WERAROA TRAINING FARM.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 201, 9 August 1927, Page 5

WERAROA TRAINING FARM.

NO CAUSE FOR ALARM. MINISTER’S ASSURANCE. Wellington, Aug. 9. A copy of a telegram from Auckland regarding the sentencing of Francois Allen Coburn was submitted to the Minister of Education, who produced a report showing that the accused was first admitted to Werarqa at the age of 14J years at the request of his parents, who complained of the boys’ filthy habits. He was in residence intermittently for two years and then in 1921 was committed to a mental hospital on account of his thieving and generally depraved habits. Ae Weraroa the boy was not fit to associate with the other inmates and had to be watched night and day and kept entirely apart. The statements of counsel were not. only contrary to fact ’so far as Coburn was concerned, but showed an entire lack of knowledge of the system of classification and training as carried out at the farm.

The Department assures the public that there is no cause for alarm. The welfare of the boys is amply safeguarded by a suitable and competent staff.

During the hearing of Coburn’s case, counsel stated thta when at YVerearoa training farm the accused had become the victim of perverted impulses, and had acquired bad habits from the other inmates. The Weraroa institution, he said, was designed to reform a delinquent, but the vicious and subnormal and those who were merely wayward were not segregated, but were congregated in such a way that, if it was not a school for crime it was certainly not a reformatory.