GUEST BLOG: Arthur Taylor – a good news story from prison
The public don’t often hear good news stories about prisoners,so here is one. We’ve got a guy called ‘Roto’ [we call him that because he comes from Rotorua] on our landing – he’s just come to us from eighteen months in D.Block, where he used to be the laundry man.
Here, he is the Pare max’ Receiving Office cleaner [a very trusted job]. He’s got an eleven year old niece who is on dialysis awaiting a kidney transplant. Maori have to wait a lot longer as the organ pool is not as large for them. A couple of weeks ago he asked how he could go about donating a kidney to his niece. We found the Prison helpful in doing the necessary tests to establish compatibility. The problem was with Starship Hospital, who apparently have a policy not to accept prison donors. We’re in the process of trying to get around this.
We’ll keep you updated on any developments.
Starship Hospital need to get their priorities right if Roto is a match. The risk of him doing a runner are Nil, that’s his Whanau, regardless of what he’s done.
For both of them I hope he comes through the tests for Hepatitis and AIDS and other nasties.
Roto sounds like a decent bloke.