Vanner carries burden of daughter's death

Gavin Vanner

Every day of Gavin Vanner's life since August 30 last year is etched on his face.

That was the day his 4-year-old daughter Molly died when she was crushed under his farm bike. The stress of her death and the prosecution he endured is evident in his pained face.

He was the first to hold his baby girl when she was born at Taranaki Base Hospital on February 25, 2001.

He had rushed back from a weekend away with friends to be at his wife Wendy's side for her early delivery.

Boy or girl, people would ask him when Wendy was pregnant.

"His answer to me was always a girl and the reason being because they always remembered anniversaries and are good at organising things," Mrs Vanner told the manslaughter trial of her husband in the High Court at New Plymouth.

Everything that could go wrong in a pregnancy did with Molly, she said. But when Molly finally arrived "it was love at first sight".

Her husband of six years was also the last to see life in his child's eyes as he desperately tried to resuscitate her limp body in a paddock on the family's Patea dairy farm.

Moments earlier, when he got off his quad bike to make a phone call, Molly asked if she could round up the cows.

He ran as he saw her losing control. "I was trying to get to where she was and help the little bugger out.

"I thought, 'Oh, bail', but she didn't want to bail off dad's bike."

The 368kg quad bike had rolled over her 18kg body, literally shattering her skull. As he pulled back her eyelids, he said, he knew Molly was gone.

In court, where Mr Vanner was this week acquitted of Molly's manslaughter and an alternative charge of criminal nuisance, the 38-year-old at times looked ashamed as the farming community filed through to give evidence. Farmers told the court that what he did that day was not extraordinary in the circumstances.

"Thanks," he would nod as they walked from the dock.

But Wendy says he has never stopped blaming himself.

"To see what Gavin is like now compared to before Molly's accident, I just hope I get my husband back."

She liked him as soon as she met him as a 15-year-old at the Opunake Surf Club, where they were involved in surf lifesaving.

"He had a great outlook on life. He was just a really cheerful, great guy."

The Vanners are still involved in surf lifesaving. The Search and Rescue boat is stored on their farm and Gavin takes it out when someone goes missing on the coast.

Wendy said her heart jumped when the phone rang a few weeks ago. It was the police, and she was on edge because of the upcoming trial. They needed Gavin to help in a search.

His dream was always to own his own farm, like the farms they had both grown up on, she said. He started working for wages, moved on to 50/50 sharemilking, then leased a farm on Spence Rd, finally buying it in 2000.

Wendy worked two jobs. Gavin worked day and night on the farm, slogging for farm ownership, and children were always going to be part of their lives.

She has hardly been to the cowshed since Molly's accident. Her husband does not want her or their two other girls, Eva, 1, and 3-year-old Hillary, to visit the cowshed, and he will not take them out on the farm.

"I just think he doesn't trust himself to do those things any more," she said.

"I hate the thought that the other two girls are missing out on the lifestyle I sought for my children, to be out there on the farm looking at the worms ... just the general farm stuff that Molly so much loved."

She knows he spends a lot of time in the paddock where Molly died. They planted a tree there to remember her.

"I can tell what he's been doing when he comes home - just the general look on his face."

He was always a doting father. He tucked his girls in every morning before he went to the cowshed, and raced home at night to hop in the bath with them.

Molly's favourite event used to be lunch with her dad in Hawera. She had her fluffy; he drank his mochachino.

Or she would get Wendy to pack up a picnic to take to the back of the farm for him, where they plonked themselves down in a paddock and ate.

In the days following her death the close-knit farming community in Patea rallied and 100 people turned up for a working bee.

While at least 40 supporters filled the public gallery in court this week, children, relief milkers and anyone who could be mustered kept the home farms running.

As Wendy said, children were part of the farming team. They were on the farm because they wanted to help.

A friend of the Vanners for 20 years, Lane Greensill, said if it was anyone else, Gavin would have been among the supporters in court.

The prosecution was not the way to educate farmers about riding quad bikes safely, he said. All it did was destroy a man already full of self-loathing.

Friend Dale Collins said: "He is the most caring person you'll ever meet. The love for his kids is something I aspire to be. I believe he is the father everyone should try to be."

Burly farmers cried as they watched Mr Vanner's police video interview.

Of the 60 who turned up on the last trial day, not many could say they weren't in tears when he walked free.

The fearful expression on Mrs Vanner's face all week as she hunched behind her husband, hands clasped, was gone - as they piled into the back seat of a car they looked like a newly married couple.

But Molly's death leaves a gaping hole in the Vanners' world.

The normal farming family will never be completely normal again. They will always be the ones held up as an example to other farmers of what can happen when they let their small children ride farm bikes.