Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

Business New Zealand and the Every Child Counts group will meet at Te Papa on Thursday to discuss the role of business in supporting better outcomes for children.

Reports commissioned by the group calculate child maltreatment costs the nation at least $2 billion per year and poor child outcomes associated with poverty cost at least $6 billion per year, or 3% of GDP. (more…)

A Maori health researcher says reducing Maori child abuse will require tackling poverty and racial discrimination.

Dr Fiona Cram, in a report published today by the Families Commission, says family poverty is “the major contributing risk factor for children” – and Maori children are twice as likely as European children to live in poverty.

Families Commission chairman Carl Davidson said Dr Cram had “a particular perspective on Maori children in care” which the commission did not necessarily share. (more…)

Maori are a warrior race prone to violence, and an academic’s call to stop referring to Maori child abuse is whitewashing the problem instead of dealing with it, a prominent iwi leader says.

Ngapuhi leader David Rankin hit back at an Auckland academic’s claim the increasing use of the term “Maori child abuse” is fuelling racism.

Rankin said Maori are a “violent people” and the term accurately reflects what some Maori parents are doing to their children. (more…)

A mother punched her nine-year-old daughter so hard that the woman broke bones in her hand.

The punch was one of many incidents heard in the Auckland District Court today as Judge Brooke Gibson sentenced the 31-year-old mother to seven and-a-half years in prison with a minimum non-parole period of five years.

“It was sustained abuse, amounting to torture,” Judge Gibson said. The woman, who has name suppression to protect the identity of her children, had previously pleaded guilty to 25 charges. One of them was for assaulting the girl’s eight year-old brother. (more…)

A west Auckland mother today pleaded guilty to 25 child abuse charges in a case that shocked New Zealand and sparked a national inquiry.

The woman and her husband, who both have name suppression, faced a total of 36 charges between them relating to the abuse of their nine-year-old daughter and seven year-old son.

The couple were arrested in December last year after the girl was found hiding in a wardrobe with injuries to nearly every part of her body. (more…)

Decades of Govt reports and good intentions have done nothing to help vulnerable children

I had a bit of spare time earlier this week so I decided to browse through the Government’s Green Paper on Vulnerable Children – all 13,000-odd words of it. And having done so, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is just another way of making us think the Government is doing something when in fact it can’t make up its mind what to do.

It’s a procrastination ploy common to politicians of all stripes, and in this case it ensures that the festering sore of child poverty, deprivation, abuse and illiteracy will be conveniently shelved until well after the general election. (more…)

Child welfare advocates have called for “tough conversations” on the contents of a long-awaited paper on reducing New Zealand’s shocking child abuse rate.

The ‘Green Paper on Vulnerable Children’, launched in Auckland’s Aotea Square at 1pm today, proposed giving families with vulnerable children priority access to state services and redirecting funding for older children toward young abuse victims.

It is a response to New Zealand’s dire child abuse statistics, which show two children are physically, sexually or emotionally abused every hour and 1286 children are admitted to hospital because of assault, neglect or maltreatment every year. (more…)

Prime Minister John Key’s rejection of a bi-partisan approach to tackling child abuse has disappointed child health organisations, who area accusing him of making abuse a ‘political football’ in an election year.

Mr Key yesterday admitted there was universal agreement that abuse rates in New Zealand were too high, but did not believe the major parties could work together in solving the problem.

“Ultimately parties are going to have to campaign on what they believe is the right solution for those problems,” says Mr Key. (more…)

New Zealand needs to act on child abuse and not just talk politics, government leaders and health professionals say.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett this week launched a Green Paper on vulnerable children which is being hailed as a step forward. The Government suggested the mandatory reporting of child abuse.

The Green Paper aimed to open up discussions about child abuse. “Too many children are being hurt, abused, neglected and badly let down, but we can change this and now is the time to act,” Bennett said. (more…)

A Level 3 sex offender who spent more than 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman was arrested Thursday and charged with sending indecent text messages to a minor, city police said.

Marlek E. Holmes, 37, who was released from prison in October, was arrested after two separate investigations into complaints against him, detectives Todd Crossett and Charles Dudek said. (more…)