Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why have we had such a bad run of child abuse incidents?

I want to talk about kids being bashed by their families.

We've had a really bad run of it - I don't know if you've realized - in the last few weeks. As far as I can see, just in the last 8 weeks, we've had the toddler in the suitcase, and we've had the baby in the bin in Auckland.

We've also had a 2-month-old go to hospital with serious injuries that happened today, we've had a 3-month-old taken to hospital in Wellington in June, and we've had a 6-month-old critically injured at a Foxton Beach house in July.

And we've hardly talked about this. I mean, we've talked about the toddler in the suitcase yesterday, world media talked about it too because it is so bizarre, it's hard to ignore.

We also talked about the baby in the bin, that got about a day's worth of coverage, again, because that was pretty out there - putting a baby in a bin. 

But everything else, almost no coverage. Now, do you know why that is?

I mean, part of it is obviously that this is now not unusual anymore. We just bash our babies all the time in this country apparently - but also because you're not actually allowed to talk about it.

I don't know if you realize this, but the moment that Oranga Tamariki, which is the new CYFS, uplifts a kid, the Family Court orders basically automatic blanket suppression on it.

Which means the police can't say anything, it means OT itself can't say anything, it means the media can't say anything. So the news coverage just basically dies.

We get: "baby's gone to hospital," and that's the end of it. No more coverage.

It's actually only when the child dies that we can talk about it in detail because there is now no young person to protect anymore.

Now, isn't that the opposite of what we want? I mean, I think this is doing our kids a disservice. 

I understand why we did this in the first place, why we put these suppression orders in - the idea was to protect the privacy of these young people. But what it is also doing is protecting the privacy of the thugs in their families who put them in hospital or in the suitcase or in the bin.

And what it also means is that no one then talks about what's going on. We're not horrified by the detail because there is no detail, so we don't talk about it, including politicians - and they should be the ones pitching solutions.

At the rate that we're bashing our kids, this should be an election issue every single election - but it's not because we hardly talk about it because of the rules. So surely the rules should change.

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