Transparency in New Zealand - Kiwikileaks

Wairarapa Police delete evidence - again:

2012-01-31T19:25:00.000-08:00

Constable Stephen Cameron wasted more police resources the other day, delivering his latest "work" regarding the ALLEGED trespass at Smith Hare and Christison Mobil garage on 27 October 2011. Constable Cameron reckons he "had a problem with a memory stick" - yeah, RIGHT! What lies! This is the standard response to requests to the local police for evidence!:

What use are these photographs Constable Cameron? I asked for the CCTV footage of the alleged "crime" - not some random snaps taken weeks or months later! The CCTV footage of the alleged "crime" clearly establishes my innocence - which is exactly why the police "had a problem" with it!

The information at the link above describes how staff at Smith Hare and Christison Mobil garage in Carterton were regularly telling customers "the eftpos machine is out of order" so they could access the details of people's credit cards using the manual system and defraud the accounts! It also describes how police deliberately deleted the camera footage of THAT incident as well, and I will find the links that show how they did it on several other occasions as well, regarding CCTV footage at New World, Masterton and Carterton police stations, and the recent assault on me by Constable Mia Wilton in the main street!

These corrupt creeps need sorting out URGENTLY!

More on the Mad Doctors Short, Rimkeit, Orr, et al.

2012-01-30T22:12:00.001-08:00

These are a couple of emails sent between Dr Jackie Short at Rangipapa and Dr Gary Orr at Te Whare Ahuru, as part of their conspiracy to pervert the course of justice regarding the corruptly laid charges against me, which have now been rightly dismissed because I am completely innocent of the charges.

Ten days after Short and Orr wrote this orchestrated litany of lies Dr Nick Judson wrote a report stating that there was nothing wrong with me, and a few days after that Dr Wolfgang Kure released me because he and the majority of the other clinicians and nurses at Te Whare Ahuru knew perfectly well that I didn't have "Delusional Disorder"! Just like Dr Justin Barry-Walsh wrote in his report also! (Click "Ctrl" and "+" at the same time to zoom in on these documents).

And here's a copy of Dr Orr's "Treatment Plan" - like something out of the Dark Ages! Restrict or cut off all phone calls, visitors, access to writing materials - this is the evidence of the state of the mental health service in New Zealand!

This is because I sat up till all hours in my cell at Rangipapa (link below) till about twelve thirty every night writing my own application to the High Court for a Judicial Inquiry under section 84 of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act. This was after an application for a Judicial Review under section 16.

Luckily for me, Orr, Short and Rimkeit all went to the UK at once, and Dr Wolfgang Kure was appointed my responsible clinician, Dr Kure stopped the toxic forced medication and released me almost straight away. The evidence is clear that this was simply an attempt to pervert the course of justice regarding the corruptly laid charges against me. This matter should be of serious concern to all New Zealanders!

So should the use of the corruptly obtained Protection Order, dated 1997, which was corruptly used to prevent me attending a recent FGC and also used as ridiculous "evidence" regarding the corruptly laid charge against me of Breaching a Protection Order!

This is also the subject of complaints to the Press Council regarding journalists like Matt Stewart, Nathan Crombie, Tanya Katterns and others.

Constable Jackson Can't Be Bothered Getting Off his Backside - IPCA:

2012-01-13T04:18:00.004-08:00

I went to the police station this morning, and a police woman came out, eating , and pointed to a notice saying "Closed due to balloon accident investigation". There's heaps of police in town, lots from Wellington, all sitting in the Events Centre, what a great state of affairs when we've got Court in a Caravan and the police station's closed.

This is the standard of our police, and of our police complaints authority, which is utterly useless whatever you want to call it. The disclosure referred to in the letter below included the medical report from the assault on me by Anthony Rolf Feinson, Chairman of the Carterton Community Centre, of which Georgina Beyer was the Patron, Beyer saw nothing wrong with the serious assault, which left me with two smashed teeth, or the serious fraud and misfeasance which was out of control at the community centre under the governance of the committee, mainly people associated with the Carterton District Council. Police refused to charge Feinson for the attack, then refused to return the evidence of the attack including the medical records.

Interesting that Constable Jackson can't be bothered getting off his backside, because Judge Caroline Wainwright issued a scathing decision also recently, ordering police to give me disclosure regarding another matter.

These are the same police officers who have been covering up for their paedophile mates for years and getting promoted for it!

It's still going on too. We need to establish a strong and united network of community organisations to deal with these problems and the others that are facing our communities today, with branches of Transparency NZ and Friends of Caring Communities, Let's Get Growing NZ and our holistic program for safe and healthy communities.

Lance Hopping - showing kids how to grow wings for years:

2012-01-08T03:57:00.003-08:00

Roimata, pouring from the skies today, for Lance Hopping, who loved the sky, loved flying, loved his family. For his ten passengers, and all their families and friends. This is an utter, utter tragedy for our community, and for all the family and friends of all involved.

Lance always wanted to fly, so he grew wings and did it. He was a well qualified and experienced commercial helicopter and balloon pilot with an extremely good reputation for safety. Having worked as health and safety officer for two other local helicopter companies with unblemished safety records I reckon I am qualified to hold such an opinion. I also saw Hoppy flying overhead often, for eleven years or so, and always safely.

Hoppy also worked as a local truancy 'officer'. He showed all the little local kids that they can do what they love too. Hoppy knew it was important to give kids two things, roots and wings. If I remember rightly Hoppy was adopted, and he knew what it felt like to feel not quite as good as the rest or as big as the rest or whatever, for one reason or another, and how it was important not to let that define who you are or let it hold you back. He was a very humble man too.

I note people have been searching this site for information on the Seven Day Club. They reason they won't find any is because of Hoppy. He was a good kind man who loved his family very much, and who set a good example to all the people who looked up to him, like the members of the 7 Day Club. Although he was a quiet and humble man he was someone special in this town, everyone who knew him liked and respected him. He understood about putting the Unity back in our Community, and why it's so important. Photos of Hoppy don't show an egotist posing with a Harley, they show a kind and gentle man who loved his family, loved children, knew what was important in life. I didn't like some things about the Seven Day Club, but I respected what Hoppy was doing and understood where he was coming from.

Here's a link to a facebook page where people can pay their respects to the families of Lance and his passengers.

He's greatly missed by our community, this is a huge loss to Carterton. Thinking of the families, and the people working out in the rain today to find out how this happened. Of the poor local police and ambulance and fire crews who responded to the sirens and arrived at the scene to discover it was their mate, Hoppy.

The rain has suddenly stopped, and it's so quiet.

Here is a link to an interview with a witness, Bevan Lambess.

Here's a link to a news article about Hoppy, and his passion for flying.

And here's one that attests to his reputation for safety.

Nobody knows how this tragedy happened, but we all mourn the loss of Hoppy and his passengers, and await the result of the investigation.

Update, 9 January 2012: Brian Edwards has written an article regarding some of the appalling media coverage of this tragedy, it's worth reading.

The Circus that Passes For the Masterton District Court!

2011-12-18T12:51:00.003-08:00

Unbelievably, this is where the Masterton Court are conducting business these days, the busiest Court in the country per head of population, operating in a caravan, because of the utter incompetence of the Court manager, Mark Elliot, and the Ministry of Justice:

Corrupt Police Prosecutor Greg Peters sitting in the Masterton Courthouse caravan with Court staff Nelda and Colin.

The Masterton Court has been perverting the course of justice for as long as I have been in the Wairarapa, this latest incompetence takes the cake! Look at this idiot Greg Peters! Sitting in his little caravan! Mark Elliot, Court Manager, should have been sacked years ago, and there should be a proper inquiry into the many occasions Court Registrar Liz Harpleton and her boyfriend, Police Prosecutor Garry Wilson, have conspired to pervert the course of justice in the Wairarapa and contributed to the scandalous and deliberate cover up of hundreds of child abuse files!

Child Abuse Cover Up Continues by Wairarapa Police:

2011-12-17T14:10:00.005-08:00

Here's a link to the latest news about the corrupt, incompetent Wairarapa police and the scandal regarding how they've been covering up for child abusers for years. under the management of area commander John Johnston! Now click on the links below to see how long this has been going on for, and how so called "investigators" have been covering up for the offenders and ensuring they get promoted, - they never even INTERVIEWED Sgt Mark McHattie, after he threw hundreds of child abuse files in the rubbish bin and lied through his teeth and said "Hand on my heart" they'd all been resolved - read how he was PROMOTED instead of being booted right out of the public service entirely!

Here's Wairarapa Police Area Commander John Johnston, who boasted of his refusal to resign in the wake of the scandalous backlog of hundreds of uninvestigated child abuse complaints ignored by corrupt local police under his corrupt command, arrogantly boasting of his latest corrupt coup. Here's the link to the story in the Dompost.

And here's the unbelievable story of how the man responsible for this outrageous incompetence and corruption, Detective Sergeant Mark McHattie, was promoted for it!!!!!

Like wily Justice Bill Wilson and John Moss, Dave Archibald and Gary Smith, arrogant, corrupt idiots like Johnston are being rewarded by even bigger taxpayer funded salaries for ignoring child abuse, violence and suicide epidemics in favour of harassing hard working law abiding people like me.

Go to the website of the Masterton Library and click on the link to 'Searches', 'Newspaper Index' (- not sure if that link will work), then type in keywords 'police', and 'crime', 'child abuse', murder', 'suicide', etc to see John Johnston's shameful legacy. Look how arrogant he is with getting away with this latest scandal - being appointed to the newly established role of director of sport with the NZ Police Sports Council, of which he's been chairman for 12 years. "The position was not advertised." - no, of course not! The old boys network creates jobs like this for themselves all the time! And while Johnston and his police mates bleat about not having enough resources, Police waste the precious resources they're given on the Police Sports Council and the Mounted Police and other hobbies of their own. Suzanne Mackle is being touted by the media as a hero in all this - nothing could be further from the truth! Mackle wasted her time pursuing the malicious charges resulting in the complaint to the IPCA by Michael Appleby, and committed perjury in her unsuccessful attempt to lie to the Masterton Court about the public meeting in Carterton. She should have been getting on with investigating the child abuse. Instead she was assaulting me and strip searching me for nothing and lying about it in Court!

Wairarapa police continue to refuse to charge Gary McPhee or Michael Francis Murphy. The newspaper article below is not very clear, but basically, on the left is an article waffling on about how it's giong to take 20 years to do anything about the violence and child abuse, and on the right is a picture of Carterton Mayor Gary McPhee sitting on his Harley Davidson, looking like an utter tosser, while a woman touches him up and waffles on about how this "artist" is going to paint his picture - says everything about our community leaders' priorities, doesn't it! Georgina Beyer and Ron Mark are exactly the same, self serving, vain, bullshit artists. Elect the right people and the problem can be solved in about six months! Elect transvestite prostitutes, drunken bullying bikers and failed politicians and you'll get a culture of child abuse, suicide and violence - did Ron Mark ever stand in an electorate? Did anyone ever actually vote for him or was he always a list MP? Get rid of these idiots! We need a proper commission of inquiry that is going to interact with the public and hold open counsel with the community! This has been going on round here for generation, everyone knows it, Constable Steve Wakefield was the worst offender! Because the inquiry is incompetently run the problem continues, and as soon as we get rid of one corrupt cop round here there are two worse ones just waiting to take their place. It's sick, and it's because the so called independent Police Conduct Authority is as corrupt and useless as ever! Here is a link to a previous related article.

Ron Mark up to his Nek Innit:

2011-12-16T21:19:00.002-08:00

Last Wednesday night there was a so called public meeting at the new Carterton Event Centre to discuss the Mangaterere stream, which is consistently rated as the most polluted local waterway. It is consistently rated "E" for unacceptable.

Although the public were welcome to attend, they were manipulated and deceived in a display that was an absolute insult to the intelligence.

Failed MP Ron Mark, Carterton's latest Mayor, who follows in the footsteps of other idiots who have managed to get elected locally, such as Georgina Beyer and Gary McPhee, went on forever with all the 'apologies' of all his mates who couldn't be bothered coming, didn't ask if there were any other apologies of course, then proceeded to go on for two hours about how wonderful the Council was and how great it was that the community supported him and the Council, etc, etc. He proceeded to then talk about the farmers, and their role in fencing stock out and planting the waterways.

Then there were various speakers, one after another, for about two hours. Some were alright, all were well meaning I think, but it went on and on without any opportunity for active public participation, and they were all talking about the matter of fencing and planting the waterways. One of the speakers was a local farmer who won an environment award recently for the way he's done this on his farm, the main topic of all the talk seemed to be this issue. We had been asked to sign a form and were given a number when we arrived, and after all this talking had been going on for about an hour and a half or so, Ron Mark told us all to go and stand in the corner.

Apparently we were to go into four groups and discuss three questions which had been written on large sheets of paper in each corner of the room. Several people walked out of the meeting entirely at this point, well aware of what the real problems are and utterly sick of the obvious manipulation of the process of community dialogue. I followed the other sheep, and played the little game. Each group had a Council appointed "facilitator". We were firstly asked to introduce ourselves and say a bit about why we were at the meeting. As there were about 25 people in each group that took another 20 minutes or so. We were then given little sticky notes about two inches square and told to write our answers to the three questions on the sticky notes.

None of the questions mentioned or referred to the word "sewage", and up until that point, the meeting had been going for well over an hour and a half and nothing whatsoever had been said by anyone about sewage. Or the local piggery for that matter, they would probably be the second biggest polluter of the Mangaterere, but the Council sewage plant takes first place. They allow seasonal discharges of sewage into it as well as the leaks and overflows.

Which is odd really, because on the 9th of December, just days earlier, there had been a report in the local paper titled "Council to pay $20K for leak", describing how the Carterton District Council has offered to pay $20,000 "donation" to the Greater Wellington Regional Council, after appearing in Court charged with illegally polluting a Wairarapa waterway

On February 24th - when everyone and their kids were swimming in the river - Greater Wellington Council officers noticed the discharge of treated and partially treated human effluent to the Mangaterere stream at three different locations around the Council's sewage plant. The Mangaterere is a major tributary of the Waiohine River, which in turn flows into the Ruamahanga River, Wairarapa's largest waterway.

Residents have been complaining about this for years! The Mangaterere is consistently rated the most polluted waterway in the region - largely because it goes past the Carterton District Council sewage plant! There are unacceptably high levels of bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorous and other chemicals (I tried to get a copy of the reports from the Council yesterday morning, but was told they don't have them!)

Here is a link to the water quality standard website, where it shows that the quality of Carterton's water is rated "D" at one location, and "E" at two other locations. If you click either "Explain grading" or "Explain compliance in the sidebar on the left at that link, you can see that "D" is "Unsatisfactory" and "E" is rated "Unacceptable". This was two days prior to the meeting, the water is unacceptable. It's been unacceptable for years.

Another major contributor to the problem is the local piggery, this was also not mentioned once by Mark or his mates. These matters were discussed with the quarter of the people at the meeting who I was able to speak with, then we all had to play musical chairs again and listen to the Council appointed facilitator of each group give a "summary" of the answers to the inane questions! I used to work for ACNielsen, a market research company, I've worked for advertising companies, etc, and I can tell BS when I see it. Once again, sewage hardly got a mention, or the pig farm, because everything had been so carefully staged to get everyone talking about what a wonderful job the farmers were doing and how we could all help them. By the time all that was finished we'd all been sitting in the uncomfortable chairs for so long listening to this rubbish everyone just wanted to go home.

I put my hand up and asked how many people were aware of the report and it appeared hardly anyone was. I then asked Ron Mark when we were going to get the full information regarding the state of the sewage system, what he was going to do about the leaks at the identified locations, when he was going to do it (as he had indicated he intended doing absolutely nothing until the upcoming holidays are over - March he said!), and how much it was going to cost to do that, and how much it was going to cost in the longer term to bring the sewage plant up to scratch.

He refused to answer any of these questions. Every single one of them. Here's a link to a Carterton ratepayer who seems to live in Masterton, who also has a local sewage problem. Mark huffed and puffed and postured, and stuttered and stammered, and then said "Are you Kate Raue?" As if it mattered who I was!

Here's a link to an article titled "Farmer's Slime Fury" - "Mr Tatham says for five years his water troughs have been filling with a thick green slime, caused by nutrient growth from treated wastewater entering his bore. "They've been pumping sewage straight into the water table and we end up with a green scum in our water troughs that's obviously sewage slime. "In the summer months the slime can get up to six inches deep and while the house is on town supply the stock have no choice but to drink it." He said when he initially complained to the council it offered to supply town water for his animals. "But then they went silent for three or four months, and when they got back to us they said the water was running the other way. "They should be totally ashamed of what they're doing - how anyone can pump sewage into the town's ground water is unbelievable."

This gets better, have a read of the article at this link, titled "Carterton Boundary Stack Fuels Dispute", note the photo. Now read this article, titled "Carterton Farmer: It's All a Stack Up" and you'll see that it's actually the reporters at the local paper and Ron Mark who are the ones fuelling the dispute, having completely made it up in the first place - talk about delusional! Instead of attending to the sewage problems Ron Mark has been carrying on about a few bales of silage that aren't bothering anyone except one woman apparently!

"Former Carterton District Councillor Chris Engel said it seemed Carterton Mayor Ron Mark had a "personal vendetta" against him, describing a mayoral appeal to dairy co-op Fonterra as "an abuse of power".

In an email last week Mr Mark called on Fonterra to intervene in the dispute, saying in it was "only a very fine line now between Fonterra inaction and indifference". "If Fonterra chooses to do nothing, then we will be able to say, on behalf of the people of the Carterton district, we tried." - worrying about a few bales of silage that aren't bothering anyone, while he's tipping partly treated human effluent into our river!!!

"Fonterra spokesman Rick Osborne said the company was aware of the issue and the area manager had been in contact with Mr Engel on several occasions. We expect our shareholders and suppliers to be aware of community concerns."

I intend to make Fonterra aware of the community concerns about corruption, incompetence and abuse of power, and encourage others to do the same. Ron Mark is an odious little man, and thoroughly deceitful. He was deviously ushered into the job to finish what Beyer and McPhee were sacked for starting - read about the Whorehouse Fiasco here.

Election by Deception Part 2 - Idiots in Power, Political Science 101:

2011-11-25T18:21:00.004-08:00

More on what passes for democracy in New Zealand these days:

I recently heard someone talking rubbish about Gary McPhee, who is now on the Wellington Regional Council, after he and Ron Mark 'helped' each other get elected. Gary is a lunatic. Worse than that, he's a bullying and violent lunatic and it's well documented.

What's interesting to note is that a few days ago it seems eleven people "liked" Gary McPhee, 'Politician', but today only nine do. How do these people get elected if only nine people like them? Or eleven, for that matter? Anyone who advocates killing people should be ashamed of themselves, and so should anyone who "likes" them as a politician. We've got serious problems with violence, and here's a politician advocating killing people. A recidivist violent offender advocating killing people. Great!

We need to adjust people's attitudes. We need jobs, McPhee sold the Borough Farm because he couldn't understand what an educational reserve was, then the Wairarapa missed out on the Cuisine School, which was perfectly suited to the Borough Farm, and would have brought billions of dollars to the local economy! And provided many training opportunities. McPhee's an idiot. Nobody wanted a six million dollar Event Centre (that only seats 300 people anyway). Here's his facebook pages the one with 9 "likes" is today's, 26 November 2011, election day.

When we say it's well documented, this is an article in the local paper shortly after he was elected Mayor:

________________________________

FLAMBOYANT Carterton mayor Gary McPhee has broken his silence over an incident in the town last Thursday that led to him being questioned by police.

The rangy first term mayor, who stands 6 foot four inches and is a Harley Davidson fan, has described his role in the High Street incident as being something he regretted, but he was not backing away entirely from it.

"I do regret it. It's something I wish I hadn't done but if someone else had done it I would have supported them," he said.

The incident that led to him being interviewed by police involved Mr McPhee pushing his way into a flat in the centre of town and arguing with the people inside.

According to Mr McPhee - and to police ? the flat had been at the centre of many police inquiries.

Mr McPhee said on Thursday he had a few drinks with friends and had fielded yet another complaint about the flat.

He had " rightly or wrongly" intervened by visiting the premises, forcing the door open and confronting those inside.

There had been a "verbal exchange" and he said he had then left without further ado only to be later spoken to by police.

No charges have been laid, or official complaints made." THIS IS UTTER LIES, A COPY OF THE FORMAL COMPLAINT WAS HAND DELIVERED TO THE OFFICE OF THE WAIRARAPA TIMES-AGE!

"Mr McPhee said the flat had been a problem area for a long time.

He said he had "reacted, or possibly over-reacted" when he had received the complaint on Thursday night.

"Carterton is my town." NO GARY, IT'S OUR TOWN.

"I am proud of it

"I want it to look good and for people to feel safe." Yeah, right.

Mr McPhee said he has been negotiating with the owner of the flat, which is tenanted, over its future." Blackmailing them, actually.

"The mayor was back at work yesterday after being in Tauranga during the weekend and in Wellington on Monday.

He said he has talked to the council's chief executive officer Kieran Shaw over what had happened, but not to his councillors.

"It's really nothing to do with the council." Yeah, nothing to do with the community either, according to the nasty, drunken, bullying oaf.

________________________________________

We've just had the suffer the noise and frightening spectacle of the Boobs on Bikes White Ribbon hoons roar through the town, The Christmas parade had hardly finished! Yesterday a cyclist was knocked off her bike by a car right outside my house and it will be interesting to see what Constable Sykes and the Masterton Police Prosecutors do about it. Kids don't like these great big Harley Davidson's roaring past with these big fat blokes in black gear and intimidating helmets and balaclavas etc.

Drivers need to be WAY more careful when opening car doors and when pulling out of driveways. This driver was not looking where she was going, and she was going too fast. Drivers open car doors in front of me on an almost daily basis, then deny it, then abuse me, and other cyclists I know confirm it happens to them all the time too. Look before you open your car doors please motorists, the edge of a car door in the face does really terrible damage. Look before you come out of your driveways please, because the point is, that could have been a child yesterday. The victim was thrown several feet onto the road, and could well have been hit by a vehicle, the area is near a 100 kph zone and speeding is common i the area.

It's not safe for kids to ride their bikes on the roads and it's safe for them to do so on the footpaths as long as they show consideration for pedestrians and motorists, slowing down and getting off whenever necessary, and wearing high visibility reflective vests at all times.

Kids round here get bored because there's nothing for them to do, they want to go and play, and ride the Community Garden ponies, but yesterday we were told off by a woman with a distinctly English accent who told us "This is the dogs park. You're not allowed here." Nasty old bag! We weren't bothering anyone. Her dog should have had a muzzle on and there was nothing stopping her from running it off the lead as she was claiming our presence prevented her from doing. Kids have nothing to do here, because the Carterton DIstrict Council have sold off the Community Centre, Health Centre, Borough Farm, and everything like it to pay for the $6 million Event Centre that nobody wanted - for the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!

Me being safe, High visibility safety vest, helmet, glasses, bell, rear vision mirror, and looking for traffic and pedestrians.

McPhee in his usual get up, he regularly refuses to wear a helmet, and wouldn't be seen dead in a reflective vest!

Me showing someone how long McPhee will be Mayor for, or how big his brain is or something.

The Secret Life of Information - How Auckland City Council Silences Critics:

2011-11-22T23:23:00.001-08:00

The strange case of the blogger arrested without a warrant and charged with "Misuse of Telephone Device", for which he will probably not be entitled to apply for legal aid, and the absolutely over the top bail conditions imposed.

