Newsroom has learned of a new allegation of excessive force against a young girl by a worker from the same Oranga Tamariki Care and Protection Residence featured in our video report this week.
A former Oranga Tamariki care worker has come forward to Newsroom alleging one of the staff members featured in our whistleblower video had previously used excessive force against a girl – but multiple complaints about the incident went nowhere.
Newsroom understands four Oranga Tamariki staff have been stood down following our investigation that shows three separate incidents of a young teenager being thrown to the ground, put in a headlock and held in other non-approved and potentially painful restraints.
It is now alleged one of the staff members whose actions were captured on the video had had a serious complaint laid about him over another incident within the past 12 months.
A former Oranga Tamariki care worker said seeing the Newsroom story gave her the courage to come forward.
Talking to Newsroom on the condition of anonymity, she says she witnessed that same staff member commit a violent assault on a young girl in care, leaving both the girl and witness traumatised.
She says this kind of behaviour has been able to happen because Oranga Tamariki’s complaints process is “broken and leads nowhere”.
Through tears, the woman, who had been a care worker for nearly a decade, said the event still haunts her and she feels as though she wasn’t able to do enough for the young girl.
The incident happened when she and the staff member from the Care and Protection unit were transferring the girl from hospital to an Oranga Tamariki facility.
While the car they had been in was stopped in a quiet public area, the girl attempted to get out of the vehicle and go to a nearby house. The woman heard a scream and got out of the car, only to be confronted by the male staff member with his arm around the girl’s neck.
“Then he dropped her to the ground, backwards. Even now, it brings me to tears. It was so violent. I don’t even know why he did that,” she says in a shaky voice.
The girl managed to get back up but the man dropped her to the ground again.
“Then he wrapped his whole body around her and locked his feet between her ankles so she couldn’t move at all. And this girl in the past had been raped, so he was just re-traumatising her. It would have been better if he’d left her to go to the house and left the police to collect her later when she was feeling calm. The restraint was way over the top. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The woman immediately made a complaint to a team leader at the Care and Protection Residence.
When she heard nothing, she followed it up again at least twice. Eventually she heard the police had investigated and their inquiry was closed.
“But how can there be a police investigation if they didn’t interview me as the only witness? I don’t know if they actually did one. I would think if the police were doing an investigation I would have been one of the people they talked to. Nobody’s sat down with me and asked me about this.”
Policies pointless
Oranga Tamariki’s policies say the use of holds while dealing with young people in their Care and Protection Residences must be “kept to an absolute minimum” and only be used in extreme circumstances and when staff have reasonable grounds for believing that the use of a hold is necessary.
When holds are used, more than one staff member had to be present to ensure the young people were "protected from the potential misuse or abuse of such holds" and the least restrictive form of holds had to be adopted.
Crucially, the Oranga Tamariki statement says: “Physical force must not be used when a less intrusive form of intervention is adequate.”
If Oranga Tamariki's code of conduct was breached, an investigation could follow and police would be notified under the agency's Child Protection Protocol “where necessary”.
“Findings of serious misconduct may result in summary dismissal of the employee,” an Oranga Tamariki statement to Newsroom said.
But our original whistleblower says having policies and processes are pointless if they lead nowhere.
“It’s no good having them in place if it’s left to the manager’s discretion about whether or not you implement them. We are public servants. We don’t have the discretion about whether we follow policies and processes. It’s very clear what we should be doing.”
Not the first incident
The woman says she and the girl talked a lot about what had happened in subsequent weeks.
“She said to me ‘you’re not allowed to do that, are you?’ I said ‘no, we’re not’. I wasn’t going to bullshit her. The girl actually said it wasn’t the first time he’d done it to her.
“It was a violent assault on a young person. It’s terrible, young people are supposed to be our priority, you just don’t do that. I also feel traumatised by it.”
It is understood the young girl submitted a grievance, which was investigated by the centre's leadership team. The man continued to work at the residence.
“How come we're holding the young people accountable for their behaviours, but not the staff?” asks the woman.
Another staff member who spoke to Newsroom said the fact complaints went nowhere meant the staff member involved in the incident could continue working in the unit “thinking it’s okay to headlock a girl and knock her around.
“So no surprises someone leaked the video of him doing that to a boy.”
Newsroom asked Oranga Tamariki whether there have been any previous complaints about staff members who have now been stood down from the Care and Protection Residence as a result of our investigation.
A spokesperson said as it was an employment matter the agency couldn’t comment further.
