Mt Albert homicide: Lena Zhang Harrap should have been safe going for a walk

Saturday, 25 September 2021

Detective inspector Aaron Pascoe provides an update on the homicide investigation into the death of Lena Zhang Harrap.

OPINION: Going for a walk seems like such a simple thing.

A daily stroll in the leafy suburbs, past familiar places and faces. The usual route, the usual time, an essential part of life in lockdown.

That Lena Zhang Harrap will never come home from her walk is a cruel and senseless tragedy. She did nothing wrong, was taking no decadent risks, was not doing anything that might cause a loved one to worry.

She was going for a walk in a place where she felt safe. Where she should have been safe.

Lena Zhang Harrap did not return home from her walk on Wednesday morning.

* Mt Albert homicide: Lena Zhang Harrap walked same route daily, this time she didn't come home

* Family of Mt Albert's Lena Zhang Harrap thank public for love and support after alleged murder

Chief executive of UpsideDowns Education Trust Dr Sarah Paterson-Hamlin.

A generation ago, going for a walk in your local community wasn’t such a simple undertaking for many people with Down syndrome.

Today, life is very different due to the tremendous efforts of disabled people, families, their allies, and advocates resulting in such simple rights as being visible and active community members. They are still fighting.

For so, so many of the parents of children with Down syndrome who I work with, the motivation for the hours of speech therapy, occupational therapy, music therapy, meet-ups, seminars and all the rest of it, is the future independence of their child.

Being able to speak, read, write, get a job, join a club, go flatting, hang out with friends, go for a walk alone – these are all things new parents in this community are still told today, in Aotearoa, their children will never be able to do.

But every day the perseverance of people with Down syndrome and their loved ones alongside the hard-gotten gains of inclusion are proving these warnings unfounded.

Flowers have been left at the scene where Lena Zhang Harrap’s body was found in Mt Albert.

Lena proved them to be unfounded.

She danced, she walked, she participated, she brightened the lives of those around her, she was visible, she mattered. She still does.

It is a crime of the highest magnitude that she was taken away like this.

But, as Zandra Vaccarino of the New Zealand Down Syndrome has pointed out, it is an anomaly.

In his statement to the Abuse in Care inquiry, Sir Robert Martin stated that “it is time to challenge New Zealanders. The phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is no longer acceptable”.

The wider community has been left shocked by Lena Zhang Harrap’s death.

Sir Robert and many others are well aware that there are corners of our society, even now, that would prefer for some people to remain invisible; conveniently ensconced away from the general public.

Sometimes, this view is expressed in terms of the purported safety of those community members.

But as that inquiry and Sir Robert’s heart-rending testimony make clear, remaining out of sight is not safe.

Loneliness and social isolation take a very real physical toll, as well as the more obvious emotional one.

The Helen Clark Foundation recently released a report that revealed people with disabilities are more than three times as likely to feel lonely most or all of the time, and that for everyone loneliness can have a severe impact on a person’s body, reducing life expectancy.

Lena Zhang Harrap’s body was found after she failed to return from a morning walk on Wednesday.

Since 1960, life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has leapt from only 10 years to between 60 and 70 years today.

There is no doubt that advances in areas such as paediatric heart surgery or leukaemia treatment have contributed an immense amount to this sea-change, but so to have changing expectations, rights to an education, reduction in isolation, and an increase in community participation.

What’s more, we know that more inclusive communities are more likely to excel.

For example, typically-developing children are found to perform better in measures of literacy, numeracy, and empathy when they share a classroom with a peer who has a learning disability.

It is true that people with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience violence in Aotearoa.

It is true that women are significantly more likely to experience violence, or to be murdered in Aotearoa.

However, it is also true that in both cases, such violence is far, far more likely to be carried out by someone known to the victim.

It is true that the numbers are horrifying, and that we clearly need to do better for disabled New Zealanders; these are conversations we must have.

It is not true that any person with a disability should feel they must retreat or hide away because of this horrendous act of violence.

Of course it’s natural to want to hold our loved ones close at a time like this.

We are emerging from a period in which we have locked the doors against an invisible enemy; sacrificed to protect each other, especially our most vulnerable.

How tempting to keep them closed against this much louder threat. But that would be counter-productive.

Disabled people – just like anyone else – are safer, healthier, and happier, where there is inclusion.

Where a person is empowered and supported to live a life of choice and individuality out in the world. We often refer to this as living independently – including in this very article – but it isn’t.

We must live interdependently, in a way that supports and involves people who might have different needs to what we might be used to, because everyone gains from this approach.

Our response to Lena’s death cannot be to insist upon further closed doors – it must be to open them.

Dr Sarah Paterson-Hamlin is the CEO (and dishwasher) of the UpsideDowns Education Trust, a Mt Albert-based charity that provides access to speech and language therapy for children with Down syndrome across Aotearoa.