Education officials should have done more over the disappearance of two children, who were later found murdered and hidden inside two suitcases at a storage facility, says a child protection advocate.
Yuna and Minu Jo, aged eight and six, were registered with a GP and attended a local primary school before they were murdered by their mother Hakyung Lee in 2018.
But it was four years before their bodies were found.
While their school made initial attempts to track them down, an advocate for children says the ministry could have done more and needs to improve its safeguards.
Lee was sentenced to life imprisonment for a minimum of 17 years by Justice Geoffrey Venning in the High Court at Auckland on Wednesday.
Hakyung Lee will serve a minimum prison time of 17 years for the deaths of her children, aged 6 and 8. (Source: 1News)
She was found guilty in a trial by jury in September.
Lee had concealed the children’s bodies by placing them in suitcases and storing them in a storage unit, before leaving the country.
They were discovered after Lee’s storage payments lapsed and the unit was auctioned off online.
The students had attended Papatoetoe South School, and were remembered by teacher Mary Robertson, who gave evidence at Lee’s trial.
Robertson described Yuna as “beautifully behaved” and Minu as a “joyful bubbling boy”.
Papatoetoe South School principal Caroline Chawke told RNZ in a statement the school had tried to track down the children at the start of 2018, but was unsuccessful.
“When we received no response from contact numbers, home visits were made,” she said.
“After 20 days of unexplained absence, we followed the Ministry of Education’s established process. The MoE guarantees follow up, but they do not report the outcome of their enquiries to schools.”
Chawke said her thoughts were very much with those who knew and loved Yuna and Minu.
The last time Robertson saw Lee was when she came in to inform her of her husband Ian Jo’s death in late 2017.
Lee told Robertston she had plans to return to Korea after the trip to Australia, where they would all be supported by family.
She told the children’s teacher she was yet to make up her mind on whether they would come back to New Zealand at all.
Child advocate says more could have been done
Safeguarding Children chief executive Willow Duffy said what happened to the children was heartbreaking.
“When I read about the way that they died, without anybody realising, it’s really upsetting for everybody, not just myself. It’s dreadful to think about children in that situation,” she said.
Duffy said the Ministry of Education had the opportunity to establish a protocol or memorandum of understanding between itself, police, and Oranga Tamariki to ensure an investigation into whether missing children were safe was carried out.
“There’s a memorandum of understanding between Te Whatu Ora, the police, and Oranga Tamariki, there needs to be another memorandum of understanding between education, police and Oranga Tamariki,” she said.
“I just feel as though this is an opportunity to improve our system because it’s happened once that we know of, there will be similar situations happening again where children are missing and they may be taken overseas and exploited, we don’t know do we.”
More could have been done, Duffy said.
“I would like to think that there is more curiosity and investigation from the Ministry once that information goes to the Ministry, and there will be people, and there will be families, where the children are just safe, but when you’ve got a situation like this – more could have been done, and those children deserved that more should have been done.”
She wanted the Ministry of Education to consider reporting concerns about absent children to police, to make sure they were safe.
“It’s a safeguard, it’s just checking to make sure that the children are safe, and in all cases when a child has been harmed, or has died, or murdered in this situation, it’s a real opportunity to look at the processes and procedures, policies, and guidelines, and I would encourage the Ministry of Education to consider actually putting that in their processes.”
Ministry of Education operations and integration leader Sean Teddy said the ministry had cross-agency information-sharing agreements with the Ministry of Social Development and Immigration for situations where contact details are missing, and was working to establish an agreement with police.
“These arrangements help determine a child’s whereabouts, including whether they have left the country, and reflect a co-ordinated approach to ensuring children are accounted for and supported,” he said.
“Safeguarding children is a shared responsibility across government agencies, schools, communities, and parents. The Ministry of Education’s role is to make sure every child has access to education and to work closely with schools and other agencies to support student well-being and respond when concerns arise.”
RNZ asked the ministry if it had alerted the police to Minu and Yuna’s absence, but was told the answer needed to go through an Official Information Act request.
The Ministry of Health was also approached for comment, as the family were enrolled at a local practice in Papatoetoe.
The Ministry of Health also said GPs were required to try to contact patients prior to dis-enrolment. However, if they were unable to contact the patient or their caregiver (in the case of a child), the individual may be removed from the enrolment list.
Health Minister Simeon Brown said he had requested further information from Health New Zealand on current enrolment processes to ensure they were fit for purpose.
rnz.co.nz
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