Space games in morning and death in afternoon for three-year-old

By ELIZABETH BINNING

April 29 last year started like any other day for 3-year-old Tamati Pokaia.

His foster mum of five months, Maata Waterhouse, dropped him at the Huntly early childhood centre. He spent the morning planning a trip to the moon with his best friend, Joel, and teacher Louise.

At some stage of the morning, Tamati picked up a packet of popcorn which had been left over from a garage sale a week before, and stashed it in his lunchbox.

At 11.45am, Mrs Waterhouse picked Tamati up from the centre which had been one constant in his continually changing home life.

Supervisors there say he had been a good, outgoing kid, despite occasionally taking food from other children's lunchboxes.

Once home, Tamati sat down at his favourite little plastic chair and table set, and opened his lunchbox.

He pulled out the popcorn and started to eat the snack, unaware that his seemingly innocent action had just pushed his foster father over the edge.

Michael Waterhouse told police he had been sitting nearby watching TV when he saw the popcorn and challenged Tamati about where it had come from.

Tamati's "lie" that he had not taken it from another child's lunchbox sent the father of five into a rage.

He grabbed the boy by the arm. When Mrs Waterhouse approached her husband and said "no, Mike", he pushed her away. She left the room and started vacuuming.

Waterhouse bent the boy backwards over the padded arm of a nearby chair. He punched Tamati in the stomach four times, using what he described as moderate force.

He told police he could see that Tamati was in "a ton of pain" and that the veins were bulging in the boy's neck after the second blow.

Tamati then fell to the floor and Waterhouse landed knee-first on top of him.

After the beating, Waterhouse lifted Tamati's T-shirt where extensive bruising had already formed on the child's stomach. He spent the next two hours showering Tamati's limp body and applying ice packs to the bruises.

At 2.50pm, when the little boy lost consciousness, Waterhouse ordered his wife to call for help.

The ambulance officer who arrived at the Gavin Place home said she met Waterhouse at the door. He said he "didn't know what had happened".

When she entered the bedroom she found Tamati lying on the bed in a T-shirt and underpants splattered with vomit. He was blue and had no pulse.

A pathologist found that Tamati had died from a loss of blood caused by a tearing of the blood vessels. His body was covered in bruises.

He would have felt pain immediately after the beating, then gone into shock from the internal bleeding. Surgery would have been needed within two hours for Tamati to have survived.

One couple who knew Waterhouse described him as a loving family man and an active member of the Huntly South Rugby League Club where he was held in high regard.

He coached an under-18 side, managed the bar, organised fundraising and helped clean up. He was good with both children and adults.

But others who knew Waterhouse described him as a "domineering man".

Tamati's third foster mother, who wants to be known only as Karen, said she spent three weeks integrating Tamati and his younger brother, Billy, into the Waterhouse family before moving to Australia.

She admitted to having a few reservations because the Waterhouse family already included five other children and there seemed to be an attitude that smacking was okay.

"The rules with fostering are that you are not allowed to hit a child. I remember saying that to Maata when we dropped the children off.

"She said, 'oh well, we will have to think of other ways to discipline him'."

Karen said she was devastated when she learned of Tamati's death.

"I dropped my phone and just cried."

She said Tamati was not a naughty boy and even if he had misbehaved there was no reason for Waterhouse to beat him.

"He was only a little boy. No child of that age deserves what he got."