{"id":1574,"date":"2025-09-04T15:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/1574\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T15:25:09","slug":"multiple-child-abuse-cases-in-lower-north-island-raise-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/1574\/","title":{"rendered":"Multiple child abuse cases in lower North Island raise concern"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 6-month-old baby who was found with critical injuries at a Foxton Beach house died in July, for which nobody had yet been arrested.<\/p>\n

That same month, a 3-month-old baby was found to have suffered nine fractures, including to her ribcage, ankle and arm, when she was admitted to Hutt Hospital, police said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in a case before the courts, two children aged 4 and 5 \u2013 also in Lower Hutt \u2013 were hospitalised in March last year with \u201cvery, very severe\u201d injuries believed to have been inflicted deliberately over \u201ca long period of time\u201d, police said at the time. <\/p>\n

Dakota Allen, 26, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges including assault on a child<\/a>, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and attempting to pervert the course of justice a year later.<\/p>\n

He and another woman, whose name was suppressed, were due to jointly appear in the Wellington District Court next month.<\/p>\n

These followed the case of Baby Ru, officially named Nga Reo Te Huatahi Reremoana Ahipene-Wall, who died at Hutt Hospital on October 22, 2023.<\/a><\/p>\n

Police confirmed to RNZ on Wednesday there were no updates to report on any of these investigations.<\/p>\n

Detective Inspector Rebecca Cotton, national manager of sexual violence and child protection, said: \u201cSadly, I wouldn\u2019t describe this as a spate.<\/p>\n

\"DetectiveDetective Inspector Rebecca Cotton. Photo \/ Melissa Nightingale<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an aberration on what we\u2019re seeing. Unfortunately, in New Zealand we have cases of child abuse occurring every day, in every corner of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

What had occurred most recently in the Lower North Island had raised more public and media attention because the injuries were more serious than what was typical, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a trend, it\u2019s just a set of coincidental circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police, Oranga Tamariki and a wide range of NGOs were working to wrap support around families to prevent this kind of offending, she said.<\/p>\n

They were also reliant on members of the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice can\u2019t battle this alone,\u201d she said. \u201cIf someone sees something that they know is not right or they suspect that something is not right or that a child is being abused, I just implore people to speak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were options for speaking anonymously, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice can\u2019t be everywhere, we can\u2019t know everything, and we are reliant on people speaking up.\u201d<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 6-month-old baby who was found with critical injuries at a Foxton Beach house died in July, for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1903,2512,2511,2516,2518,78,2514,2517,2513,2510,111,43,139,529,69,2515],"class_list":{"0":"post-1574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-cases","10":"tag-child","11":"tag-concern","12":"tag-green","13":"tag-in","14":"tag-island","15":"tag-kate","16":"tag-lower","17":"tag-multiple","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-north","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-raise"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}