I hate my dad

Major Fucking Sarcasm

13D Frank St was a mess when police began their investigation.

Bourbon boxes, pizza cartons and kids' shoes had been chucked through a hole in a broken ponga fence where the Rotorua rental property backed on to a reserve.

Empty bottles littered the ground inside the fence, and out the back of the small three-bedroom house in the low-income neighbourhood of Koutu was a table with broken legs and a baseball bat leaning against the wall.

Inside, a bowl of half-eaten noodles was on a table.

This was the scene of the crime; the mess the aftermath of a 21st party which raged one Saturday afternoon and night with loud music and brawls while a battered, malnourished little girl lay dying.

You'd need a Big Brother camera to get across the horror of the last days of Nia Glassie's miserably short life.

Failing Big Brother, child witnesses in the trial of who killed Nia, who assaulted her and who neglected her the most, probably told it best.

The children's identities were suppressed but what they said in court was hard to listen to.

They sometimes mixed up what happened when and ran incidents of abuse together. It didn't matter. What came out loud and clear was the nature of the abuse that went on and on, usually when Nia's mother was at work, but sometimes when she was there.

What was done to Nia was callous and violent, perpetrated by a group of no-hopers who lived and partied together, who smoked pot together and who for one reason or another didn't like the little girl they failed to protect.

Nia Maria Glassie was three. They thought she was ugly.

In court, via a television screen, a little girl says: They were kicking her to the couch.

Who?

Wiremu and Michael.

What with?

With their feet.

They kicked Nia in the head, and she points to the front of her head.

How many times?

Three times.

Then what happened?

She was falling asleep.

How hard was the kick?

Hard as a rock.

Wiremu put her to bed.

Sometimes Nia would bleed but they don't care about it. They just keep on smashing her, she says.

They put her in the corner and they kick her to the wall and she gets bumps on her head.

The worst thing, in this child's mind, was when Michael Curtis lifted Nia to the ceiling by her neck and her hips and when she touched the ceiling, he let her go.

This interview, and that of another child, was recorded when Nia was alive, though barely so.

She was in hospital, on a ventilator. Her brain injury, left untreated for 36 hours, was so severe parts of her brain tissue had died.

Another child tells how they spun Nia on the clothesline as fast as they could. Her voice is soft and shy.

They put her into the drier, too, she says.

The drier is in court. A Simpson with a small round door, 28cm in diameter.

Next to it, a tiny pink T-shirt with the words "Miss Cutie".

This is the T-shirt Nia was wearing when, finally, she was taken to hospital.

Who did this, a kindly woman asks the girl, about the drier.

Wiremu and Michael Curtis, she says. But it was Michael Pearson's idea.

She said to Michael Pearson, don't do it.

Why did you say this, asks the woman.

Because she's just a little kid, says the girl.

Michael Pearson told her to shut up.

We listen in appalled silence.

The defendants don't look appalled. Perhaps they're bored. Though, sometimes in court they laughed and whispered and often they tried to stare down the reporters covering the trial.

It was hard to read the stares, but certainly there was challenge in those largely blank eyes; even in court it seemed they were making lame attempts to be menacing.

That was until they listened to each other's statements as told to police when it happened, when they were all so quick to blame each other.

Then their body language changed dramatically and the main offenders, the Curtis brothers, had to be separated by guards.

The woman asks the second girl more about the clothes drier.

You turn it right up, replies the girl, and it gets hot then it dries your clothes.

Nia was screaming, she says, so they put her on the clothesline and they spinned her as fast as they could so she could fall off.

She did fall off, the little girl says. Three times. On her head.

They put Nia in the drier like "a ball", the girl says.

They turned the switch, the one with lots of numbers on it, up too high and Nia kicked the door open but they just put her legs back in.

They were laughing but this little girl didn't think it was funny.

The clothesline and the drier were on different days, and they were not what killed Nia. The kicks to the head killed her.

The girl also told how "they" shoved her in the sandpit and threw a basketball at her. But first they'd taken her jeans and undies off her and they'd pushed her in the sandpit on her bottom.

She was crying loud so they turned up the radio so the neighbours didn't hear. Then they watched DVDs and got some vegetables ready for Michael Curtis' 21st party.

When Lisa Kuka, Nia's mum, came home from work, around Shortland Street, she and this girl went out leaving the Curtis brothers, Nia and another child in the house.

Nia was all right when they left, but when they came back she was floppy and wouldn't wake up.

Nia "slept" the rest of Friday and all of Saturday and Sunday.

Both children told of wrestling moves the grown-ups got off the PlayStation 2 - which Wiremu had stolen - that they saw performed on Nia.

