A mother has been sentenced in the Auckland District Court for the abuse and neglect of an infant boy and his toddler sister.
A mother has been sentenced in the Auckland District Court for the abuse and neglect of an infant boy and his toddler sister.
WARNING: Contains graphic content.
For about a year, neighbours could hear the constant crying of children from inside a Onehunga home.
Ominous signs of abuse were also picked up by the South Auckland daycare where the infant boy and his toddler sister, who lived at the property, spent mostdays.
There was lethargy, bruising, dirty clothes and nappies that appeared to have been left soiled from overnight.
After daycare staff, who had sent the boy home twice in one week, urged the children’s mother to take him to hospital, police became involved.
Now, the woman, who cannot be identified to protect the children’s identities, has been sent to prison this week after admitting to an Auckland District Court judge that she had neglected them both and inflicted injuries on the boy, resulting in a broken arm.
Co-defendant Kingston Tawhiti Edward Tierney-Hooker, who lived in the same household for a short period, stood beside her in the dock.
Tierney-Hooker, 25, was also initially charged with injuring the baby with reckless disregard, but that charge was dropped after the mother took responsibility for the injuries.
He was instead convicted of neglecting the boy by failing to get medical attention and was sentenced to nine months’ home detention.
“You have to realise ... there are consequences for your actions,” Judge Jonathan Moses said as he ordered three years’ imprisonment for the woman, explaining he needed to find a sentence that deterred others and, importantly, “denounces this kind of behaviour”.
Police began investigating the pair in January 2023, after the mother took her baby to Starship Hospital at the urging of daycare staff.
Doctors there compiled a list of more than 30 injuries, including the broken arm.
Judge Jonathan Moses, photographed presiding over a Palmerston North court martial in July 2024, sentenced a mother in Auckland District Court this week for abuse of her two young children. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
“Numerous clustered injuries on [the child’s] face, scrotum, inside arms, and front and posterior torso, were visible,” court documents stated.
“Fractures affected all of his limbs, including his right and left forearms, his left upper and lower leg, his right lower leg near the knee and his right lower leg near the ankle.”
A blood test indicated the boy had likely suffered recent trauma. The doctor who examined him concluded the injuries had occurred sometime in the past four weeks, and they wouldn’t have been sustained “through typical infant movements”. The clustering of bruises also stood out.
“This indicated that [he] had experienced multiple applications of force to his body,” authorities noted. “The fact that [he] had multiple fractures at different stages of healing also indicated that [the baby] had experienced trauma of sufficient force to break bones on more than one occasion.”
Tierney-Hooker and the woman agreed to separate summaries of facts as part of their guilty pleas. The documents mimicked each other word-for-word in most regards, but Tierney-Hooker’s document stated the injuries were inflicted solely by the children’s mother.
The document agreed to by the woman stated “the injuries were inflicted by [the mother]”, but with a handwritten addendum stating: “and Mr Tierney-Hooker”.
Both sets of facts reported: “Daycare staff observed Mr Tierney-Hooker pick [the boy] up by his forearms or his clothes on occasion, in a manner that was inappropriate for handling an infant. On one occasion when this was raised with Mr Tierney-Hooker, he responded to the effect that [the baby] was okay.”
On other occasions, daycare workers noticed severe, untreated nappy rash, resulting in “significant blood and open skin” on the boy’s bottom.
The toddler was also taken to the doctor with a broken arm, one week before her brother. In addition, court documents outlined an incident in October 2022 when her mother went out drinking with friends in Lynfield and left the girl locked in an empty room without furniture.
“That night [the toddler] had a meltdown, running around, crying and banging for about 40 to 45 minutes,” court documents stated. “She slept on the floor of the empty room with a bag of snack food and a duvet.”
Since the pair’s arrests, the children have been in foster care through Oranga Tamariki.
“They’re thriving, apparently,” Crown prosecutor Clare Antenen said at the sentencing.
The children’s grandfather also addressed the judge, agreeing the children were doing well but emphasising they missed their mother and had trouble understanding why they couldn’t stay with her.
He added that he didn’t believe his daughter had neglected the children, suggesting if there was any emotional harm, it was from the children being removed from her care.
“Do you know what the injuries were to [the baby]?” the judge asked the grandfather. “He had fractures on every limb.”
The man insisted it hadn’t been proven his daughter inflicted the injuries but acknowledged it was “a very serious crime” she pleaded guilty to.
The judge noted the mother seemed to deny some responsibility in a pre-sentencing interview, but defence lawyer Sam Walker said any perceived minimisation by his client should probably be “put down to shame more than anything else”.
“She has said this is the biggest regret of her life,” he explained.
He noted the woman has since taken a 14-week parenting course, engaged in one-on-one counselling and has liaised with Oranga Tamariki about steps she can take to get her children back into her life.
Walker said the offending occurred in the backdrop of a fractious relationship with her own mother - in which she never had a strong, reliable female role model to base her parenting efforts on.
Judge Moses agreed, to an extent.
He ordered a starting point of three and a half years’ imprisonment for the woman’s neglect of the children, with another year and a half added for the boy’s injuries. He then allowed a 40% reduction to account for her guilty pleas, youth and lack of prior convictions, and her rehabilitation efforts and background.
“You are still young and I’m sure you’ll be young when you’re released from prison,” he said, encouraging her to continue addressing her background issues.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
