Borstal Girls Escaped After Attacking Matrons

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 3

Borstal Girls Escaped After Attacking Matrons

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, January 17.

Two inmates of Arohata Borstal violently assaulted two assistant matrons of the institution on December 23, escaped with another inmate after unlocking her room, and the three committed a number of offences at Johnsonville and Petone before being apprehened, Mr J. D. Murray said in the Magistrate’s Court at Lower Hutt today. Appearing before Mr J. R. Drummond, S.M., were Mary Nichols, aged 18, a nursing aide, Mary Tatana, aged 18, a factory hand, and Juditn Maureen Carberry, aged 19, a waitress. Nichols and Tatana were jointly charged with breaking from a penal institution with violence. Carberry was charged with escaping from a penal institution The three were jointly charged with two charges of theft, two charges of conversion, and one charge of breaking and entering with intent. The three pleaded guilty to all charges. About 7 p.m., Mr Murray said, cocoa was being delivered to the rooms in the reform wing by an assistant matron. When she reached Tatana’s room she was invited inside to see a drawing. She was attacked from behind by Nichols with a wet towel which was thrown over her head and face. Tatana then began hitting the woman with a broom and she fell to the floor as the two continued to assault her. Her keys were taken by Nichols, who had punched her, said Mr Murray. A second assistant matron was attracted by the commotion, and was forced into Nichols's room by Tatana, who then hit her to the floor with a broom. Her keys were also taken and the women locked in the two rooms. The door to Carberry’s room was then opened with one set of keys and the three escaped. The girls stole four flagons of beer from a parked van and, at Johnsonville, entered the yard of an ice cream factory and drove one of the firm’s trucks to Wellington, where before abandoning it they stole from it articles of clothing worth £5 10s. the property of the regular driver.

They then went to Petone where they entered a house through an unlocked window and .stole articles of women’s clothing, jewellery and cosmetics worth £36 4s. of which £27 worth had been recovered. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve the three were apprehended at Petone. All told the police they were sick of Arohata and wanted a transfer, and Nichols and Tatana said that as long as they were detained there, they would continue to escape, said Mr Murray. They were remanded until tomorrow for sentence.

“Nothing would astonish me, after all these years, except to be understood.”— Ellen Glasgow.