He's been charged with ONE breach of the Telecommunications Act, there is no mention of John Key or any government Minister on the Information filed in Court, no Summary of Facts has been provided, no list of police witnesses - nothing. It is a basic right to contact our representatives, we pay their wages! And a basic right to share and impart information, according to the New Zealand Bill of Rights. Section 14 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind, in any form.”

Transparency in NZ has been told that the respected local businessman was arrested without a warrant, at night, taken to the local police station and held there for hours and forced to agree to these draconian bail conditions - all SIX of them. Not to contact any prosecution witnesses - what witnesses? We understand the defendant has received no disclosure, no details of any complaint, no list of prosecution witnesses, no summary of facts, no witness statements, in fact nothing except these three documents. Incredible that a citizen can be arrested without a warrant and charged with an offence like this and have such bail conditions as this imposed in a supposedly civilised country! I mean, it might be fair enough if he were charged under say, the Harassment Act, or something like that, but there seems to be a lack of even an allegation (of any substance). Here's the legislation:

Section 112 - Misuse of telephone device:

(1) Every person commits an offence who, in using a telephone device, uses profane, indecent, or obscene language, or makes a suggestion of a profane, indecent, or obscene nature, with the intention of offending the recipient.
(2) Every person commits an offence who—
- (a) uses, or causes or permits to be used, any telephone device for the purpose of disturbing, annoying, or irritating any person, whether by calling up without speech or by wantonly or maliciously transmitting communications or sounds, with the intention of offending the recipient; or
- (b) in using a telecommunications device, knowingly gives any fictitious order, instruction, or message.
(3) Every person who commits an offence against subsection (1) or subsection (2) is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding $2,000.

So much for the legislation, now for the summons. Which has go the name of the informant "Rowley Prosser Clegg" crossed out, and some barely detectable scribble seems to be there, good luck deciphering it though, then it seems to refer to an offence allegedly committed on the 1st of December 2010, which extremely unlikely to be correct, and the spelling is just appalling, this is what passes for justice in this country:

"Annoying" or "Irritating" indeed! I complained to police about Rachel Betteridge of Masterton and her husband, sending me messages saying "You need a bullet" and "Watch your back" - police refuse to charge them, in spite of Betteridge committing perjury when giving evidence at another hearing in relation to the matter, so why should they get away with this outrageous bullying?

Of even more concern is that is smacks of politically motivated bullying by the police, similar to the politically motivated bullying that saw the demise of MP Georgina Beyer, and as documented by lawyer Michael Appleby. That matter also involved corruption and incompetence at the Carterton District Council, as also documented by the Auditor General (highlights from his report are contained in the complaint to the IPCA from Michael Appleby). The main part of the complaint from Michael Appleby has not been acknowledged let alone investigated, local police have steadfastly refused to investigate the allegations regarding the former Carterton Community Centre in spite of letters from a number of lawyers, etc. Georgina Beyer was forced to resign from parliament in disgrace because of the evidence though, and good riddance, we are still paying the price of corrupt and incompetent governance. We need a commission of inquiry into the IPCA.

The Day of One Love. The Story of One Life.

2011-11-11T18:05:00.029-08:00

Once I understood each word the caterpillar said
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the Starlings
and shared a converstion with a housefly in my bed
Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets
and joined the crying of each falling dying flake of snow,
I once spoke the language of flowers.
How did it go?
How did it go?"
- Shel Silverstein

In loving memory of Ceridwen Claire Allom. ♥

When the sun came up today the lives of many people were changed forever, they learned the unspeakable truth, that their friend, sister, niece, granddaughter, had passed away suddenly, at the age of just 15.

This is Ceri's picture, reproduced with kind permission of her mum, who loved her as much as it's possible to love anyone, and a song posted by one of her many, many friends. Less than 24 hours before I'm writing this, Ceri was living and breathing and laughing, and riding her bike.

There will be more written here about this, but now's not the time. For today and the next few days, Ceri's pictures and her friend's songs can tell the story of a beautiful young woman, an original. My heart is with her family and friends today, the day of One Love.

A healing gift from Ceri's mum to us;

And this, the song that echoes hollow in our hearts in the big empty space where Ceri used to Be (Home is here, Paradise is Here), (Be Here Now - Oasis) Wish so much that we could fix you baby, and fix all the hearts that are broken and bleeding too, because of you:

I remember when my brother Dave died. The complete and utter desolation and devastation I felt, how much I just wanted to fix him, like we want to fix dear, sweet little Ceri. I remember how hard it was to sleep, and I remember how I came to treasure the few tiny seconds every morning when I awoke, before I remembered. Here's the link to a little bedtime story, The Fisherman and his Soul, by Oscar Wilde, who wrote some of the most beautiful children's stories you've ever heard (and you probably have heard one or two of them.) Chapter 33 goes like this:

♥

"And as he spake there came a great cry of mourning from the sea, even the cry that men hear when one of the Sea-folk is dead. And the young Fisherman leapt up, and left his wattled house, and ran down to the shore. And the black waves came hurrying to the shore, bearing with them a burden that was whiter than silver. White as the surf it was, and like a flower it tossed on the waves. And the surf took it from the waves, and the foam took it from the surf, and the shore received it, and lying at his feet the young Fisherman saw the body of the little Mermaid. Dead at his feet it was lying.

Weeping as one smitten with pain he flung himself down beside it, and he kissed the cold red of the mouth, and toyed with the wet amber of the hair. He flung himself down beside it on the sand, weeping as one trembling with joy, and in his brown arms he held it to his breast. Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their cups was less salt than his tears.

And to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shells of its ears he poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands round his neck, and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat. Bitter, bitter was his joy, and full of strange gladness was his pain.

The black sea came nearer, and the white foam moaned like a leper. With white claws of foam the sea grabbled at the shore. From the palace of the Sea-King came the cry of mourning again, and far out upon the sea the great Tritons blew hoarsely upon their horns."

♥

This is how it feels. It's not pretty. It hurts the people you leave behind, the ones you love the most, brothers, mothers, fathers, uncles and aunties, cousins, grandparents, great grandparents - it was so surreal, meeting Ceri's great grandparents - it hurts more than anything, and the terrible images of the discovery, and the utterly unbelievable reality, cannot ever be washed away from the memory. Death is forever, it's final, we know that much, and that's all we really know for sure. On the official form certifying the death someone has to identify the person. When my brother died, it was my sister. On the form it had the question "How long have you known the deceased? The answer, in little handwriting, "All my life."

Life is for living. And it's so short anyway - just a tiny insignificant speck in the great scheme of things, but while it lasts it's magic, it's a wonderful gift from the Universe, it's Paradise, right here, please, please, please don't waste it. Spend it having fun with your friends, or travelling the world, do what you love.

We have an epidemic in this country. Wairarapa has for several years had twice the national rate of self inflicted death, in a country with the highest rates in the world. Every few weeks another family, and all the friends at all the schools, have to go though this. More will be written about this matter in due course, and we must remember that there has been no formal decision regarding the cause of death of Ceridwen Claire Allom yet, and there may not be for some time.

Meanwhile, here's another of Ceri's favorite songs, thanks to her friends for sharing the love, a sweet little song for a sweet little lady who had great taste in music.

Here's a link to Ceri's Tribute Book.
She's gone where we can't find her now, where we can't fix her, no matter how much we love her.
. . . and another song, because music heals the soul (even birds singing).

Zoe sang Tiny Dancer like an angel for her friend, no words can describe the utter perfection of it.

The story of Ceridwen, the Goddess of White Words: Ceridwen's Cauldron of Divine Knowledge, Wisdom, Rebirth, and Inspiration. It represents regeneration in the womb of the Goddess. Her Cauldron was named Amen, and its transforming magic was said to happen through change, experience and divine inspiration. So, from the passing of Ceridwen Claire Allom was born the Circle of Love, because Ceri's short life was so full of love and laughter, and because she's touched so many hearts. The story of Ceridwen's Cauldron speaks of the Cauldron representing the womb, the Holy Grail, the source of Love. Her mummy carried her and brought her into the world, it took six men to carry her outside into the sunshine yesterday. Arohanui little one.

The Secret Life of Information - Wairarapa Times-Age Backpedals:

2011-11-07T00:22:00.001-08:00

Here's a link to the latest response from the Press Council, with the attached correspondence. Note the sheer, utter arrogance and cheek of both the reporter AND the editor! Not to mention the fact that they are both proven WRONG.

Here's the link to the original article, published over two months ago:

Here's the link to some more of the politically biased rubbish they print.

Here's the link to the evidence that there is not, and never was, anything wrong with my health. Here's a link to more evidence of that, and there is even more evidence at the posts after that and the posts after that.

The evidence is overwhelming, and numerous links can be found to it on this site and many others.

More on the lunatics in charge of the asylums:

2011-11-06T02:21:00.003-08:00

Here's a link to the story of a Nigerian drug smuggler who fooled immigration officials to get a job as a hospital psychiatrist. He was yesterday jailed for 16 months. After arriving here in January last year, Chidozie Emmanuel Onovo, 40, got a work permit and was employed as a psychiatrist by the Canterbury District Health Board. The board said no concerns were raised about his competence or treatment of patients. - I wonder what the patients said though!

It was not until August this year - after Onovo applied for residency with an application denying any past offending - that he was found out.

Immigration checks revealed he was a convicted drug smuggler, and that at the time he claimed to have been working in the medical field in Nigeria, he was serving his prison sentence in Britain.

Then there's this link: A community mental health provider says it saw nothing to arouse suspicion when it employed another Nigerian fraudster who was using false passports.

Richmond New Zealand employed Hakeem Amoo Ewebiyi from June 8 last year until February 26 and, according to his lawyer, he worked successfully in the rehabilitation of sex offenders.

Ewebiyi was yesterday sentenced in the Christchurch District Court to two years and two months in jail for using two false passports.

Have we learned nothing? Here's a link to the story of Linda Astor. While she was in New Zealand she released a very dangerous man into the community - a man who would later decapitate his partner Fiona Maulolo.

Astor took a job at Hutt Valley Health after arriving in New Zealand from the US.

She was initially allowed to practice under supervision, but within a year she had the top job in mental health services at Nelson Marlborough Health.

Her probationary supervisor deemed her "definitely fit to practise".

But while at Hutt Health, Astor illegally signed papers that freed schizophrenic Les Parr when he was under a compulsory detention order.

Parr's father, Lesley senior, visited his son and was shocked that he was allowed to go home...he says it was very clear to him that his son was unwell.

" He was nowhere ready to be released or go home."

"You could just tell it in his behaviour," Lesley Parr told the Sunday programme.

To add to the family's concern, Les's uncle Bruce says from the time Les was released into his father's care there was no contact with Hutt Hospital.

"Nobody will take responsibility, they pass the buck and pass the buck and then when it gets to the top they close the door and say 'go away we don't want to talk to you about this,'" Bruce Parr said.

Les Parr was acquitted of murder due to insanity and is held as a special patient at Wanganui Hospital.

The Maulolo family are still angry. The family fought Hutt Valley Health for damages, but the fight was futile.

Here's another link, note the pathetic comments from MP Nick Smith, and "none of the police involved in the 'investigation' were available for comment" - yeah, right! There was no investigation, that's why.

Certain doctors conspired to keep me locked up for over three months for criticising the Wairarapa police, - funny that, because if you go to the links at that post, you'll see that it was a view held by the majority of people in the community. Watch this space for the emails between the doctors and lawyers, coming up soon.

Carterton Events Centre - More of the Whorehouse Mentality:

2011-11-01T21:33:00.008-07:00

The Worst Little Whorehouse in Carterton:

Here it is, in all it's tawdry glory, the premier production of the "Limelight Theatre Company, who took over all the remaining assets of the former Phoenix Theatre, as well as getting a mysterious grant of "several thousand dollars" which has suddenly come to light after local lawyer and thespian Peter Totman suddenly remembered it's existence twenty years later - yeah, right! The first production in the famous Carterton Events Centre that nobody in Carterton wanted, the one we were promised was going to be for everyone, family friendly, etc. Real family entertainment alright, all the kids are asking mummy, what's a whorehouse? Is the best we can do?

More of the same old fraud from the same old people. Once upon a time Carterton had a Community Resource Centre, running about ten community organisations including the Community Gardens, Supergrans, First Steps, programs to assist less able members (called 'disabled' by other people) to find employment, etc. It was taken over when the people named below and others took over the Centre illegally by punching the Secretary and Finance Officer in the face and changing the locks to cover up the fraud and misfeasance described by these lawyers.

Laura with the giant turnips.

This money should have gone to the Phoenix Theatre, the people's theatre, but of course they were never told about it, were they? Peter Totman knew perfectly well about the Phoenix Theatre for years but obviously chose to keep this money a big secret from them. Now suddenly he produces it like a rabbit from a hat to give to this bunch of vulgar self important show offs to ponce about putting on their "performance" of "The Best Little Whorehouse In Carterton" or whatever it is. Here's what the article in the local rag says:
"It was the case of the reappearing money for a Wairarapa drama society on Wednesday, as thousands of dollars gets set to boost theatre productions 20 years after it was squirrelled away.

At Wednesday's Carterton District Council meeting councillors were told $7000 had been held by the council since 1989, the date when the former Carterton Amateur Dramatic Society went into recess.

Council chief executive Colin Wright noted in a report it looked like that money was held on the condition it one day be given to another such group.

"Inquiries indicate that the intention was for these funds to be utilised by a similar amateur group in the future," Mr Wright said.

"The Limelight Theatre Group [formerly Phoenix] have now requested these funds in accordance with the original intention as they have little in the way of financial resources for producing their proposed show during November in the Events Centre or any future events."

A letter from Peter Totman, last president and honorary solicitor of CADS, confirmed the two-decades-old decision.

"It was resolved that the funds of the society be transferred to Carterton District Council to be, in due course, transferred to a society within the Carterton district with similar objectives as CADS.

"I subsequently arranged for the funds to be deposited accordingly."

On Wednesday that appeared to be the case, but no evidence had come to light.

"Unfortunately we can't find any correspondence and there's no minutes of it," Mr Wright said.

"But we definitely are holding what amounts to several thousand dollars of funds, and that includes about 20 years of accumulated interest."

The council were due to discuss releasing the money to Limelight at the meeting."

The Limelight Theatre is the vehicle for show offs like the lawyers and their mates, Mark Hinton, Caroline Wait, John Greenwood, Kate Nolan, members of the Carterton District Council like Barbara Durbin, Elaine Brazendale, Ruth Carter, Jill Greathead, Ewen Hyde, etc - who were all on the committee of the former Carterton Community Centre when it was illegally taken over and closed down to cover up the fraud and gross mismanagement. These are the people who thought it was such a good idea to hire unemployed transvestite prostitute Georgina Beyer (known locally as Beyer the Liar) to teach the youth of the town "Life Skills" - at the tax payers expense of course, it wasn't coming out of their pockets, it's YOUR money they're throwing down the drain with this sort of carry on while crime, child abuse and suicide skyrocket out of control in the Wairarapa under the governance of these corrupt and stupid idiots. I use the term "stupid idiots" because the report of the Auditor General published on this site (highlights are at this link, scroll down to paragraph ninety something, 91 or 92 I think) makes it absolutely crystal clear that this is exactly what they are. Mark Hinton wrote the letter to police accusing me of the theft of the community centre's financial records. I've posted them on the internet to show why there has never been an audit, because Councillor Jill Greathead was told by RG Thompson that it would be a huge fail and the allegations of fraud were try, go Greathead closed the audit down!

What's also crystal clear is that there have been two substantial community petitions against this Event Centre, and that it is unwanted by the vast majority of people in the community and certainly all the well informed ones (apart from the corrupt well informed ones who were involved in the fraud and misfeasance), and that the Carterton Events Centre is an obscene insult to the real people of Carterton, and all the people who signed the petition calling for an audit of the former Community Centre, the Event Centre - including the so called "Facility Focus Group" and the involvement of the Carterton District Council and people associated with it. This isn't our Community Centre, it's their "Event Centre". Reminds me a bit of that comedian, who was had up for molesting his 4 year old daughter, got off with no conviction and name suppression (- I get more than that for not wearing my bike helmet!). Judge Phillipa Cunningham said he deserved to get off because he was so funny and we all needed to have a good laugh [at this sort of thing?] adn the poor man wouldn't be able to get a job if he was punished in any way. Maybe he should stop trying to be a comedian and get a real job.

We had a proper community resource centre, the real Heart of Carterton, with Community Gardens, a Health Centre, a Borough Farm, now we've got an 'Event Centre' run by the same thieves and liars who are responsible for the fraud and misfeasance at the former Carterton Community Centre, and the theft of all the assets and funds of that organisation, and the very first thing they do is put a big performance of this just to remind everyone of Cartertons's Whorehouse image - good one Ron Mark and the Carterton District Council, lawyers John Greenwood, Carolyn Wait, lawyers 'assistant' Kate Nolan, Councillors Brazendale, Carter, Greathead, librarian Hyde - for dragging the town into the gutter yet again.

Here's a link to an article published on 2 November 2010 in the Wairarapa Times-Age, titled "But trust boss says Carterton requests haven't stacked up".

Here's more about how your taxes and rates are spent. As you can see, Friends of the Gardens received the grand sum of $250 - conditionally - while Sean Crawford, son of John Crawford, leader of the gang of bullies and idiots who took over the former Community Centre for this very reason - so daddy could keep funnelling our hard earned money into little Sean's pocket, and the pockets of their mates.

Check out the other information on this site about how John Crawford and his mates took over our Community Centre, ran it into the ground, stealing and wasting all the money, they closed it down when they couldn't get any more funding. More links will be put up on this post in the next few days, and more posts tagged with labels, watch this space.

John Key - I can see his lips moving, but what's that coming out of his mouth?!

2011-10-25T22:01:00.012-07:00

UPDATE: Some of the information on this post was deleted at the source, (thank goodness for YouTube and techy mates - That Nek Minnit deserves a knighthood for services to the community.

Watch this clip, and listen carefully, especially from about 1:33 onwards, to Key's statements regarding the report from Standard and Poors, and what he alleges Standard and Poors said about the Labour Party. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry really. Santa Claus indeed!

Now watch this. I can see his lips moving, but - what's that coming out of his mouth?!

___________________________________________________________

UPDATE - 12:05 PM 27 OCTOBER 2011: This post has been CENSORED people who do not tolerate free speech and freedom of information in New Zealand in 2011. The video clip embedded above, of Key speaking at a press conference has been deleted at the source, because it is indisputable evidence of a corrupt dishonest politician at "work" (not to mention potentially actionable). If it's not actionable to tell deliberate lies about such a serious matter, lies of this calibre, then it certainly should be. Standard & Poors told him a downgrade would be much more likely under Labour government indeed!

It is John Key's government which got the double downgrade, not the Labour government,and this is outrageous propaganda to be broadcasting on state television this close to an election.

The Wairarapa Times-Age refused to publish my candidate profile when I stood for election, because the editor said it was actionable. It wasn't actionable at all. I later published it with no consequence (other than widespread respect), and other information which the prejudiced, politically biased WTA refused to publish, about Georgina Beyer MP, which made "her" position in parliament untenable and resulted in "her" resignation. There is currently another complaint before the Press Council. Here's a link to another article about political bias of the local press.

__________________________________________________________

In light of this poor sportsmanship on the part of John Cheese, here's a bonus clip, and this one is from a REAL financial expert:

__________________________________________________________

Under British Law (the Representation of the People Act 1983, - see link below), there are criminal penalties in place for those convicted of making or publishing false statements about election candidates, and that should certainly be the case here. This is to protect the democratic process and is in addition to the general, civil law on libel (which must obviously also be observed when reporting elections).

Here's a link to the Hansard report that contains the following exchange:

Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2)---Defamation Provision

9. Hon. PETER DUNNE (Leader---United NZ) to the Associate Minister of Justice: Does she agree with the chairman of the freedom committee of the Commonwealth Press Union that the proposed new anti-defamation law ``not only constrains media freedom, it constrains freedom of speech and that affects everyone''; if not, what were the reasons she gave to the Cabinet and the Caucus for proposing the amendment?

Hon. PHIL GOFF (Minister of Justice), on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice: Any anti-defamation law, including the Defamation Act, constrains the absolute freedom of speech. However, section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act allows constraints that are ``justifiable in a free and democratic society''. The reason for the amendment was to discourage people from making and publishing statements about candidates in an election campaign, knowing them to be untrue and defamatory, with the purpose of damaging candidates' reputations in a way that is calculated to influence voters.

Hon. Peter Dunne: Will the Associate Minister now spell out to the House the reasons that led her to claim twice last week to the House that media ownership was one of the factors behind this change?

Hon. PHIL GOFF: I do not have the benefit of seeing what the Associate Minister said last week, but the reasons for the change were as I explained to the member in reply to the primary question.

Jill Pettis: Will the Minister please explain to the House whether the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) will be passed this week, now that clause 199B is to be removed?

Hon. PHIL GOFF: It is important that this bill be passed as soon as possible, in order to give electoral institutions the time needed to make the necessary administrative changes. However, its passage will depend on progress on other items on the legislative agenda, and on the cooperation of all parties in the House.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Why did the Minister, who was apparently described today as one of New Zealand's most pre-eminent lawyers, chose to ignore the advice of officials who said that criminal defamation would be an unreasonable restriction of free speech?

Hon. PHIL GOFF: I do not know what happened under previous Governments, but in this Government Ministers take responsibility for making decisions. They listen to officials' advice; they do not have to slavishly follow it.

Dr Muriel Newman: In the light of the widespread opposition to the proposal to introduce criminal libel into New Zealand's electoral law, and of the Government's sudden U-turn on it, will the Minister consider removing the press-gagging laws that make it a criminal offence to report on the Family Court; if not, why not?

Mr SPEAKER: That is rather wide of the original question, but the Minister may comment.
Hon. PHIL GOFF: No. (abridged)

_______________________________________

But wait, there's more:

Heroes - All Black on the Beaches:

2011-10-23T18:57:00.006-07:00

Here we have local hero, dad of the year and all round nice guy Willie Magnus, and some of his mates. They work as professional divers. This clip is a bit of fun, but to find out what they really do in a typical days work check out some of the related Youtube clips, it's dangerous work, and often done in appalling conditions.

Last night the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup. Richie McCaw was a hero, he's still a hero this morning, and he'll be talked about for years, and good on him and the team, so they should be - it was a great game. Both teams played well.

This morning the beaches of the East Coast are still All Black. Watch this clip, and click the "Like" button to show your support for these guys, because while the rest of the country's partying and nursing hangovers, these guys are out there, over their heads in freezing cold water, filthy toxic oil, even more toxic Corexit and other chemicals, risking their lives on a daily basis to clean up this mess for us. Everyone will be buying Ritchie a beer today, let's all buy one for someone working to clean up the mess the Rena left. These guys are every bit the heroes too, let's remember them at this time, and get in behind the All Black on the Beaches campaign.

They'd all like to be home with their families today, Willie's got five lovely daughters, a lovely wife, a darling grandchild, he's got brothers and a sister, nieces and nephews, all the in laws and outlaws, they all love him to bits, we miss him to bits because he's such a good guy, and wish we were going for a bit of recreational hunter/gathering somewhere nice like Ngawi or Tora with him to keep us safe. and if you go out with Willie (or Kate Jury), you can be sure you'll come back safe. Thinking of everyone working to clean up the Rena catastrophy. These are every bit our local heroes.

Please take the time to watch the clip and click the "Like" button, these guys do a great job in cold, dangerous uncomfortable conditions, show you like what they do. The clip's funny as anything, especially if you have any idea of how much all that gear actually weighs and how big Willie actually isn't (you can't see because he's inside all that stuff, but the gear probably weighs twice as much as him), also, the tank, which is the heaviest thing, has a tendency to whack you in the back of the head if you aren't careful. Hard.

