The manager of the daycare attended by Malachi Subecz said there were no clear signs of child abuse or concerns about his carer during his time at the centre.
“There was nothing to set any alarm bells off for us,” said the former manager of Abbey’s Place Childcare Centre in Tauranga, who has name suppression.
Malachi was 5 when he was murdered in November 2021. He was enrolled in the daycare in March that year by his mother, Jasmine Cotter, who was jailed three months later on drug importation charges.
She signed over his care to a friend, Michaela Barriball, who went on to murder him at her home in Te Puna, near Tauranga. She is serving a life sentence.
At a coronial inquest into his death in Auckland, the daycare manager said today that her first impressions of Barriball were positive.
“She was good, he used to come in with great lunches. I would hear conversations, ‘How was your day?’, backwards and forwards. He was always well-clothed, he always had spare clothes in his bag.”
Soon after Barriball took over his care, Malachi’s cousin Megan Cotter called the centre to raise concerns about his care arrangements and ask the centre to keep an eye on him. She earlier told the inquest that she had serious concerns about Barriball, who had no children of her own and whose family was connected to Jasmine’s drugs case.
The centre manager said staff did not act on this call or record it on Malachi’s file because Megan was not listed as one of Malachi’s family contacts. They referred Megan to Oranga Tamariki. Under questioning, the manager said that, in hindsight, this call should have been recorded.
In September, daycare staff noticed Malachi had bruises on his body. They called Barriball, who said he had fallen off his bike. This “added up”, given their knowledge of Malachi and other factors such as his “bubbly” personality, the manager said, and they never suspected abuse.
“We hadn’t had any other suspicions,” the manager told the inquest. “It never even crossed our [mind].
“No other injuries, no change in his clothing, no change in his food that [was] brought in, no changes in behaviour. He used to be really happy to see her.”
The staff took photographs of the injuries and placed a note on his file. They also took photos the next day, for his 5th birthday.
The inquest has heard that staff did not complete an incident form, investigate further or escalate the issue, such as by making a report of concern with Oranga Tamariki.
The manager said the centre had child protection policies, trained staff in the field, and had alerted Oranga Tamariki in another case when child abuse was suspected. But there were no such concerns in Malachi’s case, she said.
Starship Hospital paediatrician Dr Patrick Kelly was shown the photographs taken by daycare staff at the inquest on Tuesday.
He noted potential injuries in four separate areas and expressed concerns about possible child abuse. He stated he would not have accepted a fall from a bicycle as a credible explanation.
He also noted that most non-medical staff were not trained in identifying such injuries.
The manager said that children at the daycare often had bruises from falls in the playground or at home, and she had seen much worse than the injuries on Malachi. She also agreed that daycare staff were not specialists in assessing injuries.
The daycare was ordered to close by the Ministry of Education in 2022 after failing to meet the conditions of its license.
Two complaints were made against the manager with the Teaching Council, but they were not upheld, the court heard today.
The manager spoke about the toll of the complaints, one of which appeared to blame her directly for Malachi’s death.
“That reads to me that something I did is why that little boy lost his life,” she said, speaking through tears.
Kellie Turner, lawyer for Megan Cotter, asked whether the daycare centre should have considered the accumulated risk factors in Malachi’s case: that his mother was in prison and he was not living with family, the phone call from his cousin, his patchy attendance, and possible signs of malnourishment.
The manager said she was not alerted by any Government agency about Malachi’s mother’s situation, and found out about it only by chance. Child protection training did not identify this as a risk factor. The daycare was never alerted about any ongoing custody battle over Malachi.
There were no concerns about malnourishment because he arrived at daycare with a full lunchbox.
The manager made several suggestions for child protection changes, including better training for frontline staff, clearer escalation policies, and better information-sharing by agencies in suspected child abuse cases.
“Especially for us little centres that are trying to do the right thing by our whānau and our babies.
“It takes a village to raise a kid. It should be the same in protecting them.”
Isaac Davison is a senior reporter who covers Auckland issues. He joined the Herald in 2008 and has previously covered the environment, politics, social issues, and healthcare.
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