Editorial: Cycle of abuse must stop

Teresa Cormack has been a name well known in this country for 15 years.

It has taken that long to identify her killer and see him convicted. Had Jules Mikus been caught in 1987 and given the full sentence for murder in this country he would be out of jail by now.

The trial has not explained how 6-year-old Teresa Cormack fell into the clutches of a man like Mikus on the morning after her birthday when she never came to school. But the case has uncovered, as these wretched crimes often do, a side of society that can make most people despair.

Mikus, we are told, was himself abused as a child and had a string of convictions for indecent assault on young girls from the time he was aged 15 until he molested and murdered Teresa Cormack when he was nearly 29. Since then he has amassed a list of driving and drugs convictions and several periods in prison but, it appears, no further sexual offences.

However, when it became known in 1999 that he was living with a woman who had several children, the authorities were sufficiently concerned to remove them from his reach. The Child Youth and Family service intends to check the well-being of children who have been in his care.

But perhaps the most appalling insight to the side of society that Mikus inhabits - the side that Teresa Cormack had the misfortune to meet - has come from the woman he lived with for the past five years.

Shirley Te Kooti and her four children were sheltering from her previous partner in a Salvation Army hostel when she met Mikus. The next year she had a child by him. At that time, suffering post natal depression, she says, "I rang the fathers of all my children and none of them came apart from Jules. The others had cars and lived around the corner, but they never lifted a finger ... "

How do we rescue people, particularly children, from circumstances like this? In this case the Child Youth and Family service seems to have been commendably quick to remove the children once they learned - two years after the fact - that Mikus was in their home. But in this country it ought to be possible to see that situations such as this do not develop.

There is no shortage of agencies wrestling with the plight of children in these sorts of circumstances.

The latest proposals, which we report today, have has just been published by the Auckland University of Technology public policy institute, Children's Agenda and Unicef. They endorse the principles and tentative programme set out by the Government in its "Agenda for Children" in June. The purpose of their paper, they say, is "to influence the Government to act".

But the actions they propose are heavy on procedure, organisation and slogans such as the "whole child approach", whatever that may be. They also have a list of additional welfare benefits to recommend and even want family support payments partly wasted on families that are not poor.

There is only one effective action for this problem. It goes under the heading of early intervention and parent support services. We need good social workers in sufficient numbers to monitor the births of children in worrying circumstances and get alongside their parents quickly.

If the parent or parents can be helped to set up a clean, safe and happy home for the child, let's spare no effort and expense to help them. If they are unlikely to give the child that start in life no matter how much help is provided, the children should be removed, to the care of other family members if possible but to foster homes if necessary.

We must break the cycle of child abuse that creates monsters like Mikus, and ensure that all children can walk to school in safety again.

The Making it Happen report

Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/childabuse