The other thing about this clip is the little insight into the careful but casual way the team works together, checking, double checking, nothing left to chance, looking after each other, then suddenly, right before you're eyes . . . . da dah! "Yeah, no worries mate" - classic Kiwi monkey business at work.

Also today, let's dedicate this World Cup win to some other ordinary heroes. While Willie will be back in the bosom of his family soon, with his lovely wife and daughters. Marelle Pereira was just eight years old when her father was murdered by agents of the French government, when they executed the plan to deliberately blow up the Rainbow Warrior. This was an act of international terrorism which deserved total condemnation, as well as an act of Murder. Politically motivated murder. Marelle grew up without her daddy, she couldn't sit on his knee anymore, laugh and joke with him, snuggle up and talk with him . . .

Mirelle, and her mother, have grown up without Fernando Pereira, the peaceful, peace loving, gentle photographer, who did the same thing I do, spread the truth. A photographer, a father, a gentle man. A hero because he was trying to tell us about the real news.

Let's take a minute or two to remember all the quiet, humble, everyday heroes today (any day) and dedicate this win to them. The French played a great game last night and deserve respect for that, and Fernando Pereira and the crew of the Rainbow Warrior deserve to be respected and remembered too. Raise a glass to them today, and those out at sea working on the Rena, as well as Captain McCaw and the team. Then do what you can to help get the Black Off Our Beaches.

The Heart of Carterton - Katherine Jane Reid:

2011-10-22T21:09:00.006-07:00

Katherine Jane Reid was the Real Heart of Carterton.

Carterton lost one of its greatest assets recently, Katherine Jane Reid. Katherine worked at the Carterton District Council, she should have been running the place.

Always bright and cheerful, professional, efficient, great at her job. Katherine always followed things up, she'd give you a ring and get back to you about things, she sorted things out effortlessly, and stood out head and shoulders above the other office staff in this respect. I can't count the times she helped me with enquiries, but every time she did I left her company feeling better than I did before. Katherine just had a way of making people feel good, because she was good.

Nobody who ever met Katherine would have found a bad word to say about her, she was an absolute sweetie, and it is an utter, utter tragedy that she passed away recently, suddenly, unexpectedly, leaving her beloved daughter, aged just two years old, and her loving partner.

They say only the good die young, well you wouldn't get much "gooder" than Katherine Reid.

Rest in peace Katherine, I miss you a lot, and think of you often.

You'll always live on in our hearts, thanks for the lovely memories. This one's for you:

Local "journalism" - Tanya Katterns further disgraces Dompost:

2011-10-21T16:30:00.002-07:00

Local Dompost reporter Tanya Katterns has always been biased, prejudiced, and lazy, and recently it caught up with her, and the Dominion Post, when Katterns was sacked for plagiarism. It was found that Katterns had copied a sickeningly sycophantic article by Ron Mark's old mate Deborah Coddington.

"She said any similarities were inadvertent. But Fairfax believed them to be intentional, and argued she had deliberately misled her managers when first confronted with the allegations.
Katterns argued that allowing her back to work would help ease the financial difficulty, loss of professional reputation, and ill-health that she claimed had resulted from her dismissal.
Katterns later said the ruling was to be expected."

Oh yes, and what about the "financial difficulty, loss of professional reputation, and ill-health that has resulted" from my dismissal from the South End School and St Matthews Collegiate after local lying, corrupt police told the Principals of both schools that I had been charged and/or convicted of child abuse, which is a rumour they delight in perpetuating in order to manipulate local voters by lauding the praises of scum like Georgina Beyer and Gary McPhee, while slandering me.

The following rude and off hand email was received from Mary Major at the Press Council, on 11 October 2011:

"Good morning Kate,

How are things progressing with the editor?

Regards,

Mary"

Prior to this, on September 26, I received this from her:

"Hello Kate,

I have all your correspondence, but while there is any chance that you might be able to resolve the issues directly with the acting editor I will not send the complaint on to the newspaper.

Generally speaking this resolution process works better if there is not a formal complaint in the offing.

Please let me know if you have had any further response from Heather McCracken.

Regards,

Mary Major

I informed Mary Major that there are over 20 emails which are clear and indisputable evidence of a refusal by Ms Heather McCracken, Acting Editor of the Wairarapa Times-Age, to be fair and reasonable and publish my press release in right of reply, particularly in light of the history of prejudice and bias against me is previous political reports. Lawyers have confirmed that this is politically motivated corruption - the local police are acting like a private army for Gary McPhee, Georgina Beyer, etc, while ignoring - and corruptly lying about - hundreds of uninvestigated child abuse allegations, and telling lies to my employers, the South End School and St Matthews Collegiate. They will be included in this post in the next day or so to demonstrate how arrogant and ineffectual the Press Council is and exactly how they deal with complaints.

Local gutter press continue to print this utter rubbish and give their corrupt mates this kind of free advertising!

Court Order for Disclosure of Information, and Court Certificate:

2011-09-19T02:00:00.002-07:00

"[1] There is a human right involved here that a person who is charged with a criminal offence, as Ms Raue is in relation to this protection order, is entitled to know the basis for the charge.

[2] The charge was laid in March 2011. We are sitting here now at the end of August, and to date Ms Raue has not been provided with any information about the charge. It may be that the reason for that is that there is no information; if that is the case, she is entitled to know that as well.

[3] I accept that the charge was withdrawn (today), but nevertheless, she is entitled to know the reason why the charge was laid in the first place."

- Read full Minute of Judge Wainwright, and Certificate of the Wellington District Court, at this link

Big local news: "Wairarapa Times-Age Nearly Gets It Right:"

2011-09-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

Following publication of the report in the local "news" paper, the Wairarapa Times-Age, regarding the dismissal of serious charges against me, I wrote a request for correction and right of reply.

Read how the mainstream media will do almost anything to avoid publishing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, at this link to the full story . . .

Suicide Prevention Project, Barry Taylor, not performing:

2011-09-03T04:31:00.006-07:00

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 September 2011:

"TELL SOMEONE: Barry Taylor, co-ordinator of the Wairarapa Suicide Prevention Project, says an inter-agency response has been launched after the sudden deaths of four young people in the region since June."

The sudden death of a 17-year-old girl in Masterton yesterday is the fourth similar tragedy since June involving young Wairarapa people.
Barry Taylor, Wairarapa Suicide Prevention Project co-ordinator, said a 14-year-old Masterton schoolgirl who died last week was the youngest. The eldest was a young Wairarapa man in his early 20s, who died days before a 17-year-old male in the town in June.
He said there were no obvious links between the deaths besides some overlapping networks at schools and among friends. Only one of the teenagers who died was enrolled at school, Mr Taylor said, although the other two had not long left college.

Mr Taylor, who was appointed project co-ordinator three years ago, said an inter-agency meeting had been set down for yesterday afternoon in the wake of the first two deaths involving teenagers.

But the death of the young girl yesterday morning had ramped up the need for wider discussion and led to even more agencies being called to attend, he said. "What rubbish!"

"It's trauma compacting upon trauma but it's important not to create community panic. Suicide leaves some of us with only questions; and speculations, the whispers, the rumours, they escalate and sometimes fill that void," he said. "This guy hasn't got a clue."

"But any young people or parents who have concerns at all, should not hold back. If parents are worried about their children, do something about it. If something is wrong, tell someone." "Check out the link at the bottom of this report to find out exactly how far that gets you."

Mr Taylor said the meeting yesterday had mapped out a co-ordinated inter-agency response in the town and region involving representatives from Wairarapa DHB, police, CYFS, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMS), Victim Support, Special Education, Youth Connect and counsellors from Makoura, Wairarapa, Chanel and Rathkeale colleges.

He said concerned parents are invited to a meeting in Masterton early next week that would outline "what to look for if your children are distressed". A venue is to be confirmed. "They get together and talk rubbish and wring their hands - the FOCCers have the answers."

People at most risk were identified at the meeting yesterday and "postvention" responsibilities set out for several agencies "about what they need and who will help". "Postvention? They have no plan, they adopt an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach."

"We're also looking at providing further support through churches, youth groups, schools, marae and iwi, and families, and providing a resource list for those natural support systems."

Mr Taylor said there had been an increase across New Zealand of youth suicides that was borne out in provisional figures from the Chief Coroner for self-inflicted deaths between July 2010 and June this year.

A Mental Health Commission report released last month showed the suicide rate for girls aged 15 to 19 in New Zealand was the highest in the OECD. "WHAT?!"

"In Wairarapa, five to six people a year die of suicide," he said. "WHAT?!"

"This is four in three months and that has the elements of a cluster. But whether this is something extraordinary or not is yet to be established." "WHAT?!"
Mr Taylor said there was a risk that social networking could "idolise" the young person who had died and "romanticise" the tragedy, providing a forum "for the young people to bond in their vulnerability and not their strength"."We need to discover what could be causing a young life to become so unbearable that suicide is a viable answer for that person. We need to help them navigate and work through that.

"Youth suicide is highly impulsive and often happens through a little trigger event," he said. "The greater tragedy of youth suicide though is that many of them don't want to die, they just want the pain to end."
_____________________________________________

Actually the tragic reality is that this is what happens when you ask the "community agencies" in the Wairarapa for assistance.

What's wrong in the Wairarapa is that we have dysfunctional communities, managed and governed and manipulated by a small group of bad role models. When I first came to the Wairarapa and became Secretary and Finance Officer for the Carterton Community Centre, which catered for the more vulnerable members of the community, I discovered the allegations made to me of incompetence, fraud and serious misfeasance by the committee were entirely true. I also discovered that the committee were almost all associated with the Carterton Distruct Council, a major funder of the Centre - in other words they had serious conflicts of interest, they were awarding funding on one hand and spending it with the other hand, and most unwisely. The Community Centre was the heart of the community, a place where people could come and feel welcome, access resources and useful, accurate information. A Community Centre is not about a building it's about the people running it, so is a community. He Tangata, he tangata, he tangata. The same people who took over the former Community Centre by punching the Secretary and Finance Officer in the face, are behind the new "Event Centre" in Carterton. There is the Arts Agenda, John Crawford, Jo Roffe, etc, there is the Council contingent, Elaine Brazendale, Ruth Carter, Jill Greathead, Julie Hallam, Ewen Hyde, and their family and friends, who were into paying money hand over fist to idiots like Georgina Beyer. Here are links to the Minutes of the committee meetings, financial reports, and more information showing their involvement.

Let's see some real statistics, how many of the people who committed suicide were unemployed? How many were mental health patients? I'd still be employed if police hadn't lied to South End School. Come to think of it, that's the sort of thing that drives people to commit suicide isn't it, imagine how youd feel if the local police started telling the community that you were a child abuser, a criminal, etc, etc, and you received a letter dismissing you because of it, like I did?

Two weeks before the election when I stood for Mayor, local journalists saw fit to put posters outside every dairy saying "Mayoral candidate in Court appearance" and wrote a story about how I'd allegedly been charged with ringing someone up and swearing at them. They published nothing when the charges were thrown out. So Gary McPhee was elected, a local drunken, bullying biker. McPhee sold the Borough Farm, the Health Centre and everything else he could to pay for an Event Centre to take the place of our community resource centre, the first production of the new Limelight Theatre is going to be "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" - great family entertainment. The Statement of Claim presented to the Court to wind up the Community Centre, signed by John Crawford, Elaine Brazendale, Jill Greathead, Ruth Carter Ewen Hyde, and 3 others states that the pathetic excuse, in paragraph 3 below, for the closure of OUR Community Centre:

Here's the link to the story of the Great Cuisine School Debacle, which describes how under McPhee's leadership Carterton missed the greatest opportunity to kick start the local economy ever. If I'd been Mayor the Cuisine School would have been on the Borough Farm and it would have provided employment and training to thousands, and attracted international visitors and investments, that's the sort of thing we need, not an "Event Centre" with "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."

Charges "Laid by mistake" claim police:

2011-09-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Then the police prosecutor came out with the best bit, saying I shouldn't have the Disclosure because "the charge had been laid by mistake" and that "it should never have been laid in the first place."

No, of course it shouldn't have. And neither should the other five charges, or the Perverting the Course of Justice or Escaping From Custody that were also thrown out recently or all the other ones they've had a crack at and lost, like Billsticking, the five charges from the matter involving Georgina Beyer at the public meeting, Rachel Betteridge's perjurous complaint, trespass at the Council, etc.

Here is the link to the full story, and the report in the local 'news' paper:

- Read full story here

International Day of the Disappeared 2011, August 31:

2011-08-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

Today is the International Day of the Disappeared - where is the Panchen Lama of Tibet? Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was kidnapped by the Chinese authorities at the age of six (!!), shortly after he was recognised as Panchen Lama by H.H. the Dalai Lama. After the real Panchen Lama disappeared, the Chinese appointed their own Panchen Lama, a puppet of the government.

This is as good a spot as any to remember this letter to the Judicial Complaints Commissioner about Judge Adrienne Winklemann, and about freedom of speech and freedom of information, from Vince Seimer, who, like me, has "Disappeared" from time to time in the course of seeking justice and truth, the original, and the rest of the story, can be found at kiwisfirst.com, at least we reappeared eventually. Spare a thought today for those who've disappeared, and write to the Chinese embassy and ask them where is the Panchen Lama? Many thanks to all who rang and wrote asking "Where is Kate Raue?" when I disappeared, if we don't speak up for others, who's going to speak up for us?

- Read full story

No Disclosure, Altered Documents from Police Prosecutor & Masterton Court Again:

2011-08-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

It's outrageous that, having been robbed of justice in the matter of the false and corrupt accusation of Perverting the Course of Justice, now the Masterton police prosecutor can continue to get four adjournments in the Court since the Crown memorandum was filed, for charges like this! Time to protest about how our taxes are being squandered like this while the real problems are mismanaged and ignored. The circus continues in the Masterton court on Monday 29th August, watch this space.
- Read full story at this link.

Hotel Rangipapa - Lunatics in Charge of the Asylum:

2011-08-13T18:32:00.001-07:00

After having nothing to do with the police for most of my life prior to coming to the Wairarapa, I have been subjected to an orchestrated campaign of malicious and vexatious litigation from the local police, who have charged me with quite a number of things in the last seven years or so and consistently refused to take complaints and refused to investigate complaints made by several lawyers also, including the complaints from Ken Daniels and Michael Appleby.

What's worse is the refusal of the PCA and the IPCA to investigate or even acknowledge the serious complaints made by me and several lawyers. These matters are greatly in the public interest because they involve our former Carterton Community Centre, which was taken over illegally and closed down to cover up the fraud and serious misfeasance that occured there. Ex MP Georgina Beyer was involved with the Centre, and was Patron of it at the same time as she was a Member of Parliament and wrote several letters regarding the fraud and misfeasance at the Centre, these letters resulted in her resignation from parliament because they contained untruths.

The previous post notes how barely qualified "forensic registrar" Brenda Sally Rimkeit, encouraged by corrupt and incompetent amicus curiae and ex police officer Bryan Yeoman, wrote a certificate for the Court at Wellington on 8th March stating that I should be detained in a secure mental asylum in order to have two reports completed, to address the question of whether I was fit to stand trial. Both of them
knew full well that this was not necessary, because the only reason I had not attended two previous appointments was because they had been made in Porirua and not Masterton, like the one that I had attended, and WINZ unlawfully refused to assist when I applied for a recoverable advance for travel costs to the appointment which had been made at Porirua unnecessarily, by Rimkeit herself.

Judge Barry had agreed with me only a week or so previously that the appointments should have been made in Masterton and if they had been I would have attended. This post takes a closer look at the various psychiatric reports etc, and how Rimkeit and some of her colleagues have hijacked the justice system and led to a serious miscarriage of justice. At this point I'd like to note that the last report Rimkeit wrote announced that she would no longer be practicing as a forensic psychiatrist, the evidence on this site will show you why that is, and why Rimkeit should be charged with Perverting the Course of Justice, making false declarations, intentionally submitting false and misleading documents to the Court, etc. Here is her "professional opinion":

"It is my opinion (and that of forensic psychiatrist Dr Jacqueline Short, currently my acting supervisor) that Ms Raue is unfit to stand trial. She currently has a mental impairment which is Delusional Disorder. Ms Raue has stated on a number of occasions during this assessment period that she feels capable of representing and defending herself against the current charges. She has suggested that her main line of defence is that the charges are the result of corrupt acts by certain parties and that she will name these parties in Court. My concern is that if she proceeds to represent herself at Court she may, through her delusional belief system, falsely accuse certain parties of wrongdoing."
(- 22 March 2011, Brenda Sally Rimkeit)

This is outrageous! Citizens should be able to report police incompetence and corruption without being locked in a mental asylum and labelled delusional. Read the true story of how Brenda Sally Rimkeit and a couple of her colleagues perverted the course of justice and stopped a jury trial proceeding in order to conceal police incompetence and corruption.

Here's what Dr Nick Judson said only two or three days before the Crown decided to offer no evidence: "Ms Raue presented as pleasant, polite, well groomed and looked physically quite healthy and relaxed." "Her manner was pleasant and quite relaxed throughout the interview and she showed no evidence of any pressure in her thinking. Her speech, while a little speeded at times, was not noticeably pressured and her thought processes were logical and rational throughout the period of the interview. We spent some time discussing the issues of the court, the charges and her intended defence. She was able to explain clearly and rationally the way in which she intends to defend herself against the charge and remained focused on this throughout, without introducing any extraneous or irrelevant material and without displaying any paranoid thought processes in relation to the charges." "Her understanding of the legal issues is very good and she has the ability to formulate and enter a plea and to follow all the matters pertinent to the court." "Overall my impression is that she will be able to interact successfully with the court for the purpose of conducting her defence. In my opinion she is fit to stand trial."

Another psychiatrist, Dr Justin Barry-Walsh wrote: Her account included a number of persecutory ideas. However on balance considering her ideas and reviewing the other materials, I do not think Ms Raue has a mental illness, particularly I do not believe that she has a psychotic illness characterised by the development of persecutory delusions." He also says "I would further observe the litigious quality to her presentation means that she has an exaggerated intellectual understanding of court process and would be well capable of following legal process and both entering a plea and instructing a lawyer." These reports make an utter mockery of the Crown memorandum, which was written two days after the report saying: "Ms Raue presented as pleasant, polite, well groomed and looked physically quite healthy and relaxed." "Her manner was pleasant and quite relaxed throughout the interview and she showed no evidence of any pressure in her thinking. Her speech, while a little speeded at times, was not noticeably pressured and her thought processes were logical and rational throughout the period of the interview. We spent some time discussing the issues of the court, the charges and her intended defence. She was able to explain clearly and rationally the way in which she intends to defend herself against the charge and remained focused on this throughout, without introducing any extraneous or irrelevant material and without displaying any paranoid thought processes in relation to the charges." "Her understanding of the legal issues is very good and she has the ability to formulate and enter a plea and to follow all the matters pertinent to the court." "Overall my impression is that she will be able to interact successfully with the court for the purpose of conducting her defence. In my opinion she is fit to stand trial." They had no evidence to offer in the first place. The Prosecutors and police officers should be charged with contempt of Court, so should Drs Sally Rimkeit, Jacqueline Short, Safarti and others.

- Read full story at this link

Stranger than Fiction - Crown Gives Up the Ghost:

2011-07-28T20:12:00.018-07:00

The Crown has given up the ghost of the unlikely chance it had of ever succeeding with the charge of Perverting the Course of Justice, after the joined indictment of Escaping From Custody was thrown out last September. It is over two years since I was charged with the offences, after a remarkable sequence of events. The campaign of harassment and corrupt and malicious prosecution against me by the Wairarapa police (in collusion with various other people) has cost the New Zealand tax payers a small fortune in monetary terms, but the greatest cost by far has been the damage to the integrity of the justice system and the New Zealand police.

After over two years of these corrupt prosecutions the Crown filed a memorandum in the Court dated 15 June 2011 stating that they proposed calling no evidence against me. They had no evidence to offer from the moment the charges were laid. The events of the last five months have been a chilling revelation into mental health services and the justice system in New Zealand these days.

Five months ago, on the 4th March, I was arrested at my home by Constables Paul Dallinger and Mia Wilton, who took obvious delight in pushing me around, handcuffing me, groping me, etc, during the "arrest". When we got to the Masterton police station they told me that the Judge had gone home (a Friday, just after midday) and I'd have to stay in the police station cells overnight. They alleged that I had breached Court bail by not going to psychiatric appointments and Court. I told them what I told Judge Barry only a week or so earlier: After the initial psychiatric assessment had been in Masterton (which I had attended, with Dr Justin Barry-Walsh) I then received two letters advising me of two other appointments in Porirua. I am unemployed, since the police lied to the school I worked at and told the most outrageous lies (police told the school that they'd "recently charged me with an offence involving a child", etc) and I certainly cannot afford to travel to Porirua - twice.

WINZ refused to assist me with an application for (a recoverable grant of) financial assistance on the following grounds: "Work and Income can not be seen to assist people who do not abide by the law" So much for being innocent until found guilty. Judge Barry agreed with me that this was unacceptable because the appointments should have been made in Masterton in the first place like the initial appointment, which I had attended. I understood that my attendance at the minor Court fixture had been excused pending the reports being completed, it certainly should have been.

My doctor had written police and the Court letters attesting to the serious effect that this campaign of bullying and harassment was having on my physical and mental health. I was regularly suffering depression and claustrophobia from all the hours I was forced to spend sitting in cells, Courts, etc, one letter particularly asked that my attendance be excused if possible and that I not be locked in cells unnecessarily.

The Police Complaints Authority has already upheld a previous complaint about the brutal, sadistic and corrupt actions of the Wairarapa police towards me.

I was finally brought before Judge Davidson in the Wellington Court on Tuesday 8th March after being taken to the Court on the Monday, but being sent back to Arohata Prison because the amicus curiae, Bryan Yeoman, hadn't turned up to Court. While waiting in the horrible graffiti covered, filthy cells that feel like medieval dungeons, in came a woman who introduced herself as Sally Rimkeit. This woman (Brenda Sally Rimkeit) wrote a certificate for the Court that in her opinion I needed to be held in custody to have two psychiatric reports completed to determine whether I was fit to stand trial or whether I was insane. On the basis of her opinion I was remanded to a medium security psychiatric institution, with people who had been found guilty of murder, etc). I was detained there for months, forcibly drugged with serious heavy duty antipsychotic medication, and witnessed, and personally suffered, absolutely appalling 'treatment' at the hands of people, some of whom were WAY more deluded than I am, all at the expense of the good old New Zealand taxpayer. At our first meeting (on 8 March) she told me that she had only recently qualified as a forensic psychiatrist

In her report dated 22 March (after two weeks of 'treatment') "Dr" Rimkeit makes the following statement under the heading "Assessment of fitness to stand trial:"
"It is my opinion (and that of forensic psychiatrist Dr Jacqueline Short, currently my acting supervisor) that Ms Raue is unfit to stand trial. She currently has a mental impairment which is Delusional Disorder. Ms Raue has stated on a number of occasions during this assessment period that she feels capable of representing and defending herself against the current charges. She has suggested that her main line of defence is that the charges are the result of corrupt acts by certain parties and that she will name these parties in Court. My concern is that if she proceeds to represent herself at Court she may, through her delusional belief system, falsely accuse certain parties of wrongdoing." What?!!! I am the one falsely accused, and fully intended to call a witness who will swear on oath that they heard Aaron Brook boasting that Gary McPhee (ex Mayor and drunken bully) paid him money to lie in Court against me, I am perfectly entitled to do this, and it would have most definitely been in the public interest and in the interests of justice for the jury to decide that, not Brenda Silly Rimkeit! It is completely outrageous that a serious criminal trial can be aborted like this because of the mumbo jumbo of mad women like this and malicious doctors like Safarti, who knew perfectly well that I was not delusional, not a danger to myself or anyone else, perfectly well able to care for myself and not suffering from any major mental illness and probably not any minor one either for that matter unless you count depression and situational claustrophobia.

