Academy raided after demand for sacking

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 8

Academy raided after demand for sacking

PA Auckland A Social Welfare and Justice Department “raid” on the South Auckland Legionnaires Academy yesterday followed an ultimatum that the academy leader, Mr Dan Davis, be sacked, the academy’s administrators say.

The Te Waiariki Trust Board, which administers the running of the academy, has rejected the accusations against Mr Davis and refused the departments’ demands. The board chairman, Mr Murray Deaker, said a preliminary - inquiry showed Mr Davis had done nothing which another person placed in a similar situation would not have done. Mr Deaker said bureaucrats from the departments had taken “kneejerk action” to remove

youths in Mr Davis’s care without finding out about the two incidents which led to the troubles.

Three youths — two sentenced by the courts and under Probation Service supervision and the third a State ward — were removed from the academy headquarters in Otara at 8.30 a.m. by officers from the Justice and Social Welfare departments. The departments had written to the Te Waiariki Trust on Monday threatening to uplift young people for whom they were responsible unless Mr Davis was “removed from management” of the academy.

The letters cited concern over two events, the first a fortnight ago. An academy worker, whose name is suppressed, has been charged with as-

saulting ah 18-y ear-old trainee. The case is yet to be decided by the courts. The second incident, regarded more seriously by the authorities, happened last Wednesday when an Otahuhu probation officer visiting the academy found a 20-year-old man strapped to a bed head. The man, who is not under control of either department, was referred to the academy early on Wednesday by his parents because he was under the influence of glue and other solvents.

The police said that the unemployed man, who emigrated to New Zealand from Tonga with his parents, had vomited in the lounge of their Otara home, thrown food about the house, broken furniture and stripped off his clothes while intoxicated on glue fumes.