WELFARE OFFICER FOR TRIAL: CHARGE OF ILL-TREATMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1948, Page 3

WELFARE OFFICER FOR TRIAL: CHARGE OF ILL-TREATMENT

(P.A.) NAPIER, October 15. A statement by accused, in which she was alleged to have said that she had decided to give a child an injection with a hypodermic needle as “a lesson to her not to tell lies/’ was read by the police when a former senior woman official of the .Child Welfare Department appeared in the Magistrate’s Court today. The accused, Phyllis Muriel Kidd, 'single, aged 38, was committed for trial on a charge of ill-treating a child at Omakere on June 11, 1947. Accused pleaded not guilty. Detective-Sergeant A. Reid produced a statement made by the accused on May 7 last. In the statement the accused said she went to Omakere, and after discussing the case with the school teacher, decided to give the child an injection as a lesson to her not to tell lies. Accused said she told the child she was going to give her further injections for her teeth, and the girl did not object. Using a sterilised hypodermic syringe and water, she gave the child an injection in each arm. After a second injection in each arm, the girl admitted that the story she had told of a visit to a dentist in Waipawa was a fabrication, continued the statement. When accused asked her about a sum of £5, the girl said she had burnt it. The next morning the girl threw her arms round accused and said she was sorry. Counsel for the defence, asking that the charge be dismissed, submitted that there was no evidence of wilful maltreatment, and that if there was an offence it should be dealt with as a charge of common assault.

Holding that a prima facie case bad been made, Mr L. G. H. Sinclair, S.M., committed accused, for trial.