Furthermore, a number of psychiatrists did not share Rimkeit's delusions, Dr Justin Barry-Walsh wrote: "Her account included a number of persecutory ideas. However on balance, considering her ideas and reviewing the other materials, I do not think Ms Raue has a mental illness, particularly I do not believe that she has a psychotic illness characterised by the development of persecutory delusions." He also says "I would further observe the litigious quality to her presentation means that she has an exaggerated intellectual understanding of court process and would be well capable of following legal process and both entering a plea and instructing a lawyer."

Dr Judson's report of 13 June 2011 says: "Ms Raue presented as pleasant, polite, well groomed and looked physically quite healthy and relaxed." "Her manner was pleasant and quite relaxed throughout the interview and she showed no evidence of any pressure in her thinking. Her speech, while a little speeded at times, was not noticeably pressured and her thought processes were logical and rational throughout the period of the interview. We spent some time discussing the issues of the court, the charges and her intended defence. She was able to explain clearly and rationally the way in which she intends to defend herself against the charge and remained focused on this throughout, without introducing any extraneous or irrelevant material and without displaying any paranoid thought processes in relation to the charges." "Her understanding of the legal issues is very good and she has the ability to formulate and enter a plea and to follow all the matters pertinent to the court." "Overall my impression is that she will be able to interact successfully with the court for the purpose of conducting her defence. In my opinion she is fit to stand trial." This makes an utter mockery of Rimkeit's comments and of the Crown memorandum. The Crown never had any intention of allowing this matter to go to trial because they knew perfectly well that it was an orchestrated litany of lies cobbled together in a pathetic attempt to pervert the course of justice by the Wairarapa police, professional leech Bryan Yeoman (there's a link on this site to the Legal Services website showing how much money he's been paid for his "services" and others.

Constable Laura Rhymer lied, fabricated evidence and committed perjury, falsely charging me with offences which she knew perfectly well I hadn't committed. She conspired with other corrupt Wairarapa police officers to conceal serious violent crimes and instead pursue a vindictive campaign of corrupt harassment against the victim of the crimes. I have already been acquitted of the joined count of Escaping From Custody which was thrown out after Crown Prosecutor Ms Andrea Ewing had the good sense (last September) to agree that was the proper thing to do.

If the trial had gone ahead the extent of the police corruption would have been revealed and proven, it is an outrageous miscarriage of justice that the trial has been aborted, and the reasons given by the Crown prosecutor are a pathetic load of claptrap.

Read the Crown memorandum, and the full story, at this link.

South End School - Emily Brown, Rod O'Leary and Elaine Scully stuff up again:

2011-03-02T14:04:00.001-08:00

I recently received information that another member of staff at the South End School was recently lied about, defamed and sacked in a manner very similar to the manner in which I was sacked. The manner in which I received this information confirmed that the same serious breaches of privacy, and gossip and lies, are rampant at the South End School. The Board and staff involved should be sacked. Elaine Scully was recently found to have said to a young female Maori student "You're a lying little bitch." The family never even received a written apology!

Here's the letter I received:

Here's the latest emails:

______________________________________________________________

- Sent 1 May 2011 to Ken Wilson, Statutory Manager, C/- South End School Secretary Scully after original email to address provided by Ministry of Education was returned undeliverable:

Hi Ken,

I understand that you are the Statutory Manager appointed to the South End School, and have been asked to write to you regarding issues around the management and administration of the school.

I was recently handed correspondence between the school and [name deleted to protect privacy], regarding the termination of his employment at the school, which seems to mirror the way I was treated (attached). I've also been contacted by a number of people who have also complained about the school, including the family of a young girl who was called a "lying little bitch" - as in "You're nothing but a lying little bitch" by Elaine Scully, who is also responsible for this confidential correspondence ending up in my hands and the hands of a number of other people. Many people said that Mrs Scully, Mr O'Leary, Ms Powell and other staff and members of the Board of Trustees have been spreading rumours throughout the community that I am a child abuser, and that [name deleted to protect privacy] is also a paedophile.

I received a letter from the Board of Trustees which is attached. Also attached is a note of thanks I received at the end of the year (2008). The last paragraph of the letter to me, and the thank you note, make a mockery of the school's current position on the matter, and of the Court proceedings brought against me by Rod O'Leary and the former groundsman Thomas Smith.

I've also received copies of correspondence between the school and the Armstrong family about me, which frankly disgust me because they contain nasty and untrue accusations. Furthermore, Board of Trustees member Emily Brown came to the Armstrong's home and made a number of derogatory statements about me and about how Emily had contacted Police and mental health authorities about me after I politely requested that she arrange a meeting between and the Board about this correspondence I had received containing the untrue allegation that I was a danger to the children. Emily Brown is an adulterous liar, who has acknowledged (and boasted about) the fact that she was having it off with George Smith while still married to and living with her husband. Emily's mother and brother committed suicide, and it disgusts many people in the community that she is going around to homes like the Armstrongs, spreading her nasty spiteful UNTRUE rumours, and causing hatred and division in the community. She claimed to be representing the Board on this visit, which disgusted us even more. She should resign from the Board immediately, her adultery and lies disgusts decent people in the community.

I request the immediate return of everything I brought to the school, including the large sign, tools, hoses, plants, etc.

I request that the school write immediately to [name deleted to protect privacy] and apologise to him for distributing his correspondence and breaching his privacy. He deserves the job as groundsman for all his voluntary work for the school! The way the Board treats volunteers is disgraceful!

I request that you inform me immediately:

(1) specifically what information (referred to in the correspondence) the school received about me that led them to believe I was (or "could have been") a danger to the children, and

(2) from whom specifically the Board (or O'Leary) received this information.

The correspondence to the Armstrongs is outrageous, the two letters to them clearly contain allegations that I am a danger to the kids, O'Leary knows perfectly well that I never told him any such thing, and that there was no meeting until AFTER I received the letter sacking me, ex Deputy Principal Dallas Powell knows this too. They know perfectly well that the local corrupt police officer told him the lies about me being charged, not me, as he is not dishonestly inferring! The visit to the Armstrong's by Emily Brown was equally outrageous and she should resign immediately because of that alone - how dare she go around the community breaching my privacy and spreading lies like this!!!? How unprofessional! I requested a meeting with the Board!

I request an immediate meeting with the Board to discuss the letter which I received from Gavin Kennedy. The last paragraph promises me my job back if I am "acquitted of the charges withdrawn" - there never were any charges as everyone knows, and I want my job back without further delay.

I understand you were appointed on 1 October 2010. How is it then that [name deleted to protect privacy] was hired and fired by Rod O'Leary and the Board?

I look forward to your urgent response.

--
Kate Raue

Transparency in New Zealand

Friends of Caring Communities

_________________________________________________________________

Hi Ken

We have had the attached email in from Kate.

I spoke with Emily yesterday to try and ascertain how she got the attached letters. Emily is sure she has stolen them from her letterbox. Unfortunately for us, Emily has admitted that she often doesn’t clear her letterbox (which is on the main street) for days at a time.

I have not responsible for this info getting into Kate’s hands as she states. I phone Emily or leave a message on her answerphone every time I drop mail into her letterbox. The only other way I give her board info is to hand it to her son Zac and ask him to take it home (this is usually non important info).

We have phoned the Police and asked them to come down to track this for us.

Any advice? Do you want me to inform all the board members about what is happening? Ray was in the office this morning so I have informed him.

Cheers

Elaine.

__________________________________________________________________

Sent this morning, 3 March 2011, after I read this outrageous rubbish:

How dare you? I don't steal anything! And have witnesses lined up who handed me the letters and who will confirm that YOU Elaine are the one who stuffed up, AGAIN. And flinging nasty defamatory lies around AGAIN too.

I'm sick of your lies and accusations, I demand an immediate apology.

Ken, get rid of Elaine Scully and Emily Brown right now, like I said, I've got witnesses lined up.

Katherine Raue

Emily Brown should resign from the Board immediately, she is liar, who stuffs up everything she is involved in, her husband is far more suited to the position - shame Emily cheated on him with George Smith then left him, shame on Emily! I didn't steal her mail and I am sick of her nasty lies to try and cover up her own incompetence and spite.

I don't mean to sound so cross, but I am cross, because of the blatant orchestrated litany of lies about the matter. Such as the document below. The fact is, that I never went back to the school after I received the letter above. This charge was because the lying Principal Rod O'Leary made up the story that I told him I'd recently been charged by Police with an offence
involving a child - why would I???

There was categorically NO bad behaviour, in front of the pupils or at any other time, evidenced by the last paragraph of the letter to me above. Which is why Police didn't turn up to Court on the day of the hearing, because O'Leary would have been guilty of PERJURY if he had tried to give this evidence:

Efforts to sever ties turned hostile, yes, out of the blue, for no reason, I received the letter above, and suddenly the Board turned very hostile, expecially Emily Brown , who has really lost the plot now, alleging that I stole mail from her letterbox - the woman is absolutely delusional! - someone should contact the mental health services and the police, like she did when I asked for a meeting with the Board! She should resign from the school Board immediately. Parents should seek the nomination of her ex husband Graham to take her place on the Board, he is infinitely more suited to it.

Oh, and the language alleged? According to the only evidence there is, it is alleged that I called the Principal and groundsman thieving crooks. This is how your taxes are being spent folks.

What's worse than that, is that this is who's teaching your children!

Corrupt Wairarapa Police Pervert the Course of Justice to Protect Violent Criminals:

2011-03-01T05:24:00.002-08:00

This is the recording of the call to 111 by a woman who saw a car driven by Michael Francis Murphy skid into my driveway on 11 February 2009, and saw him and another person proceed to smash their way into my house and violently attack me. I've deleted her details to protect her privacy. She had a birds eye view and saw the entire incident.

This is the link to the Offence Report written up by corrupt Constable Peter Cletus CUNNINGham - after reading the first five pages or so you are thinking "Is this the same incident or what?????"

Here's the link to the statement made by two other woman, Clair Cook and Kelly Wilson, who were walking up the road with a dog, who also witnessed the attack and were so concerned about it that they immediately rang 111 also, and one intervened with the dog to try and stop the attack. I won't protect her privacy because she refused permission for me to access the audiotape of her call, and is now saying I should "move on", after the local corrupt police officers had a little word in their ear, like they had a little word in the ear of the Board of Trustees of the South End School, when they told them recently that they had charged me with "an offence involving a child", in accordance with their policy of flaunting the very laws they're paid to enforce.

This is the statement made by Michael Murphy to Police the following day. What sort of a police officer writes rubbish like this you may well ask? Constable Peter Cletus Cunningham, one of the many corrupt members of the tax payer funded, politically motivated bullying Gestapo police officers who abound in the Wairarapa.

Here's his Statement and his Brief of Evidence (hopefully, uploading these blind as usual, fingers crossed), both dated 1 May.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. After corrupt Constable CUNNINGham wrote that ridiculous orchstrated litany of lies called an Offence Report referred to above, in which he tries to make out that the victim of a violent home invasion is in fact the criminal offender in the matter (which is what he and his mate Constable Harvey Pope told the Board of Trustees of the South End School), I acquired a disk with audio recordings of 46 police radio tracks, including the one from the anonymous woman. All of my many, many requests for the tape of the other one, the one from Clair Cook and Kelly Wilson have been refused, and the reason for that I believe is that Murphy's screamed threats ("Get out of the way and I'll smash the fucking door down", etc) were clearly audible in the background.

When police realised I had the recording of the other call, which I had not known existed until I acquired the disk (unlike the one from the other women, which I had seen and heard as it continued after the offenders left), it appears that they had a word to Michael Murphy, who came to my house yet again (his statement refers to earlier visits, with drunken lout Gary McPhee and the cops, abusive text messages, etc) to steal the disk and thereby get rid of the indisputable evidence of his attack, which the police were refusing to investigate and instead making up lies about a non existent incident in the supermarket, an incident which never happened and which there is no evidence of, a pack of malicious lies cooked up by local trouble maker Tracy Feast, because of her obsessive jealousy.

I came home and caught Murphy in the act of stealing the disk (which I had already copied) and two boys from over the road also saw him, at exactly the same time I did, within a few yards of my property, and reported this to the Police. Constable Laura Rhymer to be exact. Constable Rhymer recorded my statement in her notebook at 18:30 hours on 8th April 2009.

Constable Rhymer then alleges that she took a statement from Aaron Ronald Brook at 20:50 hours on 8th April 2009. This is a lie. This statement did not exist, which is why it's written on blank A4 paper and not in her notebook. Here's more on Constable Laura Rhymer, and more on Aaron Ronald Brook.

I was later charged with Perverting the Course of Justice and Escaping from Custody, two charges joined as part of a single indictment by Judge Behrens. There has never been any credible evidence that I did anything wrong whatsoever. The Escaping from Custody charge was dismissed, during the hearing of a Crown application under s 344A of the Crimes Act by Judge Barry on 30 September 2010, under s 347.

Here's the link to Aaron Brook's Statement, and his Brief of Evidence. Harder to locate is the original statement of Aaron Brook, which was only produced by Constable Rhymer for the first time half way through the Depositions hearing - it should have been provided with the Disclosure! I am still trying to locate it, this post will be developed as the documents are uploaded, check back soon.

Here's Constable Laura Rhymer's notebook entries, here is the list of Disclosure - two copies of it actually - showing that there was only one statement disclosed, not two,and that only 2 pages of notebook entries were. The notation on the documents is by lawyer Ken Daniels, who also wrote on the actual copies of the 2 pages provided "Are there more pages of this notebook.?"

His notes on the page at left read: "NB the BOE's [Briefs of Evidence] are NOT draft or final deposition statements. * This is an indictable matter."

An examination of this "evidence" reveals what a corrupt and malicious waste of tax payers money this prosecution is! It shows beyond any doubt that Aaron Brook has always said that he saw Michael Murphy within yards of my home at the exact same time I had earlier reported the theft happening to Police. He has never recanted that evidence. He's been boasting that Gary McPhee is paying him money to lie about me in Court. Someone is, that's for sure. He and his cousin came to my home and volunteered the information that they'd seen him at the same time I'd earlier reported with no prompting from me whatsoever, I asked them only to tell the Police what they saw, nothing else. The Depositions evidence shows that the two Justices of the Peace, Adams and Debney, are corrupt in allowing the matter to proceed - they should have found no case to answer on the basis of the "evidence" - there is none against me! And there is considerable evidence that I was viciously attacked by Murphy and that his intention was to seriously harm me, and that he has a tendency toward violence, and manipulative and threatening behaviour.

I have no lawyer, just a corrupt amicus curiae, who is conspiring with corrupt Police, Court staff, and Adams and Debney to string the matter out as long as possible so that they can profit from their involvement in the matter for as long as possible. I face seven years in prison on this corruptly laid charge, while Murphy has never been charged with the attack on me or the theft of the satchel and contents.

I wrote this letter to the IPCA recently, sending copies to local police and local MP John Hayes, who has ignored all correspondence to date:

to		"murray.johnston" , "kevin.basher" , Independent Police Conduct Authority , johnhayes.mp@xtra.co.nz, john.hayes@national.org
date		12 November 2010 11:10
subject		Information at Carterton Police Station - Urgent request, please email a list of what the items are immediately and deliver them to the Post Office without further delay
mailed-by		gmail.com

12 Nov

I have previously requested a list of whatever Police are holding at Carterton Police station.
I have previously requested Police deliver whatever it is to the Carterton Post Office without further delay for me to collect from there.
I have had no response to my formal complaints regarding the assaults by Constables Pope, Dallinger, Wilton, or the refusal of these officers and others to take complaints from me, including the formal complaints about the Community Centre, which havenot been addressed in previous correspondence at all, as you know, and the assault on me at Hodders Road recently, which occurred during a call to police from Wayne Friend's cellphone.
I have had no response to my formal complaints and requests for confirmation of information that Wayne Friend was pulled up by police while driving the same car that Murphy, Greig and Feast were in when they came to Brooklyn Rd on 11th February and smashed my door in and attacked me while horrified witnesses called 111, registration PY 5539 or similar, in Masterton recently and was let off without a ticket in spite of having no registration or warrant. This is referred to in another letter I wrote you, please provide copies of all letters you have on the file from me, as my papers are in Hodders Rd and police are preventing me accessing them deliberately.
I have had no response to my formal complaints regarding the refusal of Constable Wilton and others to take complaints regarding the damage to my property at Hodders Rd, now called Gallon Road, or the assaults by Wayne Friend and Tim Reynolds. I showed Wilton the glass in my dressing table drawers, and the smashed tv set etc, and she smiled.
I have requested all information regarding me, and in particular all information including audio recordings of the phone calls to police from that address in the last twelve months, in particular the lengthy call made by Wayne Friend while Tim Reynolds assaulted me and illegally detained (kidnapped) me.
I repeat my request that this be delivered to the Post Office immediately.
My Court paperwork (and other essential items) is at that address in what is now Gallon Road, after police wrongly insisted I be bailed to there in spite of me pointing out that they had specifically opposed it recently because of the risk of violence against me. After then forcing me to live there the Police have a duty to take my complaints, provide the evidence to me and charge my attackers.
This was noted in the Wellington Court recently when the residential bail clause was deleted.
Police have a duty to protect me and charge the people who attacked me.
Police have a proven record of failing in their duty. There is currently an investigation into the huge number of uninvestigated child abuse allegations in the Wairarapa.
Police have a proven record of refusing to take complaints from victims of violence such as the victims of Gary McPhee's drunken home invasion - this is a FORMAL COMPLAINT into the Wairarapa police for corruption, bias and prejudice and refusing to act with fiduciary responsibility and due diligence.
My own such allegations against Michael Murphy Tracy Feast and Tuakana Greig have never been investigated, like the allegations about the Carterton Community Centre, this is a FORMAL COMPLAINT.

Katherine Raue

Read their response at this link. It ignores most of the complaint, as usual. The property at the Police station turned out to be a large box of my own files, Police have refused to reveal how they came to be at the Police station, or where the rest of my files are, this is obviously another attempt to pervert the course of justice as police appear to have gone through the files removing whatever they think doesn't show them in a good light.

Home Invasion - "No Charges To Be Laid":

2011-02-18T12:46:00.003-08:00

Regarding this letter from Police Damage Control Manager, "I will try and address the issues as I see them" - not "I will try and look at things from your perspective and address the issues you have raised."

According to his numbered points:

Firstly, has there been any response to the two letters sent by Mr Daniels, and the vague allegation that "these matters have been addressed in previous correspondence . . . . . and I do not intend to revisit them." This is utter rubbish, Tara Sewell of the Police lied and wrote a letter dated 30 May 2008 stating this (my comments in italics):

1. “All information regarding police file 010518/2481’

There is no file with that number held by Police therefore your request for information is refused pursuant to section 29(2)(b) of the Privacy Act 1993 as the information does not exist. The file is the subject of the letter to lawyer Kamil Lakshman of Ainslie Hewton from Sgt GN Reid of Masterton Police

2. “All information regarding a complaint of theft by the same group of people against myself and Jennifer Armstrong and Oasis Trust regarding a derelict caravan on the site of the former Carterton Community Gardens in Moreton Road”

I am advised by Senior Sergeant Johnston there is no correspondence or documentation held by Police on the theft of the derelict caravan. He further advises that this matter was dealt with at the time on the telephone. Your request for this information is refused pursuant to section 29(2)(b) of the Privacy Act 1 993 as the information does not exist. What rubbish - there was a pile of paperwork on this one! Links will be up soon, watch this space, this is a really good one! Police wasted a whole lot of time over this complaint against me and Jennifer Armstrong, when the complainants had no authority whatsoever to make any complaints at all, and lied in telling everyone they had been authorised. And, this was 6 months after they'd signed ownership over to us anyway!

3. “All information regarding the complaints relating to the illegal takeover, fraud, theft of mall and theft of all assets of the former Community Centre”

Police currently have insufficient information to locate the information that you have requested. Police will require more information from you in order to locate the information.

Please provide Police with details such as the date(s) of the above mentioned incidents, the approximate time(s) of the incidents, any Police staff involved and what specific information you require from Police.

Police will consider and process your request for information once further details are received. This was, inter alia, the subject of the letters from Ken Daniels and the other lawyers.

4. “AII information regarding the phone calls made to the police by Larry Mason (through 111 emergency services I believe), Rachel Betteridge and Ewen Hyde (either 111 or directly to Masterton Police station), including all transcripts and audio recordings, job sheets, etc regarding the complaints made against me to the police by these people”

Police currently have insufficient information to locate the information that you have requested. Police will require more information from you in order to locate the information.

Please provide Police with details such as the approximate date(s) of the above mentioned phone calls, the approximate time(s) of the phone calls and any further information that you think will help Police in the search for information about the phone calls. - This was the subject, inter alia, of the two letters sent by Ken Daniels referred to above, and a large amount of other correspondence.

5. “Any information that any attempt whatsoever was made by police to obtain any evidence of Rachel Betteridge’s claims.” The second page of the letter claims that "this information doesn't exist." No, because Police never even looked at her phone let alone contacted Vodafone, to verify Betteridge's outrageous lies. I challenge them to do so, and to address the signed statements from the JP's, seeking sworn statements from them both. Links to these matters will be up soon, in the meantime, search the site for them.

There was more than a "verbal exchange" - there was a violent and unprovoked attack by two huge, drunken bikies, on tiny little sick people and women. This article above us pure political propaganda of the Adolf Hitler School. "The flat had been the centre of police inquiries" indeed. Yes, like my house was the "centre of police inquiries after the violent attack on me on 11th February 2009. "I want people to feel safe" indeed! So I bash people's doors in and assault them for no reason. Yeah, right.

Gary McPhee and Ron Mark are posers. Read these two articles, and the other information on this site, and marvel at the mentality of people who voted for this nit wit.

It doesn't take 20 years to do something about violence - unless you spend your time like this, posing for pictures and getting 'touched up' (by 'artists'). Check out the silly little baseball hat for goodness sake.

Wairarapa Police Pervert the Course of Justice Again

2011-02-17T15:50:00.004-08:00

Here's the letter from Senior Sergeant Johnston, corruptly trying to cover up a vicious, violent, planned home invasion and assault with a weapon.

Here is the link to one of several phone calls to emergency services while the attack was taking place, from witnesses, first hand. This is a blatantly corrupt cover up of a vicious violent home invasion orchestrated by Michael Francis Murphy and Tracy Feast. This is evidence of blatant police corruption, and it's why Sgt Johnston doesn't work at the Masterton Police station any more apparently.

The letter below refers firstly to some of the letters written by lawyer Ken Daniels to the police. Follow the link to read two of the many letters sent by lawyers to the police, and Sgt Murray Johnston's rude and arrogant email dismissal of our complaints. The complaints have been corruptly ignored in spite of monumental evidence of fraud and gross misfeasance.

Secondly, the letter contains the refusal of the police to charge local prostitute Rachel Betteridge with Perjury, or anything else, after Betteridge and her husband sent me text messages, saying "You need a bullet" and "Watch your back" among other extremely offensive and threatening messages. Police have been provided with signed statements from two Justices of the Peace, and a considerable amount of other information, in support of my complaints regarding this lying prostitute. We'll come back to this matter in a minute.

