Reaching out to the wider communityA Church of

Reaching out to the wider community

A Church of England book has recommended that overweight or bald people should be regarded as worshippers with ‘special needs’ alongside the blind, the deaf, very short people, and readers of tabloid newspapers. The advice is part of an initiative to make churches more friendly. It says that bald people could be “in trouble from those overhead radiant heaters some churches have unwittingly installed” and that special arrangements might need to be made for people who are overweight. “Some pew spaces and chairs are embarrassingly inadequate for what is known in church circles as ‘the wider community’

Claims that Fuller was getting WINZ assistance illegally

Natasha Fuller is the beneficiary who is getting $715.00 a week on the dpb to spend most of her day on message boards complaining she cant get the Training Incentive Allowance, despite boasting as being a fully trained private investigator..

She posts as the happy hocker – surely a spelling mistake – on message boards, as well as justyns.

There are claims on the message boards that Fuller was unlawfully collecting a benefit while living with her partner. If so, she should be taken to task for it because she would not have been entitled to it. Her high income partner didn’t give her much money. It is claimed that Fuller was on the benefit while living with her partner. I have not been able to verify that claim, as WINZ won’t tell me (I didn’t ask either). She got pregnant in June 2007, around about the time she was described as a sole mother who used a WINZ enterprise allowance to run a small business that failed. She also allegedly got a 10K WINZ grant to buy a car and have it signwritten for her business before crashing it and getting another one.

In addition she was given $200 a week to buy food when she lived with a partner. Her partner [ whom you can see here just before they split up ] paid for the mortgage because it was under his and his mums name. Now Fuller says she is “ over men so over being hurt and have decided that u just can’t beat a good vibrator:)”

One poster warned

You have stated on the forum board that you have been living with someone and collecting DPB, that is FRAUD. All of us that are paying taxes are paying for you to live the high life and boast about it.

She told the media she got $400 hair extensions around three months after her daughter was born. Apprently her daughter was born 3 February 2008. But on 4 February 2009, on a message board where she writes up to 10 messages a day, she said she had hair extensions for more than a year – if so, she may have been pregnant when she got the extensions.

Fuller says her partner left in December 2008 and that was when she said she applied for the dpb again. She says she doesn’t want to work more than 20 hours. That’s because she may lose the benefit and the In Work Payment is less than the benefit, and you can’t get both.

You can see Fuller on You Tube right here living the high life doing karaoke. She’s drunk. On her Facebook site she gloats that she spent more than $200 on CDs last month.

It is clear that on the dpb you can get up to $1000 a week: Domestic purposes benefit of $272,an accommodation supplement of $225 – ( Fuller gets $110 and a disability allowance of around $35 a week) , tax credits of $200, childcare assistance of up to $181 for one child, and out-of-school care and recreation assistance of $72 a week.

Fuller doesn’t deserve a training incentive allowance. But she should be able to lobby on government policies without ministerial meddling. However Labour shouldn’t moan about it as it released Fuller’s benefit details in Parliament in 2007. Hypocrites. **Further updates here**

Destination: ‘Winesburg, Ohio’

Destination: ‘Winesburg, Ohio’
In the darkest times of need, it is hope that drives the human soul to survive even the most heart-wrenching scenarios.

Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s “Winesburg, Ohio” poetically examined the lives of the hopeful and the hopeless of this small Victorian- American town.

Duke and the Police
by Jason Trumpbour, FODU spokesperson

Duke and the Police

I have been keeping a low profile recently and that is deliberate. Mike Nifong had tried to make an issue of FODU’s efforts to call attention to his misdeeds. Now that the relevant authorities have taken the matter up, I am content to let them handle it. I will have much to say about the bar hearing, removal proceeding and contempt hearing in due course. In the meantime, I want to call attention to some disturbing information brought to light by the folks at LieStoppers concerning Duke. See also this timeline and the hearing transcript.

If you will recall, last May Mike Nifong requested the court issue a subpoena to Duke University to provide records of card key activity by all members of the Duke lacrosse team and also provide their home addresses. This information is protected by a federal statute called the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act and cannot be disclosed without a showing of need. Nifong’s request was patently overbroad, but Duke University refused to challenge it. Instead, Duke told the lacrosse players that it would comply with the request and that, if they did not like it, they could do something about it themselves. Attorneys for the lacrosse players challenged the request on their own and a hearing was held in July. The judge then handling the case, Kenneth Titus denied the request. It turns out that Nifong’s request was a complete fraud on the court because, as LieSoppers discovered, Duke University had already turned these records over to police months earlier in March evidently in violation of FERPA.

This new information is disturbing as it relates to Duke on several levels.

First, the Duke administration chose to supply personal information about its students to a manifestly unethical and corrupt district attorney in connection with a politically motivated investigation. Do not be fooled by the administration’s story that they did not know what to believe or that they instinctively trust public officials. Duke had been told by the police that the case was bogus and the file would likely be closed after the police had interviewed that alleged victim. How the police later came to aggressively investigate the case is an interesting story. I will have to tell it to you sometime, but not now. Suffice it to say that these circumstances were an additional reason for them to be very suspicious of the motives of Mike Nifong and the police.

Second, the principle beneficiary of this bit of theater would not have been Mike Nifong. He already had indictments against three defendants and he could have subpoenaed their records with no difficulty. Nifong had no need to use the records of the other players at trial, because his position at that point in time was that they had been exculpated by the April 4 lineup. Nor would there have likely been any repercussions for him or the police for merely soliciting a violation of FERPA. The real beneficiary would seem to be Duke University because it would provide a legal fig leaf to cover its apparent violation of federal law. Worse, Nifong’s apparent willingness to cover for Duke shows that Duke, through its own misconduct, had found itself entangled in Nifong’s malicious prosecution to the point that its interests had started to overlap with those of Nifong.