These moves are hard to envisage. If you don't have a PlayStation take a look at YouTube and type Smackdown! v Raw in the search bar. Then imagine adults doing this to a 3-year-old.

The children were cross-examined. They were sitting in a room next to the courtroom and their words and images came to the trial through a TV screen.

Five defence lawyers and the Crown questioned them and one of the defence lawyers suggested the wrestling was "funsies" that got a bit too hard. The jury obviously didn't agree.

Nia was a second-class citizen in that house. When it didn't make them angry and get her another hiding, they seemed to take pleasure in her crying.

One of the defendants told how she would sometimes whimper instead of crying because she knew if she cried she would get something else.

In New Zealand's long list of child abuse cases, children are often killed when a carer snaps in anger.

These ones were mean and violent, seemingly because they were bored, or perhaps because they could.

A police officer talked about a "pack mentality". One would do something so another one would do something else.

The abuse was normalised and it escalated. The brothers didn't play sport or work, there was booze and pot, though no suggestion of P.

They didn't have much money so were home a lot and found ways to entertain themselves.

Every day in court, a new horror unfolded. Jurors would stare at the defendants in disbelief.

Lisa Kuka, Nia's mother, received plenty of those stares. She knew at least some of what was happening to her daughter but did nothing to stop it, not even when Nia wouldn't wake up but could still have been saved.

Lisa Kuka, it seems, grew from a nice little girl into a woman whose life revolves around men and who demonstrated a frightening submission to them.

She was the 17th of 19 children. A former primary school teacher told us that while poor, the Kukas seemed a nice family. Lisa's older sisters, twins Louise and Linda, looked out for her.

They were not terribly bright, but they were good girls and they always had lunch and shoes.

"I look at her now, the photos of her on TV and she's got such hard eyes, absolutely hard," the teacher said. "I remember her as a rather bubbly, little bit silly-headed, giggly little girl."

She can't think what happened to Lisa, but says a lot of low socio-economic women in Rotorua get into playing the poker machines and going to housie and pubs.

"Their lives are very thin ... Thin in terms of interests and hobbies and ambitions. It would be the most unrewarding life I can imagine, and I've seen a lot of them like this. It's a sad thing."

Lisa has already found another man, one who promised to take her on holiday to Niue, his homeland, if she got off.

She had her tubes tied after Nia, but by the time she hooked up with Wiremu Curtis she had six children.

She was 34; Wiremu was 16 and not long out of school. He was described in court as "a slow learner".

His lawyer called him stupid and used his stupidity as a main plank in his defence.

Family members on both sides disapproved of the relationship. In court, in a police interview, we heard Lisa admit she loved Wiremu and that her loyalty was to him.

Whatever it was she saw in him, she was content to entrust the care of her daughter to someone who couldn't have been more woefully inadequate.

When Wiremu dobbed in his older brother Michael - the smart one - and Michael's girlfriend, Oriwa Kemp, during a police video interview screened in court, he was sobbing and sniffling and his story became wilder and wilder.

Michael was incensed at what he heard, and when they left for a break his fists were clenched. When they came back a guard sat between them and the cocky body language was gone. Michael was stony and Wiremu jerked his knees, slouched and squinted and chewed on something furiously.

The next day some of his fingers were plastered - apparently because he'd punched a wall - and he appeared to deteriorate from then on.

While his lawyer was giving his defence, Wiremu scribbled on a paper towel. A peek showed it to be some kind of rap song, but the words were incomprehensible.

A long list of abuses perpetrated by Wiremu against Nia was detailed in court.

He and Michael come from a very big long-established Rotorua family. Actor Cliff Curtis, famous for his role in Once Were Warriors - the movie about domestic violence which was inspired by the notorious Ford Block in Rotorua - is a cousin of the Curtis brothers' father, William.

William sat at the back of the courtroom every day. "The proud father," a policeman said cynically.

We can't say much about William, 49, because he faces his own trial over allegations that he, too, abused Nia.

His is said to have pulled a scarf around her neck until she went purple, at a previous address, which he denies.

Outside court, William told us he joined the Black Power at 14. When asked why his side of the family went into the gangs, he would only say "we've all got different ways".

He said when he split up with the brothers' mother, Michael, then 8, went with him and Wiremu spent some time with his mother and also with an aunt in Northland.

"I was a hard man," William said, though he reckons he'd left the gang. "He [Michael] was brought up the same way that I was, I was hard with him but."

They lived all over the place. Michael, he reckons, went to hell and back with him.

Michael was said in court to have bashed his girlfriend, Oriwa.

When Wiremu got together with a woman old enough to be his mother, William senior says he freaked out.

"A lot of people told Boy, [Wiremu] to finish with her. He wasn't ready to rear kids, he had a life out there, out in this world. He had dreams, he was going to go to Aussie."