Thirdly, the letter refers to the nasty drunken home invasion and assault committed by corruptly 'elected' Mayor Gary McPhee, and the refusal of the police to charge him or his co-offender. "The matter was investigated at the time and no charges were to be laid." - Oh really? WHY NOT? - This sounds like another PITIFUL EXCUSE used by the police to let criminals off: "I am aware that the Carterton District Council Members, the Carterton Mayor and MP Georgina Beyer have recently discussed issues around the closing of the centre. In such circumstances the actions of the 'elected' officers of the centre are most unlikely to have breached any Criminal Law."

Fourthly, the letter refers to the Bill Sticking charges laid against me by Constable Cunningham in about 2003, and the fact that the prosecution was so zealously pursued although there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the police wasting their time on it right from the beginning.

Like the trespass matters, all politically motivated corruption.
Read full story:

Pope Loses the Plot:

2011-02-10T17:08:00.003-08:00

This is the huge rock which was thrown through my window while I slept, innocently minding my own business as usual, at about 20 past one in the morning.

If this rock had hit my head, I would probably be dead.

Constable Harvey Pope, of the Carterton Police, is apparently in charge of "investigating" the matter.

Instead of doing so, he abused his position, and used it to pervert the course of justice, as usual.

The previous post has a link to one of the fake Facebook profiles created recently, and a copy of a message from another one, these have been created by Julian Tyerman and Robert Brook and their associates, and Police could easily confirm that if they were so inclined, but they aren't, because they like to cover up violence and protect violent offenders in the Wairarapa. Here's the hole in the window. The window was 5mm thick, and the slices of glass were razor sharp.

Here's the link to Constable Harvey Pope's paperwork relating to his "arrest" of me, still waiting for the paperwork about this investigation into the attack - that should be interesting! To say the least. We're seeing a pattern here.

This all started when the Police charged me with bill sticking because Constable Peter Cunningham issued me with an illegal trespass notice regarding the Carterton Community Centre, which he later had to apologise for - actually he never did apologise as far as I recall, Sgt Murray Johnston and the Area Commander did. Cunningham was babbling on about how the notices were defamatory to Georgina Beyer and Councillors and Council staff, everyone tried to tell him defamation was a civil matter, but oh no, Constable Cunningham knew better . . . and now Pope is having hysterics about me writing a blog, when people are assaulting me (see link next paragraph), smashing my possessions

This is an outrageous act of violence. Like another outrageous act of violence, the attack by Michael Murphy and others on 11 February 2009. Like this nasty mindless destruction by Wayne Friend and Tim Reynolds:

And here's the highlight of all the paperwork Constable Harvey Pope created when he came and arrested me, promising he was going to send me to prison till March, and this is the highlight of what he presented to the Court, and wasted all day, and probably all of the few days prior to this, doing, instead of investigating all the child abuse allegations the local police ignore as a matter of course. Oh, and giving me bike helmet tickets all the time. No wonder crime is out of hand in the Wairarapa, the cops have lost the plot. They spend their time perpetrating politically motivated corruption, in order to keep their mates, Georgina Bayer and Gary McPhee in positions of power.

Constable Harvey Pope is the spitting image of disgraced Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope, who was recently told not to bother reapplying for his job. Harvey Pope only got the job because he's related to Rob Pope - nepotism was one of Dame Margaret Bazely's main criticisms in her recent report, which was utterly damning of the NZ Police. Harvey Pope has failed to be promoted above the rank of Constable because of his incompetence and corruption.

He spends all day persecuting the victims of violent crime and making up long involved excuses for the recidivist violent offenders, like his mates in the Wairarapa Police, and the NZ Police in general.

This post will be updated daily with more information about Pope's corruption. The public need to be warned about creeps like Alan Donoghue and Wayne Friend, and instead, Harvey Pope is worried about me defaming them? The sooner Pope is sacked the better for the NZ Police and the Wairarapa.

More hatred and vandalism condoned by corrupt Wairarapa Police:

2011-02-09T14:26:00.006-08:00

This fake facebook profile was created in the last couple of weeks, and these threats were made on it. It's the second time these people have created fake Facebook pages. Police could forensically trace who made these pages very easily, if they were so inclined, unfortunately, they support this behaviour and encourage it and protect the offenders.

On Monday, several local people came to alert me to the graffiti, and a large number of posters stuck up around the town, pushed under shop doors, etc, which contained spiteful and defamatory statements about me. Many of them said they'd taken the posters to the police station and complained, and that Carterton Police told them that they had spoken to me (named in the posters) which was an utter lie because they refused to speak to me about it, smirking and laughing instead. I rang the Masterton station and the Police Communication Centre, because the calls are recorded.

I spent hours at the Masterton Police station on Tuesday, trying to make a complaint about this graffiti, and the facebook page (identity theft, and the threats), the theft and vandalism of my property by Rachel Taylor, Wayne Friend etc, among other things. The officer who came to the counter wrote down about four words on a bit of paper, disappeared for ages , then came back and said they wouldn't be taking my complaints because "they're already being dealt with." I wanted to make a statement or statements about the complaints, and as usual, corrupt Wairarapa Police refused to take statements, or even acknowledge the complaints.

This is the standard lie from the local police, the exact same lie which has been trotted out since our complaints about the illegal activities at the former Carterton Community Centre involving Georgina Beyer the Liar and the people associated with the Carterton District Council. One of the more bare faced examples of this is the letter from corrupt and overpaid Tara Sewell of the legal section at Police headquarters.

Police spent a considerable amount of taxpayers money when they charged me with Billsticking (in about 2003) for putting up notices in Carterton advertising a public meeting to discuss the illegal takeover, mismanagement and closure of the Carterton Community Centre. The excuse given initially (in writing) by the Police for proceeding with the prosecution, which they were later forced to apologise for, was that the notices were defamatory (against Georgina Beyer and members of the Carterton District Council). Defamation is a civil matter and nothing whatsoever to do with the Police. Wairarapa Police are ignoring child abuse allegations and focusing their attention on persecuting law abiding people like me, who seek to rid the Wairarapa of the shameful crime, child abuse and suicide which has characterised the area for decades. The only evidence to support the Billsticking charges was that my fingerprints were allegedly on the notice, but I was acquitted when the Police had no evidence to offer at the trial, because they knew full well that the fingerprints only meant that I had touched the notice in question, and not that I had put it on the building in question on the date in question, which was the Community Centre building. As I was the Secretary and Treasurer of the Community Centre, it's no wonder Police didn't turn up in Court, because as usual, no crime had been committed.
Compare this with the indisputable evidence of my complaints which are ignored every time.

I asked the Police to ensure that they fingerprinted the notices stuck around the town on Sunday night, these notices were completely different to the notices I am alleged to have stuck up advertising the public meeting, they are extremely nasty, hate filled, offensive, and most certainly defamatory, unlike the ones I put up. Let's see if Police do, or whether they get rid of the evidence as usual. There were a large number of the notices given to Police, including several which had been carefully picked up to preserve the prints. Many were stuck up in view of the security CCTV cameras, I requested the footage first thing Monday morning, let's see if we get it.

Yesterday, corrupt local constable Harvey Pope, who is the spitting image of disgraced Police Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope, recently told not to bother reapplying for his job, arrested me for alleged bail breaches. I was locked in a cell for most of the day, which Police typed up reams of paper full of excuses why they opposed my bail and tried their utmost to have me imprisoned. The alleged bail breaches involved me and a friend asking for my property back, including the keyboard which was smashed after I went and asked for it back, from where it was locked in the house occupied by local methamphetamine dealer Wayne Friend and Tim Reynolds. Police, who have twice assisted their mates to move house while on duty, have refused to assist me at all regarding this matter. I was living at the address and was assaulted by my partner, the tape of the call to Police during an assault on me at the property after I was invited by Reynold to come and see what Wayne Friend's P addict mate had stolen, is on this site and is clearly evidence of an assault and kidnapping of me. Harvey Pope wasted hundreds if not thousands of dollars of Police resources trying to corruptly lock me up, but Judge Tuohy wouldn't even let them read out their corrupt little story in the Court and released me.

Last night a huge rock was thrown through my window. If it had hit my head, I would be dead. Police are refusing to do anything about any of it, like the other complaints, and the new Area Commander refused to make an appointment with me when I rang him this morning.

We need an urgent inquiry into this Police corruption in the Wairarapa, and NZ in general, one that involves the investigators acknowledging the complaints made by me which have been ignored, and then investigating them. The complaints about the Community Centre were fobbed off with the excuse that they had been "addressed in previous correspondence" which is nothing more than a pack of blatant lies, when we requested the file on the complaint Police wrote back and said the file doesn't exist - of course it doesn't, because the complaints were corruptly ignored.

This is a photo of the creep who complained to Harvey Pope that I was harassing him, Alan Donoghue, who sexually assaulted me last year and has conspired with corrupt Constable Pope - no wonder he's still a Constable! - to cook up a pack of lies alleging that I assaulted him. Donoghue spent years in prison for armed and aggravated robbery, he is a criminal, who spends his taxpayer funded benefit on drugs and alcohol and spends his days drinking and taking drugs. Corrupt local Police are refusing to take my complaint about Donoghue's assault on me and charging me instead. Donoghue's statements go on about how he feels he is a "victim", and he's scared of me and feels intimidated, etc, but Police are ignoring the fact that he and his mates are the ones harassing me. They came to the address I'm staying at, where the rock was thrown through the window, making a nuisance of themselves after he alleged he felt scared of me - there was no reason for him to come there whatsoever, and if it were true that he feels scared and intimidated, why has he approached me about five times since the charge was laid to abuse and threaten me in front of witnesses?! He and his mate Darren Hughes (another low life druggie criminal, unemployed, like Donoghue, were caught interfering with my bicycle on another recent occasion and he approached me when I was talking to a person outside the supermarket, witnesses have noted his menacing and unpleasant attitude and demeanor, and Police refuse to issue him with a Harassment notice. Here he is in the bottle store, stocking up on supplies for the day.

Allan Donoghue, guilty of sexual assault and making a false complaint to Police.

Harvey Pope's whole excuse for locking me up was because Alan Donoghue had complained that I took a photo of him and Constable Pope said I should be locked up to stop me putting information on the internet about people. Unbelievable. Constable Pope is like Constable Cunningham, who started all this in the first place, by charging me with Billsticking after trying to arrest me (her read me my rights for heavens sake - and it's one of the few times local police have done so too!) for defamation. After I told defamation was a civil matter and he wasn't allowed to arrest me for it, he went away, and a little while later I got a summons for Billsticking. His friends were stealing money hand over fist from the Carterton Community Centre, stealing funds that had been granted to assist the less well off in the community. They closed down the Carterton Community Centre and stole every bit of money in the ten bank accounts, after saying they were going to give any left over to the IHC on the application to wind up the Centre, they never did, they stole every single cent from the ten organisations "under its umbrella". This grand Event Centre is just another reincarnation of the trough for the pigs to feed from that was the Carterton Community Centre, because it's run by the same people and their mates, rich lawyers who have hidden agendas, and greedy artists who have figured out how to get plenty of funding for so called community projects. Sean Crawford received a grant of $1000 just for "having an exhibition" for two weeks at Prime Gallery, a free gallery, as in free to have an exhibition, while we got just $250 from the same people to run the Community Gardens for a whole year. It was a darn sight harder doing that than Sean Crawford's effort - described by him as "kicking stones". His work consists mainly of tortured animals, weapons, snarling dogs made of razor wire, and other sharp metal, gun and bomb imagery, etc. We helped people to establish vegetable gardens and fruit trees, we established gardens in schools, like the South End School. We got everyone doing their community hours sooner or later too, and trained people in good work habits, and good life habits. We got them off the streets and into jobs, and rehabilitation programs, etc, and just helped to bring out the best in everyone. It was a great garden, and a great community centre and we need an inquiry into the manner in which it was taken over and mismanaged and defrauded by the very people behind this Event Centre, opposed by two petitions, the very same people who are still on the Council after years of this corruption and fraud.

Tim Reynolds and Wayne Friend Smash TV, Keyboard, etc:

2011-02-07T18:03:00.003-08:00

Here's what these gutless wonders have done now. After giving away my guitar and allowing their mates to take other property of mine, here's what they have done to my electronic keyboard, the one I used to teach kids music with. These violent P fuelled nutters have been smashing and destroying my property for months, and the corrupt Wairaiapa Police condone and encourage it. Merlene Chambers alias Shedlock has stolen my guitars, that were likewise used to teach kids music with, among other things,and corrupt local Police continue to refuse to do anything about it. Merlene's always having garage sales to sell all the stolen property she accumulates, to get money for her drugs and alcohol.

This happened after I took a couple of kids riding on our horse and asked for the saddle and bridle, as well as this keyboard. These guys are absolute scum! Nobody in Carterton wants the planned six million dollar "Event Centre", we want an inquiry into the illegal takeover, mismanagement and closure of our Community Centre.

Then there is the little creep at the local Mobil garage, who I am reliably informed is related to Aaron Brook, star police witness in the Perverting the Course of Justice charges, who fraudulently stole $60 from my bank account, made a fake profile on Facebook using a photo of me and my name, on which he reveals his true colours, but more revealingly, he sent me several messages from that Facebook account, threatening to "plaster your name all over town" and to poison our horse Flynn. Police have the technology to find out exactly who wrote this:

But they won't do anything about it because the offender is one of their friends. These threats are clear and unequivocal evidence of a crime, and police simply refuse to do anything about it. And last Monday night he did exactly what he threatened to do, putting up posters and spray painting obscene graffiti all over Carterton. His brain must be the size of a pea to blab on Facebook about it then do it, but that's the Wairarapa - the Police support and encourage these people and they do it again and again, like Michael Murphy. More photos will be uploaded to this post, evidence of crimes the police refuse to investigate.

Police were alerted immediately and asked to secure the CCTV camera footage they boast about all the time, the bet is that they will lie and say it's been deleted as they always do. The front of the Marquis Hotel and the Dance Studio over the road are covered by more than one camera. Police are refusing to take my complaints about it again, as usual, I have just come straight from the Masterton Police Station, after coming up here yet again for a Court hearing, only to find that I wasn't required because apparently the matter was called on the 27th January - after being set down for today! - and adjourned on 27th January until some other date (24th February I think) - after the Duty Solicitor refused to speak to me on the 27th January and I was refused the opportunity to address the Court. There's no justice in the Wairarapa. Many people went into the Police stations with the posters that were put up, Police went to great pains to prosecute me for bill sticking, but they refuse to fingerprint any of the recent notices about me, including those picked up with tweezers.

There's another post titled Police Corruptly Delete CCTV Footage, further evidence of their corruption. This is a regular occurrence these days, and well documented at other posts.

More local news: Masterton Police were branded "unprofessional cowboys" by Allan Kirk, chief executive of NZ Motorcycle Safety Consultants for leaving a burned out Harley Davidson, which caused an accident with a car, on the road for over three hours, creating an unnecessary hazard for other road users (Wairarapa Times-Age 1 February, page 3). Also, on page 1 of that paper is a report that Gary McPhee's dogs were recently shot for killing a neighbour's stud sheep. Typical of McPhee's irresponsible attitude and inability to manage his affairs - let alone manage public affairs!

And as for Allan Kirk calling other people "unprofessional cowboys", well perhaps Allan Kirk should ensure that his motorcycling mates wear high visibility vests when they're riding, these vests should be mandatory, and there is only one reason why they are not, because lawmakers are too gutless to try and tell the Harley Davidson louts what to do - it's easier to pick on cyclists like me and issue them with ticket after ticket for not wearing a cycle helmet (I don't wear one sometimes, and have a doctors letter explaining why, but almost always wear a high visibility reflective vest).

Police continue to refuse to accept my complaints or take any action whatsoever about any of them.

Another Top Cop Caught Lying - Our Police Rotten to the Core:

2011-02-01T01:33:00.001-08:00

Work out the real cost of this. Firstly, it's not just about the cost of the ticket, it's about how many man hours were wasted - Harrison should be charged with wasting Police time! And the sentence should reflect the seriousness of this corruption and waste of resources, using Police time and resources to steal $200 - the sentence should act as a deterrent to other corrupt, selfish, greedy Police.

This is what Police get up to all day - and this is the National Manager of "Youth Services Group! - no wonder our youth are so mixed up with role models like this! - Like the corrupt Masterton Police who had no case to answer in Court again the other day!

We urgently need a commission of inquiry into the NZ police. Support Transparency in NZ and or call for a judicial review and a commission of inquiry into the NZ Police, and Wairarapa Police in particular. And while we wait (pigs might fly all right), we'll inquire into it for them, right here at Kiwikileaks, the Official Website of Transparency in New Zealand, building a better country, one step at a time: (Open the images on this site in 'Paint' or a similar program to enlarge and view in detail, and leave a comment if you have a news tip or opinion.)

One of the country's top policemen is being investigated over allegations of providing false information on a police letterhead to get a $200 parking ticket waived.

The internal police investigation into Superintendent Bill Harrison, the national manager of youth services, began last month, two years after Wellington City Council waived the fine.

A police vehicle was ticketed on Harris St, Wellington, on September 25, 2008, for not displaying a current registration label. The fine was for $200.

Mr Harrison wrote to the council that day, using police national headquarters letterhead, asking for the ticket to be waived.

"I attach a copy of the current label that, through an oversight, was incorrectly displayed (behind the old label)," he wrote.

But certified documents obtained by The Dominion Post show that the registration label Mr Harrison attached to his letter was issued one hour after the car was ticketed. The council waived the ticket on the basis that the registration was current, despite the time discrepancy.

A council spokesman said yesterday the registration had been current, and the label supplied by Mr Harrison showed a later time because it was a replacement.

It is understood police have obtained council documents relating to the infringement as part of their investigation.

Assistant Commissioner Grant Nicholls said in a statement yesterday that police became aware of "details of the allegation" in December and started an immediate investigation.

"We are affording the superintendent all the rights of the employment process given to anyone alleged to have failed to meet the standards of behaviours expected in their employment."

The case would be concluded "as quickly as possible", the statement said.

Mr Nicholls declined to respond to further questions.

A woman who answered the phone at Mr Harrison's Churton Park home yesterday said he was at work. He is still based at police national headquarters.

The only other infringement held by the council against the police car was in 2007 for an expired-meter offence, which was later paid.

Last week, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a progress report on whether police were changing their culture after the 2007 commission of inquiry into police conduct, which was led by Dame Margaret Bazley.

The report found there was little confidence among police that "concerning" staff behaviour would be detected, and no action was being taken over poor-performing senior staff at police headquarters.

"The commissioner and all his inspector mates in bullshit castle at headquarters should get back on the street and get a reality check," one officer told PricewaterhouseCoopers.

-The Dominion Post (NZ), 29 January 2011

Smith Hare and Christison Ltd, Mobil garage Carterton - WARNING:

2011-01-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

"Bobster the Mobil Man" (Facebook),
Chief Thief at Smith Hare & Christison.

Having spent $36 just on train fares yesterday to get to Wellington for the hearing of the corruptly laid charges (23.11.10), I went to the eftpos machine today at about 11:30 a.m. to withdraw some money and noted that the balance of my bank account was not what it should have been, so immediately rang my bank. They were able to tell me that a transaction withdrawing $60 had occured at local Mobil service station Smith Hare and Christianson at 8:49 a.m. this morning using my Eptpos card. I told the bank that I hadn't been anywhere near Smith Hare and Christianson at that time, and that there was no chance whatsoever that my card had been used there at that time because it had definitely been in my possession elsewhere.

I immediately went to Smith Hare and Christianson and asked to see the manager, told him what the bank had told me, and requested the CCTV camera footage for the time the transaction was carried out, only three hours previously. He told me he wasn't going to give it to me, or show it to anyone except the police. I asked for a pen and paper to write the request on, and a phone to call police, he told me to get lost, just like he did when I requested the footage of Gary McPhee assaulting me (according to the terms of the section of the act the police used on another occasion) at Smith Hare and Christianson.

Then I remembered the incident that occured a week or two ago when I went to Smith Hare and Christison and used my eftpos card. There were two young males iin Mobil uniforms behind the counter, and when I asked if I could get cash with my Cashpoint card, they looked slyly at each other, took my card out of my hand, then told me that the eftpos machine wasn't working, and then produced one of those old credit card machines which you put the card in. Then put the paper receipt on top of it and then slid the thing across the paper which imprints the card details onto the paper. I smelled a rat at the time, as I watched the staff members smirking at each other, but needed cash urgently to catch a train. As I thought about that incident I realised that the theft of the card details had occured during that transaction, a couple of weeks ago, and that a staff member had committed the theft by using those details at 8:49 this morning.

When I put this to the manager, he and the other staff laughed at me, ordered me to leave, and abused me. As I watched them closely, I realised that this has been going on there for a long time, there's certainly no shortage of naive and gullible people in the Wairarapa, and it was clearly obvious that the management and staff at Smith Hare and Christianson are all in this together. This became even more obvious when I asked for a pen and paper to make the request for the CCTV footage, and a formal complaint, in writing, and a phone to call the police, and the manager refused to provide either, and made it crystal clear with his mocking, laughing, arrogant and aggressive attitude that they all thought it was a real joke. They laughed even harder when I said I was going to report it to the local police, everyone knows how corrupt they are, and I bet they've been turning a blind eye to this particular little scam for years. I was then threatened and assaulted by the duty manager "Blaine" (according to his badge) and the junior staff.

This is the thief, his name's Bobby apparently, look at the smart alec, posing for the camera, when I went back to get a snap of him. He's a disgrace to his family, a disgrace to Mobil NZ and a disgrace to the Wairarapa and Carterton in particular. I intend to repost this every time I see him on duty at Smith Hare and Christison, until my $60 is returned and he is sacked or charged with theft (preferably both), he has a history of this apparently, and a real attitude, which is obvious from the photo.

On the way to report the matter to the police, a woman in a big silver four wheel drive RV opened her car door without looking on the main street, causing me to fall off my bike and graze my knee and hands as I had to swerve to avoid hitting the door. Then the stupid woman denied it. I was wearing a bright red t shirt and wasn't hard to spot, I was watching her intently at the time, as I watch all parked cars for this very reason, and I saw her head clearly and she did NOT look, which is the reason I had time to swerve, because I knew she was going to do it, and tried to brake and avoid it. The average driver pulls into the kerb, glances in the mirror as they undo their seat belt and then swings the door wide open without another thought. I heard some bystander say "where's your bike helmet" - I hear it every day as I ride round Carterton from all the pathetic small minded idiot people who feel moved to shout it out at me ad infinitum. The same people who swing their car doors wide open without a second thought, on a daily basis. Like I've said before, when motorcyclists have to wear high visibility vests I might wear a cycle helmet. I have a doctors letter explaining why I should be exempted. High visibility vests actually PREVENT accidents, whereas a cycle helmet is NO USE WHATSOEVER until AFTER an accident has occurred. Simple common sense. Funny how the gutless wonders of the Wairarapa like to shout abuse at me regarding whether or not I wear a helmet on my push bike, but are too cowardly to say anything about big fat Gary McPhee smashing down the door of innocent people and smashing them over the head with a weapon. Says everything about the cowardly, ignorant, thieving bullies who inhabit the Wairarapa.

When I confronted 'Blaine' and 'Bobby', their reaction made it obvious that they do this regularly. They laughed when I asked for a phone to call police, abusing and threatening me, 'Bobby' went outside and started wheeling my bike up the road, and Blaine called the police and told them I was trespassing. Local corrupt police refused to take my complaint and threatened to arrest me for trespass.

The matter is still under investigation. In the mean time, I'd go to another garage, or if you must go to Smith Hare and Christison Mobil "service" station in Carterton, make sure this little thief doesn't "serve " you.