Third, even if the leak of personal information had not been illegal, it was extremely prejudicial to the players. Judge Titus found that Nifong had failed to show any legitimate reason for the police to have this information. Indeed, just as with the Ryan McFadyen e-mail, police used it to as part of a fishing expedition.

Finally, and probably most disturbing of all, this surreptitious leak of private information occurred at a time when Duke was pretending to support the players, had encouraged them to talk to Duke officials citing a totally fictitious student/teacher privilege and had even hired a local attorney who they offered to the players in an ambiguous relationship meant to approximate that of a defense attorney. Now we see what kind of “help” Duke was providing the players. No person truly acting in the role of defense counsel would have volunteered this information without a subpeona.

For those who insisted that our criticism of the Duke administration for its lack of public support for its falsely accused students was unfair because Duke was probably concerned about its students and was probably working behind the scenes to help them, guess again. For those who have insisted that speaking out against the conduct of Mike Nifong might work against the University’s interests and expose it to unacceptable risks, look at the risks the administration was willing to take in order to further the interests of those working against the players.

Speaking of the Ryan McFadyen e-mail, the claim by Sergeant Gottlieb in his post dated notes prepared in July that the police received a copy of the Ryan McFadyen e-mail through a Crimestoppers tip always sounded suspect to me. The affidavit in support of the search warrant application recites that “On 3/27/2006 Sgt. Gottlieb was contacted by a confidential source. The source provided Sgt. Gottlieb a copy of an e-mail sent by email address. . . .” The Ryan McFadyen e-mail was widely distributed because, aside from being tasteless, there was need to conceal its contents. It is possible that some private individual unconnected to the team came across a copy of it. However, the only other people who had access to the e-mail and its chain of replies were Duke University employees. Is Sergeant Gottlieb’s new version of events in July 2006, which characteristically contradicts an earlier document produced by the police, one supplied to a judge no less, an attempt to conceal another surreptitious leak of private information by Duke officials? In his deposition for the bar hearing, Benjamin Himan indicated that, on March 27, 2006, he, Sergeant Gottlieb and Nifong met and among the topics discussed was obtaining “e-mails and stuff like that.” However, we do not see the police or Nifong actually making a formal request for the e-mail records of the players.

I do not believe that the administration actually wanted to help frame its own students. There is some indication that members of the administration initially believed the charges based on their own personal prejudices rather than objective facts. However, the one common denominator present is that there was always some other priority for the administration that was greater than the welfare of its students. They wanted to be on the right side in the eyes of the public regardless of the facts or law. They wanted to maintain their cozy working relationships with local officials. They wanted to appease small, vocal constituencies within their faculty. They did not think the lacrosse players deserved their help.

People, particularly lawyers, keep asking me, “Doesn’t Duke have access to legal advice?” They are puzzled at how a major university with its own legal staff and a top ten law school on campus could continuously make such horrible mistakes and seemingly lack any appreciation for what was going on in the lacrosse case. Duke does have access to plenty of legal advice. The reality is that the administration does not care. I found this out first hand. In settling with several of the players, particularly in the Dowd case, the Duke administration essentially used University resources to pay for the privilege of doing whatever it wanted. They were not mistaken about the consequences of their actions. It was never going to be any other way.

It is impossible to defend the administration’s motives in violating FERPA as somehow a well intentioned attempt to further the cause of justice as it understood it to be at the time. If the administration had truly been committed to justice, it would have pursued it without regard to where it might take them and which side it might be found to lay. Yet, when the time came for speaking up for the due process rights of its students, the administration was silent and remained silent until late December. No, there was never any commitment by the administration to seeing justice done in the lacrosse case at least through December and certainly not in March. In the absence of such a commitment, there was only self interest and playing favorites.

Collin Leaves Duke as Well

In other news, Collin Finnerty has announced that he is transferring to Loyola College. As with Reade Seligmann, it is disgraceful that Duke has not done more to retain a student who suffered because of his Duke affiliation and did so with dignity and character. Reade, Collin and David represented the University well and made us proud.

I live not too far from Loyola College. It is an excellent school with a top notch lacrosse program (they beat Duke last year). The people there are glad to have him and I am sure that they will take good care of him in a way that the Duke administration was unwilling to do. Welcome to Baltimore Collin!

Joan Collins

I do not want Joan Collins’s latest article to be overlooked by bumping it from the top place with this update so, after reading this, keep reading below. I would just like to add that it is not surprising to me that faith was important to all of the lacrosse team members, their families and the Presslers and that it helped them through their ordeal. The deep faith she describes them having was certainly apparent to me by their conduct all along, especially that of Reade, Collin and David. I am sure that there were many, many moments of despair for them. However, they did not give up. They did not let themselves be paralyzed with self pity. They did not give in to hatred. They never lost the ability to see beyond their own concerns and now want to use their experience to help others in similar situations.

St. Louis de Montfort, in his Letter to the Friends of the Cross, described the proper way for people to confront and even embrace the vicissitudes of life, which provide opportunities for spiritual growth and a closer, more uncomplicated and uncluttered relationship with God. To suffer setbacks without hope and without faith is to suffer as the damned do. However, to suffer with hope and with faith is to suffer as Christ and the holy martyrs did. What the three families went through was horrible and they are still suffering materially for it. However, not only were they not destroyed by the experience, as Joan points out, they are better people for it. St. Louis emphasizes that there is nothing meritorious about suffering in and of itself. Recently, someone wrote a letter to the Herald-Sun complaining about all of the legal actions against Mike Nifong and compared him to Jesus. I wish I were kidding. However, to suffer for an evil or unjust cause is to be a martyr not for God, but for Satan. If Mike Nifong would only embrace the, in his case, just suffering he brought on himself, as the penitent thief at Christ’s side did, he too could be a better person for this experience and actually would be like Christ.

