This may be the most painful story you read today:
'Hardest decision of our lives': Foster parents return Moana to state care | Stuff.co.nz.
If you’ve followed this saga, you’ll get the gist from the headline. Marty Sharpe’s story will very likely make you angry. Unless you’ve got a heart of flint, it should also deeply sadden you.
It’s a story about good people who tried to do the right thing and have been ground down to the point where there was no option left but to capitulate.
More to the point, it’s about a vulnerable girl who found love, affection and security for the first time in her life with foster parents who wanted the best for her, but who has now been taken away from them to face an uncertain future.
It’s a shocking indictment of a perverse system that appears to have callously sacrificed a child to the culture wars.
The most depressing aspect is that the whole wretched affair appears to be rooted in a particularly cruel and destructive form of racism – only not the type of racism we normally hear about, because that’s supposed to flow the other way.
And we, the taxpayers, are involuntarily complicit in this process, because the government department pulling the strings in the case is acting on our behalf. It's not a day to feel a proud New Zealander.
11 comments:
Completely agree with everything posted.
Cannot avoid asking though when was the last time a Govt. department operated with any consideration to the people paying their salaries (i.e. the taxpayer)?
Phil Blackwell
Having done fostering in the past, I feel so much for this family, and the little girl. They have been treated despicably by bullies and cowards who care more about 'culture' (i.e. when some money is involved) than the vital needs of this girl. One of the great cultural lies of today is that 'Māori do better with Maori'. No. Has not worked since early 2000's in health.
I do hope Moana's future is ok.
I do hope that ACT MP Karen Chhour is featured on the news and in any stories on this.
I'm not very hopeful that my hopes will come to anything.
Ken Maclaren
Absolutely Outrageous.
Reading the judges decision makes it appallingly clear that the Ministry for Children (O-T) acted in an extremely racist manner.
My heart goes out to that poor girl and her Foster parents.
Not a day to be proud to be a Kiwi.
To be fait guys, the days to be a proud New ZXealander are few and far between these days.
Ken
It would be nice to think that you sentiments are met. However, it is almost certain that this girl will end back as a very damaged person in OT's "care" within a short period of time. And the activists will claim that it was because she was placed with a non-Maori couple that this happened.
What is the most disgusting thing about the whole issue is the State is actively supporting the destruction of this girl's (and probably many others like her) future.
There is a lesson here for prospective adopting parents. If you are non-Maori, have nothing to do with Maori children. The State will actively ruin your lives for having the temerity to be kind.
Er, I think thats the type of statement that got Scott Adams blacklisted.
Not speaking to the merits of it, just observing the similarity.
Karl I dont feel complicit at all nor should most of us
We the citizens of this so called democracy have next to no say in how anything is done
Sadly Hiko, this has been true for the last 3 years and this is just the tip but very real edge of the iceberg.
Poor Moana, why arent we marching in droves to save the life of this 6 year old??
Oh that's right because we would be called alt right conspiracy theorists and rivers of filth whilst being widely ignored and villified in the media!!
But seriously, why arent we marching? I will write to Hipkins and I encourage everyone else to do so as well. We'll soon see what a man of the people he really is.
Hiko - your comment "...this so called democracy have next to no say..." overlooks the election coming up, at which you can confidentially exercise your democratic right towards changing the government.
Providing of course that sufficient voters are well informed, and someone doesn't change the rules in the meantime: recent political performances doesn't bode well in that regard.
Yes, Karl, I was dismayed to hear about the latest episode of what has now happened with the State Ward, Moana. That dismay turned to anger when it’s reported that the mother and her lawyer claim it was a ‘colonial experiment’ and that they will have to ‘pick up the pieces’. Never mind that the mother was clearly incompetent and had no business bringing children into the world that she could neither support nor care for; never mind that poor Moana was clearly enduring a culture that was creating her suffering and maltreatment and, that leastwise initially, there was no-one of that ‘culture’ willing and able to put it right. But we now see the results of a State funded ideological campaign which has waged a war of attrition on a family who were only endeavouring to do, and by all accounts achieving, the right thing. I feel very sad for the Smiths and Moana, for the immense emotional and no doubt financial toll this has taken. I feel anger and disgust at Oranga Tamariki for waging this unjustified war using taxpayer funds, and to the mother and lawyer (who I’ll wager owe their livelihoods to the taxpayer) for attempting to divert the responsibility elsewhere from where the blame fair and justly lies.
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