NZ's mighty military Power Point:

2011-01-25T03:00:00.004-08:00

Today, in the newspaper, was the following article:

New Zealand's military has received a dubious new honour - Britain's Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox suspects they have set a new world record for Microsoft Power Point presentations before lunch.

Fox, who is accompanying British Foreign Secretary William Hague to New Zealand, told reporters this afternoon that he was impressed with the effort the New Zealand military had made to highlight their work.

"I am sure we might be breaking a world record for Power Points before lunch," he said.

Extremely dubious indeed. Powerpoint presentations can be dodgy at the best of times, and I've seen many real shockers, this quote just says it all really.

Powerpoint presentations are the favourite method of engaging with the public of such great politicians as Georgina Beyer and Gary McPhee, because it's one way communication. Smoke and mirrors stuff that is so often an insult to the intelligence. It's a crude way of presenting temporary information in a controlled, manipulative manner. In the majority of Powerpoint presentations I've seen, if the information were printed and distributed to the audience it would be immediately recognised for the rubbish and propaganda it is.

Idiots in Carterton swallowed hook line and sinker the Powerpoint presentations of Gary McPhee and Georgina Beyer (Beyer the Liar, disgraced ex-MP, forced to resign over these matters) regarding the matter of the Carterton Community Centre/Event Centre.

Transparency in New Zealand puts our money where our mouth is, putting information and indisputable evidence on the internet for all to see whenever they like, not producing a rabbit out of a hat and then - poof - making it disappear again. Powerpoint is only of use when supported by other more permanent information references.

And the photo accompanying the original article is just classic:

The photo is by John Selkirk, and titled: "TOUR OF DUTY: Britain's Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox, right, views the engraving at the Auckland war memorial after a wreath laying as less formal locals look on."

After coming from a freezing UK winter he has to get about in that big black jacket in the blazing heat (his poor wife back home is in bed with the flu).

Poor man, they should have taken him for a ride in a Skyhawk or something.

CASPER Suicide Prevention Strategy:

2011-01-21T16:21:00.004-08:00

Friends of Caring Communities, Transparency NZ, Let's Get Growing NZ and the Circle of Love like CASPER's Suicide Prevention Strategy better than any other we've seen. It identifies strongly with our own vision of holistic community health. Here is a link to the Strategy and some excerpts reprinted:

Suicide Prevention Strategy
September 2011 2
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................3
Purpose ...................................................................................................................................................3
Suicide Rates in NZ..................................................................................................................................4
CASPER Philosophy and Approach..........................................................................................................6
The Causes of Suicide..............................................................................................................................7
A Unifying Theory of Suicide.................................................................................................................14
Current Approach to Suicide.................................................................................................................18
A New Approach to Suicide ..................................................................................................................23
Overview of the Strategy ......................................................................................................................26
Focus Area 1 – Understanding ..............................................................................................................26
Focus Area 2– Well-being .....................................................................................................................28
Focus Area 3 – Safety............................................................................................................................31
Focus Area 3 – Belonging......................................................................................................................33
Focus Area 4 – Contributing..................................................................................................................38
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................42
Appendix One....................................................................................................................................43
References ............................................................................................................................................443

Introduction:
New Zealand suicide statistics are grim. They tell us that 11 people die from suicide every week, that 10% of the deaths of New Zealand 10-14 year olds are suicides and that we have rates of youth suicide that are not only the highest in the developed world but double those of the United States and Australia and five times those of the UK.

As bad as these statistics are, we know that they are likely to under-represent the true prevalence of suicide, particularly in Maori and Pacific populations.

No one who has experienced the suicide death of a loved one and who watches as the toll continues to rise, will ever concur with government that good progress is being made in addressing suicide in New Zealand and that current strategies are effective.

Suicide is, in the majority of cases, a preventable form of death. Sadly, New Zealand government has implemented policies which have been shown through robust research to actually increase, rather than decrease suicide rates.

CASPER’s strategy sets out an alternative to current suicide prevention policy and practice. It is based on New Zealand and international evidence on effective suicide prevention. It espouses a sociological approach to suicide prevention and the relocation of suicide prevention from mental health settings back to families and communities.

It is produced by families who have lost loved ones to suicide. It honours their lives and ensures their legacy survives their deaths.

Purpose:
In recent years the New Zealand government and government funded organisations have produced a mountain of paper dedicated to the prevention of suicide. Strategies, action plans, reports, programmes and commentaries have been produced at the cost of millions of dollars and none have produced the desired result of reducing New Zealand’s status as the world leader in self-inflicted deaths of children and youth.

Albert Einstein said “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” We believe this concept goes to the heart of why New Zealand’s approach to suicide prevention has failed so miserably. Put simply, we have done little more than package and repackage programmes underpinned by a flawed understanding of suicide. It is time to review our thinking and step outside the mind-set which has produced the strategies of the past few decades. It is time to admit that this thinking has led us down a path that research shows actually increases, rather than decreases suicide rates and to view suicide from a truly evidence based perspective – one which is not tainted by the agendas of those who accrue power, status and wealth from the advancement of a mental health approach to suicide prevention. It is time to develop a new model which calls on diverse perspectives from a range of disciplines, groups and individuals rather than being restricted to the same small group of people with the same narrow
perspective which has characterised this work for the past twenty years .

We know that given a particular set of circumstances all New Zealanders are at risk of suicide. We offer this strategy in the hope it will prevent others from experiencing the destruction of their lives and that our loved ones, and we as their families, have experienced. Suicide prevention has been captured by ‘experts’ and the health sector. This strategy returns the role of protecting individuals and groups from suicide to families and communities and provides a tool for them to successfully fulfil that role.

Suicide Rates in NZ:
In 2009 the OECD released figures showing New Zealand had the highest rate of youth suicide amongst its member countries. The rates shown were substantially higher than those for countries with which New Zealand traditionally compares itself – twice the rate of the US and Australia and five times the rate of the UK.

Figures for 2011 released by the Chief Coroner show an increase in suicides for those aged 10-14 over the past four years of 300% and increases of 125% for prisoners and retired persons, 35% for students and 12% for the unemployed. Suicide numbers fell significantly for those who are employed (14%) and who perform household duties (22%).

The figures show that girls outnumber boys in suicide deaths in the 10-14 year age group and that overall the female suicide rate increases are steeper than those for males.

While hanging remains the most common method of suicide in New Zealand accounting for 55% of all suicides, poisoning with prescription drugs is the second most common method of self-inflicted death and has increased by 33% over the past four years.

The most common age for suicide in the Maori and Pacific communities is 15-19 years and suicide in these communities is very rare over the age of 60 years. By contrast, Pakeha New Zealanders are more likely to die from suicide in their middle years and suicide amongst older people occurs at very high rates. The Maori suicide rate increased by 16.1% between 2007/08 and 2010/11.

Significant trends and patterns in suicide in New Zealand are masked by the practice of reporting of aggregate data and performing little analysis on sub-populations within New Zealand. New Zealand’s suicide rates in comparison to those of other countries are often downplayed with claims that they do not represent a true picture due to differences in reporting between countries. Researchers have found however that “factors such as differences in the ascertainment and reporting of deaths by suicide are unlikely to account for all these observed differences.”

They have also found that reported rates of Maori suicide are likely to be significantly lower than the actual
rate of deaths with New Zealand researchers finding “The under-reporting of indigenous peoples’ suicides appears to be a universal problem.”
2
Recent changes to the Coroners Act are likely to have reduced our accuracy in reporting suicide. Prior to 2006 it was compulsory to conduct an inquest into all suspected suicides. Change to legislation removed this requirement and New Zealand families are now actively discouraged from going to inquest. Decisions made by Coroners on the papers, without the benefit of proper investigation and testing of evidence, result in lower levels of accuracy in determining whether a death was a suicide. Variation in practice between Coroners in requiring evidence of intent and the fact that the Act refers to self-inflicted deaths rather than suicide, contribute to this lack of consistency.

The release annually of different suicide figures by the Chief Coroner and the Ministry of Health adds
further doubt to the accuracy of New Zealand suicide data.

CASPER Philosophy and Approach
CASPER practice is based on the following primary beliefs:
 Suicide prevention will occur within families and communities rather than mental health
clinics or government offices

 All suicide prevention practice should operate from the ‘first do no harm’ principle In seeking to understand and prevent suicide, CASPER takes much from the discipline of positive psychology- the study of human strengths and virtues. We conceptualise effective suicide prevention as the identification of optimal states and promotion of strengths and abilities rather than the identification and correction of pathologies or deficits.

We see suicide prevention as broader than a programme or set of activities but something which should be embedded in a way of thinking and behaving in the lives of individuals, families, communities and society. Rather than being confined to emergency rooms, health clinics or government department work programmes suicide prevention should be manifested in the way we interact with others and manage our homes, businesses and organisations in our daily lives. Hugging a child is suicide prevention. Visiting a neighbour is suicide prevention. Creating a job, cooking a shared meal and starting a community group are all suicide prevention activities. If we each took opportunities to connect with others, to create a sense of belonging and hope, provided everyone with opportunities to participate and showed others we value their contribution, we
would create an environment where the urge to live prevailed over the desire to die.

The Causes of Suicide:
Throughout history suicide has been a subject of study within a diverse range of disciplines. While these disciplines have in the past competed for dominance, it is clear that in the past few decades psychiatry has achieved this. So dominant is the discourse of psychiatry in fact, that many both within and outside of the mental health field are unaware that other theories of suicide and approaches to suicide prevention even exist.
Psychiatry promotes what is often referred to as a mental health model of suicide and suicide prevention but is more accurately described as a mental illness model. Its premise is that suicide is caused by mental illness and that the prevention of suicide involves the detection and treatment of mental disorders. Despite acknowledging that suicide is a behaviour, not an illness, the architects of the New Zealand Suicide Prevention strategy have ensured suicide prevention in this country employs a completely medical model.

In recent years it has promoted depression, anxiety, conduct disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder as the key causes of suicide. These ‘disorders’ are what the lay person would call sadness, worry, misbehaviour and fear and correctly identify as normal human moods and behaviours. It promotes detaining people against their will, using force, restraints and seclusion and prescribing drugs known to double the risk of suicide, to prevent suicide in people who are distressed or have been made suicidal by the use of these drugs.

In New Zealand, the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is used to define mental disorder. Known as the ‘bible’ of psychiatry, it lists hundreds of psychiatric disorders and their
symptoms in a series of checklists.

The presence of the symptoms listed in the DSM cannot be established through blood tests or other biological tests but are ruled present or absent based on the opinion of a mental health worker. These symptoms are highly subjective and often contradictory as the following list of indicators demonstrates:
 Feels sad most of the day nearly every day for two weeks, decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day, insomnia or hypersomnia (Major Depressive Disorder)
 Often talks excessively, is often "on the go" or often acts as if "driven by a motor", often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat, often has trouble organizing activities (ADHD)
 Often deliberately annoys people, often spiteful or vindictive, often touchy or easily annoyed by others (Oppositional Defiance Disorder)

As the disorders listed in the DSM are unable to be verified through objective testing, they are voted in and out of the manual by popular vote amongst psychiatrists. Former disorders which have been voted out include
 Children running away from home for a day or more without permission
 Feelings of rejection associated with forced retirement and manifested by social withdrawal.
 Fear associated with military combat and manifested by trembling, running and hiding.
 Social maladjustment of individuals thrown into an unfamiliar culture (culture shock) or into a conflict arising from divided loyalties to two cultures.
 grief reaction in infants associated with separation from patient's mother, manifested by crying spells, loss of appetite and severe social withdrawal.
 Giving incorrect but approximate answers to questions associated with being given a death sentence.
 Homosexuality
Disorders being considered for inclusion in the next edition of the DSM due for publication in 2013 include
 Paraphilic coercive disorder (rape)
 Gender Identity Disorder in Children (children dressing up in clothes and playing with toys generally worn by the opposite gender)
 Attenuated psychosis disorder (those who may be at risk of developing a disorder later in life).

The DSM has received much criticism for its lack of evidence base and its propensity to significantly over-diagnose mental disorder, its lack of validity and failure to consider the possibility of environmental causes of human distress by locating problems exclusively within the individual. The British Psychological Society has been particularly critical of the DSM V stating “The Society is concerned that clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences which demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.

In New Zealand, Professor Mulder of Otago University raises the concern that “While the general introduction to DSM-IV concedes that all its illness definitions are human constructions (p. xxxi), most mental health workers view depression as a specific mental illness, a natural entity rather than an arbitrary construction.”

Psychiatrist William Glasser explains the unscientific nature of applying the medical model to emotional distress stating "...for over a century the entire mental health delivery system has been based on what is called the medical model. This is an illness model that recognizes symptoms, looks for pathology to support those symptoms, but does not diagnose disease unless supportive pathology is found. But when this model is used to diagnose a mental illness such as those described in the DSM-IV, one of the basic tenets of the medical model is completely ignored. In those instances, mental illness is diagnosed from symptoms alone and no supportive pathology is required. This misuse of the medical model has led to the present ever-increasing assortment of diagnoses and treatments, none of which even comes close to meeting the requirements of medical science".

The primary reason for the dominance of the mental health model of suicide and suicide prevention are the links that have been drawn between mental disorder and suicide, the notion of depression as a leading cause of suicide and claims that mental health treatment prevents suicide.

In respect of the links between suicide and mental illness, the NZ Ministry of Health consistently claims that 70-90% of those who die from suicide have diagnosable mental disorders. What is not widely understood is that data reliably shows that only around 30% of those who die from suicide had a diagnosis of a mental illness at the time of their death and that higher figures are based on mental health assessments conducted on dead people, using an often criticised technique known as the psychological autopsy. While New Zealand conducts completely inadequate physical autopsies on those who die from suicide, often failing to test for drugs known to induce suicide, it focuses much effort on questioning family and friends of those who die to find any evidence of a mental disorder even where it is clear none exists. Most who quote the figure of 90% in relation to mental disorders in suicide victims, do not understand that the mental disorders being identified include not only feeling sad for a period of two weeks (depression), but binge drinking (substance abuse disorder), breaking the law (conduct disorder), being a victim (post-traumatic stress disorder), being worried (anxiety disorder) and a host of other normal human moods, behaviours and experiences that are identified after death from the reports of friends and family. Rather than being the primary and proven cause of suicide, the World Health Organisation (WHO) states that no causal relationship between depression and suicide has been established.

In a recent study of 108,664 respondents from 21 countries around the world, the WHO found that a diagnosis of major depression was not useful in predicting which people with suicide thoughts would go on to
make suicide plans or attempts, and is not associated with unplanned or impulsive suicide.

Professor Mulder of Otago University who has studied the prevalence of depression in suicide attempters dismisses the notion of an ‘epidemic’ of depression stating that the reasons for the increased prevalence of DSM depression in some populations are likely to include classification bias, financial incentives, and social and cultural factors. It seems unlikely the “epidemic” is solely or even largely related to an increase in a mental illness called depression. This conclusion leads to the question of whether individuals with
depressive symptoms are best served by a medical solution.

Hopelessness
Hopelessness has been defined as a group of negative expectations concerning oneself and one's future life (Beck, Weissman, Lester, & Trexler, 1974; Scotland, 1969). It is distinguished from depression in that it is more a marker of negative orientation to the future, rather than current failures to cope which characterise depression.

Numerous studies have found that hopelessness is a stronger predictor of suicidality than either depression or substance abuse (Beck et al 1975; Wetzel, 1976; Drake & Cotton 1986; Chochinov, 1997; Kazdin et al 1983; Kuo, et al, 2004) and that once hopelessness is taken out of the equation, depression does not predict suicidal intent at all (Wetzel et al 1980; Drake & Cotton 1986; Kazdin et al 1983). Studies of both adults and children have found that the only reason depression is associated with suicidality is because it includes a measure of hopelessness (Kazdin 1983).

A long term study of the role of hopelessness in suicide followed a community sample of more than 3,000 participants rather than a small, hand-picked sample from a clinical trial. It found that persons who expressed hopelessness in 1981 were 11.2 times as likely to have completed suicide over the 13-year follow-up interval and that while hopelessness was strongly associated with death by suicide “depression and substance abuse/dependence were not significantly associated with completed suicide.”

Hopelessness in the face of a real inability to change circumstances and events is not a mental disorder, it is a reality for marginalised populations in New Zealand. Evidence not surprisingly shows that hopelessness is not effectively treated by psychiatric drugs and that psychiatric drugs do not prevent suicide (Baldaressini et al, 2007; Sernyak et al, 2001).

Environmental Factors
Rather than locating the cause of suicide in individual biological or psychological deficits, the sociological model of suicide prevention recognises the role and impact the social environment plays in suicidal thinking and behaviour.

It acknowledges the connectedness of individuals to families, communities and society and the effect that social, political and economic factors have on well-being. It recognises the impact of marginalisation, disconnection, lack of opportunities to participate and influence the future have on groups and the individuals within them and how these factors may lead to suicide.

The sociological approach suggests that given a certain set of adverse circumstances and events any one of us could contemplate or complete suicide. It focuses attention not on assessing individual risk or resilience against checklists of moods and behaviours, but on monitoring and influencing environments to optimise their sustaining of life.

Numerous studies have shown the strong role that adverse life events and circumstances play in completed suicide. Relationship break down, work and school stress, financial pressures, bullying and a host of other factors have been identified as features of the environment in which individuals make the choice to end their lives. The mental health model conceptualises environmental factors merely as ‘triggers’ and claims that weakness in an individual’s biology or personality is the primary cause of their suicide. It theorises that the reason the majority of individuals who face these adverse life events or circumstances do not end their lives is that unlike those who do, they do not have mental illnesses and personality disorders that exacerbate their risk and lower their resilience. Where evidence of mental disorder in individual cases is not present, and therefore refutes this theory, as is the case in the majority of suicide deaths, an undiagnosed mental illness is magically discovered by means of a psychological autopsy.

The social model sees differential responses to events and circumstances not as pathology but as a marker of human diversity and a reflection of the extent to which the affected individual experiences their ability to tolerate or alter their environment and to achieve a sense of belonging and full participation.

Cultural Alienation
Suicide as a legacy of colonisation and loss of identity is well established in contemporary research on indigenous suicide internationally (Wexler, 2006; Rochford & Signal, 2009; Lawson-Te Aho & Liu, 2010.) Maori researcher Keri Lawson Te Aho constructs Maori suicide as a soul-wounding which results from colonisation and creates “a state of mind characterized as kahupo meaning loss of hope, meaning, and purpose, and an enduring sense of despair.”

Lawson Te-Aho describes this phenomenon as bearing “the symptoms of chronic dissociation or separation of the physical from the spiritual and vice-versa—the psychological separation of the individual from the collective.” According to Lawson-Te Aho, a strong and intact set of cultural identities based on time-honoured cultural practices with intact kinship serves to insulate and protect Maori youth from the legacy of
colonization and historical trauma.” Research on indigenous suicide has found clear evidence for a strong association between lack of local community control and high suicide rates.

A study conducted this year found that for Maori youth “feeling uncomfortable in Pākehā social surroundings” was a risk factor for suicide attempts finding. The authors consider this may result from Māori young people’s perceptions and experiences of racism and discrimination in Pākehā social surroundings, linking it with a body of research which identify perceptions of racism and discrimination as a risk factor for suicide amongst indigenous communities.

International research shows that suicide rates within ethnic groups appear to be impacted by the
size of the ethnic community in which they occur, suggesting that the larger the population of a
particular ethnic group, the greater the presence of the cultural supports and networks that protect
against suicide.

Analysis of the data on suicide rates amongst minority ethnic groups find that
factors which contribute to their suicide include marginalisation, disintegration of traditional social
support networks and cultural values, socioeconomic deprivation, and alcohol misuse.

Youth Disengagement
New Zealand has the highest rate of youth suicide in the OECD. Maori and males are disproportionately affected while female and Pasifika youth are populations showing worryingly steep upward trends.   A number of factors contribute to youth in New Zealand experiencing social disconnection and barriers to participation that may increase their suicide risk. These include school exclusion, unemployment and lack of opportunities to participate in communities and political processes. In 2008, 1,364 students were excluded from schools in New Zealand.

Data shows that the average age at exclusion from school is 13.5 years, but that children as young as six years old are excluded.

In her research on New Zealand school exclusions, Freeman (2011) reports that 20% of excluded children do not continue with any schooling and that Maori were 63% more likely to be excluded and Pacific students 32% more likely than non-Mäori/non-Pacific students and that 61% of excluded students are from the poorest areas in NZ.

It has recently been reported that the rate of standdowns among five-year-olds has risen from 0.9 in 1000 pupils in 2006 to 1.2 in 1000 pupils in 2010.   The rate of suspensions among six-year-olds has remained at 0.3 in 1000 pupils.

Freeman reports that the majority of exclusions are for ‘disobedience’ rather than violence and that there is no evidence the rate of exclusion is declining. She states that “Exclusion from school can be the first step towards isolation from society” and presents evidence that exclusion causes family disruption, feelings of rejection, marginalisation and exclusion from society and a chance of becoming homeless which is 90 times that of students who achieve a school qualification.

The Human Rights Commission has claimed youth unemployment is a threat to social cohesion. Recently released figures from the Department of Labour show there are 62,300 young people in New Zealand who are not in training or in work. New Zealand researchers regularly deny or minimise the links between unemployment and suicide.

An article in the New Zealand medical journal presented data showing those experiencing unemployment had odds of subsequent suicide that were over 2.5 times higher than for those employed and that this finding had been found in two further New Zealand studies.

A large evidence base around the world links unemployment and suicide with the increased suicide rates among the unemployed being generally attributed to the feelings of worthlessness and being unwanted that comes with unemployment although, somewhat predictably, in New Zealand government has been encouraged to ignore this data in reports that those unemployed who die from suicide do so because of mental illness rather than their employment status.

Research has found however that even in people with no record of serious mental illness
unemployment produces an increased risk of suicide of around 70%.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/5482314/Naughty-new-entrants-kicked-out-of-school

2000/16 http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/B6BC8204-9A36-4022-879FA6B4710FB8CC/450/0016Suicide1.pdf

OECD research has shown that social support during periods of unemployment is associated with lower suicide rates in wealthy nations such as New Zealand.

The authors explain that “if everybody is poor, losing a job for a while is not as much of a stigma as losing a job where everybody else is very successful.” They comment that this reflects the ‘happiness literature’, where happiness is affected more by satisfaction with income in comparison with the income of others, than by absolute income.

The OECD report shows female labour participation and lower fertility rates are correlated with increases in both male and female suicide rates. They suggest that this is because they decrease family and social ties which protect against suicide.

The Ministry of Justice report that over half of the people who should be enrolled to vote but are not, are under the age of 25. Voter turnout rates for young voters and Māori in particular are significantly below the national average.

There has been much criticism of young people’s failure to vote which is generally ascribed to apathy. The Ministry’s report showed that most of those who did not vote nevertheless believed voting was important. A British study indicated that trust and voter turnout are linked and that young people’s abstaining from voting is a reflection of lack of trust in the system and in politicians.

A Unifying Theory of Suicide:
Suicide is represented by experts as being a highly complex behaviour which is not easily explained or understood. The multitude of factors which have been shown to correlate with suicide including childhood sexual abuse, psychiatric illness, relative poverty, substance abuse and even temperature fluctuations are seen as testament to this complexity.

