Of all the finds during a Gate Pa police raid, the lone 12-year-old boy who emerged on to the doorstep was by far the most disturbing.
As our report today reveals, the boy was home alone when police raided the Gate Pa house yesterday at 6am. Witnesses told of more than 20 police, some of whom threw bricks at the house to goad the occupants to come out. The Armed Offenders Squad, reportedly with guns trained on the house, naturally expected adults to emerge. But when eventually a figure appeared on the balcony, it was a lone 12-year-boy, paying a heartbreaking price for the alleged drug offending going on in his home.
This makes me sick.
To state the thunderingly obvious: It is a parent or caregiver's job to protect a child from destructive forces such as the drug trade, from physical dangers such as a methamphetamine laboratory, and from emotional scarring such as that you might expect being the sole occupant of a house raided by the AOS.
What is wrong with some parents and caregivers? Why do they have so little regard for the children in their care?
Sadly this is not the first time children have been found inside suspected P-lab houses in the Western Bay. In May last year, an 11-year-old girl was found inside a Te Puke home that police said was one of the region's largest methamphetamine labs.
In December 2010 police who raided a Farm St home found children living there as well as industrial chemicals believed to have been used to manufacture P, and in July 2010, three children aged 4 to 14 were referred to Child, Youth and Family after they were found living at an Oropi home that was used as a P-lab. Details of this latest case were still emerging as this edition went to print but neighbours told the Bay of Plenty Times the boy was a kind, polite youngster who knocked on doors asking for odd jobs to raise money for swimming lessons and buy his mother a Christmas present.
That he has such a strong work ethic - that he understands that the way to pay for what you want is to work for it - is a credit to his character. His attitude, in spite of the alleged offending of adults in his life, suggests there is an underlying strength there which must be captured before an environment of under-achievement, lawlessness and drug culture crushes it. Our community should be very grateful for the Child, Youth and Family foster families who provide homes for children like this when their caregivers are found to be wanting.
Of all the possible charges the adults living at this property might face, I hope they will be held to account for allegedly neglecting this child.