William's bond, though, was with Michael. he is said to despise Wiremu.

When Wiremu was dobbing in Michael, William would mutter things like "this is bullshit".

In court, Michael was painted as the ringleader who looked after his brother, though police said to us it was more like bullying. It was Michael who came up with the story that Nia had fallen off Wiremu's shoulders.

Police described Wiremu as a "mummy's boy" and it was his mother, Tania Te Para-Heta, he ran to when Nia finally went to hospital.

He was rambling and incoherent and still drunk from the party, telling her how Nia had fallen off his shoulders. She encouraged him to talk to police again, not believing the story.

She seemed nice in court. Dignified and honest. Her appearance to give evidence brought the first real emotion from the brothers when she blew a kiss in their direction. It was as if they couldn't, or wouldn't, look at her, and they cried. A police officer told us their mother is disgusted with them. She lives in Australia now.

It's sad reading about the household Nia Glassie lived in. Have a read of this. It's a tragic story of a dysfunctional whanau - and make the Kahui's look tame.

Nia Glassie's mother Lisa Kuka and her partner Wiremu Curtis met at her nephews 21st and quickly moved in together after Kuka's former partner Glassie Glassie left her for a thinner girlfriend. They moved into the house with Nia around April last year after Curtis' father William,a Black Power gangster, kicked them out of the place they were living in with him, his daughter, his son and his sons partner and their child. All but Lisa Kuka were unemployed.

The couple had met when he was 15 - she's twice his age. William Curtis' partner "TT" left him, but his son Wiremu (Kuka's partner) was brought up by "TT"s sister and her husband. William Curtis has five children. Two of these are from his first relationship, and one killed himself as a teenager.

Lisa Kuka has 16 brothers and sisters. She also has six children to at least three different men, the oldest of whom is a year younger than her former partner Wiremu Curtis.

Living in 13D Frank St, Rotorua was Wiremu's brother Michael Curtis and his partner Oriwa Kemp who moved in a couple of months prior. None of them have jobs. Kemp was expelled from school, got pregnant to Michael Curtis at 14 and it is understood their daughter lived in the house - the only child in the house that lived with mum and dad. Also living in the house was Kuka's sister Louise, her unemployed son Michael Pearson who was convicted of assault, and two of Lisa Kuka's other children, Esther and Jessie, who never went to school last year and are currently in CYFS care with a family member. The rest of Kuka's children are living with another sister, Donna.

So, Michael Pearson was convicted of assault for his wrestling moves on his three year old cousin. His mother, Louise Kuka , hosted the 21st where Kuka and Curtis met, and was the person who took Nia to hospital, but then went clubbing with Lisa and another sister Linda " to take their mind off it". Then Louise spoke to the media saying she believed Lisa knew what was happening to Nia. No kidding - the two sisters were flatmates, clubmates and friends . "I'm so angry with her. She knew. She knew," she said.

Everyone in the flat knew. Everyone except Nia, because she was in a coma.

Louise Kuka can't have been very angry the night the women went clubbing. She should have been angry with her son, who has now been convicted of assault. So why wasn't she? Louise's sister Lisa was convicted of manslaughter. Lisa's partner was convicted of murder. So was his brother. Nia Glassie died on >August 3, three months after moving into the house.

Over a year ago Children's Commissioner Dr Cindy Kiro said she was "keeping her finger on the pulse" of the Glassie case, but would not begin any investigation of her own until the police inquiry and court action were completed.

Well, it's finished now. Let's see if she can find her finger. Had she investigated Lisa Kuku several years ago when CYFS took away one of her children after she suffered a head injury, this whole sorry episode may not have happened.

Not one of the people who lived in that house who got themselves into relationships are married. None of the adults currently live with their partners. Not one of their children live with their mother and their father.

Neither did Wiremu Curtis. He didn't live with either - then flatted with his dad in a house full of children fathered by different people at a time he should have been sitting level one NCEA.

Four young adults in Rotorua (aged 17 to 21) have tortured a three-year old girl. It almost makes me sick even typing this up, but they:

hung her on the clothesline
spun her around until she flew off
put her in an ice cold bath
put her in a drying machine
used her as a professional wrestling prop
And even worse they were members of her extended family.

I’d be appalled if someone did that to a pet, let alone a child.

Intellectually I am against the death penalty. Emotionally I’m all in favour at the moment.

By T. Suzanne Eller
(excerpted from Real Teens, Real Stories, Real Life)

The small church was crowded. All around me people worshiped a god that I didn’t believe existed. Why was I there? My neighbor asked me to come. To be honest, I thought they would leave me alone if I did.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had attended services with my family a few times, but it was more of a ritual or a way to celebrate holidays. What I hadn’t anticipated was the wetness pressed against my eyelids as I clenched them shut.