Einstein said however “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” It is possible that suicide is seen as highly complex primarily because the mechanism that explains it has not yet been uncovered, not because it is more complex than other human behaviours. Maintaining suicide as a complex issue, able to be understood and addressed only by experts, upholds the power those experts have and the value placed on their skills. Along with legislation and policy restrictions on ‘non-experts’ such as families and communities speaking about their experience of suicide, it cements the status, power and financial position of a small minority of ‘suicidologists’, researchers and psychiatrists as the only people whose perspective on suicide is
valid. Recently however, research on suicide has focused on the development of a unifying theory of
suicide. The Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS) of suicide is a promising theory which
attempts to provide a framework, not only for understanding suicide but for developing effective interventions. IPTS is a theory for which good evidence of validity is accumulating (Van Orden et al, 2008; Connor et al 2007; Van Orden et al 2006; Joiner, 2002). It was developed as an over-arching theory of suicide by Professor Thomas Joiner. Professor Joiner lost his father to suicide in 1990 and brings both his research skills and his personal experience of suicide to his work.

Interpersonal Psychological Theory suggests that suicide requires both the desire to die and the fearlessness to kill oneself and can be understood as the result of the convergence of three factors
1. thwarted belongingness
2. perceived burdensomeness,
3. an acquired capability for suicide

The first two factors represent a sense of disconnection and of failing to make a valued contribution which prompts the desire to die, while the last represents the ability to overcome the fear of pain and death required to take one’s life. Individuals are at risk of suicide when they want to die and are capable of killing themselves. The relative rarity of death by suicide is explained by the notion that only a very small group of individuals will experience all three necessary conditions concurrently.

The desire to die:
Joiner’s theory is that the desire to die arises from two factors – thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. He theorises that an individual’s unmet need for belonging and connectedness often expressed a feeling of disconnection from others, an absence of mutually caring relationships and a sense of neither being a support for others or being supported, in combination with a sense of being a burden on others by making things worse for them or not contributing the desire for death emerges.

Thwarted belonging arises from lack of social connectedness when individuals experience of marginalisation, cultural alienation, rejection, abandonment and isolation while the sense of being a burden may arise from interpersonal conflict, unemployment, physical illness or disability. This theory provides the framework to explain the role of the range of factors which have been demonstrated to have associations with suicide – abuse, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, work and school stress, hopelessness etc as factors that contribute to thwarted belonging and a sense that one’s death has more value than one’s life.

Acquired Capability:
IPTS acknowledges that the desire to die and suicidal thoughts are present in many who do not take their lives and that the desire to die by suicide is not sufficient for completed suicide to occur. This is because despite notions that suicide is ‘an easy way out or ‘cowardly’, dying by suicide is not in fact an easy thing to do. It involves overcoming both the instincts to self-preservation and avoidance of pain. As such, Joiner theorises that for suicide to occur in the face of desire to die, a third factor must be present – that of acquired capability or fearlessness.

The theory suggests that acquiring the capability to kill yourself requires reduced fear of death and increased tolerance of physical pain. These can be achieved through repeated exposure to physically painful and/or fear-inducing experiences. The level of fear associated with an initial parachute jump for example, reduces as more jumps are undertaken. The IPTS theory suggests that childhood maltreatment, domestic violence, combat exposure, impulsivity, risk taking behaviours, repeated medical procedures and previous suicide attempts amongst an array of other experiences, may increase the risk of lethal suicidal behaviour because they prompt responses which include desensitisation to fear and pain.

It is also theorised that while acquired capability often develops over a period of time and repeated exposures, alcohol and other drugs with their ability to induce mania or psychosis, increase impulsivity and reduce natural inhibitions can facilitate an instance crossing of the threshold to acquired capability.

This theory helps explain many of the questions which arise from the current literature on suicide. The requirement for simultaneous convergence of desire to die and acquisition of capability, explains why the majority of those who experience adverse events or circumstances do not complete suicide. The socialisation of men to be less sensitive to fear and pain and the socialisation of women to value belonging and social connectedness explains the relative rates of completed suicide and suicide attempts between genders.
Acquired capability explains why the majority of individuals who attempt suicide will not eventually die by suicide and why up to half of those who die by suicide do so on their first attempt. It links disparate factors such as hopelessness, loss of romantic relationships, alcohol, financial pressures and interpersonal conflict under the umbrella of factors that contribute to the desire to die – thwarted belongingness and perceived burden and sexual abuse, illegal and prescription drugs, and risk taking behaviours under the umbrella of acquired capability.

IPTS explains why a history of a past suicide attempt is found in the literature to be one of the strongest and most reliable predictors of suicidal behaviour given its ability to increase tolerance to pain and fear. It also explains why a history of self-harm is not necessary for suicide given the capability for fearlessness to be acquired through behaviours other than suicide attempts. It explains the link between impulsivity and suicide given impulsive individuals are more likely to engage in behaviours that are painful and provocative and build acquired capability.

Current Approach to Suicide:
The New Zealand Director General of Mental Health reports that those who have had contact with mental health services in the year prior to their deaths are at 25 times higher risk of suicide than those who have had no contact in the past 12 months.

Rather than having serious mental illnesses, he reports that only 18% of those who died by suicide under the recent care of mental health services had a diagnosis of depression, 11% of schizophrenia and 9% bi-polar disorder while by far the largest group comprising 40% had no specific diagnosis.

The Ministry of Health reports that 46.6% of the New Zealand population and more than half of all Maori experience mental illness during their lifetime and that 37% have more than one mental disorder. Non-service users as defined by the Director General are not those without ‘mental disorders’ but those who have not engaged with services in the 12 months before their deaths.

The Ministry of Health and its advisers claim that almost all of those who die from suicide have mental disorders. The presence of a mental disorder therefore is, in the view of the Ministry, common to all those who die. The table above however shows clearly the hugely elevated rate of suicide amongst those who have contact with mental health services and those who do not and that this effect is increasing. While the rate of suicide in those who do not engage with services halved, the rate of those who received services increased by two thirds.

Arguments that the population engaged with mental health services are more ill or have more serious illnesses than the general population, and that this accounts for their increased suicide risk, are not supported by any of the available evidence. The recommendations of the Ministry of Health, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser and others that suicide prevention requires IPTS helps explain how involvement in the mental health system increases suicide risk by undermining belonging, creating a sense of burdensomeness and assisting consumers to acquire the capability for suicide.

Belonging & Burdensomeness:
Diagnostic labelling constructs individuals as separate and different from others and thwarts a sense of belonging. It positions distressed people as ill and frequently leads to welfare dependence and reduced ability to contribute to families, communities and workplaces. Psychoactive medications, the use of restraints and coerced ‘care’ facilitate the acquisition of tolerance to pain and fear and therefore the ability to end one’s life.

A study conducted this year found that when people are confronted with a general label of mental illness, in the absence of other information, their default response is to accord the targeted individual with lowered human status. In other words, the mere label of chronic mental illness triggers dehumanizing responses.”

New Zealand based research undertaken by the Mental Health Foundation shows that that the process of being assigned a diagnosis leads people to negative thoughts about themselves and their life potential and to becoming socially isolated. It showed that perception of the negative impact a diagnosis is likely to have on their life chances and ongoing well-being can prompt suicidality.   Research participants identified involvement in the mental health system and the experience of being labelled as mentally ill as prompting suicidalilty.

Evidence shows that involvement in the mental health system undermines people’s ability to participate, fulfil their family, workplace and community responsibilities and creates distance between consumers and their families. Evidence of this is found in a recent research project undertaken by the mental health foundation which found that discrimination and/or negative treatment from mental health professionals disempowers families and leads to exclusion of the family member using mental health services and undermines family functioning.

While the Privacy Act is clear that personal information may be shared where disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent the life or health of any individual, medical professionals and mental health workers persist in withholding information from families that their loved one has planned their suicide. New Zealand research shows that 71% of mentoring agencies have no contact with the families of the children they mentor. Such dismissal of the role of families in suicide prevention increases the isolation of service users and their risk of suicide.

The Cabinet appointed Welfare Working Group reports that in December 2009, 41% of people
receiving a Sickness Benefit and 29% of people receiving an Invalid’s Benefit had psychological or
psychiatric conditions listed as their first condition.

Those dependent on welfare and labelled ill or disabled often perceive themselves, and are perceived by others, as a burden on their families, communities and society. Low incomes and the discrimination experienced by those labelled mentally ill are barriers to full participation.

Acquired Capability:
IPTS posits that repeated painful experiences and the use of mind altering substances are antecedents to acquiring fearlessness in the face of pain and death. Legislation and practice in New Zealand allows the mental health system to use forced incarceration, restraints, solitary confinement and drugs which induce mania and psychosis to ‘treat’ those who suffer emotional distress.

The Director General of Mental Health reports that seclusion is used in every mental health unit in New Zealand and that men and Maori are those most likely to be secluded. The Director General does not report on the use of force and restraints against mental health services but it has been reported that police have use tasers against mental health service users at twice the rate they are used against criminals and disproportionately against Maori and Pacific people.

The most commonly prescribed antidepressants in New Zealand, SSRIs, have been proven to at least double the risk of suicidality when prescribed both for psychiatric and non-psychiatric illnesses and completed suicides have occurred in clinical trials of these drugs (Fergusson et al 2005).

Medsafe reports that Ritalin prescribed for ADD and ADHD can cause suicide while numerous clinical trials have shown that antidepressants more than double the risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour (Fergusson et al, 2005; Healy, 2004; March, 2007; Teicher et al 1990). The prescribing of antidepressants to children aged 0-4 years in New Zealand increased 143% between 2009 and 2010. Pharmac data shows 1.3 million antidepressants were prescribed to 485,000 New Zealander’s in 2010.

A study undertaken by the Ministry of Health in 2007 found that increases in antidepressant prescribing are directly responsible for increases in serious suicide attempts. New Zealand does not collect data on the presence of prescription drugs in the blood of those who die from suicide but research in other countries have shown the presence of these drugs in toxicology tests on up to 60% of victims (Larsson, 2010).

Forced, coercive and painful experiences within the mental health system combined with the use of drugs which reduce inhibitions induce mania and psychosis and increase impulsivity promotes acquired capability to perform the act of suicide.

Cultural Appropriateness:
Maori researchers have noted that while mainstream researchers included loss of culture and acculturative stress among the instrumental factors driving indigenous suicide this is still within a framework of individual deficits. Indigenous researchers worldwide have advocated a more holistic approach where the primary intervention to reduce indigenous suicide is not to target individual level risk factors, but the estoration of culture at the group level. An individual-level epidemiological approach addresses the symptoms of colonization, but does not address the root cause of the high rate of indigenous suicide, which according to indigenous researchers is the traumatic loss of culture over generations.

In addition to ignoring the key driver of Maori suicide, research undertaken by a senior lecturer at Auckland University, showed that 60.9% of New Zealand born, male psychiatrists – those most likely to be training and mentoring new staff and developing policy and practice, believe Maori are genetically predisposed to madness.

The author of this study expresses concern That such a simplistic and unsubstantiated application of the biological paradigm is held by a significant proportion of psychiatrists is a matter of grave concern. Is the belief that a particular race is more genetically predisposed to ‘madness’ than other races any less racist than the belief that a race is genetically/biologically inferior?

It should be noted that the biological paradigm in psychiatry has gained far greater dominance than it had at the time this research was published.The views held by senior psychiatrists of Maori inferiority and that culturally appropriate practice necessary or desirable.

The following comments made by study participants give an insight into the experiences of Maori mental health consumers and their families: "There is no need for taha Maori in training programs, as psychiatrists we are taught skills and we apply them in a cookbook manner. My effectiveness as a psychiatrist is not
dependent on the colour of my skin, my culture, nor my understanding of bloody Maori culture."

"This questionnaire is worthless! I mean the Maoris are always going on about the importance of land etc. etc. so why did they bloody well give it away. They went on about the importance of forestries and lakes and then that bloody idiot cut down the tree on One Tree Hill. I feel that they are getting the appropriate services they need, just not using them, medication is the answer – but they just don’t take their pills – if cannabis was prescribed, I’d bet they’d bloody take that."

The research showed that fewer than 5% of psychiatrists believed that an understanding of the importance of whanau and whakapapa’ and the concept of whanaungatanga’ were important to their work and only 1.6% thought an understanding of taha wairua was important.

Relocating Suicide Prevention:
If the desire and ability to die by suicide arise from social, familial and economic factors, if their reduction involves social connectedness, a sense of belonging, contributing and being valued why would we locate suicide prevention within a system that precipitates social isolation, marginalisation, and inability to contribute? And why would we do so when, in the name of treatment, this system provides drugs which are clinically proven to induce mania and psychosis which instantly confer the capability for self harm and suicide?

Why, would we not locate suicide prevention within families and communities? Why would we not educate families and communities on the importance of social connectedness and opportunity to participate to suicide prevention, assist them to implement strategies to promote a sense of belonging and being a valued contributor and to do so in culturally appropriate ways?

The mental health approach to suicide prevention has dominated the past two decades. It has reigned during the period of the most rapid rises in suicide New Zealand has ever seen. The introduction of mass psychiatric screening of four year olds in he B4 school check has translated into increases in antidepressant prescribing to this age group of 143% in a 12 month period.

Mental Health service delivery provides the perfect recipe for suicide as conceptualised by IPTS.

Risks to New Zealand in Continuing to Utilise a Mental Health Approach to Suicide Prevention:
Continued use of a mental health approach to suicide prevention in New Zealand exposes us to a number of risks. The first is the obvious risk that our citizens will continue to die at rates twice that of comparison countries. In addition to the risks to human life, there are significant legal, economic and political risks to continuing on our current path. The increase in mental health programme and spending in New Zealand has not improved the health of New Zealand citizens. The Ministry of Health continually reports increases in the prevalence of mental disorders amongst the general population and creates dependence on state assistance.
Suicide rates in Maori and women are increasing and the age of children dying by suicide is lowering.

Pathologising normal human distress as illness and encouraging individuals and groups to selfidentify as mentally ill through campaigns such as the National Depression Initiative has been identified as encouraging helplessness and reliance on the services of health professionals.

In 2011, Government expenditure on specialist mental health services will be around $1.4billion. Concurrent with increasing investment in the sector, prevalence of mental distress is increasing. The New Zealand Mental Health Survey indicated that about one in five adults in New Zealand experienced a mental illness in the past 12 months and that rates of mental illness have increased to the point that almost 50% of the population and over 50% of some population groups are deemed by government to be mentally ill.

The continued investment of millions of dollars into mental health services appears to increase the level of illness and disability in New Zealand. The 2011 budget announced an increase of $40million for mental health services and $80million for access to medicines over the next four years.

A recent study by the WHO across 76 countries found that general population suicide rates
increased in direct relation to increases in the percentage of the total health budget spent on
mental health.

It also found that:
 General population suicide rates in both genders were higher in countries with mental health legislation.
 general population suicides rates in both genders increased with increases in the number of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses.
 General population suicide rates in both genders were higher in countries where training in mental health for primary care professionals was available.

Suicide is conservatively estimated to cost $1.6billion per annum against the New Zealand economy. Continued investment of increased funding in a system which at best fails to deliver any reduction in suicide and at worst increases suicide deaths is irresponsible on both economic and humanitarian grounds.

The evidence that psychiatric treatment is at best ineffective and at worst potentially fatal is to be found in a number of reports from the New Zealand government including the report of the Director General of Mental Health that those under the care of Mental health services are 25 times more likely to die from suicide than the general population, research from the Ministry of Health which established that increases in antidepressant prescribing directly caused increases in hospitalisation for suicide attempts and the fact that despite huge investment in funding for mental health services, estimates of the prevalence of mental disorder in the general population continue to rise.

Political and Reputational Risks:
New Zealand’s reputation as a great place to raise a child is compromised by appallingly high youth suicide rates, our failure to take strong action to reduce those rates. Our brand as a ‘clean, green, natural’ country is threatened by our increasing medicating of our population, including babies and children.

A New Approach to Suicide:
The challenge for any strategy which encompasses the entire population is to ensure that it does not create inequities in outcomes, by treating diverse groups within the population as though they are the same. This strategy offers information for families and communities to use to develop a strategy and action plan that reflects their particular needs and preferred approach.

Both the Tikanga and IPTS approaches to suicide prevention emphasise belonging and connectedness. Patterns in current suicide rates show the greatest impact on those who are portrayed and perceived as burdens, rather than assets in our communities - adolescents, the aged, those who are unemployed, victims of crime and whose income and social status does not match those of their peers.

Increasingly, international suicide prevention strategies are recognising the need to move away from suicide prevention strategies based on a narrow psychiatric and individual deficit focus and moving to locate suicide prevention in communities. The aim of these strategies is to support communities to identify local priorities and build local capacity, with specific goals that include building the community’s knowledge base, engendering public will to support change and generate resources, and developing a social strategy to accomplish change. Communities are not limited to those based on geography, but include a range of groups based on shared age, ethnicity or interest.

The CASPER model envisages a partnership between government and communities and communities and families rather than suicide prevention being something government agencies engage in when families and communities ‘fail.’

The North American CDC Suicide Prevention Strategy, for example, describes its strategic direction for suicide prevention as being “to promote and enhance connectedness within and among individual persons, families, and communities.” It identifies as its particular focus interrupting the development of suicidal behaviour, rather than waiting until this behaviour emerges and providing crisis intervention.

Maori researchers have observed that the concepts of cultural alienation, loss of identity and soul wounding resulting from intergenerational impacts of colonisation do not lend themselves to empirical measurement and are therefore generally dismissed or given insufficient weight by Pakeha researchers.

IPTS provides a framework and empirical evidence to support the contribution these factors make to suicide.
A process of parallel development would see Maori and Pakeha forge their own pathways and employ their own tools towards the shared the goal of preventing suicide.

CASPER Suicide Prevention Model:
Lawson Te-Aho & Liu (2010) state that "… unless Maori are able to exercise control over the design of interventions for suicide prevention, the solution will continue to be improperly framed in Western psychological traditions as an individualized, deficit-focused problem inside the individual." This renders the
continuity of the trauma of colonization invisible, except in the form of statistics showing massively higher rates of indigenous suicide. Maori cannot look to Western psychological traditions (a colonizing/assimilationist tradition) for this kind of healing. Instead, a reclamation of the authority and resources to develop culture appropriate responses to suicide is needed. This means the reinstatement of tino rangatiratanga (tribal sovereignty) based on whakapapa (kinship) relations and functioning inside the framework of best cultural
practices. Pakeha researchers too, are recognising that individualised models cannot achieve effective suicide
prevention. They acknowledge that suicide rates are unlikely to decline as long if prevention efforts are confined to those at immediate risk of attempting suicide.

In addition to taking a broader, collective approach to suicide prevention, tailored strategies are necessary. A one size fits all strategy such as our current suicide prevention strategy, creates inequities by ignoring the disparities in the current status of minorities.

Our current strategy relies on aggregate data. This data renders sub-populations invisible. Because men and pakeha dominate the suicide statistics numerically, trends and issues for women, Maori, Pasific, youth, the aged, LGBT and other minority populations are masked. American research and models underpin much of our strategy and interventions and despite being often culturally inappropriate are imposed in the name of ‘evidence based practice.’

This strategy proposes collecting and making available good quality information to communities and empowering them to design interventions that work for their members. It proposes devolving power and resources to the groups to which individuals belong rather than locating suicide prevention in hospitals and clinics and government offices. It suggests the key role for government in suicide prevention is the provision of resources and the removal of current barriers to families and communities taking care of their own. It suggests government and the medical profession support families to care for their own rather than intervening directly in families in a way which has been shown to cause harm and increase suicidal risk.

Lawson Te-Aho claims that “The restoration of indigenous people’s rights is understood as an issue of the colonizing power relinquishing control over resources, language, and the cultural development of indigenous peoples. In Maori terms, suicide is associated with a state of mind characterized as kahupo (Kruger et al. 2004), meaning loss of hope, meaning, and purpose, and an enduring sense of despair.”

Families and communities are currently expressing a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in relation to suicide. It is necessary to restore their role and power in relation to keeping their members safe from the desire and capability for self-inflicted death. Increasingly, communities are reclaiming this role and power but in doing so, face threats and withdrawal of resources from the government.

Joiner points to the power of social cohesion and a shared sense of purpose as being protective against suicide. He notes that the practice of ‘pulling together’ saw fewer suicides during the 9/11 crisis in the United States. Other research has shown that wars can be associated with a decline in suicide rates, and attributes this to greater cohesion and shared sense of purpose in a society during wartime.

Suicide is one of the most preventable of all causes of death. The evidence is that prevention requires a sense of belonging and hope and opportunities to participate and contribute. The provision of these things sits naturally within families, whānau, communities and hapu, iwi, schools, churches, community and sports groups, not with government or the medical profession.

Overview of the Strategy:
The CASPER suicide prevention strategy has 4 Focus Areas:
1. Understanding
2. Wellbeing
3. Belonging
4. Contributing
The rationale for the focus on each area is provided along with an overview of the evidence for its links with suicide.

The purpose of the strategy is to provide a framework for families and communities to develop a set of suicide prevention initiatives that reflect their culture, needs, priorities and capabilities. Ideally this process would commence with an audit of strengths and development needs and of particular risks and gaps, protective factors and assets currently held. This would help focus the development of an action plan which addresses each of the listed focus areas.

The strategy provides some possible action items as a guide but these are neither exhaustive nor necessary. The best plan of action for each family and community will arise from the expert knowledge they have of their members, needs and resources.

Focus Area 1 – Understanding:
Rationale:
Knowledge is power. Families and communities must be provided with data which is current and accurate if they are to maximise their suicide prevention capability. Currently families and communities have little information about suicide and its prevention. Most are unaware of the prevalence of suicide within and across populations.

Information from government and government funded agencies is outdated and inaccurate. It conceptualises suicide as a rare occurrence that is a product of mental illness. These messages serve to create a sense for the majority of the population that suicide is not something that could affect their loved ones and provides a false sense of security for families in relation to their level of suicide risk. By contrast, messages about drink driving reinforce the idea that this form of death could occur in any family and that good preventative education and action is required to keep family members safe.

New Zealand families have a right to know that the numbers of suicide deaths far exceed road traffic deaths, that suicide occurs in children under 10 and people over 80 as well as in teens and those in middle age. They have a right to be fully informed about the risk of suicide so that they are able to take preventative action.

The New Zealand Coroner’s Court collects and reports minimal data. This includes age, ethnicity,
geographical location and method. It does not collect information on sexual orientation, the role of alcohol or prescription or illegal drugs, sexual abuse, domestic violence, bullying, physical health or a range of other data on the circumstances leading to suicide.

For the first time this year, the Chief Coroner released data on occupation and employment status of those who died from suicide. If this data is being collected, it is difficult to understand why the Ministry of Health has not reported it.

All possible information on suicide victims should be collected in every case, analysed for patterns and trends and made available to the public. New Zealand has a highly restrictive regime in relation to open discussion of suicide. In contrast to other jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand has increased restrictions on the media reporting of suicide rather than relaxed them. There is good evidence that reporting of suicide is an important community education measure that can prevent suicide. A recent submission to the Chief Coroner summarised the international evidence on open reporting of suicide and led the Court to advise it was persuaded that there are more benefits than harms arising from allowing unfettered reporting of suicide deaths.

The submission describes the harm done to families of suicide victims by current restrictions under s71 of the Coroner’s Act 2006, which include suicide risk.

The New Zealand Suicide Prevention Strategy has as one of its goals to “Expand the evidence about the rates, causes and effective interventions.” Recent changes to the Coroners Act which remove the requirement to conduct an inquest for suspected suicides undermines this goal. Increasingly families are discouraged from going to inquest and Coroners are failing to collect the robust data such a proceeding reveals.
- Submission available at http://www.casper.org.nz/node/132

Possible Actions:
 Development and implementation of a comprehensive regime of suicide data collection and reporting.
 Reintroduction of requirement for an inquest for all suspected suicides.
 Public education campaigns on the importance of belonging and community cohesion
 Provision of current, accurate information to family/whānau, community, marae, youth/rangitahi, schools/kura and other groups.