While we are on the subject, this was the thought for the week during Mike Nifong’s bar hearing on a site run by Irish Jesuits called Sacred Space:

Jesus urged us not to swear at all: “All you need say is ‘Yes’ if you mean yes, ‘No’ if you mean no.” Only constant honesty with ourselves can make us really sincere. The world knows an honest person. Many would not tell a downright lie, but few, even of the pious, always tell the truth. It was the truth in Jesus that devastated his enemies. In proportion as we live a recollected life, with Jesus as model, we attain a simplicity and lucidity of character which has less and less need for untruth.

I thought the coincidence was remarkable. That should be the lesson for all of us in the lacrosse case, not just Mike Nifong.

Healthy Eating and Nutrition Event

Bradford rabble rousing over 90 day law

Sue Bradford has advised that WINZ had declined assistance to a beneficiary about to start work because he was not going to be in permanent employment, due the new 90 day law that came into force on Sunday.

I find that pretty hard to believe that WINZ would lawfully do that for that reason. Bradford asked a question in parliament today asking if those who are offered employment under the 90-day probation law are entitled to the same support from Work and Income New Zealand as those offered employment not under the 90-day probation law?

The Minister said they are offered more protection. Given that WINZ work brokers will be arranging some of this employment – and paying much of the first 90 days salary in some cases, WINZ are hardly going to scuffle assistance because the person is under a 90 day probationary period. Beneficiaries can’t get an automatic 13 week stand down if they are fired under the 90 day law, like they can if they are fired after 90 days and don’t take a personal grievance case.

Rajen Prasad asked how the Minister will guarantee that Work and Income staff members do not play judge and jury where there is some doubt about who is at fault in cases where workers are fired during the 90-day trial?

They don’t play judge and jury now. At least they are not supposed to. If there is doubt, beneficiaries have the benefit of the doubt and WINZ will only stand down if the person has been fired under normal circumstances and if they don’t appeal. If they have been fired for any (including no) reason under the 90 day law, they will be treated a little more leniently given that they cannot take a personal grievance case, thus eliminating their stand down to get on a benefit in the interim. They`ll get on a benefit sooner until the employer has been spoken to.

At least what’s what should happen. As there is no mechanism to determine whether an allegation of misconduct actually has any substance, WINZ can’t apply the 13-week stand down without some investigation..

Healthy Eating and Nutrition Event

Nutrition and Healthy Eating Events

Why we eat what we eat – The psychology of choice and AGM

Food and Health Forum
Date: Monday 16 March 2009| Venue: Royal Society of Medicine

This meeting aims to provide an overview of the latest research into the psychology of food choices. Areas covered will include the role of the hypothalamus, imaging of the brain’s response to hunger, programming of appetite and obesity, the role of physical activity in controlling food cravings, mindless eating, the influence of sound, teenage eating, phenotypes and how we motivate people to change.

At the end of the meeting delegates will have gained a broad and up-to-date overview of the mechanisms that drive people to make food choices. They will have an understanding from this research as to what future research is needed and how we can implement in practice the knowledge that is already there.

Food and Health Forum – More information

The Royal Society of Medicine
1 Wimpole Street
London
W1G 0AE
T. 0207 290 3935
F. 0207 290 2989

A tale of two New ZealandsA great editorial

A tale of two New Zealands

A great editorial in the Dominion Post today.

Two New Zealands came face to face with each other in a Hastings courtroom last week.

One was the New Zealand of Paula McCutcheon, the young mother widowed last month when her husband, Mark, was stabbed while trying to help a woman who was being assaulted outside a Hawke’s Bay pub. Hers is the New Zealand most inhabit a land in which citizens go to work each morning, take pride in standing on their own feet, abide by the law and teach their children to respect others.

The other was the New Zealand of Victoria Stevens. It is a New Zealand in which adults healthy enough to rob and to steal, and to wrestle with the police, prefer to claim benefits than to go to work and in which mothers show their love for their sons by barking like dogs. To most New Zealanders theirs is a foreign country, but it is a foreign country that coexists alongside mainstream New Zealand.

Stevens is the 43-year-old invalid beneficiary who was jailed for contempt of court last week after barking like a dog a Mongrel Mob gesture of support during her [unemployed] son’s court appearance. Her son, Hulio Ataria, is the Mongrel Mob associate who has been charged with Mr McCutcheon’s murder.

What’s the bet that Victoria Stevens, a sickness beneficiary, has more of her whanau involved in crime than the McCutcheon whanau. What’s the bet that Stevens is more overweight than McCutcheon. What’s the bet that those in Steven’s whanau drink more alcohol, have more tattoos, take more drugs and left school earlier with fewer qualifications. What’s the bet that had McCutcheon had sons they would have shared the same surname as her, unlike Steven’s kids.

You can read the entire editorial here

A tale of two New Zealands IIYesterday I

A tale of two New Zealands II

Yesterday I wrote this:

Two New Zealands came face to face with each other in a Hastings courtroom last week…

One was a woman widowed when her husband was stabbed while trying to assist someone who was being assaulted. The other was the mother of the stabbed child – an angry sickness beneficiary who is now in prison for contempt of court.

It happened again today. Two New Zealands in a court room. One was the sister of a boy who was stabbed to death. The other was a businessman who stabbed the boy after believing he was tagging his garage. Manurewa businessman Bruce Emery claimed he took a knife for self defence and after a 300 metre chase the teenager, Pihema Cameron, was stabbed in the chest and died. The boy’s sister said she hated Emery and wanted to rip his eyes out. But what does she do all day? “I just stay home, bum from my dad, get some money, go get stoned, drink alcohol and do whatever,” she said.

She’s 15, about 18 months younger than her former brother. Does she go to school?

