Woman with 50 convictions takes child shoplifting, is warned ‘it should end today’

Phaeton Taumata has more than 50 convictions for shoplifting. Photo / 123rf

A woman who has been stealing for more than 25 years has been told to break an inter-generational way of life after she took a child out shoplifting.

Phaeton Taumata is 41 years old. The Hastings District Court was told on Tuesday that she has been shoplifting since she was 14. She has more than 50 convictions.

She appeared in the court via an audio-visual link from Arohata Prison, in Tawa, for sentencing, having earlier pleaded guilty to 11 charges of shoplifting between February and October last year.

Four of those offences involved a monetary value of more than $1000, one was between $500 and $1000, and six were for amounts under $500.

She pleaded guilty to a 12th offence involving an unspecified amount before she was sentenced.

Judge John Walker said on one of the shoplifting visits, she had a child with her who walked out of a shop with a drone.

Defence counsel Cliff Church said that Taumata had lived a life where “dishonesty offending is the norm”, and she had received no intensive counselling to reduce her offending.

It had increased since a co-offender became involved.

Judge Walker said that Taumata had received a nurturing childhood but had learned about shoplifting “at a very early age”, and it was now up to her to not pass on that behaviour to the next generation.

“It’s your job to try to break this cycle that you are part of. It should end today,” the judge said.

“Unless you make some real changes, it won’t be long before your children are standing in a court,” he said.

“But you need to be strong enough to break away from that behaviour. Your mother managed to do it, and she can help you do it as well.”

Judge Walker sentenced Taumata to five months’ home detention at a Whakatāne address, with conditions to do programmes as directed by a probation officer.

He gave her credit for early guilty pleas and for two weeks she had spent in custody.

But he declined a police request for reparation, saying there was almost no prospect of Taumata being able to pay it.

“I’m not going to make an empty order and hold out false hopes [of reparation],” the judge said.