Several photos of Sonny Marks were placed on a chair in the hearing room, surrounded by one of his favourite sweatshirts. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
WARNING - This story discusses suicide
“Kia orana, I hope you have someone next to you… it’s about Sonny… he’s dead.”
That was how a mother recalls being told by Oranga Tamariki that her youngest son had likely killed himself on New Year’s Eve in 2018.
But it’s the calls Ana Ransfield didn’t receive that she says have caused her the most grief.
She didn’t know her 14-year-old son Sonny Marks had been admitted to hospital at 11pm the night before in a critical condition and wasn’t contacted until he died at 7.15am the following morning.
“I want answers,” Ransfield told a courtroom packed with her friends and family.
“I want Oranga Tamariki to answer for their failure to care for Sonny.”
Ransfield gave evidence before a Coroner’s inquest in Palmerston North yesterday to examine the events surrounding her son’s death.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to be with Sonny in the hospital before he died because Oranga Tamariki did not tell me he was in Hastings Hospital until after he died and he was in the morgue,” she said.
According to the summary of events presented at the hearing, Sonny was placed with a foster family in Shannon, Horowhenua and for several weeks over the Christmas holiday period he’d been staying with his half-sister in Rotorua.
Together, they all travelled up to Hastings to spend time with his foster parents’ family over the New Year period.
On the afternoon of December 31, 2018, Sonny and another child were given permission to play in a garage where toys were kept. Late in the afternoon he came inside and seemed upset and complained of a sore stomach.
He was monitored and cared for but slipped in and out of consciousness.
He was taken to Hawke’s Bay Hospital unresponsive and staff underwent extensive resuscitation he was transferred to ICU at 3am, however, he never regained consciousness and he died at 7.15am on January 1, 2019.
Despite this report, his mother believes he would never intentionally take his own life.
Ransfield also says that before Sonny was hospitalised she had no knowledge of any issues with his mental health.
However, counsel for Oranga Tamariki Adam Lewis referenced a number of documents and doctor’s reports, which Ransfield was largely either present at or part of the proceedings for, which noted Sonny’s storied history of mental health.
Ransfield, who is partially deaf, said she didn’t recall hearing about nor reading any document or mention where her son’s mental health was raised as an issue.
“He didn’t have a mental health problem while he was with me anyway,” she said.
Some of the issues Coroner Matthew Bates will investigate over the course of the hearing are whether Sonny’s suicidal ideations were raised with his family and if they had been raised would it have affected his foster placement; what extent was the state of his mental health and wellbeing shared with either his birth family or his caregivers; and whether the psychiatrist who assessed him was overworked and under-supported.
Bates will also analyse whether Sonny’s death was in fact self-inflicted.
Sonny’s social worker at Oranga Tamariki, who has interim name suppression, told the hearing that he’d made a number of attempts to take his own life in the several years leading up to his death.
She said she was deeply concerned about the lack of action from the Child Adolescent Mental Health Service and “lost her rag” at one of their staff over their lack of action, causing them to make a written complaint about her.
She said Sonny was difficult at school and was bounced around multiple homes and caregivers since first being taken into care by Oranga Tamariki in 2013 after concerns were raised about his home life.
“He still wanted to live with his mum and believed there was a conspiracy to keep them apart,” the woman said in her statement.
When Sonny was placed in his final home in 2018 the social worker said she gave the caregivers an explicit rundown of his tumultuous mental health background and that it was something they needed to be aware of.
She was overseas when she received news that Sonny had died and told the hearing yesterday that she knew him well and didn’t believe he intended to take his own life.
“I’m sure Sonny’s death was self-inflicted, but in a sense I think it was accidental,” she said.
“I don’t really think he wanted to die.”
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
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