What’s the bet that the young teenager has got no qualifications and was not doing too well at school. What’s the bet that Emery has a better job than most of the Cameron whanau, had more qualifications than Camerons mother and father, gets drunk less often and takes less drugs. What’s the bet that had the poor kid been encouraged to do well by his parents, instead of his sole parent taking off to Australia on her own, he would still be alive today.

I`m not defending Emery’s actions at all. His actions were despicable. Had he not reacted the way he did the boy would also be alive and Emery would not be in prison. But what is our society turning into when people get stabbed to death for helping someone, and killed for petty crime. And why, of late, is it Maori families who are running around courtrooms with the head of their dead offspring plastered on their t-shirts – the same dead offspring they should have cared for a little more when they were alive.

Israel’s disgusting attacksSo, there’s a truce in the

Israel’s disgusting attacks

So, there’s a truce in the war in Gaza. Israel sets up a three-hour truce so that humanitarian workers can get aid to civilians.

Then fires at and kills the aid workers. How can the UN continue in these circumstances when its own aid workers are being killed and injured, even when they are in direct coordination with the Israeli liaison people, who are supposed to ensure their safety.I don’t blame the UN for suspending relief until it can be assured humanitarian workers come out alive during a ceasefire.

Although Hamas started this scrap, I guess its one step forward for Israel – from drinking Pepsi while watching Gaza burn, to killing aid workers when their fingers are not supposed to be on triggers.

Child abuse and prostitution

Make a list of all the child abuse murders in the past five years. Look at the family structure. Put a tick against the families whose adults are not married. Put a tick against the families that are Maori. Put another tick against families that have a beneficiary. Tell the media what proportion of families have at least two ticks, and how many have three.

But just before you do that, contact a Maori and a former prostitute for comment. Two recommendations would be Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Prostitutes Collective head Catherine Healy. Give them the results. Ask them why sex workers are safer on the streets than kids in at-risk families in their own homes. Ask Healy what proportion of street workers are married and non-Maori – and how many were abused as children.

Given that Bob McCoskrie from Family First is accessible to and can access the media frequently, perhaps that’s something he could do, given his views on prostitution and child abuse.

Here’s a start:

February 2006 3 year old Ngatikaura Ngati suffered heavy bruising and wounds to his arms, legs, chest, face and groin. The mother, 32, and stepfather, 27, each face a charge of murder, child cruelty and failing to provide the necessaries of life. Both found guilty of manslaughter – sentenced to 8.5 years each. Up for parole in less than four years.

March 2007 – A woman whose baby, Cheyenne Petersen, drowned after she allegedly abandoned it in bush near Parua Bay, near Whangarei, pleased guilty to manslaughter She was high on P at the time and later charged with manslaughter. She got a reduced two-and-a-half years prison term as she was a drug addict.

May 2007 26 -year old solo mother of five admitted infanticide after an initial charge of murder was dropped. She was sentenced her to two years’ intensive supervision and 100 hours of community work. Supervision includes treatment for alcohol abuse.

June 2007 – Sachin Dhani (16 months) dies after beatingwhile in care of a relative

June 2007 – 28-year-old woman charged with murdering her newborn baby found dead in the backyard of a Te Mome Road property in Alicetown.

June 2007 – Death of 22 month old Tyla-Maree Darryl Flynn from severe burns while being cared for by step-father. A 30 year old man charged but he caused a car accidentkilling another person – possibly while drunk. As he died in the accident he could not be convicted.

July 2007 3-year-old Nia Glassie was brain damaged after months of assaults by stepfather, grandfather and extended family. Her family is backgrounded here.

September 2007 Ten-month-old Jyniah Mary Te Awa died in Starship Hospital after receiving a suspicious “non-accidental brain injury”. Tiana Mary-Anne Odessa Kapea, a baby sitter, was convicted of her murder.

November 2007Azees Mahomed, 29, is to stand trial in 2009 for the murder of his 11-week-old daughter Tahani Mahomed. The girl’s mother will also face charges of failing to provide the necessaries of life and one of neglect.

1 Jan 2008 Two-month-old Tahani Mahomed died at 5am New Years Day. Police have interviewed her 29-year-old father and 24-year-old mother. Her two-year-old sister was taken into the care of Child, Youth and Family. Her Father (29) was charged with the murder and a 24-year-old woman was arrested and charged with failing to provide “the necessities of life”.

April 2008 Three-year old Dylan Hohepa Tonga Rimoni dies of ‘unexplained head injuries’ while in care of his foster parents April 18, 2008. A 36-year-old woman was charged with murder as well as two charges of causing him grievous bodily harm and assault.

July 2008 – Duwayne Toetu Taote Pailegutu (7). His stepfather Johnny Pukerua Ioakimo Joachim, (37) pleaded guilty to murder. The boy’s mother has also appeared in court, charged with failing to provide the necessities of life. CYF twice notified but did not investigate.

December 2008- 16-month old Riley Justin Osborne. Beneficiary stepfather (22) charged with murder.

Here’s some cases where nobody was convicted of murder or manslaughter.

* Raiden Niania, 4 months. Father Arthur Niania found not guilty of shaken-baby manslaughter after his second trial. First trial had to be aborted.

* Alyssa Wilson, 4 months old. Father – boxer and playstation addict went through three trials, the last of which was aborted. No further trials so charge withdrawn. No one will ever be held accountable.

* Chris and Cru Kahui, 3 months. Father Chris Kahui charged with murder but found not guilty. No one else is expected to face charges.

UPDATE Well, that didn’t take long – another child dies – under CYFS care. More details when they come to hand.

Fire at will bill will not lead to

Fire at will bill will not lead to 13 week benefit stand downs

There has been a fair bit of scaremongering by the Greens that the Fire at Will Bill will lead to people losing their jobs and not being eligible for a benefit for 13 weeks. In fact it is the opposite – people who are fired at will for misconduct under the 90 day legislation will be much less likely to get a long stand down.

