the United Kingdom.

From the NZ Herald:

For the seven days before Duwayne Pailegutu died, he was kept inside his mother and stepfather’s small flat in Nelson – so no one could see he had been beaten so badly he was paralysed, incontinent, and slowly suffocating on his own blood.

The left side of his body was disabled after repeated blows to the right side of his head which caused a stroke, and he struggled to eat or drink.

In addition to the haemorrhage, an autopsy found at least 10 deep bruises to his scalp – some of them inflicted by the shoes of his stepfather as the little boy cowered in the corner of his Fergusson St bedroom.

A further 75 bruises were found over the rest of his small body. …

For the week before he died,Duwayne sat, partially paralysed and fitted with nappies, slowly suffocating on blood which he inhaled into his lungs as he vomited during “exercises” in which his stepfather made repeated blows to his stomach to make him cough up blood.

In an attempt to “shock” Duwayne into movement, Joachim dipped his paralysed foot into boiling water, leaving the largest of four scald wounds on his right leg.

When he became frustrated that Duwayne could not move, Joachim threw him against a wall.

And for the six weeks before his death on July 2 last year, Duwayne had been living with three broken ribs.

Words again fail me, that I share a species with the person who did this.

Garth George says:

I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.

I disagree.

I think there would be less child abuse if there were more abortions.  The would would be a better place if those who are not suited to be parents did not become parents.

John Minto has worked out who is to blame for the murder of Nia Glassie:

There is never any excuse for abuse of children and it’s natural for us to want long prison sentences for her killers. However, unless we clearly see the context in which she was killed then we will condemn other children to similar abuses.

Yes the context of what makes people stick a toddler in a drying machine to torture her.

As Nia Glassie lay dying in hospital last August the New Zealand Herald published figures related to child abuse among Maori. Social issues reporter Simon Collins reported that Maori children were more than twice as likely to die from child abuse as other children but that this was a relatively recent development.

In 1987 child abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand. From 1978 to 1987 the number of children aged 0 to 14 per 100,000 killed was 0.92 for non-Maori and 1.05 for Maori.

However from 1987 it rose rapidly. For the period 1991 to 2000 the figures were 0.67 for non-Maori but 2.40 for Maori.

This dramatic increase has obvious roots. The number of Maori in paid work dropped by 15 per cent between 1986 and 1991 while total employment fell just 6 per cent. Maori unemployment peaked at a staggering 26 per cent in 1991 while the non-Maori rate was just 9 per cent.

Maori were disproportionately degraded by the policies of Rogernomics under Labour’s 1984 to 1990 government.

Yet those who killed her did so in a time of near full employment. But hey let us ignore that and blame it all on Rogernomics.

Those who demand vengeance for Nia Glassie’s death would be better to first set up a gallows outside Parliament and the Business Roundtable offices before they focus on the miserable men guilty of her murder.

Yeah, nothing to do with those who tortured a three year old. Or the neighbours who did not report it. The guilty parties are those who saved a country from bankruptcy.

The most important solution to ending child abuse is to make full employment the number one economic priority. Forty hours work on decent pay by which a breadwinner can support a family in dignity and respect must be at the heart of social and economic policy. Not surprisingly it was dropped as Labour Party policy back in the 1980s by the likes of Roger Douglas, Helen Clark and Phil Goff while it’s never been National Party policy.

So Douglas, Clark and Goff plus National are all to blame. Again never mind that at the time this happened unemployment was the lowest in the world.  I think it is reprehensible of Minto to try and blame this sociopathic torture and abuse on the economic policies of 20 years ago.

Anything less than this is to cry crocodile tears for Nia Glassie and condemn more children to her fate.

You don’t get full employment by turning a country into Cuba, as Mr Minto advocates. You get it by having a strong economy.

Catherine Masters in the Herald has written a story bringing together all the different elements of the hell that was Nia Glassie’s final days.

There have been a number of high profile abuse cases, but this is the one that I think I will never forget.

Other deaths of toddlers have been awful, but due to a mixture of neglect and violence. The Glassie case can only be seen as group sadistic torture.

I don’t want to politicise this awful case, but National had pledged to bring in a sentence of life without parole for the worst killers – they estimate it would be used only two or three times a year. This would be one of those cases – those responsible and found guilty of murder should never ever be let out. If you read the story, you will see that redemption and rehabilitation do not form part of this story.

Some extracts from the sad sad story:

What was done to Nia was callous and violent, perpetrated by a group of no-hopers who lived and partied together, who smoked pot together and who for one reason or another didn’t like the little girl they failed to protect.

Nia Maria Glassie was three. They thought she was ugly.

They kicked Nia in the head, and she points to the front of her head.

Sometimes Nia would bleed but they don’t care about it. They just keep on smashing her, she says.

They put her in the corner and they kick her to the wall and she gets bumps on her head.

The worst thing, in this child’s mind, was when Michael Curtis lifted Nia to the ceiling by her neck and her hips and when she touched the ceiling, he let her go.

Another child tells how they spun Nia on the clothesline as fast as they could. Her voice is soft and shy.

They put her into the drier, too, she says.

And the defendants:

The defendants don’t look appalled. Perhaps they’re bored. Though, sometimes in court they laughed and whispered and often they tried to stare down the reporters covering the trial.

The torture again:

The woman asks the second girl more about the clothes drier.

You turn it right up, replies the girl, and it gets hot then it dries your clothes.

Nia was screaming, she says, so they put her on the clothesline and they spinned her as fast as they could so she could fall off.

She did fall off, the little girl says. Three times. On her head.

They put Nia in the drier like “a ball”, the girl says.

They turned the switch, the one with lots of numbers on it, up too high and Nia kicked the door open but they just put her legs back in. …

And back to those responsible:

The abuse was normalised and it escalated. The brothers didn’t play sport or work, there was booze and pot, though no suggestion of P.

They didn’t have much money so were home a lot and found ways to entertain themselves. …

Lisa Kuka, it seems, grew from a nice little girl into a woman whose life revolves around men and who demonstrated a frightening submission to them.

She was the 17th of 19 children. …

I wish there were simple answers to these horrors. Sadly there are not.

UPDATE: Dave Crampton at Big News has a long post on the background to the Glassie household.

It is not surprising a juror cried as the final days of Nia Glassie were detailed in court – maybe the surprise is that all the jurors did not cry.  Even reading about it in the newspaper is gut churning enough. It is bad enough when any child dies due to abuse or neglect – but this case seems even worse as the abuse was deliberate and for entertainment it seems. The sad details include:

• Forcibly placed Nia on a clothesline and spun her around until she fell off, twice repeating the action while standing around laughing
• Put her in a tumble dryer and turned it on, standing by laughing.
• Forced Nia to take cold baths and then dressed her in soiled clothes
• Kicking her in the head, causing bleeding between her brain and skull.
• Leaving her unconscious, having fits and frothing at the mouth for 36 hours before her family sought medical help

I just don’t know how people can do such evil, let alone how others can observe this happening and do or say nothing. The instinct to protect kids is well instinctive in most of us. I guess the sad answer is that those who perform such evil deeds, were probably abused themselves growing up. And that in no way excuses what they did – but it reinforces how vital it is we make a greater effort to break the cycle of abuse.