“Would you like to speak?” the convenor at the meeting addressed the little boy sitting at the front of the hall.
“Yes,” the boy whispered, his brown eyes clearly sad and glistening with tears. He looked out at the large room, his gaze sweeping over all those watching him intently.
“I’d like to speak for all of us kids, if that’s OK?” The convenor nodded.
“Where were you?” he asked, fixing upon a large, heavily pregnant woman seated in the front row, her girth almost dwarfing the swarthy male slumped in his seat alongside, in a black hoodie, baggy, low-slung trackpants, and covered in enough ink to write War and Peace.
The woman shifted uncomfortably in her chair, not looking at the boy, before muttering a plaintive few words, ”I did my best”, then looking down again, mouth clamped firmly shut.
“That was your best?” the little boy replied, his voice trembling a little. “To keep having kids you couldn’t afford, with one deadbeat stepfather (sorry, boyfriend) after another, who only stayed so they could get a leg over. Should never have been trusted to even look after a goldfish, never mind take proper care of a precious child, but you let him do it. You couldn’t have missed the bruises, but you did nothing!”
The woman kept her eyes down.
“And where were you? The boy addressed a shambling, dishevelled-looking group at the back of the room.
A big man, older than the others in his group, raised his chin defiantly and spat back. “We did care about youse! And the cops got the scumbag who did it!”
The boy took a deep breath, not cowed by the aggressive response, and then spoke in quiet anger. “All you cared about, every cowardly one of you, was yourselves. Two tiny babies in your house were dead, and all you could do was try to cover your own tracks and stop police from coming in.. for days! All so you could do things “the Maori way”. Well, that worked well, didn’t it?”
A number of women at the back of the room suddenly started wailing and waving their hands about, with some noticeably shedding quiet tears. The little boy raised his small voice and glared at them. “And as for YOU!” he shouted, “all you lot are good at is turning up to the tangi, crying and chanting and waving bits of green stuff around, pretending you care! I reckon it’s just for the free food! Where were you all, beforehand? Where was the support?”
The wailers gradually sat down, somewhat chastened.
Another man carrying a placard stood up. “Can we get to the point? I thought we were here because of that bunch of racists, picking on Maori and taking kids for no good reason. They’re just a load of family-wreckers — kids should stay with their whanau!” He remained standing, daring to be challenged.
“Oh, the whanau,” the little boy smiled sadly, “the noble whanau… I’ve seen the whanau of all the little ones I’m speaking for.” His voice began to rise again, quivering with anger.
“A mixed mob of child molesters, violent, thuggish abusers with the emotional maturity of a brick, P-addicts, booze-raddled, selfish, gutless, spineless losers, who spawned all the others like you, in this room. There are wild animals who look after their babies better than any of you. SHAME ON YOU… SHAME ON YOU ALL!!”
The little boy flopped down in his seat, exhausted. There was barely muted muttering in the room, and some shuffling towards the exit. Eventually the boy looked over at a woman sitting among the Oranga Tamariki group. Tears were rolling down her face but she smiled and nodded encouragingly at him. “Keep going,” the boy said softly. “Please, please don’t give up…. for our sake…”
“We won’t, Moko,” she replied. “Someone has to try to make a difference..”
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