Who is speaking for Baby Ru?

Sunday, 19 November 2023

Tracy Watkins is editor of the Sunday Star-Times and The Post.

OPINION: It’s been nearly four weeks since toddler Ruthless Empire Ahipene-Wall arrived at Hutt Hospital with the severe head injuries that killed him.

In that time, police have repeatedly stated there are only three persons of interest in their hunt for Baby Ru’s killer. But still no arrest.

There have, however, been wild rumours, social media posts and finger-pointing between the three people in the house at the time.

Bizarre claims about the cause of death have spread like wildfire, yet police have been unequivocal. Baby Ru died from blunt-force trauma to his head.

Some of the social media posts from those in the house at the time paint a sympathetic picture of those who were there; they point the finger of blame elsewhere, assert their innocence, and even share touching last moments.

What they don’t do is own up to what they know about the brutal and cowardly act that killed a little baby.

Meanwhile, police have revealed CCTV footage which suggests in the hours after Baby Ru’s injury there was a calculated effort to remove evidence.

We also know that members of the household were known to police, and probably to child protection agency Oranga Tamariki (OT) as well.

But OT continues to hide behind privacy as its excuse for refusing to talk about what it knew.

So who is speaking for Baby Ru? Not the people who were last to see him alive. And not OT. The inference is that they are not to blame for his death. But they have failed him, even in death, by refusing to give him a voice.

At some stage, however, the questions need an answer: did they act when extended family identified Baby Ru as being at risk? What checks were made on the house where Baby Ru had been living? What discussions were had, if any, when an uncle sought to take the child into his care?

All we know is that Baby Ru was “in the system”; a case number, among tens of thousands.

We also know that there had been a knee-jerk response to a highly emotive and sympathetic documentary about child uplifts that led to a dramatic reversal in the number of babies being removed from at-risk homes.

That’s not OT’s fault either. Politics and politicians are to blame for that.

Uplifts are not the silver bullet. New Zealand’s shocking child homicide rate seems immune to whatever desperate policy changes successive governments have thrown at the problem. No matter what, babies and young children keep dying.

We do know that we’ve heard politicians talk for years about wraparound services, boosting front line social worker numbers and a raft of other changes.

But the roll-call of dead babies continues.

We’ve marched in the streets, held candlelight vigils, and shed tears at the horror of so many deaths - but nothing changes.

There have been other child homicides this year, though they made less of a ripple, presumably because they haven’t played out on social media in the same way as this one.

And that means there are questions for us in the media as well; should we amplify the social media posts, giving them a bigger platform, especially when they can’t be challenged or their claims scrutinised - and especially so because there is no-one to speak for Baby Ru?

So there will be soul-searching, as there should be after a death like this.

But let’s all hope justice for Baby Ru is served first.