Malachi Subecz was murdered in 2021 – report finds NZ children 'no safer now'

Chief Children's Commissioner Claire Achmad reacts to a "gutting" ICM report into progress made by government agencies such as Oranga Tamariki in the wake of the Malachi Subecz tragedy. The report found New Zealand children are "no safer now". In fact, she tells John Campbell, child abuse in care is on the rise in this country.

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At risk children, in similar situations to Malachi Subecz, “are no safer now” than when the five-year-old was murdered, in 2021.

That is one of the findings in a report by Aroturuki Tamariki, the Independent Children’s Monitor (ICM), released this afternoon.

The ICM, whose watchdog role includes monitoring “the whole of the Oranga Tamariki system”, concludes, “we are not confident that tamariki in similar situations to Malachi are any more likely to be seen, or kept safe by the system, than they were when Malachi died.”

“Is that good enough?” I asked the Chief Children's Commissioner, Dr Claire Achmad, who has read the report.

“It's absolutely unacceptable," she replied.

“My role is to advocate for the children of this country so that they're safe, they're well, they're thriving and flourishing,” she continued. “When I read that report, see that stark finding that tamariki are no safer than when Malachi died, that's completely unacceptable. And whilst this is hard stuff to deal with, and hard things to make change on, just because it's hard doesn't mean that we can't focus the mind and take real action. We must.”

The “must” is now an urgent consensus.

“Institutions that care for or provide services to children, young people or adults in care must keep the best interests of the child uppermost in all aspects of their conduct,” stated the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care, last week, in a recommendation that might seem so obvious as to not be required, were it not for the frequency with which we fall short of even that objective.

That’s the big picture, our national portrait, and we will return to it.

But to understand the ICM’s report, and why the Children’s Commissioner has come out so strongly in support of it, we need to return to the aftermath of Malachi’s death.

How a little boy in such a desperately vulnerable position could become so “invisible” to the state, and could remain so until his death, despite warnings about his safety, was the subject of a 2022 report by Dame (and Dr) Karen Poutasi.

What made the Poutasi review different was not only its big picture scope, or the rigour and independence of its author, but the final of its 14 recommendations. “So change can be monitored," it reads, the “recommendations made in this report should be reviewed in one year’s time by the Independent Children’s Monitor."

In other words, this was not going to be another duly commissioned report, welcomed with solemnity and nodding heads, then implemented in some small part, or discreetly ignored.

“She asked us to come back in twelve months and report on what progress had been made”, Arran Jones, Executive Director of the ICM told me. “New Zealand's got a history of children being killed or severely abused, reviews being done, recommendations being made, but the follow up hasn't been there. So, this is the first time that an agency has been directed to do the follow up, and that's what we've done.”

And what have the ICM found?

“What we've said is that progress hasn't been made to a point where we can say kids are any safer today than Malachi was killed.”

What widens the ICM report beyond the particular context of the terrible, echoing, loneliness and brutality that was the end of Malachi’s life, is that it has been released during a time of intense scrutiny of the way we care for our vulnerable children.

Last week, the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care released its report. Unprecedented in scale, it was an extraordinary attempt to give voice to the estimated 200,000 people who were abused in care between 1950 and 1999 (with parts of the report addressing this century too).

“We like to think that abuse like this doesn’t happen here in New Zealand," Prime Minister Chris Luxon said. “But it did and it is a shameful chapter of our history that we must confront.”

Did and does, past and present. Multiple agencies are demanding we also look at the now.

Last week, I spoke to the head of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services (NZCCSS).

“When I read the Independent Children's Monitor’s reports”, Nikki Hurst told me, “the thing that sticks with me is where it talks about this continuing to happen, that children are continuing to make disclosures of abuse happening to them, in our society right now. In state care.”

And that, in part, is why the Children’s Commissioner has responded so strongly to the ICM’s report.

I spoke to Dr Claire Achmad, in Wellington, on Wednesday.

“This is a national shame, and it's more than that. It's a multi-generational national shame – how we are treating children in this country," she said.

In other words, and this is a terrible qualification, the abuse of our children didn’t end at the conclusion of the 50-year period officially covered by the Royal Commission, nor did it end when Malachi’s death finally made us notice that broken little boy. It continues.

