MOTHERLESS BOY'S PLIGHT

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 84, 8 April 1922, Page 7

MOTHERLESS BOY'S PLIGHT

NEGLECTED AND BEATEN. EUXS AWAY TO BUSH. There was unfolded at the Juvenile Court this morning the pad talc of a motherless boy's ill-treatment. Three weeks ago the" little lad, whose age ia ten years, ran away from his home at Glenfield, and he was yesterday found in the bush at Murray's Bay. He had severe bruises on his body, and was in a filthy condition generally. The police declared that the little fellow had evidently been ill-treated at home by his step-mother, and Sergeant Kowell asked that he be committed to an institution. He was an intelligent boy, and already used to hard work. Some IS months ago his step-mother was charged with cruelty to his brother, and the lad had been taken away from the home and placed in an institution for his mm protection and welfare. He had since been doing excellently. _ In a statement made to the police the little lad. who -was before the Court this morning, declared that his stepmother frequently beat him, even using the toast rack as an instrument of chastisement. She also used the strap nearly every morning, first removing hi 3 clothing to'do the job thoroughly. His father," he said, also used to beat him. The father defended the punishment, telling the magistrate that the boy had only been beaten "when he deserved it." The magistrate, however, thought the boy would be better away from a home in which he had apparently fared so ill. and he made an order for his committal to the Probation Home, and ordered the father to Day for his maintenance there.