One of the girls said she was scared when she heard the school bell because she didn't want to go home. File photo / Thinkstock
One of the girls said she was scared when she heard the school bell because she didn't want to go home. File photo / Thinkstock
An adoptive mother who wounded one of her daughters and beat them on multiple occasions has avoided jail “by a hair’s breadth”.
The 59-year-old, who has name suppression to protect the identities of her young victims, was found guilty in September of abusing the two girls - including wounding one of them and hitting the other with the buckle of a dog collar.
She strenuously denied the bulk of the offending throughout her judge-alone trial in September, but shortly after being found guilty it was revealed she had already been convicted just weeks prior for assault charges against another child. She was earlier sentenced to supervision on those charges.
The woman appeared in the Hutt Valley District Court today for sentencing on two representative charges of assault, as well as wounding and assault with a weapon.
In their interviews with police and during cross-examination in court, the victims described incidents of being hit with chairs and dog collars, being dragged by their hair and bitten, and one alarming case where the victim, aged about 8, was swung by her hair into the corner of the dressing table, causing an open wound on her head.
The defendant claimed she had been pulling the girl and, when she let go, the child fell. She said she wasn’t aware she had hit her head or that she had a wound, despite the fact the girl had blood crusted over her hair at school the next day.
The woman denied all the offending except for the two representative assault charges, which covered multiple incidents of slapping and hair-pulling.
Reading the victim impact statement from one of the girls, Judge Chris Sygrove said the child still has flashbacks to the abuse she suffered, but is starting to improve now she is not living with the defendant.
“She used to be afraid at school when the bell rang because she knew she had to go home to you,” Judge Sygrove said.
“She says she’s still scared for the future because she badly wants it to be better than the past.”
The girl was happy to get out of the woman’s house, but is slowly “getting over the treatment that you meted out to her”.
The woman was sentenced in the Hutt Valley District Court today.
“She still has trouble trusting people. She says she has more freedom now but her life is not settled yet. She’s moving forward and has made some friends.”
He said at the beginning of the hearing the defendant would not be going to jail.
“She comes within a hair’s breadth. I think it’s to her advantage that I’ve had time to give it careful thought ... She’s going to get the maximum home detention,” he said.
Judge Sygrove allowed discounts for her previous lack of convictions, as well as cultural factors, including that physical discipline was common in the woman’s home country of Samoa.
“Effectively you have imported the type of discipline you were familiar with as a child, to New Zealand. It is simply not appropriate to adopt that type of discipline in civilised society in New Zealand – as you have found out, to your detriment.
“My initial decision was that the only appropriate sentence for you was a jail sentence.”
He said after reading the lawyers’ submissions and the cultural report, he was persuaded to modify his decision.
He adopted a starting point of three years in prison, allowing six-month discounts each for her clean record and cultural factors. That brought the sentence down to two years, a length which allows the sentence to be substituted to home detention.
When switching from a prison sentence to home detention, the sentence length is halved to factor in when a person would have been eligible for parole if they had gone to jail.
Judge Sygrove therefore sentenced the woman to 12 months of home detention, with conditions she could not be in contact with family members under the age of 16. She will be subject to special post-detention for six months.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
