For whom the bells toll

A church service to mark National Children's Day tomorrow, should prod authorities - and the public - into action over child abusente writes CARROLL DU CHATEAU.

When the crowd of dignitaries, headed by Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright, gather at St Matthew-in-the-City church at 11 tomorrow morning to celebrate National Children's Day, four people will be missing. The aunt and three siblings of Tangaroa Matiu, whose murder sparked this national day against child abuse, will not be there in the old church with its 250-odd flickering candles - one for each child who has been killed through abuse and neglect over two decades. Why will the guests of honour be absent? Because there is not enough money in the kitty to pay for them to drive down from Kaitaia for the service.

The Matius' predicament offers a snapshot of the aftermath of child abuse. On January 12, 2000, when Genesis Mahanga wrenched a rail off the deck of his house in Massey, West Auckland, and beat his 3-year-old stepson Tangaroa to death because he messed his pants, he set up a chain reaction that was to devastate many lives.

Both Tangaroa's mother and stepfather are in jail. His brothers and sisters were inevitably scarred. The extended family is stretched to breaking. As his 27-year-old aunt Vanessa, who took on the care of her sister's children when she went to prison says, "In the long run we're all still suffering because of Tangaroa and the way he died. We're still suffering because of the consequences and the choices she [her sister] made. We're always going to have to live with the fact that our last name is Matiu."

Despite their infamous past, and obvious need, the Matiu family is still under huge pressure. "We're getting on fine," says Vanessa. "But it's a bit too much at this time." Vanessa is referring to two things - first, that she and her seven charges (four nieces and nephews and three children of her own) are now living with her husband's parents after their own home burned down in July; second, that the family car probably would not make the trip to Auckland, even if she did have the money for petrol.

For the past three-and-a-half months Vanessa, her husband Dean and their seven charges, now aged between 6 and 13, have squashed into three bedrooms. Says Vanessa without a flicker of bitterness, "It hasn't been a perfect road to walk through for me and my husband, but he works and that's good. We've had some counselling. I've had my ups and downs and we're still carrying on."

And are his parents coping with the influx? "Yes," says Vanessa, "it's nothing new for them. That's the thing about Maori people. We've grown up like this on maraes, we're used to living like this." As she also points out, because her parents-in-law are the pastors at the local Christian Fellowship church where they all belong, "we get a lot of support from the church".

Although the couple put in an application for a Housing Corporation house about a month and a half ago, after the house burned down ("they think I left the oven on, I'm sure I didn't") they do not think they will be rehoused in the near future. Says Vanessa, "The Housing Corporation is looking, but there are nine of us altogether. It's probably hard to find a house for a big family like ours."

And have Tangaroa's two brothers and sister managed to get over the trauma? "They're okay, the horror's always back there, but they've just got to carry on, soldier on."

Unlike other National Children's Day events, this service is not government funded. Nor does it have wealthy benefactors or corporate sponsors. Instead this public demonstration on our day of shame is driven by four women, Alex Dempsey, Raewyn Stone, Cheryl Love and Cathie Harrop, who could no longer bear to stand by and do nothing while babies and children were being murdered and abused with depressing regularity.

Says Dempsey, one of the four organisers who were so moved by Tangaroa's murder they vowed to do something about it, "We just got together to do something, to make people take notice. Standing by and accepting child abuse as inevitable is the surest way to perpetuate it."

Unfortunately labours of love do not translate to dollars. Despite a year of fundraising, the quartet has managed to raise only enough to pay for invitations, candles and a simple lunch after the service so that invited guests who work in the field of child abuse will have a chance to meet colleagues in a relaxed setting.

The service begins at 11 am. Main speakers are Dame Silvia Cartwright, Commissioner for Children Roger McLay, while Rev John Marsden, the chaplain who was on duty that day when Tangaroa's body arrived at the Starship Hospital, will offer the prayer of thanksgiving. Then people will light candles to honour lives snuffed out by abuse accompanied by St Mary's schola and St Joseph's Convent from Otahuhu.

Explains Dempsey, "There are two prongs, or points, to the service. First there's a large invited audience of people who work in the child abuse profession, who need to meet each other face-to-face, so helping the city work together on these issues.

"Second, we want to bring the public into this battle. So Aucklanders, come along and support us. Make the authorities take notice. More people march up Queen St to protest against genetic modification than they do to protest against our appalling rate of child abuse. The only way we will get change and eliminate abuse is if there's public pressure for change!"

What Dempsey and her team is fighting for sounds so simple - and so fundamental to keeping at-risk children safe.

"Where are we at with the national register," she asks, pointing to a problem that has been tripped up by so many pressure groups and human rights issues that people who work in the area despair of it ever getting through. All social workers and health professionals are asking for is a national monitoring database that would flag all at-risk children.

The system would work via a database which could be called up on computer every time a child was brought into, say, a hospital, GP's rooms or even noted by a kindergarten teacher. Ideally the file would be accessible to all health, education and social welfare professionals - and a child's name would be flagged if there were suspicions of abuse.

As Dempsey points out, "When James Whakaruru turned up dead in 1998, it was found that 40 health professionals had had contact with this child. But because he had gone to different clinics, different doctors, no one had finally noted that it was a case of abuse."

And why is the database taking so long? Dempsey sighs, "Ethical reasons, privacy reasons, money ... "

Frances Watkinson, a child protection co-ordinator at KidzFirst, the children's service at South Auckland Healthcare, talks about how, since they death of James Whakaruru, they have developed a system for tracking children "for whom abuse is an issue".

As she says, "We can't hang around waiting [for a national register] so we started tracking ourselves, collaborating with Child Youth and Family, Police and the Well Child people."

But as she also says, there are problems with such a register. "Who goes on it? Who knows you're on it? How can you get off? And really, none of this will work unless we get collaboration and ensure that people are not threatened by things like the Privacy Act, but actually report abuse when they see it - or even suspect it."

The frustrating thing about all of this is that it is defenceless children who are sacrificed while political correctness - for all the most valid reasons - protects the people who torment them. This time last year, while people like Vanessa and her sister's remaining three children lit candles in remembrance of their murdered brother, others such as Women's Refuge chief executive Merepeka Raukawa-Tait sat there searching for solutions, tears streaming down their faces, as they thought about the children still living lives of terror and desperation - probably within kilometres of this beautiful church.

As Vanessa says, "There's a lot of people out there that honestly do care - about people put in situations like me. It's good that they're carrying on the Children's Day." She searches for words, "There must be more they can do."