My motto? Never let them see you cry. I wasn’t about to break down in front of people I didn’t know. I wasn’t crying because I felt the presence of God or that I sensed his love for me. I fought tears because I was mad, so angry that I shook inside.

How dare the preacher stand there and talk about the love of God. It was easy for him and people like him to spout off about a God who existed, who had a purpose for every person. Well, maybe their God had taken a personal interest in them but he didn’t live at my house.

The mother I am about to share with you is the not the mom I have now. You see, she had an encounter with God, and he brought her out of the darkness of emotional pain and healed her. In order to share my story, I have to share a little bit of hers as well.

My mom left home at 16 years old, pregnant and newly married to a boy who thought he was a man. She lost her first baby to cystic fibrosis when the toddler was less than two years old. She had her second child at 18 and left her husband at the age of 21. He came to visit her one night and forced her to have sex. She discovered two weeks later she was pregnant.

I was that baby.

Mom married a good man who loved her and the two little kids that came as a package deal. But in spite of this turn of events, my mom was fragile.

Growing up, I never knew what to expect. There was physical abuse and apologies. There were humiliating punishments, harsh words, and tearful requests for forgiveness.

It wasn’t always bad in my home, but when it was it was loud and chaotic and frightening. I feared one day that my mom would pull the trigger or hurt herself. I hated the words that came out of her mouth when she was angry.

One day my mom chased me through the house, brandishing an umbrella as she screamed at me. I ran out the door and into the rain. I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and no shoes. The cold rain pelted me as I ran down Latimer Street. I pushed through the wetness, pumping my arms as I ran as fast as I could. Finally I stopped, bending down to catch my breath as my tears meshed with the raindrops. I slowly turned around and walked home, sat on the curb, and wept until my throat closed.

I was stuck. I couldn’t run away. I had no money, no place to go.

I started smoking at the bus stop, pushing boundaries with my teachers, and drinking with my best friend. My attempts to be tough must have appeared hilarious to others. I was skinny to a fault and looked younger than my age. Being tough didn’t come natural. My heart was gentle and I hated conflict and fighting, yet every single time I let my guard down someone hurt me.

That’s when the hardness crept in. Never let them see you cry. Never give them a chance to know you care.

One day it all came to a head. My mom pulled us around her in her bedroom. She put a gun to her head and threatened to shoot herself. I was scared, but not because I thought she would die, but because under my breath I whispered, “just do it”.

Who was this person I was becoming?

Two years later I stood in the little church. The pastor sang, strumming on the guitar as people knelt at the altar. “He loves you,” he said. “He has a plan for your life.”

I challenged God. “If you are real,” I whispered, “If you exist and you know me and you love me like he says, I need to know.”

I expected nothing, yet I received everything as a tender touch reached past my hardened heart. I’ve had trouble explaining this moment to people over the years. “Did you see God?” No. “Did you feel God’s presence?” Yes, but so subtle and deep inside of me, touching areas that I had closed long ago to anybody, that I knew it was God.

I stumbled from the church. I ran home and told my mom that I had just got “saved”, though I really didn’t understand what had occurred.

My circumstances were still the same, but everything was different on the inside of me.

I made mistakes, huge blunders as I tried to learn what it meant to follow Jesus as my Savior. I wasn’t perfect, but I understood his love. The people of that little church ministered to me in ways they will never understand. There were times I wept at the altar and then went home to chaos. There were times I fell in my walk with Christ and their gentle encouragement helped me to keep going.

It is amazing what can happen when God restores a broken life. It can be beautiful like the portrait that my mom is now, the shattered pieces of her life assembled together in a beautiful picture of God’s mercy.

Today I am a mom, an author, a speaker, and a wife. I have the opportunity to share the story of my life and the beauty of purpose and the fact that God loves us from the beginning.

I found a note from my dad under my pillow one day. I still carry it with me, the tattered pieces a reminder of what God has done. My quiet father, who very rarely shared the depth of his emotions, said in that letter, “I have watched you and I see that you have something that is of great worth, a treasure. I know that it is real and I admire you for your faith and your love for God.”

We have never spoken of that letter, but it came at a time when I prayed for a sign. “God, show me that you hear my prayers. Heal my family. Let me know that you are listening.” The folded piece of paper under my pillow was heaven sent and priceless.

For years my mom and I have been friends. She is compassionate, loving, and sometimes she’s still fragile, but she’s beautiful to me.

I am still running after the same God that touched my life. He’s been with me through good and difficult times, but my love for him will always be wrapped around that first moment when he reached down to an angry, hurting girl and silently whispered that he loved me.

I still can’t help but whisper back, “I love you too”.