“Sadly, the death of Malachi is not an isolated incident," the ICM’s report tells us. “Data from Child Matters shows that on average, one child in New Zealand dies because of abuse every five weeks. Most of these children are under five years of age, and the largest group is under one year old. This is one of the highest rates in the OECD.”

One child every five weeks. On average of them about half of them have a record with Oranga Tamariki. Malachi wasn't under the ministry's care, but it had been alerted to the little boy's dangerous situation by concerned whānau.

Dame Karen’s recommendations were an attempt to forge a meaningful, transformative response to the tragedy of his death. To take Claire Achmad’s “must” and make it flesh. To give any future Malachi (and those children are out there, somewhere), a better chance of being seen.

The ICM’s brief was to “report on progress.” And they have.

A key finding in the report was that, across the children’s system, a list of agencies (including but not limited to Oranga Tamariki) were not adequately prioritising child protection. The other five other agencies were: Department of Corrections – Ara Poutama Aotearoa, Ministry of Social Development – Te Manatū Whakahiato Ora, Ministry of Education – Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, New Zealand Police – Ngā Piriimana o Aotearoa, Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora.

The report’s focus though is on Oranga Tamariki, mainly because of "its fundamental statutory role in addressing reports of concern” such as the one filed by anxious whānau members of Malachi Subecz. And because it was the only agency that had completed internal actions stemming from Subecz's death.

The report is full of striking details, if “striking” is a sufficiently strong word. But few toll quite as loudly as the number of Dame Karen’s recommendations that the ICM matter-of-factly lists as, “Not Achieved.”

Dame Karen’s first recommendation was that “Oranga Tamariki should be engaged in vetting a carer when a sole parent of a child is arrested and/or taken into custody”. (As happened, or didn’t, with Malachi’s mum, who left him in the unsupervised “care” of a woman who would go on to abuse him, humiliate him, and then kill him.)

Dame Karen’s “recommendation two” was that “Oranga Tamariki should be engaged in regular follow-up checks” of such children.

“Have those recommendations been achieved?” I asked the ICM’s Arran Jones, knowing the answer because I’ve read his report.

“No," he answered. “What we are told is they are still doing work, but they have not been achieved, and change has not occurred.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I can only say that sufficient priority hasn't been given.”

If we don’t sufficiently prioritise after Malachi’s death, then when are we going to prioritise?”

“Yeah”, Arran Jones said, “and look, some of these recommendations require legislative change, and that can take time, but some of them are also able for chief executives to progress as well. But the bottom line is, we haven't seen the change yet.”

It was raining in the capital yesterday, and we were short of camera-people on a frantically busy day, so we set up two cameras in a meeting room in TVNZ’s wellington office, and Arran Jones then Claire Achmad kindly came to us.

Claire Achmad is still relatively new to the role of Chief Children’s Commissioner, having been appointed in November of last year. Yesterday she was singular and unequivocal, insisting we do better.

“I'm gutted when I read that report. You know, it's really stark. What it says to me is that, as a society and the very systems that exist to keep children safe, we're continuing to fail children in this country”.

We were discussing the ICM report, but the Children’s Commission has done its own work, of course. And, like the ICM, it crunches Oranga Tamariki data.

Last week, to accompany the release of the Royal Commission’s Abuse in Care report, Claire Achmad put out a media release headlined, “Let’s honour the survivors of abuse in care by making real change”.

In it, the Children’s Commissioner tells us is that abuse is continuing to happen. And worse.

“Official data from Oranga Tamariki shows an increasing number of children and young people are experiencing harm in care. The percentage of children in care with findings of harm – including physical, sexual and emotional harm, and neglect – increased from 5.65% in 2019, to 9% of children in 2023.”

Increased. I asked Claire Achmad about that.

“Those figures that you refer to John, they come from the most recent Oranga Tamariki Safety and Care annual report. And if I can unpack them into real terms. We're talking about 519 children and young people in the past year having been harmed and abused in our state care system. That's physical abuse, that's sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect.”

In the past year, 519 children abused in our care. Some harmed more than once.

Malachi wasn’t in the state care system. But when people approached the state care system to say they feared he wasn’t safe (and how terribly right they were), the system did not look hard enough to see.

