‘Horrific’: Luxon won’t rule out heads rolling over girl’s mistaken identity
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has described the case of an 11-year-old being mistaken as a 20-year-old and put in a mental health unit as “extremely distressing” and wants to know why officials took two weeks to tell the minister in charge.
Health NZ has apologised after police officers admitted the girl to a mental health facility. Officers also handcuffed the child.
The New Zealand Herald reported the girl was autistic and non-verbal, and injected with medication at the hospital. Te Whatu Ora said a review would be carried out to see if any medication had been given to the girl.
“As a parent, you identify with what is a horrific set of circumstances … it’s just incredibly distressing and concerning,” Luxon told reporters at Parliament.
“Massive amounts of empathy and concern for her and her family.”
He said it was unacceptable that Health NZ took two weeks before informing the minister.
Oh. My. God.
The dismay and horror at how this young girl was misidentified by the police and the mental health services tells us this was a genuine mistake with the most terrible outcome.
We Give Police and Mental Health Services enormous power over people, and our expectation is that there are checks and balances inside the system to make sure that enormous power is used properly.
Everyone in this story was trying to do the best for this 11 year old, yet the system misidentified her and then injected her twice???
The only example worse than this would be the Armed Police  raiding the home of a wrong person and shooting them during that raid.
The system must protect the vulnerable and in this case despite everyone best attempts we failed that little 11 year old kid.
One thing I think we can all agree on is that there needs to be an immediate payment for damages caused to this young girls whanau.
Let’s hope the mistakes are identified and new standards set.
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My policy is that the people on the spot always make the best decisions and take the best actions they can in the circumstances. What else are they supposed to do- – email the CEO and wait for clearance from the Minister?
Investigate, educate, compensate.
A very good point Henry.
And you don’t expect the police to investigate why their 20 year old suspect looks 11 years old? Just admit they did wrong and stop embarrassing yourself with mindless explanations.
How the fuck can an 11 year old even look like a 20 year old adult .To even think that is plain stupid .
You are wrong, the worst decisions are often made in these circumstances, by people(police) who are not trained to deal with mentally deranged. For another example, a deranged (white) guy was shot dead on the northern highway in 2018, for threatening cops with a …bread knife. Happens a lot. Let me guess in this case the 11 year old was overweight, tall, possibly brown. Obviously not able to communicate. We’ll see…
I suppose they could use any compensation they get to pay for a parenting course, the girl had been in custody for 12 hours before they reported her missing. Something is missing in this picture.
Have you had experience looking after a child that is autistic .One family I know had to put up a barbed wire fence 2 meters high to keep their boy in the yard because he was always escaping .Maybe you could ask these parents if there is anyway you could assist them instead of denigrating them for doing a great job .Not so long ago these kids would have been sent to lake Alice or Tokanui where they were abused and probably died .Some education of yourself would be a good investment .
Unfortunately there is autism in my family and dealing with it is not easy. Have been through a similar escapee event more times than I would care to mention and as you say maybe I am being unfair but 12 hour is a long time.
What do we have here, Unlawful detention, medicated against her will, medicated without parental consent, false imprisonment, illegally detained?
I get that a non verbal autistic may appear to be different to the normal person but FFS as a parent of an Autistic im gobsmacked how the Police and medical system totally failed to correctly identify her condition and age.
To me this is a direct cause of under funding and an overstretched health system or sheer bloody incompetence.
I agree 100% .You have my total respect for the job you are doing in raising your child .
A tough one. But the police are not psychiatrists, and if they are called to a non-verbal person possibly about to jump off a bridge, I can see how they might have got it wrong.
Whilst I find it disturbing she was not identified as a 11 years old, and she was misidentified by police. I don’t think the police are villains here.
My real problem is that the only and first solution from medical staff was a chemical solution. The use of drugs, without any proper assessment. Someone chose to medicate on assumptions, rather than do the real work of diagnosis. This is the real crime, and crime it is.
Yes no excuses, but it shows a system in crisis when we are talking mental health.
We have been warned about this for years and I have personally seen it.
Why is our mental health care in crisis? I think we all know.
Lack of funding
Correct Dean and sadly we were nearly there with the previous Labour government. A new government and it’s cuts are responsible, it is clear as day.
Now don’t blame the victims, Albert. Poor checks and balances before admitting her to Henry Bennets they should have double checked not good enough from both our Police and the mental health team involved. And
someone needs to be reprimanded.
Those checks could have been processed through good administration but due to Government cuts over half of the admin were let go in Waikato.
And add this to Nationals growing list of unsolicited cuts…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/556401/former-health-nz-it-worker-not-surprised-at-data-breach
The police should take a person who is at risk to a place of safety however the police should also check she is identified as the missing person prior to her being taken to a psychiatric facility. What concerns me is that they gave a nonverbal child strong antipsychotic medication before her being identified as the actual patient who left the facility. It will be very interesting to see the report as to how this happened and to hope the staff concerned actually learn from it so that it is prevented from happening again
The police are under pressure especially with that nasty mercenary as their leader. The police are also busy doing the beat and monitoring gang patch attire. We also have police choosing to leave. Double checking this young girls identify would have been best practice. The police and the mental health hospital have failed in their duty of care so someone needs to be held accountable. Stop blaming and accept responsibility and this should start from the very top.
I hope the reports into this matter clarify:
(i) the time it took for police to get to the bridge where the 20-year-old patient had been reported to be distressed and climbing the bridge supports (i.e. the chance that she would still be there simply walking across the bridge as was the 11-year-old).
(ii) the role of the recent police policy against dealing with mental health matters (e.g. does that mean that newer officers lacked even the inadequate training police previously received regarding presentations of mental or developmental disorder).
(iii) the genders of the police officers who misidentified, assaulted and wrongfully imprisoned this girl.
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