FOSTER PARENT LAW

Taranaki Daily News, 2 May 1935, Page 4

FOSTER PARENT LAW

APPARENTLY NOT WELL KNOWN. / PAEKAKARIKI WOMAN IN COURT. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, May 1. On February 5 a Maori child, Huia Leahy, aged four months, died at Paekakariki, and at the subsequent inquest the verdict was that death was due to exhaustion following malnutrition. To-day in the Magistrate’s Court the child’s foster-parent, Mironia Utu Budge, pleaded guilty to a charge of retaining the child for the purpose of nursing it apart from its parents for more than seven days, not being licensed, as a fos-ter-parent. It was suggested that the child’s condition was due to Budge going to work and leaving some of her daughters to look, after it

Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., remarked that through the provisions of the Act were apparently not very well known they were very far-reaching, and many people might unwittingly commit a breach of them, but the heavy penalties provided showed that the legislation regarded the matter as one of importance. Had there been wilful neglect there was proper provision in the criminal law which would render Budge liable to indictment. In all the circumstances of the case he did not propose to inflict a heavy- penalty. A fine of £2 was imposed.