KEY POINTS:
Corrections is facing more embarrassing questions after the contents of the confidential police case against those accused of murdering toddler Nia Glassie were found by a group of children at an Auckland rubbish tip.
The discovery comes in the same week as highly sensitive Corrections files containing names
and personal details of some of the country's most notorious criminals were apparently discovered in an Auckland park by a member of the public.
Yesterday the Herald on Sunday was hand-delivered a cardboard box containing nearly 1000 pages of classified police material relating to the horrific death of the Rotorua 3-year-old in August last year.
Included in the police dossier were forensic reports, autopsy reports, cellphone search warrants and numbers, CYF family files and reports on children in the family, Nia's complete medical history and transcripts of police interviews with Nia's mother, Lisa Kuka.
The files were discovered on Friday morning at a tipsite in East Tamaki by the children of a South Auckland man.
It appears the files were disclosure material provided by police to lawyer Brian Foote, who was earlier acting for Oriwa Kemp, one of those charged over Nia's death.
Foote appears to have passed the documents to Kemp at Auckland Women's Prison, where she is at present in custody, and then after reading them she has given them to another visitor to dispose of.
Corrections northern regions manager Warren Cummins said under its present policy it did not search visitors when they left a correctional facility. Therefore, he said, there was no way of knowing if one of Kemp's visitors had left Auckland Women's with sensitive police material from the Glassie case. "These documents are her property and it is her right to dispose of them in any way she sees fit," he said, adding Corrections would be alerting Kemp to the fact the material was now in the possession of the Herald on Sunday.
Mark Loper, the head of the Glassie police inquiry, said it was worrying to think the police case, which had taken hundreds of hours to compile, was now in the public domain.
He said under the present disclosure laws, police had no choice but to provide the accused with all material relating to their prosecution.
"Once we disclose this material we lose control over it," he said. "But that said, we always hope the parties who receive this material do their best to ensure it remains confidential."
Loper said obviously he hoped the police case against the five accused - Kemp, Kuka, Michael Pearson, Wiremu Curtis and Michael Curtis - was not compromised as a result of what had happened.
National's law and order spokesman Simon Power yesterday pinned the blame at the feet of Corrections.
Last week it had lost confidential material including personal details and addresses offenders were to be parolled to and now it was not even carrying out what appeared to be the most "basic bureaucratic functions".
Kevin, the man who handed the files to the Herald on Sunday, said yesterday that he had alerted the newspaper to his find in a bid to stop the same thing from occurring again.
"It's a bit of a worry when you find this sort of sensitive material at a rubbish tip. Someone surely needs to be held accountable," he said.
Herald on Sunday editor Shayne Currie said the documents would be handed back to police this week.
The newspaper did not pay for the documents despite some earlier reports suggesting "Kevin" had tried to sell them to media. The documents are covered by wide-ranging suppression orders.
