KEY POINTS:
Last week Auckland Zoo was hunting diseased neighbourhood cats that were sneaking in at night and fatally infecting wallabies. But by week's end the only "intruder" unmasked was part-time contract worker Mark Burton, who was summarily sacked for being an undeclared paranoid schizophrenic-in-treatment.
He hadn't passed on anything
nasty to the wallabies. Mr Burton's problem was that six years ago, in a bout of insanity, he killed his mother. On Saturday a reporter broke the news to the zoo, which freaked about possible public reaction once their celebrity worker was "outed".
Given that his job - part of his rehabilitation - involved processing and bagging animal manure for sale to garden centres, the person most at risk of catching anything seems to have been Mr Burton. But he obviously trusted the systems in place would protect him from any harm.
Unfortunately the zoo authorities didn't have similar trust in the assurances of his employers, Second Chance Enterprises, and his clinicians at the Mason Clinic, that Mr Burton was under careful supervision and was of risk to neither beast nor human.
The Herald's stablemate, the Herald on Sunday, is now under attack from health professionals for it's "Killer Works at Zoo" lead story last weekend which revealed that Mr Burton had been at the zoo part-time for four months.
I'm not going to try to defend the story. At a time when the Government is spending $6.4 million on a John Kirwan-fronted campaign to humanise depression and, by association, other mental health issues, it was, shall we say, depressing to see this message had failed to filter through to my Sunday colleagues.
It wasn't until the paper rang that zoo director Glen Holland learned of the "killer" in his midst. He terminated the contract saying "we believe there are better areas than a zoo for such a high profile person to be reintegrated into society".
For a publicly-owned body, could we not have hoped for a less not-in-my-backyard response? Particularly such a hasty one.
The feedback on the Herald website suggests the public is rather more enlightened than the zoo thought. Which is of little comfort, no doubt, to Mr Burton, unless the zoo, with a decent nudge from its political masters, offers an apology and his job back.
In an institution that makes its income from charging people to see its caged "killers", it seems odd that the authorities so quickly fell for a newspaper story suggesting there was an uncaged one lurking in the bushes ready to pounce.
Mr Burton was employed by Second Chance Enterprises, a charitable trust that since 1989 has been offering employment opportunities for people with psychiatric disabilities in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
For the past eight years, one of the jobs on offer has been to make "zoodoo" compost from Auckland Zoo excreta. Initially it was an off-site operation, but for the past four years the whole composting and bagging operation has been conducted in the nether regions of the zoo, away from public view.
Second Chance says they've never had any problems in that time and that their workers at the zoo are "heavily supervised".
Mr Burton is a full-time patient of the Mason Clinic at Pt Chevalier and his part-time job is a component of his rehabilitation. Clinic director Sandy Simpson says that in the past four years not one patient who has left the clinic has reoffended and the rehabilitation success rate has been extremely high.
I like to think that most Auckland ratepayers would support their zoo's small role in this.
Mr Burton was badly let down when he needed help six years ago. The Southland Hospital doctor who failed him then was subsequently found guilty of professional misconduct and fined $90,000.
Mr Burton's father, Trevor, says he was "horrifically dangerous" then but is not a risk now he's getting expert care. Who would know better than the man made widower by his son's act of madness?
Mark Burton is in remission and is taking his medication. He is well supervised and monitored. For four months he quietly shovelled muck at the back of the zoo and frightened neither the animals nor the customers. Why is he suddenly such a risk? As Mental Health Commission chairwoman Ruth Harrison says, "He deserves a fair go now."
