Cruel 'disciplinarian' goes to jail

By PATRICK GOWER

When David Mead moved in with Irene Molloy and her three children, he wanted change.

He wanted to introduce some discipline, so when her seven-year-old daughter stepped out of line she was force-fed a packet of powdered cloves, crying throughout the ordeal.

Her 13-year-old son needed to be punished and was made to sit naked and seething with embarrassment in a cold bath with his two younger sisters.

At times Mead would discipline the children by refusing them food, often for no reason. At other times, they would be made to eat barely edible or rotten food, with Mead dishing up meat that had gone off on top of a plate of cold baked beans.

They would be woken in early morning darkness and made to do menial chores for hours before school; when they got home in the afternoon they would be told to pick up a toothbrush and start cleaning the bathroom yet again.

They were punished like this for nearly five months in early 1999.

But yesterday the punishment was for Mead when he was given a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, and for Molloy, who will spend the next year in jail for her part in the cruelty.

The couple were given the sentences by Judge Robert Spear in the Hamilton District Court after a jury in March found each guilty of four charges of cruelty to children.

Mead was also sentenced from an earlier trial on a charge of striking the boy.

The couple are still together. They have a year-old son, and Molloy is now four months pregnant with their second child. She will be eligible for home detention.

In sentencing, Judge Spear said: "This was a regime with distinct overtones of sadism. "

These children were subjected to cruelty that should not and will not be permitted, sanctioned or justified in this country."

Mead, aged 32, moved into 35-year-old Molloy's Te Aroha home when her former abusive relationship with the children's father ended. She was looking for support, he was there.

His defence lawyer, Warren Pyke, said Mead had walked into a troubled household and had tried to straighten it out in his own, however misguided, sergeant-major like manner.

But crown prosecutor Louella Dunn said he was far from their "knight in shining armour."

Molloy's lawyer Maurice Knuckey said his client was party to the events, not a principal, and there was very little she could have done to have stopped things as she was in bed unwell most of the time.

Afterwards Mead's mother, Marion, said: "My heart bleeds for Irene. She has suffered 15 years of abuse at the hands of her previous husband and now she is being punished [by the courts] again.

"The system has known about those problems for years and not stepped in."

During the trial, the three children gave evidence against the couple through closed-circuit television, or in the boy's case, from behind a screen.

While the defence found inadequacies in the evidence, Judge Spear said both he and the jury had accepted that a high degree of cruelty existed.

He said while Mead's inadequacies were notable, he had shown little insight or remorse into what he had done and had committed a gross betrayal of trust.

The judge said that Molloy had been through hell, but she too had betrayed her children's trust.

"The children are apparently recovering well in the loving environment of their grandparents. No doubt the harm you have done will stay with them for the rest of their lives and affect their ability to form a loving relationship with you, Irene Molloy," Judge Spear said.