Casino Ataria-Wharehinga was 19 months old when she died in Starship Hospital after being beaten by her uncle on multiple occasions.
WARNING: Distressing content
Hawke’s Bay toddler Casino Ataria-Wharehinga was killed in the care of her drug-addicted aunt and uncle in Gisborne in early 2022. In the weeks before she died, she was assaulted and refused treatment, before dying after another brutal assault.
A former voluntary Oranga Tamariki caregiver in Hastings says that, while the justice system has dealt with those responsible, OT could have prevented the tragedy.
She says she briefly looked after Casino at OT’s request, and would have kept doing so, but OT sent Casino out of her home, out of the region, and into harm’s way. James Pocock reports.
Francine* was passionate about caring for vulnerable Hawke’s Bay children – so much so that she volunteered to do so for Oranga Tamariki.
For five years she provided them with a safe, caring home when their worlds were turned upside down. No longer.
One of the children Francine would take in was a Hawke’s Bay toddler called Casino, who was placed with her on November 13, 2021, after her mother was taken into custody.
It was a short visit. Within five to eight hours – Francine can’t be certain exactly – Casino was transferred out of her care to be placed with whānau in Gisborne.
Eight weeks later, 19-month-old Casino was killed.
Oranga Tamariki (OT) has been asked an array of questions about the case by Hawke’s Bay Today but it has so far declined to answer any of them.
It says it cannot comment on any circumstances of the case because, despite the case having gone through the courts, the killing of Casino could still be the subject of a coronial inquiry.
OT’s stance makes it hard to confirm exactly how Casino ended up in the care of her uncle Te Ngahuru Maxwell McClutchie and her maternal aunt Amy Wharehinga, Casino’s mother’s twin sister.
But Francine says she is certain. She believes it was a direct transfer, from her OT-approved house to theirs on November 13.
She says OT told her right from the start that Casino’s aunt and uncle were coming to pick her up.
A man with familiarity with the case has told Hawke’s Bay Today he believes it’s more complex than that. OT did not give approval for Casino to stay with her aunt and uncle and she was supposed to be living in another whānau home in Gisborne.
Regardless of what OT’s intentions were for Casino, court documents show she was living with her aunt and uncle for the majority, if not all, of the two months before she died.
Francine can’t stop thinking about this.
She is leaving her voluntary role as a form of protest and she wants answers – about the decisions OT made over those months and about the process it went through to make them.
But OT has refused to provide anything to her, citing the Privacy Act.
What Francine can’t stop thinking about in particular is why the equivalent of a single workday or less was enough to decide that Casino was better off in Gisborne than with her.
She feels OT “rushed” Casino out of her door, didn’t do due diligence about where she was going, and is now trying to sweep its mistakes under the carpet.
Thanks to a transcript of Justice Andru Isac’s sentencing notes, Hawke’s Bay Today can reveal more details about the “terrifying” home where Casino lived out her final days.
Isac’s notes confirm just one of Wharehinga and McClutchie’s five children, aged from eight months to nine years old, was legally allowed to be in their day-to-day care.
He said in sentencing McClutchie that both he and Wharehinga, the two people Casino needed to care for her, were addicted to alcohol, cannabis and methamphetamine.
Her uncle told police he craved meth in the way others craved food.
He admitted during his trial in the High Court at Gisborne that his domestic situation was “chaotic”, with no structure or routine for the couple or the children in their care.
Isac wrote that Casino had been in McClutchie’s care for “a matter of weeks” when he assaulted her on December 19, 2021 – five weeks after Casino left Francine’s home – while he was the only adult at home.
Casino suffered a significant head injury, which caused extensive bruising to her head, neck and shoulder, fractures to her ribs, vertebral compression fractures, swelling to her head and symptoms consistent with concussion.
Adults were unable to put clothing on her upper body because of the facial swelling and pain. The judge noted her injuries were obvious to everyone, including a visiting police officer.
But both McClutchie and Wharehinga did nothing to get medical treatment and later claimed the injuries were caused by a falling rock-salt lamp pushed over by one of their children.
“On December 20, 2021, you went as far as to cancel an appointment made for her at the local medical centre,” Isac said.