Firstly, if you are fired within the 90 days and your partner works you are not eligible for a benefit anyway. Secondly, the 13 weeks only applies to a work tested benefit and is a discretionary stand down, not a mandatory one as the MSD can choose not to apply it. If they go on a sickness, invalids or DPB, the stand down won’t apply.

Section 60H of the Social Security Act provides for the stand down if an employee leaves their place of employment without a good and sufficient reason.Unemployed means resigning from or otherwise leaving employment, other than by dismissal. Any firing is dismissal. However the section also applies if an employee has lost his job because of misconduct. Misconduct cannot be proven under the 90 day legislation as an employee can’t challenge it in a personal grievance – the only method of establishing whether the employer acted with good and sufficient reason, whether that reason was misconduct or simply a bad case of BO. .So a stand down can’t be legally imposed as there is no test of that good and sufficient reason.

Sue Bradford wrongly says that if an employee who is dismissed, say, on suspicion of theft, will be stood down from the dole for 13 weeks, and will have no means of challenging the stand-down. Mere suspicion is not a good and sufficient reason and a decision to stand down on something that may not have happened can certainly be challenged. But, for those who don’t know beneficiary rights – including Sue Bradford and most WINZ Case Managers – they wouldn’t know that a person can get out of a 13 week stand down purly by attending a mandatory interview in preparation for employment, and an approved activity. This could be as simple as getting a free CV and doing the interview applying for a benefit and receiving a Job Seekers Agreement.

How handy –BIMs in one placeAnyone interested in

How handy –BIMs in one place

Anyone interested in the briefings to incoming ministers can find and read them all online here. Here’s some comment on three: Families Commission, CYFS, and Office of Childrens COmmissioner.

The BIM from the Families Commission notes that 20 years ago, almost nine out of 10 families with children had both parents living in the same household. Today, that number is seven out of 10, with the other three being sole parent households. What it didn’t say that of the seven, many have children that are not living with their father and mother – but one of their parents and their parent’s partner. Given that half all murders are domestic –violence related, with many of these families having a non-European step-parent, I would have thought that would have been relevant. If the Commission hasn’t research this, it is not doing its job, if it has researched it, it should be in the BIM.

It mentioned the (now scrapped) Family Commission Summit. Apparently the summit and its costs made the Minister’s face turn blue, which is an appropriate colour. I note that several commissioners and CTU president Helen Kelly were confirmed to speak, as was Phil O’Rielly from Business New Zealand. Yet those such as Family First’s Bob McCoskrie, and For the Sake of our Children’s Christine Rankin were not even asked and no Pacific Islanders were confirmed to speak. So participants were hardly “drawn from a cross-section of people in terms of age, ethnicity and areas/sectors of knowledge and influence”. Just one Maori was asked to speak and that’s because the Children’s Commissioner is Maori.

Which brings me to the next briefing paper – the briefing from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. No mention at all was made of the smacking advocacy or Section 59 of the Crime’s Act – whatsoever – despite mentioning it in the first paragraph of this year’s Annual Report. It considered Section 59 a “major issue”.

The BIM said that children who do not experience warm loving carers during infancy are less likely to develop empathy and so struggle with future relationships – and NCEA, apparently. We don’t need “ warm loving carers” for children, we need children who are cared for by their father and their mother, not all day carers that provide care out of a home environment while their parents work, get home tired and see their children in weekends only. We need children who are helped by their parents with homework so these kids can get NCEA. And it is Maori children who need this support more as they are over represented in under achievement.

Early intervention is about tilting the balance in favour of children. When we build skyscrapers, we ensure that the foundations are well designed and securely in place. The foundation should be strong families – the OCC answer is a strong state intervention led by task forces and frameworks, along with a “strategic and integrated” approach. Pathetic.

Although the OCC did mention that there was an increase in notifications to CYFS due to family violence, it was the CYFS briefing paper that had the details. No mention was made of the OCC in the CYFS briefing at all. Child abuse notifications had gone up by 30,000 in the past year, because police are required to refer all family violence – including smacking – notifications and investigations to CYFS. But the amount that required further action had actually reduced with no change in the rate of substantiated child abuse. Was this the reason why smacking and Section 59 was not mentioned by the OCC BIM? It is clear that the thousands of notifications are starting to hamstring the effectiveness of CYFS and the BIM says if irrelevant notifications were to increase it will lead to an “inability to cope”.

Organisations like Family First will claim that irrelevant advocacy work of the OCC is leading to notifications that are starting to hamstring the ability of CYFS to do its job.

Child abuse and prostitution

Make a list of all the child abuse murders in the past five years. Look at the family structure. Put a tick against the families whose adults are not married. Put a tick against the families that are Maori. Put another tick against families that have a beneficiary. Tell the media what proportion of families have at least two ticks, and how many have three.

But just before you do that, contact a Maori and a former prostitute for comment. Two recommendations would be Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Prostitutes Collective head Catherine Healy. Give them the results. Ask them why sex workers are safer on the streets than kids in at-risk families in their own homes. Ask Healy what proportion of street workers are married and non-Maori – and how many were abused as children.

Given that Bob McCoskrie from Family First is accessible to and can access the media frequently, perhaps that’s something he could do, given his views on prostitution and child abuse.

Here’s a start:

February 2006 3 year old Ngatikaura Ngati suffered heavy bruising and wounds to his arms, legs, chest, face and groin. The mother, 32, and stepfather, 27, each face a charge of murder, child cruelty and failing to provide the necessaries of life. Both found guilty of manslaughter – sentenced to 8.5 years each. Up for parole in less than four years.

