An extension cord was running from a neighbour’s house into a house bus parked outside that the whānau of eight were crammed into. Again, several windows had been broken and it was “inadequately boarded up”.
As it started to get dark, police noticed several more of the woman’s children wandering back home from nearby streets and a park, all unsupervised.
The woman, who was granted name suppression by Judge Noel Cocurullo to protect the identity of her children, appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Thursday for sentencing on six charges of ill-treatment of a child.
Each charge represented each of her and her partner’s children.
The case has been going through the court for the past four years. The woman’s partner will be sentenced next month.
The woman accepted a sentence indication by Judge Cocurullo in August last year.
Today she was in court to find out if she would be jailed, or be able to continue her rehabilitation at the Grace Foundation in Auckland.
The Crown summary of facts detailing the offending stretches six pages, detailing how the children’s dire living state was uncovered, the unsanitary and cold conditions they were living in, and also assessments by a paediatrician of the children carried out six months after the family was found.
“Significant concerns” were noted, including inadequate or poor nutrition, clothing worn for days so were grimy and stains, and were holed so badly that they needed to be thrown away, unpleasant odours and that the children were “visibly dirty, grime under finger and toenails”.
The paediatrician commented that the “mother’s apathetic presentation was overwhelming” and that she appeared “disconnected from reality”.
At a second appointment, to assess her three youngest children, the mother left to pick up a Christmas hamper.
Police had been involved in a number of calls in the lead-up to the child being found on May 23, 2021, and dating back to March 17, 2018.
At least four times in that period, one or more of the children had been seen wandering in public, “in potentially dangerous situations, and in an unkempt state”.
Neither the woman nor her partner had fully registered the births of their two youngest children, resulting in them having different names between various agencies.
When spoken to in May 2021, the woman said she was out and her partner was meant to look after the kids.
The partner, who was shaking and “jumpy” at the time, said the child had “run off” and that he’d had trouble keeping an eye on him.
‘That’s all she knew'
Counsel Jarom Keung said his client was brought up in similar circumstances; drugs, alcohol, abuse, violence, gangs and neglect.
“She said it has been difficult for her because she finally realises that what she grew up with wasn’t normal.
“She’s now at a point where she is receiving the help. She’s completed parenting courses, doing a drug and alcohol [course],” he said, adding that she was addressing previous trauma.
Judge Cocurullo initially told Keung that he was “not remotely interested” in dishing out enough discounts to get her down to the two-year mark, from a four-year starting point, to qualify her for home detention.
But in the end, despite opposition and impassioned submissions from Crown counsel Kasey Dillon, Keung was able to convince the judge.
Keung said while some of the discounts he was seeking overlapped - Section 27 background, drug addiction, and alcohol and drugs - it was the woman’s mother’s comments, detailing how she was an alcoholic, and while she was in custody for drugs, the daughter was raised in a home of neglect, gangs and various types of abuse.
He argued that her upbringing was directly relevant to her offending and meth use.
She had also spent the last four months at the Grace Foundation and was one month away from finishing her rehabilitative courses.
She had been barred from seeing her children, now aged between 6 and 14 and they were living with other family members.
The woman had herself been a CYF child and that was now continuing, he said.
“It’s that intergenerational abuse ... even [the woman’s] mother being subjected to the same.
“So she has been aware, or known, to Oranga Tamariki for many years.”
‘Nobody did anything’
Judge Cocurullo was unimpressed and couldn’t help but think that “as a society we have dropped the ball here”.
“Surely someone could have joined the dots before this Samaritan found this bottomless child on the street in winter.
“Nobody did anything.”
Judge Cocurullo said his biggest concern was the woman’s “lack of emotional availability”.
“She was just not remotely interested at all.
“She wanted to go and get a Christmas hamper instead of staying with her children at the hospital. I mean, hello.”
However, what irked him the most was the number of reports made to Oranga Tamariki before the toddler was found pantsless on the street, but the whānau were not followed up.
“We’re supposed to have child protection agencies for a reason and it beggars belief that for two or three years ... of you not being emotionally available that the ill-treatment continued for so long and it was not picked up.”
Given the progress she had made at the Grace Foundation, he agreed to sentence the woman to home detention but gave her the maximum of 12 months.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 21.
