WOMAN PLEADS NOT GUILTY

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25607, 23 September 1948, Page 3

WOMAN PLEADS NOT GUILTY

ALLEGED ILL-TREATING OF CHILDREN

SENIOR WELFARE OFFICEfc IN HAWKE’S BAY (PA.) NAPIER. Sept? IS. A former Child Welfare officer. Phyllis Muriel Kidd, aged 38. appeared in the Magistrate s Court to-day on two charges of wilfully ill-treating children so as to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to their health. She pleaded not <uilty. On one charge she was committed for trial. The second case was adjourned. The prosecutions were brought under Section 28 of the Infants Act, said SeniorDetective D. McKenzie. On April 14. 194/. the child concerned in one charge was committed to the care of the Child Welfare Department after her appearance in the Children s Court. The child was seen a number of times by the accused. On March 9 the child was sent to a butcher s shop with a 10s note and said she lost the money. The next day the accused came and gave her a thrashing. Later tne child wgs taken to Port Ahuriri Police Station in order that the police would help get the truth from her. A second thrashing was afterwards given the child by the accused, and a strap was placed round the child s throat w itn sufficient pressure exerted for the incident to be reported to the police. The accused was also alleged to have said that she had not finished with the child, but would be back with a syringe which she would put in the child’s arm and get the truth out of her. The syringe was not. however, used. Senior-Detective McKenzie said the second charge concerned a child at Omakere who was alleged to have stolen a sum of money. The child was interviewed by the accused, who gave her an injection with a hypodermic syringe in order to get the truth from her. The accused would say the injection was for a different P Giving evidence, a nine and a half-year-old girl said that after the loss of the 10s the accused thrashed her on two occasions. The accused then put a strap round witness’s neck and pulled on it from behind. saying, “I wonder if I can throttle the truth out of you. I will pull and choke you till you tell the truth. ’ Florence Lillian Thomson, a married woman, with whom the child stayed, gave evidence of thrashings allegedly given to the child by the accused. Answering Mr H. W. Dowling, for the defence, the witness said she had been an inmate of a mental institution in 1938 for four months. She denied that she had attempted suicide after the incidents related 'to the police, but said she had been a patient in hospital after accidentally taking an overdose of sleeping tablets. It waa stated during later evidence that the accused had been with the Child Welfare Department for 11 yeans, and for seven years as senior Child welfare officer in Hawke’s Bay.