March 2007 – A woman whose baby, Cheyenne Petersen, drowned after she allegedly abandoned it in bush near Parua Bay, near Whangarei, pleased guilty to manslaughter She was high on P at the time and later charged with manslaughter. She got a reduced two-and-a-half years prison term as she was a drug addict.

May 2007 26 -year old solo mother of five admitted infanticide after an initial charge of murder was dropped. She was sentenced her to two years’ intensive supervision and 100 hours of community work. Supervision includes treatment for alcohol abuse.

June 2007 – Sachin Dhani (16 months) dies after beatingwhile in care of a relative

June 2007 – 28-year-old woman charged with murdering her newborn baby found dead in the backyard of a Te Mome Road property in Alicetown.

June 2007 – Death of 22 month old Tyla-Maree Darryl Flynn from severe burns while being cared for by step-father. A 30 year old man charged but he caused a car accidentkilling another person – possibly while drunk. As he died in the accident he could not be convicted.

July 2007 3-year-old Nia Glassie was brain damaged after months of assaults by stepfather, grandfather and extended family. Her family is backgrounded here.

September 2007 Ten-month-old Jyniah Mary Te Awa died in Starship Hospital after receiving a suspicious “non-accidental brain injury”. Tiana Mary-Anne Odessa Kapea, a baby sitter, was convicted of her murder.

November 2007Azees Mahomed, 29, is to stand trial in 2009 for the murder of his 11-week-old daughter Tahani Mahomed. The girl’s mother will also face charges of failing to provide the necessaries of life and one of neglect.

1 Jan 2008 Two-month-old Tahani Mahomed died at 5am New Years Day. Police have interviewed her 29-year-old father and 24-year-old mother. Her two-year-old sister was taken into the care of Child, Youth and Family. Her Father (29) was charged with the murder and a 24-year-old woman was arrested and charged with failing to provide “the necessities of life”.

April 2008 Three-year old Dylan Hohepa Tonga Rimoni dies of ‘unexplained head injuries’ while in care of his foster parents April 18, 2008. A 36-year-old woman was charged with murder as well as two charges of causing him grievous bodily harm and assault.

July 2008 – Duwayne Toetu Taote Pailegutu (7). His stepfather Johnny Pukerua Ioakimo Joachim, (37) pleaded guilty to murder. The boy’s mother has also appeared in court, charged with failing to provide the necessities of life. CYF twice notified but did not investigate.

December 2008- 16-month old Riley Justin Osborne. Beneficiary stepfather (22) charged with murder.

Here’s some cases where nobody was convicted of murder or manslaughter.

* Raiden Niania, 4 months. Father Arthur Niania found not guilty of shaken-baby manslaughter after his second trial. First trial had to be aborted.

* Alyssa Wilson, 4 months old. Father – boxer and playstation addict went through three trials, the last of which was aborted. No further trials so charge withdrawn. No one will ever be held accountable.

* Chris and Cru Kahui, 3 months. Father Chris Kahui charged with murder but found not guilty. No one else is expected to face charges.

UPDATE Well, that didn’t take long – another child dies – under CYFS care. More details when they come to hand.

Child abuse and prostitutionMake a list of all

Child abuse and prostitution

Make a list of all the child abuse murders in the past five years. Look at the family structure. Put a tick against the families whose adults are not married. Put a tick against the families that are Maori. Put another tick against families that have a beneficiary. Tell the media what proportion of families have at least two ticks, and how many have three.

But just before you do that, contact a Maori and a former prostitute for comment. Two recommendations would be Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Prostitutes Collective head Catherine Healy. Give them the results. Ask them why sex workers are safer on the streets than kids in at-risk families in their own homes. Ask Healy what proportion of street workers are married and non-Maori – and how many were abused as children.

Given that Bob McCoskrie from Family First is accessible to and can access the media frequently, perhaps that’s something he could do, given his views on prostitution and child abuse.

Here’s a start:

February 2006 3 year old Ngatikaura Ngati suffered heavy bruising and wounds to his arms, legs, chest, face and groin. The mother, 32, and stepfather, 27, each face a charge of murder, child cruelty and failing to provide the necessaries of life. Both found guilty of manslaughter – sentenced to 8.5 years each. Up for parole in less than four years.

March 2007 – A woman whose baby, Cheyenne Petersen, drowned after she allegedly abandoned it in bush near Parua Bay, near Whangarei, pleased guilty to manslaughter She was high on P at the time and later charged with manslaughter. She got a reduced two-and-a-half years prison term as she was a drug addict.

May 2007 26 -year old solo mother of five admitted infanticide after an initial charge of murder was dropped. She was sentenced her to two years’ intensive supervision and 100 hours of community work. Supervision includes treatment for alcohol abuse.

June 2007 – Sachin Dhani (16 months) dies after beatingwhile in care of a relative

June 2007 – 28-year-old woman charged with murdering her newborn baby found dead in the backyard of a Te Mome Road property in Alicetown.

June 2007 – Death of 22 month old Tyla-Maree Darryl Flynn from severe burns while being cared for by step-father. A 30 year old man charged but he caused a car accidentkilling another person – possibly while drunk. As he died in the accident he could not be convicted.

July 2007 3-year-old Nia Glassie was brain damaged after months of assaults by stepfather, grandfather and extended family. Her family is backgrounded here.

September 2007 Ten-month-old Jyniah Mary Te Awa died in Starship Hospital after receiving a suspicious “non-accidental brain injury”. Tiana Mary-Anne Odessa Kapea, a baby sitter, was convicted of her murder.

November 2007Azees Mahomed, 29, is to stand trial in 2009 for the murder of his 11-week-old daughter Tahani Mahomed. The girl’s mother will also face charges of failing to provide the necessaries of life and one of neglect.

