For the first but not the only time I asked her if she ever felt a sense of the office’s futility. No, never, she said. ‘There is a sense of matter-of-factness.’
Is the office powerless? ‘It has no real authority, but we have influence. And clearly my ability to speak out publicly is an important part of that influence.’
Who’s listening? ‘I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me.’
I said that I doubted the people allegedly involved in Nia’s abuse were among those listening. She said, ‘The family were clearly listening. I’ve had phone calls from them, emails from them; they made the contact.’ Did she mean Nia’s mother? ‘No. Other family members. And I think that’s a good sign. I think community leaders were listening. I think politicians were listening. I think heads of government agencies were listening.’
I had no doubt these leaders in the child abuse industry were listening and listening and listening.
Since it became news why Nia Glassie had been hospitalised, Kiro said, her office had been ‘inundated’ with calls from concerned individuals. How many is an inundation? She said seventy calls were received in two days. ‘People are willing to help in any way to raise awareness. I think it’s a wonderful thing. It shows the good nature of New Zealanders, and the generosity of spirit that I think still exists out there, and makes the nation a community. And it’s right that they should respond to child abuse. Because the fundamental duty of society is to protect and nurture our children.’
I asked her just how much more awareness of a national disgrace could possibly be raised. She said, ‘It’s my intention that we will try and take people up on their offers as much as possible. The desire to do something is what will make the difference … It’s about what I call the public discourse, the public conversation, that relies on people taking responsibility, and using lots of different opportunities to have the conversation. What I’m trying to move away from – and this has particularly been the case in the last week – is finger-pointing. I don’t want us to keep a blame culture going. I want to talk about what things are like out there, because there’s a hell of a lot of really good work going on.’
And of course that was absolutely true. People are working, doing something. It was vital, said Kiro, to continue with that good work – which included one of her essential beliefs: education about child abuse. But to borrow a phrase from New Zealand Herald columnist Garth George, a fulminating critic of Kiro, are some people uneducable? ‘I think everyone can be educated about how to treat children,’ she said. She launched into a long explanation of the dangers of shaking a baby. When she finished, I asked her who the hell she thought didn’t understand that it was dangerous?
She said, ‘Well Steve, if everyone did understand that, then why would we have so many cases of shaken babies in New Zealand?’
I said maybe it was because some trash parents don’t give a shit. ‘Maybe they don’t,’ she said. ‘And maybe they simply don’t comprehend what they’re doing. I think people have actually no clue.’
Are there any explanations for tying a child to a clothes-line, and putting her in a tumble-drier? ‘The obvious answer is no. I mean, that’s completely moronic behaviour. Who in their right mind would do that?’
I asked if Nia’s alleged torturers fitted a profile of child-abusers. Yes, she said: ‘Impulsive young males. Poverty. Drug and alcohol background. What I call the normalisation of violence within the family. A tolerance for really quite aberrant behaviour, for thinking that it’s okay.’
Did that profile include being Maori? ‘There is a particular issue for the Maori community,’ she said. ‘It is true that Maori disproportionately hurt children. But out of eighty-eight children killed between 2002 and 2006, forty-eight were Pakeha. Maori were twenty-eight. The remainder were Pacific Island and a few Asian. So I think people need to get a little bit careful when they start this business.’
I asked whether she could comprehend that some trash parents would rather get smashed on booze and drugs, and have what they call a good time. ‘I’m sure there are some people who do that,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t excuse them. I’d be the first to say that if you have children, that’s your prime responsibility. Your job is to raise your children as best you can.’
I thought about the trash individuals who have been arrested for abusing Nia, and said the response of people like that to Kiro’s advice might be to just give her the finger. She said, ‘I don’t care what they give me. Look, as regards Nia – I find the behaviour completely, completely incomprehensible. I do not understand. I couldn’t do what they – I couldn’t be cruel to a dog, basically. I’d never be cruel to a dog, let alone to a child, or a baby. You’ve got to really lack remorse and empathy to get to that place. You’ve got to really be an inadequate individual. Because how could you ever do that? But it happens.
‘But I don’t want people to wallow in a sense of it’s all too big. The hope that I take from the last week is that people aren’t doing that. We’re not finger-pointing, we’re not looking for the quick easy solution of just lock them up and throw away the key. People want to know what to do. They’re willing to take some action and
