In the two months that Moko was in the care of Shailer and Haerewa he was kicked, slapped, stomped on, had faeces rubbed in his face and bitten by the pair.
Dr Bain related the upcoming inquest to that of Nia Glassie's in which a number of important questions were addressed and clear recommendations made with a view to ensure tragic deaths such as hers did not occur in the future.
Rotorua toddler Nia died in 2007 after being subjected to ongoing abuse from her extended family. She had been kicked, beaten, slapped, jumped on, held over a burning fire, had wrestling moves practiced on her, spit on, placed into a spinning clothes dryer, folded into a sofa and sat on, shoved into piles of rubbish, dragged through a sandpit half-naked, flung against a wall, and swung on an outdoor clothes line until thrown off.
"Sadly it seems eight years [after Nia Glassie] we are again considering such serious and tragic consequences as a result of caregivers mistreating a child," Dr Bain said in his decision to open a new inquiry.
"The Nia Glassie inquest highlighted the child abuse problem in New Zealand and the issue of children living in poverty. Sadly the horrific abuse that a child such as Nia suffered appears on the face of it to have been accentuated in a worse way in the tragic death of little Moko, eight years later."
Dr Bain said the inquest into Moko's death would specifically look at what steps, if any, had been taken by those identified as having some responsibility in keeping children safe and if those steps were adequate.