1 Jan 2008 Two-month-old Tahani Mahomed died at 5am New Years Day. Police have interviewed her 29-year-old father and 24-year-old mother. Her two-year-old sister was taken into the care of Child, Youth and Family. Her Father (29) was charged with the murder and a 24-year-old woman was arrested and charged with failing to provide “the necessities of life”.

April 2008 Three-year old Dylan Hohepa Tonga Rimoni dies of ‘unexplained head injuries’ while in care of his foster parents April 18, 2008. A 36-year-old woman was charged with murder as well as two charges of causing him grievous bodily harm and assault.

July 2008 – Duwayne Toetu Taote Pailegutu (7). His stepfather Johnny Pukerua Ioakimo Joachim, (37) pleaded guilty to murder. The boy’s mother has also appeared in court, charged with failing to provide the necessities of life. CYF twice notified but did not investigate.

December 2008- 16-month old Riley Justin Osborne. Beneficiary stepfather (22) charged with murder.

Here’s some cases where nobody was convicted of murder or manslaughter.

* Raiden Niania, 4 months. Father Arthur Niania found not guilty of shaken-baby manslaughter after his second trial. First trial had to be aborted.

* Alyssa Wilson, 4 months old. Father – boxer and playstation addict went through three trials, the last of which was aborted. No further trials so charge withdrawn. No one will ever be held accountable.

* Chris and Cru Kahui, 3 months. Father Chris Kahui charged with murder but found not guilty. No one else is expected to face charges.

UPDATE Well, that didn’t take long – another child dies – under CYFS care. More details when they come to hand.

Nifong Suspended

Nifong Suspended
Two days ago, Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong was found guilty on 27 of 32 ethical charges brought against him by the NC State Bar in handling the Duke lacrosse case. As a result of those findings, Mr. Nifong was disbarred on Saturday. Earlier today, Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson suspended Mr. Nifong ending his career immediately as a district attorney.

Beth Brewer, a courageous Durham resident, should be congratulated and praised for providing the legal mechanism for the judge to issue Mr. Nifong’s suspension today. If not for the petition that Beth Brewer filed several months ago to remove Mr. Nifong from office, the suspension today might not have been possible. Thank you Beth Brewer, for being a good citizen!

Here are links for more details on today’s developments:

Nifong Served With Suspension Order WRAL

Judge suspends Duke rape DA immediately Associated Press

Judge to suspend dallying Nifong today Newsobserver

To read more about ‘good citizen’ Beth Brewer:

Profile in Courage – Beth Brewer by Joan Collins

Thank you, Beth Brewer John in Carolina

INNOCENT: Thanks again, Beth Brewer John in Carolina

Friends of Duke University

Duke and the Police
by Jason Trumpbour, FODU spokesperson

Duke and the Police

I have been keeping a low profile recently and that is deliberate. Mike Nifong had tried to make an issue of FODU’s efforts to call attention to his misdeeds. Now that the relevant authorities have taken the matter up, I am content to let them handle it. I will have much to say about the bar hearing, removal proceeding and contempt hearing in due course. In the meantime, I want to call attention to some disturbing information brought to light by the folks at LieStoppers concerning Duke. See also this timeline and the hearing transcript.

If you will recall, last May Mike Nifong requested the court issue a subpoena to Duke University to provide records of card key activity by all members of the Duke lacrosse team and also provide their home addresses. This information is protected by a federal statute called the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act and cannot be disclosed without a showing of need. Nifong’s request was patently overbroad, but Duke University refused to challenge it. Instead, Duke told the lacrosse players that it would comply with the request and that, if they did not like it, they could do something about it themselves. Attorneys for the lacrosse players challenged the request on their own and a hearing was held in July. The judge then handling the case, Kenneth Titus denied the request. It turns out that Nifong’s request was a complete fraud on the court because, as LieSoppers discovered, Duke University had already turned these records over to police months earlier in March evidently in violation of FERPA.

This new information is disturbing as it relates to Duke on several levels.

First, the Duke administration chose to supply personal information about its students to a manifestly unethical and corrupt district attorney in connection with a politically motivated investigation. Do not be fooled by the administration’s story that they did not know what to believe or that they instinctively trust public officials. Duke had been told by the police that the case was bogus and the file would likely be closed after the police had interviewed that alleged victim. How the police later came to aggressively investigate the case is an interesting story. I will have to tell it to you sometime, but not now. Suffice it to say that these circumstances were an additional reason for them to be very suspicious of the motives of Mike Nifong and the police.

Second, the principle beneficiary of this bit of theater would not have been Mike Nifong. He already had indictments against three defendants and he could have subpoenaed their records with no difficulty. Nifong had no need to use the records of the other players at trial, because his position at that point in time was that they had been exculpated by the April 4 lineup. Nor would there have likely been any repercussions for him or the police for merely soliciting a violation of FERPA. The real beneficiary would seem to be Duke University because it would provide a legal fig leaf to cover its apparent violation of federal law. Worse, Nifong’s apparent willingness to cover for Duke shows that Duke, through its own misconduct, had found itself entangled in Nifong’s malicious prosecution to the point that its interests had started to overlap with those of Nifong.

Third, even if the leak of personal information had not been illegal, it was extremely prejudicial to the players. Judge Titus found that Nifong had failed to show any legitimate reason for the police to have this information. Indeed, just as with the Ryan McFadyen e-mail, police used it to as part of a fishing expedition.

Finally, and probably most disturbing of all, this surreptitious leak of private information occurred at a time when Duke was pretending to support the players, had encouraged them to talk to Duke officials citing a totally fictitious student/teacher privilege and had even hired a local attorney who they offered to the players in an ambiguous relationship meant to approximate that of a defense attorney. Now we see what kind of “help” Duke was providing the players. No person truly acting in the role of defense counsel would have volunteered this information without a subpeona.