Focus Area 2– Well-being:
Physical Health
Rationale
Moods, behaviours and perceptions can all be influenced by physical health and illness. Ilness and disability can be significant barriers to participation and can lead to a sense of being a burden when they prevent people from fulfilling their roles in families and communities. Good physical health is strongly linked with good emotional health.

Research has found that physical illness is a strong risk factor for suicide, contributing to over 70% of suicides in those over the age of 60. A longitudinal study found the incidence rate of suicide death in participants with asthma was more than twice that of those without asthma. The U.S. National Comorbidity Survey found statistically significant increases in suicide risk for those with general medical conditions, with particularly high ratios in AIDS patients whose risk of suicide attempt is more than 100 times that of the general population. Those with cancer and asthma have been found to have a fourfold risk of attempting suicide compared to the general population.

Hernia carries an over ten-fold increase, ulcer over a threefold increase while stomach problems, autoimmune disease, kidney problems, heart attack, hypertension, arthritis, and lung disease have been associated with over a twofold increase in the odds of suicide attempt.

It is suggested that pain, physical disfigurement, disability, cognitive dysfunction and disinhibition associated with physical illness, may add to the risk of suicide. This is consistent with the theory of acquired capability.

Nutrition:
A significant body of evidence links a range of micronutrients with emotional health and optimal cognition (Kennedy et al 2010), positive mood (Benton 2003)and higher functioning ( Smith et al 2005). Research shows that a significant proportion of the population are deficient in specific vitamins and minerals as a result of high levels of consumption of fast food (Kennedy et al, 2008) and that certain foods may act as mood stabilisers (Silver et al 2002). Research has shown that adolescents in families who reported sometimes or often not having enough to eat had thoughts of death, desire to die and suicide attempts, independent of family
income.

Exercise:
Exercise has been shown to have a significant impact on mood and functioning (Kanning et al 2010) with evidence that participation in physical activity protects against sadness and suicidal behaviours (Brosnahan et al, 2004). Some research has found however that involvement in a team is the protective factor rather than physical activity itself (Taliaferro, 2008) while others have found that both physical activity and team participation play a part in reducing suicidal thinking and behaviour. Group exercise and exercise that is part of team sport has been shown to have the greatest health benefits as a result of combining the benefits of exercise on physical and emotional health and the benefits of belongingness and social cohesion.

Drugs:
A large number of studies have shown that a range of drugs are causally linked with suicide. In the United States and elsewhere in the world, antidepressants carry warnings of their potential to induce suicidality as a result of clinical trials showing they at least double the risk of suicide in those who use them.

A study conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2007 found that increases in antidepressant prescribing in New Zealand are the direct cause of increases in hospitalisation for medically serious suicide attempts. Alcohol has also shown to be linked to suicide attempts.

Studies show that like other drugs, nicotine use is strongly linked with suicidal behaviour.

Possible Actions:
 Ensure access to preventative health programmes and medical care for all members of all communities
 Promote team sport as a suicide prevention activity and aim for most young people to be involved some form of physical activity.
 Stop the unnecessary prescribing of suicide-inducing prescription drugs through effective regulation, public and GP education.
 Stop marketing alcohol to youth and raise the price point to reduce availability.
 Promote community gardens, farmers markets, and other cooperative programmes to provide access to affordable nutritious food.
 Encourage community elders to teach young families to provide nutritious meals on restricted budgets.

Focus Area 3 – Safety:
Rationale:
Sexual and physical abuse, trauma and victimisation and relative poverty are associated with suicide risk. Keeping our homes and communities safe and reducing income disparity are suicide prevention activities. The current rates of suicide of those under the care of mental health services must be reduced.

The Director General of Mental Health reports that 86% of those who die from suicide have had contact with mental health services in the calendar month of their deaths.

Many suicide deaths occur within psychiatric hospitals or within a short time of discharge. Studies have shown that in many cases physical illnesses will not be diagnosed and treated when a patient is admitted to a psychiatric unit. This has potentially serious implications for patients’ overall health, delaying recovery and lengthening hospital stay (Garden, 2005). They have also found that over 50% of American psychiatrists never perform a physical examination and that 45% of psychiatric inpatients have a significant physical disease (Hughes, 1991). This can manifest itself as mental instability, but in fact is an undiagnosed and untreated physical illness. New Zealand studies outlined in this document clearly show that harm is arising from the labelling and prescribing which are central features of suicide prevention in New Zealand.

Physical, and in particular, sexual abuse during childhood is strongly associated with suicide.

Prevalence rates for Child Sexual Abuse in New Zealand have been found to be 23.5% for urban and 28.2% for rural women with Māori women more frequently reporting experiences of CSA than women from European and other ethnic with rates between 30.5% vs 35.1%. A 2007 study found the median age of onset of the abuse was 9 years, and the median estimated age of the abuser was 30 years with the majority of cases being perpetrated by a family member.

The sexual abuse of men is often underestimated by the general population. A New Zealand study found that one in five sexually abused children is male, and overseas research suggests that 16% of males will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18.

The New Zealand crime and victimisation survey in 2008 showed that those most likely to be victimised are:
 the young (aged 15–24)
 Mäori
 renters
 people from the most deprived groups.
One in three New Zealand women is estimated to be victims of Domestic Violence.

A World Health Organisation multi-country study found the most consistent risk factors for suicide attempts were: intimate partner violence, non-partner physical violence, ever being divorced, separated or widowed, childhood sexual abuse and having a mother who had experienced intimate partner violence.

Access to prescription drugs has been shown to have a strong link with attempted and completed suicide. It is suggested that data showing doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, anaesthetists and veterinary surgeons have the highest rates of suicide amongst occupational groups is a result of their greater access to pharmaceutical drugs rather than higher rates of mental illness.

Possible Actions:
• Reduce prevalence and impact of sexual and physical abuse and domestic violence
• Reduce incidence and impact of crime and victimisation
• Ensure compliance with requirements that thorough physical health checks are completed to rule out physical causes of changes in moods and behaviours and that general medical conditions are detected and
treated.
• Discontinue practices within the mental and general health system which are known to increase suicide risk
• Reduce availability of prescription drugs known to be fatal in overdose.

Focus Area 3 – Belonging:
Rationale:
A sense of belonging is central to life satisfaction and the desire to live. It not only protects against suicide but confers a range of other benefits for individuals and communities. Ensuring every New Zealander has a sense of belonging to family, community and society is critical to suicide prevention. Belongingness increases self-esteem, improves well-being and happiness, promotes independent thought and allows young people to resist peer pressure.

It ensures individuals are invested in their families, communities and society. The importance of belonging or social connectedness including factors such as number of friends, higher frequency of social contact, and lower levels of social isolation have been shown to protective against suicidal thoughts. Research shows that lack of social interaction increases suicide risk independent of mental disorders and employment status and that lack of social interaction and religious involvements confer suicide risk over and above the effects of active mood disorders and occupational status.

New Zealand research shows an estimated a 27% reduction in elderly suicide if limited social interaction was available for that group while connectedness of adolescents to their schools has been shown to protect against suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

A study which followed a cohort of male children over thirty years found that rather than being linked with actual numbers of social relationships, social isolation may be associated with the subjective feeling of not being involved in meaningful relationships. The same study cites evidence that social ties in school have been shown to have protective effects on attempted suicide among male adolescents and argues that where young people do not experience a sense of belonging at school, they are at risk of suicidal behaviour.

The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention in the United States is based on the belief that “effective prevention strategies are needed to promote awareness of suicide and encourage a commitment to social change.”

It has connectedness among persons, families and communities as one of its primary aims on the basis that “Connectedness is a common thread that weaves together many of the influences of suicidal behaviour and has direct relevance for prevention.” Studies show a role in suicide prevention through promoting connectedness and belonging, for a wide range of community organizations including schools, universities, workplaces, community centers, and churches or other religious or spiritual organizations. These groups have the potential to contribute to, or to undermine, a person’s sense of belonging and importance to a group, a sense of personal value or worth, and access to a larger source of support which can result in greater
motivation and ability to cope with adverse life circumstances or events.

Studies have shown reluctance, particularly in young people, to engage with mental health services. A study of help seeking amongst minority youth in America found that youth were less comfortable with formal interventions in school, religious institutions or traditional mental health settings but open to programmes located in school, church or community settings if helpers were:
• young adults
• empathic listeners
• non-judgmental
• maintained confidentiality, and
• viewed as "natural helpers".
In respect to the last requirement, a feature of a number of programmes in other countries is the identification and use of ‘natural helpers.’ In most communities natural helpers are recruited as volunteers but one community had members fill out an anonymous survey identifying two friends or peers and two adult or community contacts they turn to for help. Those whose names were mentioned most frequently were approached and asked if they would be prepared to train as natural helpers.

Most are based in schools or universities but some in the wider community and perform the roles of peer trainer, personal and program advocate, referrer and counsellor to people who preferred to seek help and assistance from knowledgeable and trusted laypersons in less formal settings.

The only similar programme to have run in New Zealand was the Yellow Ribbon programme which was shut down by government despite having demonstrated effectiveness in an independent evaluation. Citizens in Christchurch who experienced a significant drop in suicide following the earthquake describe a post-disaster community where hairdressers, sports coaches, shopkeepers provided informal counselling and support and became natural helpers and suicide preventers within their community.

There are a number of ways in which social ties and a sense of belonging can be promoted across society and within sub-populations. For Maori, whakapapa is central to this goal and viewed as a core component of any suicide prevention strategy.

Maori researchers in suicide prevention describe Whakapapa in connecting individuals to the web of relationships within hapu and iwi as “… the culturally appropriate way of framing suicide prevention for Maori.” They comment that “the survival and healing of the tribal or sub-tribal kin group is contingent upon the survival and healing of each individual connected by blood (acknowledged through whakapapa) to the collective identity of the tribe or sub-tribe” and that “A strong and intact set of cultural identities based on time-honoured cultural practices with intact kinship serves to insulate and protect Maori youth from the legacy of colonization and historical trauma.”

In recent years, New Zealand has adopted many programmes from North America. Funding for these
programmes is often dependent on ‘programme fidelity’ or strict adherence to the programme as developed. While Maori programme providers are permitted to make token changes which involve using Maori faces and language in programme delivery and resources, the adaptation of programmes to a tikanga base is prohibited. Funding is not made available for the implementation of Kaupapa Maori programmes developed by Maori for Maori. While New Zealand does not collect information on the sexual orientation of those who die from
suicide, a recent survey of New Zealand youth attracted to the same or both sexes had five times the rate of suicide attempts than those attracted to the opposite sex.

A study undertaken this year, demonstrated that negative characteristics of the social environment increase risk for suicide attempts among LGB youth, independent of individual-level risk factors. The study suggests that creating more supportive and tolerant environments in schools and communities may help to reduce
sexual orientation–related disparities in suicide attempts.

Joiner suggests that public education campaigns on the importance of social connectedness could be an important suicide prevention strategy.

A sense of belonging and opportunities to connect with others can be undermined by deprivation. Analysis of data in 2008 showed that 23 percent of New Zealand children aged 0-17 experienced material hardship, which was particularly concentrated in Pacific populations with 51 percent of Pacific children experiencing hardship, 39 percent of Māori populations and 59 percent of families dependent on benefit incomes.

A longitudinal study recently commenced in New Zealand found that 40% of our children are being born into a family living in the most deprived areas of New Zealand.

Research on the links between suicide and poverty have found the odds of suicidal ideation around two times higher and the odds of attempting the odds of attempting suicide about four times higher in poor neighbourhoods than in wealthier neighbourhoods. The authors found that these effects remained after controlling for background vulnerabilities and that the associations were not explained by late-adolescence psychosocial risks.

Research suggests that relative poverty – where people stand in relation to others – has a stronger direct impact on suicide than absolute poverty. This is supported by data showing elevated suicide rates in countries with the highest income disparity and low rates in some of the poorest countries in the world. Studies have shown that mortality in developed countries is affected more by relative than absolute living standards with mortality rates be lowest in countries that have smaller income differences and thus have lower levels of relative deprivation.

Studies also suggest that income instability may have more direct links on suicide risk than low income.

Studies have shown that those bereaved by suicide experience high rates of rejection and isolation within families and communities. Support for those bereaved by suicide should focus on strengthening ties to the community and providing peer support rather than further stigmatising them with psychiatric diagnoses and a focus on perceived deficits. Education for families and communities on the evidence that families who lose loved ones to suicide are indistinguishable from other families in the community should be promoted to counter myths that these families are characterised by parental abuse, neglect and psychopathology.

There is ample research to suggest that in all ways there is nothing different and unique about the families of those who attempt and complete suicide. There is no single identifying or mitigating characteristic about families that have experienced the death of a young family member to suicide and those that have not.

Promoting this understanding may help reduce the suicide risk of bereaved families by decreasing stigma and social isolation. Providing access to peer networks, including the voice of bereaved families in suicide prevention initiatives and providing practical, active support to these families in the community rather than in health settings may increase their sense of belonging.

There is emerging evidence that social networking is a key tool for building social capital and a sense of belonging. Interestingly, researchers have found evidence that when youth disclose and express more information about themselves the quality of their relationships improves and that these positive interactions lead to improved self-esteem and psychological well-being.

A study of young people found that Facebook helped students stay connected to others and that users with low self esteem and low life satisfaction may benefit from online social networking.

Harnessing the capabilities of social networks to build social cohesion and belongingness in a range of groups, and recognising the effects of not having access to this tool, could help the development of family and
community approaches to their use.

Possible Actions:
 Identify, train and deploy natural helpers in communities.
 Improve school performance in creating belongingness in students.
 Reduce school exclusions
 Train and engage schools, marae, universities, workplaces, community centres, and churches or other religious or spiritual organizations in developing community connectedness strategies and actions.
 Provide resources for kaupapa Maori programmes which include a focus on whakapapa.
 Address economic and social deprivation and inequity.
 Provide practical support and opportunities to participate in community life and suicide prevention, for those bereaved by suicide.

Focus Area 4 – Contributing:
Rationale:
The ability to participate fully in family, community and society and a sense that the contribution made is valued are key to preventing the desire to die. Marginalisation, lack of opportunities to participate and of trust has been shown to increase suicidal thinking and behaviours. Sociologists have long argued that social recognition -being known, ‘visible’, admired, invited, loved, and valued is protective against suicide and that absence of this recognition propels an individual towards the ‘distress of an existence without justification’

Studies have found strong evidence to support the role of ‘burdensomeness’ in completed suicide. A 2008 study involving 22,227 participants from 11 European countries found the higher the level of social trust in a country, the lower the suicide rate. Social trust is the extent to which people perceive others can be trusted, the extent to which they believe others are helpful and fair or attempt to take advantage of others and promote their own needs.

Societies, communities and families that provide opportunities for their members to contribute, recognise the contributions they make and have high levels of trust and reciprocity, provide environments where individuals flourish and see meaning and value in their lives. In addition to social factors, economic and political policies can create a sense of burdensomeness and have been shown to influence suicide rates.

Evidence shows economic recessions are associated with increased suicide rates, where they give rise to negative outcomes such as job losses and home foreclosures (American Association of Suicidology, 2009) and that recessions may affect different age groups (Luo et al, 2011) and genders (Snipes et al, 2011; Barth et al, 2011) and require interventions tailored to specific groups rather than universal suicide prevention programmes.

A recent American study found a pattern of lower suicide rates in states with higher per capita income and that “the relationship is dramatic in terms of its substantive impact.”

The authors found that ‘‘cost’’ of reducing a state’s suicide rate by a full point is an increase of roughly $45 in per capita public assistance spending and that if every state in the nation increased per capita public assistance funding by $45 per year, this would translate into 3,000 fewer suicides and 300,000 fewer suicide attempts each year, representing a 10% reduction in the total number of suicides.

The comparable numbers in New Zealand would be an increase of $54.71 in per capita welfare benefits resulting in the prevention of 54 suicides deaths and 5,400 suicide attempts. Measured against the Ministry of Health’s 2004 estimation of the cost of suicide at $238,531,000 in direct and $1,381,492,000 in indirect costs, this investment represents significant economic value. A recent study of the links between suicide and debt found that after controlling for sociodemographic, economic, social and lifestyle factors, those in debt were twice as likely to think about suicide. Difficulty in reducing debt from hire purchase, mail order repayments and credit cards along with rent and mortgage arrears, were strongly associated with suicidal thoughts. This relationship was impacted by the degree of hopelessness felt about the ability to repay.

The mental health model of suicide prevention leads government to question their ability to influence suicide rates on the basis that they have little control over individual behaviour. The state cannot, for instance, legislate that citizens must join more community groups, play teams sports or drink coffee with their neighbours more often. Researchers point out however that they can ensure that welfare benefits are at a level that helps to insulate citizens from the social consequences of poverty and welfare dependence and the insecurity, marriage break ups, residential mobility, lack of opportunities to participate and perceived burdensomeness that are associated with them and with suicidal thinking and behaviour.

International researchers argue that the monitoring of and response to socio-economic factors is a key role of government and critical to suicide prevention (Barth et al, 2011). Gunnell (2009) found that improvements in welfare support and other changes since the 1930s may offset the impact of the recession on suicide.

A comparative analysis of trends in young male suicide in New Zealand and Finland (HowdenChapman et al, 2005), found that while unemployment increased to a greater extent in Finland than in New Zealand in the recession of the 1980s and 90s, Finland had lower increases in suicide as a result of a higher social spending in Finland than New Zealand during that time.

Gunnell (2009) cites this as evidence for the benefit of more welfare support in reducing unemployment related suicide. Increasing welfare support as a suicide prevention measure is supported by an analysis of changes in suicide rates in the United States where reductions in welfare spending were associated with rises in suicide.

Government Role in Suicide Prevention:
We believe that government has three key roles in suicide prevention:
1. Support families and communities to prevent suicide
2. Properly regulate industries whose products and services may cause suicide
3. Ensure economic, political and social policy and practice supports suicide prevention

Reviews of the circumstances leading to the suicide show a pattern of families and communities encountering significant barriers to preventing suicide. These barriers include government funding models which promote ineffective and culturally inappropriate suicide prevention strategies, lack of availability of appropriate support to families managing suicide risk, failure to regulate potentially harmful products and services and social policy which drives suicidal thinking and behaviour. The practice of New Zealand governments in recent years of ignoring the social drivers of suicide has been challenged by a number of commentators including psychiatrist Mason Durie who has stated that “Enough is known about health to justify an integrated approach to cultural, social and economic development and to recognise the futility of designing highly sophisticated treatment
procedures while blatantly ignoring educational failure or inadequate housing.”

Possible Actions:
 Identify and support individuals who perceive they are a burden on their families and communities.
 Create opportunities for marginalised groups and individuals to participate
 Take opportunities to recognise the contribution of men, youth, the aged, Maori, Pacific, the unemployed, students and other groups with high suicide rates to the community.
 Increase the economic base of those on welfare to increase their ability to participate and lower the sense of burdensomeness
 Ensure media reports on marginalised groups do not portray them as a burden on the community.

It is our strongly held view that direct suicide prevention is best positioned within families and communities. It is these groups who are best placed to identify and address suicide risk. Government needs to focus on removing barriers to their doing so, ensuring their efforts are not undermined by corporate entities or government agencies and addressing social, political and economic drivers of suicide risk.

Community Role in Suicide Prevention:
Just as those at risk of suicide live within families, families live within communities. Most families belong to a range of communities – those provided by geography (neighbourhood communities), those which represent an ethnic community, those based on shared interests and a range of other communities including increasing numbers of virtual communities.

Communities are often based on inclusion but also arise from exclusion. The basis of a range of communities are based on exclusion from other groups – on the basis of ethnicity, beliefs, sexual orientation, religion, age and many other factors including suicide bereavement.

Communities can play a key role in supporting individuals and families who are managing suicide risk. Conversely they may also play a key role in increasing that risk through socially isolating individuals and families, denying their access to resources and participation and undermining a sense of belonging, connectedness and value in some of their members.

Family Role in Suicide Prevention:
The family is the primary place in which individuals are socialised, experience belonging, develop a sense of identity and receive help and support. The role and confidence of families to perform this function has been seriously undermined by current suicide prevention strategies. Families have been devalued and disempowered by discourses and practices which locate them as the source of suicide risk, dismiss their skills and knowledge in protecting their loved ones and disempower them in their efforts to keep their members safe in favour of promoting suicide prevention as the province of ‘experts.’

Families must reclaim their role and power in protecting their members, become better informed consumers of suicide prevention services and challenge thinking which undermines their role in preventing suicide. Well informed and supported families play a pivotal role in protecting individuals from suicide.

In addition to the role of diagnostic labelling to suicidal thinking and behaviour, the ubiquitous use of psychopharmacology as a first line treatment in New Zealand mental health services using drugs clinically proven to at least double the risk of suicide argues against locating suicide prevention within mental health services.

Conclusion:
Suicide is a highly preventable form of death. A sense of belonging, opportunities to contribute and hope for the future insulate against the desire to die which precedes suicide. Armed with good knowledge and with a sense of having the power to prevent suicide, families and communities can make the primary contribution to suicide prevention in New Zealand. The failure of the current medical model of suicide prevention means it is imperative that families and communities take back this role and responsibility and be resourced to do so.

Evidence in New Zealand and around the world is that resourcing and implementing a mental health approach to suicide increases suicide risk and rates. When government policy markets alcohol, denies employment, causes relationship break ups, promotes financial hardship and educational failure, identifies the victims of these factors as mentally ill and provides drugs which double the risk of suicide to treat them, it is not surprising that suicide rates escalate.

Rather than creating families and communities who are trained to identify deficits in their members, suicide prevention strategies must support families and communities to identify and build on strengths and encourage inclusion, participation and support for their members. In contrast to an overarching one size fits all strategy, families and communities will develop plans which are tailored to the age, culture, gender and other characteristics of their members and represent more targeted and refined strategies than those any government could produce. The more than 80% reduction in suicide in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake shows what can be achieved when families and communities reclaim their role in suicide prevention. Similar
results can be achieved by all communities in New Zealand without waiting for a natural disaster.

New Zealand currently leads the OECD in the suicides of its children and young people. CASPER believes that should this country have the courage to acknowledge the failure of current practice and implement the strategy outlined in this document, we could lead the world in suicide prevention.

Family and Community Audit:
Families and Communities could commence the implementation of this strategy by conducting an audit of
 their current practice in creating a sense of belonging in their members
 the opportunities they provide for participation and their recognition of the value the contribution of each member makes
 their success in limiting the use of alcohol and drugs
 their success in protecting the physical health of their members
 the reduction of abuse and crime
 the level of knowledge of suicide and its prevention and the development of strategies to build on strengths and address gaps.

A family may begin to make themselves ‘suicide safe’ by asking
 Who has the strongest/weakest sense of belonging in this family?
 How do we recognise and show we value the contribution of each member of the family?
 Does anyone in this family consider they are a burden?
 Do members of our family abuse drugs or alcohol?
 Are members of our family taking prescription drugs known to induce suicide?
 How do we talk about suicide in our family?
 Do all members of our family have a healthy diet, participate in exercise and take care of their physical health?
Developing a plan to protect a family against suicide may involve building on the strengths identified and addressing any gaps.

Communities could employ a similar process in identifying the relative strengths and weaknesses in belonging, participation, suicide knowledge and healthy behaviours in groups within the community and building on strengths and addressing gaps.