By Eugene Bingham
60 Minutes producer
If you saw our programme, Running Wild, you’ll know without a doubt that teen killer Tonia Bennett was a fiery handful for the social agencies charged with looking after her.
And there’s also no doubt that most of those who were directly involved with caring for her tried their very best to control a seriously troubled young woman.
But after spending several months investigating the case, reporter Paula Penfold and I are left with one grave doubt: why has there been no independent review?
Surely there are lessons to be learned from the circumstances which led to Bennett killing mother of three Lynette Chapman in her Pukekohe home.
As Penfold said to Child, Youth and Family head Ray Smith during our interview with him: “A 16-year-old who was in your care committed a murder. It doesn’t get any worse than that.”
It’s abundantly evident that the Bennett case is one of acute sensitivity.
First and foremost, you only had to be in court when Bennett was sentenced to see how much it has affected the Chapman family. There were many tears; there was also enormous courage, primarily when Lynette’s father, her partner and her three sons stood to tell the court the impact they’ve suffered since Bennett ignited the fatal fire in January last year. The boys, particularly, did their mum proud.
As we showed in the programme, it has also been a sensitive matter for CYF.
In a highly unusual move, the agency brought along its own camera operator to film our interview – no one involved in 60 Minutes can remember this happening before. CYF also hired a lawyer for the criminal court case.
What it hasn’t done is seek an independent review.
Smith told us that he had looked at the case himself and concluded nothing more needed to be done.
“I came to the conclusion that the people that were best at making these choices had done their best to make these choices,” he said. “I don’t think anybody did anything wrong here. I think what we were challenged with was a set of circumstances that spiralled out of control and no one could have imagined this terrible thing happening.”
As Penfold pointed out to him, though, people did warn that something this dire could happen. As you’ll have seen in the programme, Bennett’s previous caregivers were extraordinarily worried about her being moved to the Wellington St address where she was expected to take more responsibility for herself and face less supervision.
Smith was unyielding. “Often times people raise a flag and they say, ‘I’m concerned something serious could happen here unless something changes’. And those concerns were heeded and conversations continued to take place about the plans for Tonia, and what would work best for her. At no point, at no point, did anyone say, ‘nothing can change,’ or, ‘nothing can be different,’ or, ‘we’re not listening’. I think all the key professionals that were involved here were very concerned and very involved.”
What surprised us was that neither Smith nor Youthlink, the trust which had been contracted to care for Bennett on CYF’s behalf, knew exactly what went on at Bennett’s house on the night of the murder.
To understand the importance of this, you’ll need to know a bit of the background. When Youthlink moved her into Wellington St, just across the road from the Chapmans, she had no permanent live-in caregivers. Instead, a roster of youth workers would come to stay from 4pm till 8am. Sometimes, a nursing agency was called in to help out when there were staff shortages.
The programme uncovered just how out-of-control Bennett was – violent, destructive, angry.
A transcript of Bennett’s police interview reveals she was having a fine old time, thank you very much, living at taxpayer expense in Wellington St.
In her own words, this is some of what she was getting up to there:
“I don’t really know [name suppressed] that well, um, to be honest he’s just someone that comes to my house and I drink with and get stoned with.”
About her boyfriend: “Yeah, he doesn’t stay very often. I usually stay at his house.”
On the night itself: “We were all pretty drunk when he showed up. We’d, me, um and my boyfriend and my mate and her boyfriend had been drinking at my house already for about an hour and a half.”
Later on in the night: “[We] went back to my house. [Name suppressed] went and sat outside while me and [my boyfriend] had sex, like 45 minutes.”
At other parts of the transcript she talks about cutting her arm with a razor blade, drinking RTDs and trying the 85% proof liquor Absinthe.
So, in summary, we’ve got a 16-year-old girl in CYF care who is drinking, smoking, taking drugs, self-harming and having sex in a house where she’s under supervision. And then she went down the road and killed an innocent woman.
So on the night in question, what supervision of Bennett was there? Turns out, the youth worker on duty had brought two of her own children with her and stayed shut in the lounge.
You’d think that after the murder Youthlink would have spoken to its staff member on duty about what she had been doing on the night. And we thought that in Smith’s own review of the case, he’d have been able to establish that too.
Yet Smith said he wasn’t aware that the youth worker had her children there, and neither was Youthlink whose chief executive, Alan Newman, told us: “We were totally unaware that the staff member had family with her that night whilst on duty. “We now understand that in fact the staff member had two of her children with her due to family circumstances. This action is absolutely not condoned by this agency. The staff member no longer works with Youthlink for unrelated reasons.
“While I am obviously disappointed at the staff member's conduct it was not unusual for other people to be at the home at times and I do not consider there is any evidence that the childrens' presence that night contributed to Tonia's behaviour.”
Let’s be clear: no one deserves to take responsibility more than Tonia Bennett. And no one’s suggesting the caregiver on duty should shoulder the blame – there’s far more to this case than that night alone.
Be that as it may, though, surely the fact that neither Youthlink nor CYF knew what had gone on in the house until 60 Minutes told them highlights the fact that Social Welfare Minister Paula Bennett needs to oversee an independent review of the case. Isn’t that the least Lynette Chapman and her family deserve?