For those who insisted that our criticism of the Duke administration for its lack of public support for its falsely accused students was unfair because Duke was probably concerned about its students and was probably working behind the scenes to help them, guess again. For those who have insisted that speaking out against the conduct of Mike Nifong might work against the University’s interests and expose it to unacceptable risks, look at the risks the administration was willing to take in order to further the interests of those working against the players.

Speaking of the Ryan McFadyen e-mail, the claim by Sergeant Gottlieb in his post dated notes prepared in July that the police received a copy of the Ryan McFadyen e-mail through a Crimestoppers tip always sounded suspect to me. The affidavit in support of the search warrant application recites that “On 3/27/2006 Sgt. Gottlieb was contacted by a confidential source. The source provided Sgt. Gottlieb a copy of an e-mail sent by email address. . . .” The Ryan McFadyen e-mail was widely distributed because, aside from being tasteless, there was need to conceal its contents. It is possible that some private individual unconnected to the team came across a copy of it. However, the only other people who had access to the e-mail and its chain of replies were Duke University employees. Is Sergeant Gottlieb’s new version of events in July 2006, which characteristically contradicts an earlier document produced by the police, one supplied to a judge no less, an attempt to conceal another surreptitious leak of private information by Duke officials? In his deposition for the bar hearing, Benjamin Himan indicated that, on March 27, 2006, he, Sergeant Gottlieb and Nifong met and among the topics discussed was obtaining “e-mails and stuff like that.” However, we do not see the police or Nifong actually making a formal request for the e-mail records of the players.

I do not believe that the administration actually wanted to help frame its own students. There is some indication that members of the administration initially believed the charges based on their own personal prejudices rather than objective facts. However, the one common denominator present is that there was always some other priority for the administration that was greater than the welfare of its students. They wanted to be on the right side in the eyes of the public regardless of the facts or law. They wanted to maintain their cozy working relationships with local officials. They wanted to appease small, vocal constituencies within their faculty. They did not think the lacrosse players deserved their help.

People, particularly lawyers, keep asking me, “Doesn’t Duke have access to legal advice?” They are puzzled at how a major university with its own legal staff and a top ten law school on campus could continuously make such horrible mistakes and seemingly lack any appreciation for what was going on in the lacrosse case. Duke does have access to plenty of legal advice. The reality is that the administration does not care. I found this out first hand. In settling with several of the players, particularly in the Dowd case, the Duke administration essentially used University resources to pay for the privilege of doing whatever it wanted. They were not mistaken about the consequences of their actions. It was never going to be any other way.

It is impossible to defend the administration’s motives in violating FERPA as somehow a well intentioned attempt to further the cause of justice as it understood it to be at the time. If the administration had truly been committed to justice, it would have pursued it without regard to where it might take them and which side it might be found to lay. Yet, when the time came for speaking up for the due process rights of its students, the administration was silent and remained silent until late December. No, there was never any commitment by the administration to seeing justice done in the lacrosse case at least through December and certainly not in March. In the absence of such a commitment, there was only self interest and playing favorites.

Collin Leaves Duke as Well

In other news, Collin Finnerty has announced that he is transferring to Loyola College. As with Reade Seligmann, it is disgraceful that Duke has not done more to retain a student who suffered because of his Duke affiliation and did so with dignity and character. Reade, Collin and David represented the University well and made us proud.

I live not too far from Loyola College. It is an excellent school with a top notch lacrosse program (they beat Duke last year). The people there are glad to have him and I am sure that they will take good care of him in a way that the Duke administration was unwilling to do. Welcome to Baltimore Collin!

Joan Collins

I do not want Joan Collins’s latest article to be overlooked by bumping it from the top place with this update so, after reading this, keep reading below. I would just like to add that it is not surprising to me that faith was important to all of the lacrosse team members, their families and the Presslers and that it helped them through their ordeal. The deep faith she describes them having was certainly apparent to me by their conduct all along, especially that of Reade, Collin and David. I am sure that there were many, many moments of despair for them. However, they did not give up. They did not let themselves be paralyzed with self pity. They did not give in to hatred. They never lost the ability to see beyond their own concerns and now want to use their experience to help others in similar situations.

St. Louis de Montfort, in his Letter to the Friends of the Cross, described the proper way for people to confront and even embrace the vicissitudes of life, which provide opportunities for spiritual growth and a closer, more uncomplicated and uncluttered relationship with God. To suffer setbacks without hope and without faith is to suffer as the damned do. However, to suffer with hope and with faith is to suffer as Christ and the holy martyrs did. What the three families went through was horrible and they are still suffering materially for it. However, not only were they not destroyed by the experience, as Joan points out, they are better people for it. St. Louis emphasizes that there is nothing meritorious about suffering in and of itself. Recently, someone wrote a letter to the Herald-Sun complaining about all of the legal actions against Mike Nifong and compared him to Jesus. I wish I were kidding. However, to suffer for an evil or unjust cause is to be a martyr not for God, but for Satan. If Mike Nifong would only embrace the, in his case, just suffering he brought on himself, as the penitent thief at Christ’s side did, he too could be a better person for this experience and actually would be like Christ.

While we are on the subject, this was the thought for the week during Mike Nifong’s bar hearing on a site run by Irish Jesuits called Sacred Space:

Jesus urged us not to swear at all: “All you need say is ‘Yes’ if you mean yes, ‘No’ if you mean no.” Only constant honesty with ourselves can make us really sincere. The world knows an honest person. Many would not tell a downright lie, but few, even of the pious, always tell the truth. It was the truth in Jesus that devastated his enemies. In proportion as we live a recollected life, with Jesus as model, we attain a simplicity and lucidity of character which has less and less need for untruth.

I thought the coincidence was remarkable. That should be the lesson for all of us in the lacrosse case, not just Mike Nifong.

Friends of Duke University

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