Page seven of Dame Karen’s report contains one staggering example. “Malachi’s cousin made a Report of Concern to Oranga Tamariki. The Report of Concern was closed by Oranga Tamariki after they received assurances from Malachi’s mother in prison that she held no concerns, and as the agency did not consider that a photo sourced from Facebook (provided by Malachi’s cousin), which allegedly showed Malachi with bruises on his face, was compelling evidence of risk. In the Chief Social Worker’s practice review, Oranga Tamariki acknowledges that it was a significant practice mistake to close the report of concern without fuller investigation.”

The ICM examined how reports of concern are now being managed, following that devastating decision to “close the report without fuller investigation”, leaving Malachi where he was.

“Oranga Tamariki is struggling with the volume of reports of concern it receives," the ICM report states.

“We heard from frontline Oranga Tamariki kaimahi that in some communities the capacity to respond to reports of concern at a community level is stretched. We heard that despite this, there is still a practice within Oranga Tamariki to refer cases to community agencies, regardless of the capacity of those agencies to respond to the need.”

I asked Arran Jones about this. His answer was long, but critically important.

“We've looked at the data that Oranga Tamariki have provided, and we've listened to their own staff in terms of what they're telling us. And so what is clear is that reports of concern can be made by anyone in the community, by agencies, by NGOs, Māori iwi providers. They make them through to Oranga Tamariki. They have a concern about a child. What then happens is an initial assessment gets done at the Oranga Tamariki contact centre. Pretty much all of those reports of concern then go through to the site for action.”

By site, Arran Jones means an Oranga Tamariki office, or staff member, or community agency closer to where the child is located.

“What is then happening is a further assessment has been done at site, so you've already got double handling here. Now they may have some local information that helps inform them, but what we have seen is that the social workers are being unduly influenced [by] what resources are available in that site to respond. So social workers are having to make very difficult decisions, knowing that their resources are limited and they can't get to all the cases that they might want to.”

So, the ICM believes resourcing is sometimes determining Oranga Tamariki’s response. And remember, this is to reports of concern over children.

“So what you see is inconsistency around the country. So our report is clear. It shows that if you're in Auckland, a report of concern is more likely to be acted upon, whereas in Canterbury, less likely.”

A kind of postcode lottery.

Arran Jones continued. “We're also hearing from NGOs where they're losing trust and confidence in making reports of concern through the Oranga Tamariki because they are not seeing or hearing that action is being taken. And these are NGOs that are working with the families. So they're not making these reports of concerns lightly, but they're making them because they know that a statutory intervention is required. And so again, our report shows that almost half of those reports of concern that are made by NGOs are being treated as a ‘no further action’.”

“Is the child being seen when there's no further action?” I asked him.

“We don't know, but a no further action would suggest that they're not.”

Which brings us back to the ICM’s dreadful conclusion, as stated on page 59 of their report.

“Based on what we have heard from kaimahi and what we see from the data, we cannot be confident that tamariki in similar situations to Malachi are any more likely to be seen or kept safe than when Malachi died.”

Achmad has read the ICM report. She has read the Royal Commission’s report. She has ready every report she can get her hands on.

“These are children's lives that we're talking about. And actually, we know that for a whānau member, or someone in the community, or someone professional who's working with a child to take the step of making a report of concern, that's a huge step for someone to take, and it means that the concern is of a degree that people are really, really worried.”

“So I want to see that report of concern process really being focused on by Oranga Tamariki. We owe it to children to actually get that really tight and make sure that it's working. And we need to know where those reports of concern ultimately end up. We need to be alongside children to ensure that they are safe.”

“Are we doing that?” I asked her.

“No, we're not doing that. Far from it. Far from it. You know, if we look at the bigger picture again, on average, one child dying every five weeks from homicide in this country, is that the country that we want to be? I don't think it is."

In response to our questions, Oranga Tamariki issued a joint statement from chief executives at the six government agencies that commissioned the review by Poutasi.

The statement included the following: "Chief Executives of six public service agencies charged with the wellbeing of children commissioned a review by Dame Karen Poutasi, in recognition that Malachi Subecz was let down by the system that should have protected him.

"A wide breadth of work is underway on all 13 recommendations with significant progress already made, and we are committed to changing the system for the better. Some of the recommendations will require ministerial decisions and legislative change.

"It will take time. The children’s system is complex.

"But child abuse is a problem we must all tackle together – families, communities and government agencies – to keep our children and young people safe.

"We are committed to doing so."

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