New claim of children in state care being taken to Hastings gang house and threatened

Billy Harford says a state caregiver in 2012 took him and two other boys to a gang house in Hastings where they were threatened by a Mongrel Mob member holding a baseball bat. Photo / Paul Taylor

A young man who was in state care says that as a boy he was taken by a caregiver to a gang house and threatened with a baseball bat.

Billy Harford, 19, said he feared for his life during the 15-minute ordeal in 2012, when he was 12. He was in state care from 2002 to 2015.

Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children, declined to comment on the substance of Harford's allegations, suggesting he lay a complaint with the ministry.

"It is definitely not Oranga Tamariki's practice or policy to drop children already in our care off at locations to teach them a lesson and we do not condone this at all," said the ministry's East Coast regional manager, Te Pare Meihana.

Harford approached the Herald following its coverage last week of the online video claiming a caregiver had dropped off a boy aged around 14 at a Hastings gang house to scare him. Oranga Tamariki says the facts of that case are unclear.

Harford said the gang house he was taken to was in Hastings. He was with two other boys, one aged around 10, the other 13 or 14.

They were living at a home in Hastings run by the Child Youth and Family Service, the state's child-welfare agency at the time. They had been "playing up" - not cleaning up properly and, without permission, going to a dairy to buy lollies and drinks.

The Child Youth and Family caregiver told them to get into a car as he was going to take them for a ride.

They went to a house which Harford identified as being associated with the Mongrel Mob, because men there were wearing the gang's patch.

A man who appeared to be a gang member told them to get out of the car.

"We ran around to the back of the house. He made us line up. He was yelling at us, threatening us with a baseball bat.

"The gang member had a baseball bat in his hand, standing in front of us with it held in the air like he was ready to swing it at us."

The boys were told the bat would "go through our heads" if they didn't listen to the caregiver.

"I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was going to happen.

"The caregiver threatened us not to tell anybody," Harford said, but he disregarded that threat.

The caregiver also told the boys to remember what his friend - the gang member - had said, otherwise they would be taken back there.

Two days later, Harford made a complaint to a Child Youth and Family social worker but she told him she didn't believe him.

"I think they should have done a full investigation rather than trying to push it away and say it never happened.

"I asked to be removed from the family home and go to a different placement. The social worker refused that too.

"The next month I was moved to Wellington. I brought it up there with the social workers. They started to get an investigation going but nothing happened with it."

Eventually a social worker handed him a letter from the police in which the police said they didn't have enough evidence to proceed with an investigation.

That social worker had told him it was wrong that nothing had been done.

He no longer has the letter.

The police declined to discuss the case with the Herald, citing complainants' privacy rights and a general policy of confidentiality over who is or has been under investigation.

Harford said that in light of Meihana's invitation, he would now make a new, third complaint about the incident.

Following last week's stories about the video containing claims a boy was taken to a gang house, a spokeswoman for Oranga Tamariki, Alison McDonald, said it could not comment, because of the obligation to protect people's privacy.

But she said it was clear from the ministry's initial inquiries there were "a number of different accounts of what actually took place".