KEY POINTS:
Three Auckland parents who have never organised anything political before have joined forces to arrange a march against child abuse up Queen St on Saturday.
Cleone Heath, a mother of three from Stanmore Bay, met Orakei mother-of-two Anna McInness and Ellerslie father-of-two Wayne Becker for the first time last Saturday, after they separately asked the Auckland City Council how they could arrange a march.
"The council said, 'There's a few of you trying to do this, why don't you get in touch?"' Mrs Heath said.
They talked on the phone two weeks ago, fixed a date and have relied on emails to tell people about it.
Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, other government departments and some non-government agencies have all shunned the event because Mrs Heath has also collected 32,000 signatures on an email petition seeking harsher penalties for child abusers.
But the three parents are going ahead anyway with only two confirmed speakers by yesterday: National shadow welfare minister Judith Collins and either Christine Rankin or Bev Adair from For the Sake of Our Children Trust. The march is one of a series of grassroots initiatives which have sprung up throughout the country since Rotorua 3-year-old Nia Glassie was allegedly spun in a tumble-drier and hung on a clothesline last month. She died on August 3.
More than 1000 people marched in Timaru on August 12, but a march in Tokoroa drew only 40 on a wet day last Saturday. Local Plunket president Karen Foster said she still believed it was worth it.
"We were doing it whether it was just the three of us who showed up or not, because Plunket doesn't support child abuse in any way, and we wanted people to know there is an agency out there that can help them," she said.
Auckland website developer Zenago donated a website to the Auckland parents, who have adopted the name "Silent Voices". Mrs Heath, 30, started her petition seeking "harsher punishments for those found guilty of child abuse" after South Auckland mother Maine Ngati and her partner Teusila Fa'asisila were each jailed for eight and a half years in June for the manslaughter of 3-year-old Ngatikaura Ngati.
"These monsters beat this defenceless 3-year-old boy for days with an aluminium baseball bat and oar. His entire body was covered in bruises and his blood was found in every inch of the house," the petition says.
Mrs Heath and her husband, a computer systems engineer, came from South Africa five years ago to escape from crime in a country where she said unemployment was about 80 per cent.
"In New Zealand there is no excuse. Unemployment is 3 per cent or something ridiculous and these people are on the benefit," she said.
But Mrs McInness, 33, a part-time lawyer with girls aged 3 and 1, and Mr Becker, 39, a financial services manager with boys aged 2 and nine months, said Saturday's march had nothing to do with the petition.
"We just thought you have to try and do something, and so our whole line the whole way along is that this march is about kids," said Mr Becker. Parents are invited to bring their children on the march, which leaves the bottom of Queen St at 10am.
