During the beatings, Tuakeu would say to the victims, \u201cWhy did I have to end up with you?\u201d and told them they took away her freedom, calling them \u201cevil\u201d and \u201ca bad child\u201d. <\/p>\n
Ongoaere Tuakeu at Manukau District Court, which heard she once hit a child on the head with enough force to break a wooden spoon. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
In one incident, Rakauroaiti forced a lit cigarette into one of the children\u2019s mouths while he was coughing from the smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the incident, you said to the [child], \u2018You can vape, but you cannot smoke, it does not make sense\u2019. You then picked him up and pushed him inside,\u201d Judge Richard McIlraith said.<\/p>\n
One of the children was left unable to walk properly and with bruises after Tuakeu hit his arms and legs with a broomstick, including after the boy fell on the ground and was trying to block the strikes.<\/p>\n
The couple prevented the children from going to school if they had bruising or obvious injuries after the assaults.<\/p>\n
During one incident, Rakauroaiti handed Tuakeu a plank of wood through the window, so she could use it as a weapon against one of the children whom she suspected had left milk outside of the fridge. Tuakeu beat the child with the plank on her upper arm, causing bruising, and slapped her on her face.<\/p>\n
Tuakeu pleaded guilty to two charges of assault with a weapon, another assault-related charge and assault on a child.<\/p>\n
Rakauroaiti pleaded guilty to two charges of assault with a weapon and three charges of assault on a child.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a significant fall from grace for Ms Tuakeu; she has no prior convictions,\u201d defence lawyer Jack Liu said.<\/p>\n
Ngatamaroa Rakauroaiti received a sentence of home detention for offences against two children. Photo \/ Michael Craig.<\/p>\n
The Crown lawyer noted the usual sentencing of this type of offending was one of imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Judge McIlraith said the degree and duration of the violence \u201cescalated over time\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the children were \u201cinherently vulnerable\u201d, aged from 5-11 and 9-15 years old respectively during the offending.<\/p>\n
Judge McIlraith said two years and three months\u2019 imprisonment was an appropriate starting point for the weapon charges, with a 10-month uplift for the other charges.<\/p>\n
He said the couple were \u201centitled to significant discounts\u201d and gave them a 20% discount for their early guilty pleas, and further discounts for genuine remorse and lack of prior offending, settling on a 50% discount.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn both of your circumstances, I think home detention is the appropriate outcome,\u201d Judge McIlraith said.<\/p>\n
The couple were sentenced to nine months of home detention and post-detention conditions of six months.<\/p>\n
Charges of assault with a weapon carry a maximum penalty of five years\u2019 imprisonment and assault of a child carries a maximum penalty of two years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Initial charges relating to the alleged starvation of the children were dropped by the Crown at sentencing.<\/p>\n
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the beatings, Tuakeu would say to the victims, \u201cWhy did I have to end up with you?\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,9092,13119,51,17094,1061,8414,69700,3368,305,42,1334,43,1523,5353,9215,8442,33244,40,38,41,39,1237,20424,1530],"class_list":["post-93569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-against","tag-assaults","tag-auckland","tag-avoid","tag-children","tag-couple","tag-dodged","tag-guilty","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-jail","tag-news","tag-over","tag-period","tag-pleading","tag-prison","tag-raft","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-two","tag-violent","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93569","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=93569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}