Prison ‘led to losing children’

Press, 12 September 1986, Page 8

Prison ‘led to losing children’

A 60-day prison sentence for debt was partly responsible for a woman losing her children, says a chaplain to Christchurch Women’s Prison, Mrs Mary Kamo. Mrs Kamo said the Southland woman (not the Southland woman mentioned previously) guaranteed the purchase of a stove by a relative to go in a new house the relative was building. When payments on the stove were stopped, bills were sent to the relative’s house, but under the woman’s name. Eventually the stove was repossessed and sold. Because of costs incurred by the firm which

had sold the stove, there was still $3OO owing on the debt. The firm sued the woman ’ for this amount, and she was eventually sent to prison for 60 days. Mrs Kamo said that because of the family’s limited resources, the woman’s husband and children were not able to travel to Christchurch to visit her while she was in prison. Soon after the woman returned home, her marriage broke up. Her husband sued for custody of the children, and won. The woman’s term in prison was cited as one of the reasons for the decision.