WARNING: This story deals with child assault and may be distressing.
A young father left his footprint on his son’s body after stomping on the child and ramming the under-five-year-old’s head into a sink because of a toileting accident.
Ngatirangi Tukiwaho then threatened to kill his mother when she called the police.
The 23-year-old was sent to jail last year, according to a District Court ruling published on Wednesday that said involving the police was the right thing to do.
“That is very much to the credit of [his] whānau who did not try to cover it up,” Judge Maree Mackenzie said.
Child protection advocates say the case highlights the importance of family members who speak up, at a time when one child is dying every five weeks on average as a result of abuse in Aotearoa.
In September 2021 Tukiwaho was the sole caregiver of his two young children.
They were heading out to a relative’s house when one child went to the toilet on the floor.
What followed was an “unprovoked, cruel and gratuitous” attack on the child in front of his sibling, prosecutors said.
The decision did not say how old the victim or his sibling were, only that both were under five.
“You texted your mother saying, ‘Can you come and get your moko before I f*** him up,’ but that is exactly what you did,” Judge Mackenzie said in her May 2022 ruling.
Tukiwaho slapped and struck the boy’s head multiple times, striking his face, temple, and both ears.
He grabbed and twisted the child’s ears, digging his fingernails in so deeply it lacerated the back of an ear.
Tukiwaho also rammed the child’s head into the kitchen sink, then stomped on his right buttock with enough force to leave the imprint of his shoe in the bruise.
The stomping caused deep bruising to the other side of the child’s body. He was also left with significant bruising and abrasions to his face and ears, and a burst blood vessel in his left eye.
After the assault, Tukiwaho put the child in the toilet where he was found by family members who came home.
“That was a cruel action on your part, because you did not go and seek medical help for your child,” the judge said.
Instead, Tukiwaho called his sister to come and collect the children, continuing to swear and yell at the child during the call and slapping the crying boy’s bare legs when putting him in the car to make him stop.
Worried about the child’s injuries, his sister took the children home and called Tukiwaho’s mother, who involved the police.
When officers came to arrest him at his house, he ran away and went into hiding for two days, sending text messages to his mother threatening to kill her for involving the police.
In the end, he turned himself in at the Taupō Police Station.
He was charged with injuring his child with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, which carries a maximum jail term of 10 years.
“It is difficult to imagine a more serious breach of trust,” Judge Mackenzie said, considering the man was the biological father of the child, whose very young age made him vulnerable and “entirely unable to do anything to protect himself”.
“You used your child as a punching bag,” she said.
Tukiwaho was on bail at the time and handing himself in did not lessen the seriousness of his decision to go on the run and evade police, the judge said, increasing his sentence by six months for escaping custody and threatening his mother.
Despite his guilty plea, the judge said it was not clear whether Tukiwaho was remorseful.
A pre-sentence report showed Tukiwaho did not think he had an anger issue, telling the report writer: “I did have some anger problems, but it wasn’t that bad… out of 10, I reckon I was about a three.”
It was not clear to the court whether Tukiwaho was beaten as a child, but he was exposed to violence.
“I accept that there was normalisation of violence if you saw or were exposed to your father beating up your mother,” Judge Mackenzie said.
He went to live with his grandparents as a young teen and “refreshingly” did not have drug or substance issues.
She sentenced him to two years and three months’ jail for the assault on his child, and three months each for escaping custody and threatening to kill his mother, to be served concurrently.
He was sentenced at the same hearing to a further 12 months’ jail for a separate assault with a weapon - beating up an armed robber in “excessive self-defence” about six months before the child assault.
His final sentence was three years and three months’ jail.
“I am not sure what the prospects of rehabilitation are or how motivated you are,” the judge said, pointing to Tukiwaho’s lack of insight.
“Hopefully, you start to understand that you do have a problem with anger and it is a big problem with anger,” she said.
Family members can often be aware of abuse occurring and it may be difficult to speak up, Child Matters national services manager Megan West said.
However, she said it was extremely important they did - and to alert authorities as soon as possible.
“The young child in this case was horrifically abused and the outcome could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the whānau intervention,” she said.
“Children can’t stop abuse from happening, but adults can.”
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.