PARENTS SENT TO GAOL

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28445, 27 November 1957, Page 18

PARENTS SENT TO GAOL

Child Thrashed “Unmercifully” (New Zealand Press Association) WANGANUI, November 26. While apparently a stalwart of his church, Wally Robinson had Unmercifully beaten his stepdaughter with a belt and had pushed her into a bath, breaking her arm, said Mr S. S. Preston, S.M., in the Wanganui Magistrate's Court today when he sent Robinson to prison for two months for assaulting a girl under 14. His wife, Mari Robinson, was sent to prison for a month on a similar charge. They both pleaded guilty Constable M. Andrews said that on November 7 the girl was in bed at her home at Turakina when her mother discovered that some dress material had been taken from a suitcase. She gave the child a hiding, striking her across the face with a piece of kindling wood so that her nose started bleeding.

The husband, who was in the bath and heard the argument, went out and hit the girl over the face with his hand. He then hit her with two straps tied together. Robinson pushed the girl into the bathroom and told- her to tidy hex self up. He then pushed her into the bath.

When the girl went to school the next day her schoolteacher took her into Marton and she was ordered to be taken to Wanganui for a X-ray of the arm. The parents would do nothing about taking her to Wanganui and a police car was used. At Wanganui, she was found to have a broken arm and numerous other injuries. Robinson said when he learned that his daughter’s arm was broken he realised the mistake he had made. ‘‘l thank God that this may be a lesson to me and my wife to live closer to our family,” he told the Magistrate.

The Magistrate said such treat ment of a child would not be tol crated in any circumstances.