Linda Hall: Watching Taken By The State grim stuff

Linda Hall

A 5-year-old girl is screaming for her mother as two police officers corner her behind a couch.

One picks her up. The child is kicking, crying and screaming "no, no, I don't want to go".

The officer hands her to the other and they take her out into the dark night, where there is yet another officer, away from her grandparents and mother.

Sounds like a horror movie. Actually it is very real and it happened in New Zealand.

Tears were flooding my eyes by the time I had finished watching Taken By The State at newsroom.co.nz

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The little girl was being "uplifted" without notice.

Her father had custody and she was on a weekend visit to her mother.

She should have been returned to her father on the Sunday night but her mother said the girl had got so upset at the airport that she wasn't allowed to go on the plane.

According to the video I watched, the mother did everything right, contacting authorities and keeping in touch with them.

But because she was in breach of a Family Court parenting order and the child should have been with her father, the father made an application to the court for a warrant.

This was to allow the girl to be taken and returned to him, using reasonable force if necessary.

Really, what is reasonable force against a 5-year-old? There is no such thing.

The man also claimed his daughter might be in danger from her stepfather. I guess that left the judge feeling compelled to act.

You can tell by the video that this little girl was in no danger. The police would have been able to tell that immediately.

I know they are doing their job and that there are always two sides to every story but no matter who was at fault in this case the child was the one who suffered most.

I wonder what the father thought when he watched that video.

Too often children end up being the pawns in a nasty breakup. I don't know the circumstances surrounding this one, of course, but no child should be treated like this.

There's also a clip of a 14-year-old boy being "uplifted". Two police officers stand in front of him as he starts crying and saying, "Please, no, I don't want to go, I want to stay here with Dad."

They manhandle him to his feet but, to their credit, let go of him when he rushes to his father.

The father can be heard in the background saying, "Sorry, buddy, there's nothing I can do."

Professor Mark Henaghan, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, was shown the footage of both uplifts.

"Family Court judges would feel differently about issuing the orders if they could see footage of how distressing the uplifts are," he said.

"You can't tell me that it is in the welfare and best interest of children."

Totally agree - and, more importantly, the parent asking for the uplift should watch the video as well.

There are times when these orders are necessary. However, I think a social worker should be sent with police to attend uplifts without notice.

They can assess the situation, decide if the child is in immediate danger, and make a decision on the next step from there.

I'm sure if that had have happened to this little girl she would have been tucked up in her bed at her grandparents' home, not taken kicking and screaming into the night.

• Linda Hall is Hawke's Bay Today's assistant editor.