The younger of the two boys charged had an abusive then absent father; his mother drank alcohol and used drugs when pregnant. It's likely that this boy suffers foetal alcohol syndrome, of the kind that caused Teina Pora to confess to a crime he did not commit.
The convicted offender has a mother who was also alleged to deal in drugs and he had a synthetic cannabis habit.
As an 8-year-old, this boy was in a traffic accident, causing a brain injury which was not properly managed.
Despite suffering a traumatic head injury, he was discharged from hospital early and never received follow up care.
This family generated 20 notifications to CYF over the years but it is unclear whether these were followed up. The responsible Minister, Anne Tolley, somewhat gagged by the fact that the legal process regarding the convicted boy is not at an end, was at least able to say that a review of CYF's handling of the cases like this "was standard".
Just on the evidence presented to the court, it seems that there were clear reasons for these kids to be removed from their "families" and taken into care.
That this did not occur reflects a deep commitment by child-care authorities to keeping biological groups, families, together at almost any cost.
It might be time to review this approach or at least set the trigger for removal of children at a lower level.
The Howard League often encounters the results of dysfunctional parenting and the neglect of young people.
Some years ago, I appeared at a Parole Board hearing in support of a convicted child sex offender who was seeking release after serving a five-year sentence.
Despite a gut-reaction which told me to go nowhere near this offender, the prison psychologist, who I respect, convinced me to at least meet the prisoner.
I met a 50-year-old who had been convicted of a sexual offence against his then partner's 12-year-old daughter.
He was pleasant and seemed genuinely remorseful for his offending which was partly explained from his life experience as a child in Hawke's Bay.
He grew up in a large "blended" family and was sexually abused from the age of 6, as were all of his siblings and any other young person in the household.
As far as he knew, this was normal behaviour, though the adults taking part in the abuse managed to enforce silence on the abused children.
Like the Henderson boys, his family came to the attention of CYF, or whatever it was called at that point, but no action appears to have eventuated.
One of our earliest prisoner literacy programme graduates left school at the age of 10. I asked him if Education Ministry officials had noted his truancy and he said there was one call to his mum who said he had gone to stay with a fictitious aunt at a remote town on the East Cape. That town has (and had) just one school, so it would have only taken one phone call to find that this kid had dropped out of school.
That call didn't happen.
This 10-year-old linked up with a gang, was a father at 14 and began his prison career three years later.
There are two rays of sunlight in these depressing stories. One is the trend for more neighbours and associates of dysfunctional families to alert CYF and the police of domestic violence and abuse and the second is that Minister Tolley has set up an expert panel, which is looking at a complete revamp of the CYF system.
The state must have a database of kids, - otherwise we couldn't check on matters like vaccination - so why aren't we better at tracking and stopping the kind of horror that befell Arun Kumar?
The signals were there years ago. The ongoing costs will be heavy on all concerned.
-Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is a supporter of pro-amalgamation group A Better Hawke's Bay. He is chief executive of the NZ Howard League and a former president of the Labour Party. He is a political commentator and can be heard on Radio NZ's Nine to Noon programme at 11am Mondays, and Sean Plunket's RadioLive show 11am, Fridays. All opinions in this column are his and not those of the newspaper.