“Had you or Ms Wharehinga done the right thing at that time, there is every chance Casino would be alive today.
“It is a tragic irony that the long term of imprisonment you now face flows from your decision to hide the cause of Casino’s injuries on that occasion.”
On January 6, 2022, McClutchie was once again the only adult home when he assaulted Casino again and left her with multiple bruises on both sides of her head, bleeding in her eyes, an injury to her brain stem, bruising to her chest and abdomen and a liver laceration.
Several of her ribs were also fractured.
McClutchie again claimed the injuries were caused by another child who jumped on Casino.
The court accepted the most likely explanation was that McClutchie gripped her with enough force to fracture her ribs and threw or slammed her against something, possibly repeatedly.
Casino was taken to Gisborne Hospital by ambulance and transferred to Starship, where she died four days later.
A homicide investigation began shortly afterwards and McClutchie and Wharehinga were charged in relation to her death later that year.
McClutchie was convicted of manslaughter for the January 6 assault, and neglect of a child and causing grievous harm with reckless disregard for the head injuries caused in the earlier incident.
He was jailed for eight years and two months last month.
Wharehinga had earlier pleaded guilty to a child neglect charge.
Francine said that, when she learned about Casino’s death through media coverage of the trial, she decided to complain to Oranga Tamariki.
Her complaint states that she felt the organisation did not conduct proper safety checks before transferring Casino.
She said emergency placements typically lasted between one and two weeks, in her experience, but Casino was moved far more quickly than that, which she says would not have given time for background checks.
“There is no way Oranga Tamariki did their due diligence because they made that decision within hours.”
She wrote in her complaint: “We have been obviously following the case closely and not once has OT been mentioned, nor taken any accountability for placing her so quickly with this whānau.”
She told Hawke’s Bay Today that OT pushed “so hard” to reunite tamariki with whānau, “which is amazing but, in many cases, it isn’t right”.
“It is such a horrible situation. She could have stayed with us as long as required to ensure a safe placement was found but everything that day seemed very rushed and I can’t stop thinking about ‘what if’.”
OT told her that, because she was not whānau, it could not provide information about the case or answer her questions.
In response to Hawke’s Bay Today queries, OT deputy chief executive of service delivery Rachel Leota said the death of any child was distressing for everyone involved.
“Given this death could still possibly be the subject of a coronial inquiry, we are unable to comment further at this time.”
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman confirmed a coroner was now considering what further action might be taken, “but no decision has yet been made”.
OT faced significant backlash in 2019 when its aggressive uplift practices resulted in a standoff in 2019 involving police at Hawke’s Bay Hospital over a seven-day-old baby boy being taken from a young Māori mother.
Ngahiwi Tomoana, then Ngāti Kahungunu iwi chairman, stated “not one more child will be uplifted and iwi will intervene at all costs” in response.
OT then faced criticism more recently for its involvement in the Moana custody case in Hawke’s Bay.
Moana was taken from her birth mother by OT when she was found with rotting teeth and a club foot when she was 3.
She was in the care of a Pākehā couple identified in court documents only as “Mr and Mrs Smith” for four years before OT changed its mind and decided Moana should be in the care of a Māori family.
The Smiths refused and, along with a lawyer for Moana, took court action to keep her in their care.
Eventually they returned her to OT care because they could not handle the struggle of the legal battle.
In 2022, a report by Dame Karen Poutasi into the death of 5-year-old Malachi Subecz in Te Puna the previous year contained 14 recommendations for OT, focused on fixing five critical safety gaps.
Two of the recommendations concerned cases when the sole parent of a child was imprisoned. Poutasi said OT should vet the approved carer and do regular follow-up checks.
Then-Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis advised that the recommendations should be the subject of further consideration and would need to be looked at in depth by the Cabinet.
Officials advised there were potentially significant consequences of implementation, including the perception of state overreach, the risk of the policy being discriminatory, particularly due to the high numbers of Māori who were imprisoned and the significant implications for the operations of court with increased reporting and requirements for care arrangements.
* The name of Casino’s temporary emergency volunteer caregiver has been changed for privacy and personal safety reasons.
James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on the environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz
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