The rates of child and family abuse in New Zealand are "shameful," a government task force said yesterday as controversy continued to swirl around the month-long hunt to find the killer of baby twins.
New Zealand's crime rates are generally low by world standards, but the country of 4.1 million has one of the highest rates of murders of children in the developed world.
New Zealand's rates of child and family abuse are "shameful" and will take many years to eliminate, the task force report said.
Child and family violence is under the spotlight after the unsolved killings of three-month-old indigenous Maori twin boys Chris and Cru Kahui last month. They died from severe brain damage and multiple injuries on June 18, five days after being taken to hospital.
A post mortem also revealed that the premature babies had broken ribs from an earlier incident. Family members appear to have since closed ranks to protect the killer, causing widespread outrage throughout the country.
Reports said up to 12 adults lived in their house in a poor Auckland suburb. Only one of the adults reportedly worked and parties were often held in the household described as "dysfunctional" by visitors to the house.
Even Prime Minister Helen Clark became involved, saying the household was "the Once Were Warriors type family," referring to a well-known New Zealand novel and film written by Alan Duff about a violent Maori family.
"There is a small number of families which fall over every possible cliff and are very, very difficult to reach," Clark said.
A government report this week said the death rate through abuse for Maori children was double that for ethnic European children. Maori, who make up about 15 percent of the population, are also over- represented in statistics for poverty, unemployment and imprisonment.
Legislator Tariana Turia, co-leader of the Maori Party in parliament, said the figures reflected "economic violence."
"There is a significant body of research outlining the relationship between relative poverty and social isolation and children being at risk of abuse and neglect," Turia said.
The task force report showed 39 children were murdered -- - mostly by family members -- between 2000 and 2004. Other figures showed the child murder rate was the fourth worst in the developed world, behind only Mexico, the US and Hungary.
The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, a grouping of non-government social agencies, said on Thursday that government agencies had failed to adopt a coordinated approach to violence against children.
"If this was an outbreak of typhoid that was killing and maiming our children, the whole nation would unite behind a plan to end it," council spokesman Shaun Robinson said. "Why on earth can't we understand this is the same? There is no simple quick fix, but there are solutions."
But Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope said government agencies had made significant progress in improving the care and protection of children in recent years.
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