Dialogue: Often it's easier to forget than cringe

By GARTH GEORGE

In all the political fallout over the Celia Lashlie affair, it is a tragedy that the crux of the matter has once again been conveniently buried - and that is the plight of scores, if not hundreds, of young children whose lives are going to end in disaster or death before they've even had time to grow up.

In April Ms Lashlie, head of Special Education Services in Nelson and a former superintendent of Christchurch Women's Prison, told a Wellington meeting about an anonymous boy who was "blond, with the most angelic face you can imagine and he is coming to prison ... and he is probably going to kill someone on the way."

Then, after she had been sacked, she admitted the boy was a fiction, a profile built from a amalgam of at least 10 pre-teen children she knew of "who fit these statistics."

At that point everyone seemed to lose interest in anything but Ms Lashlie's sacking, the political reaction, the sacking of the chairman of the Special Education Service, and the subsequent rehiring of Ms Lashlie (who at the time of her dismissal was costing the service $849 a day) on a new $60,000 contract. That in itself should make us cringe. If the Government would pay its Child, Youth and Family Services frontline social workers a quarter of the daily rate it was paying for this contractor, what a difference it might make to their quantity and quality.

So what of the angelic 5-year-old potential killer whom we so readily forgot so we could resume our head-in-the-sand posture? Well, he (and his sister) exist and they could well be attending a school near you.

In an Auckland suburb live a couple who have been dealing with at-risk children for many years. He is on a panel of people appointed under the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act to attend police interviews when a suitable family member is not available; she is a senior teacher in a primary school with responsibilities for new entrant children with behavioural difficulties.

He told me in a letter: "Celia Lashlie correctly described a situation that does exist. I see it frequently in these interviews as do the other members of the panel. We know that many of the young persons we see are largely ignored by CYFS as hopeless cases, given its lack of resources.

"Their attitudes and drug-induced behaviour, and total lack of parental and family support in many cases, combined with a record of violence, leaves little doubt as to their potential for serious assault and homicide."

He says that his wife at any one time has four or five new-entrant children in a class of 28 to 30 pupils who have high levels of emotional disturbance and come from violent homes and/or homes in which sexual abuse is occurring. They often have siblings fathered by a succession of different men.

"Teachers know this," he writes. "Children talk about it. Some of them have attended four or five schools in as many months.

"In the community in which we have lived since 1977, my wife and I have seen a succession of local children known to be seriously at risk and who are now either dead or in jails.

"Abuse and incest have been common features in their homes and the future of the children in question was totally predictable."

He says that with her training his wife is able to recognise this kind of social abnormality since it stands out in visible changes in a child's behaviour after events such as the child's mother bringing a new boyfriend into the home or an "uncle" coming to live there.

"Every primary teacher, social worker and police officer up and down the country knows all this, so why was an attempt ever made to silence Celia Lashlie for speaking out and moreover for speaking the truth?"

I have every reason to believe what this man tells me. Ms Lashlie herself was quoted in this newspaper during the controversy as saying: "There are five, six and seven-year-olds out there who will grow up, go to prison and could kill your daughter or grand-daughter on the way."

That view was confirmed by the Nelson area manager of Barnardos, Jill Shepherd, who added perhaps the most damning comment of all: "Resources for children with high needs are very difficult to find."

What a ghastly, sickening admission for a New Zealander to have to make. While we spend untold millions on the arts, on Maori language and television, on venture capital for business and on any number of other desirable but unnecessary things, we condemn many of our children, our most vulnerable yet most precious asset, to lives of unimaginable physical and mental suffering, terror, torture and even early death.

We should, each and every one of us, hang our heads in abject shame.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz