ruthless-empire homicide

It’s time that we stop making excuses for why we can’t make it a crime to stonewall the cops.

And instead just do the right thing and make it a crime for every adult in the house to stonewall the cops if someone has bashed a baby to death.

This is becoming a pattern with child deaths in New Zealand. Just off the top of my head, I can give you four cases where babies have been bashed and the adults didn’t want to tell on each other:

• The Kahui twins
• Nia Glassie
• A case in South Auckland with an unnamed 4 moth old baby who survived months of bashing in 2019/2020
• And now- baby Ru

There were three adults in the house when baby Ru was bashed, and last we heard none of them are properly assisting police.

It is not novel to raise the idea that we should write a law that criminalises those three adults, and any others like them for keeping silent.

But every time we have this debate, out come the naysayers and they warn us we can’t do that.

Because it overturns a fundamental principle in our law where you are not compelled to help the prosecution, where you do not have to speak under threat of being charged. So every time, nothing gets done.

Today, I called a retired law professor to ask what he thought.

And he said that as long as a law was written that was very specific, that only criminalised people in a very specific example of bashing a dependent - like a baby or an elderly person -and as long as pressing charges required a sign off form very senior people - like the Attorney General or the Solicitor-General - it could be acceptable.

And it could work. To give you an example- that case of the 4 month old that I mentioned earlier.

The parents weren’t talking, so the cops charged both the mum and the dad. And that forced her dad to confess it was him. He went to jail for four years, and the baby survived.

It's time that we start doing this. Sure, it overrides principles but there’s another accepted principle- you don’t bash a baby to death and get away with it.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The mother of baby Ruthless-Empire - whose death is being investigated by police - has spoken out.

Storm Angel Wall has told our newsroom after being told the toddler was choking, she rushed him to hospital, where he died.

Police are treating the death as a homicide.

Herald reporter Sam Sherwood, says Wall told him she denies being involved in the death.

"She described him as the happiest little baby you'd ever see, she said that he was a happy, chappy baby. In her words, she said she was more than sad about what had happened."

Our newsroom understands the mother was one of three staying at the Lower Hutt property at the time.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don’t mind telling you that I sort of avoided talking about this topic a couple of days ago because it’s simply grim.

But the revelations are continuing following the death of baby Ru, with the latest including that the uncle of the slain toddler has criticized Oranga Tamariki saying that he asked the agency back in December to remove the child from the family home.

And so, the Groundhog Day style naval gazing examination begins with the inevitable accusations that Oranga Tamariki is not up to the job.

There probably haven’t been too many of us who haven’t thought that simply the fact that the baby was named “Ruthless-Empire” should have been a red flag from the start.

I mean seriously, who names a beautiful little baby “Ruthless Empire”?

But perhaps that’s a bit of a distraction when the inevitable questions about who is to blame begin, and whether Oranga Tamariki is fit for purpose.

It’s not helped by the revelation that more than fifty children have died since the establishment of the agency.

But isn't the fact simply that they have an impossible job and it’s just lazy and easy to make them the culprit, when in fact the picture, the failure of these children, ultimately must go back to the communities and the families in which they reside.

That’s not to place blame too widely either, because members of the wider family, it seems, were very concerned. As we can see from the uncle who had complained about the safety of this child.

I think it’s also important to acknowledge that if you’re working for Oranga Tamariki, surely you are there to make a difference and the very last thing you want to see is a catastrophic failure that results in a child's death.

I can’t help but think of other agencies that are often under fire —such as Pharmac for not providing all the medicines we need— when it’s an impossible task when there is a limited resource trying to cope with an inexhaustible supply of problems.

Just look at the stats:

Around 70,000 complaints received a year.

38,000 had investigations completed, around 51,000 individual children. That’s 1% of our population. 

57 child homicides since Oranga Tamariki came into being seven years ago.

There will be questions, people who will want to see Oranga Tamariki disestablished, and a new agency set up but what would that achieve?

Who’s it going to be staffed by? Probably the same people who work for the existing agency, who struggle with the scale of the problem that they have to deal with.

Are we going to require that every child is uplifted when there is a question raised about their safety?

Well, there will be those who say that’s the right answer, but then we’ll see stories of communities objecting to being children being removed and destroying the family and those communities in which they live.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But one thing that’s certain is that as soon as we are relying on a government agency to provide all the answers, we’ve demonstrated that we’re failing as a society and as communities. When that government agency surely can only be as effective as the willingness within communities it serves to help them do their jobs.

Personally, I think the problems go a lot deeper. The ongoing narrative that people's problems are always someone else's fault – the lack of demanding personal responsibility, entrenched reliance on the welfare state, the list goes on.

And let’s be honest, we're only another few news cycles away from another tragedy just like this. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

More calls for Oranga Tamariki to be shaken up following new details about a toddler that was killed in Lower Hutt.  

A homicide investigation has been launched into the death of almost two-year-old Ruthless-Empire Wall.

Newstalk ZB understands his uncle contacted Oranga Tamariki wanting the child to be uplifted.

It comes after it was recently revealed 57 children have died since the agency was established. 

Child Matters Chief Executive Jane Searle told Kate Hawkesby that it reflects the need for change. 

She says they've known for a long time Oranga Tamariki's not fit for purpose, with this being just another example. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.