We invited ‘evil’ into our home
Parents of a newborn kidnapped by her nanny in an elaborate scheme tell Janet McIntyre of the horror of discovering her missing.
Louise is on the phone to police but can barely speak. The horror of what she has just seen is sinking in. An empty bassinet. A wide open back door. Her new baby girl Chloe, just home from hospital, has vanished.
Louise can be seen in CCTV footage doubling over on the back porch, heaving with anguish. Her husband Matt is bolting out the gate in his boxers.
Later, they will say they were on autopilot. Matt thought he was chasing down a homeless person: ‘‘Somebody that had just randomly come in and done this.’’
Louise tried to focus on questions from the police dispatcher. ‘‘At the same time I had a thousand other thoughts – where is she, is she hurt, is she alive? Horrible, horrible thoughts.’’
What they didn’t know in that moment was that the offender was right there standing beside them, witnessing their distress. Nadene Manukau-Togiavalu, their nanny, can be seen on CCTV apparently frantically searching for the missing baby.
And she’s there too on the 111 call, full of panic: ‘‘The back door was open and the baby wasn’t in the pram where I left her.’’
Matt and Louise – we’ve changed their names and that of baby Chloe for legal reasons – still can’t bring themselves to listen to that 111 call, 14 months after being betrayed by a young woman they trusted.
‘‘The only word is probably evil . . . somebody that can be invited into somebody’s home to look after their new-born baby,’’ says Matt.
But the call and the CCTV footage from four cameras around the house were critical in the swift, intensive police investigation that followed.
‘‘We weren’t happy with her,’’ says Detective Inspector Scott Beard, of the nanny who quickly became their focus. He’s a cop who’s been displeased with thousands of witnesses in his 38-year career but ManukauTogiavalu piqued him more than most.
‘‘When you take into account the lies, the ruse created over a period of nine months . . . and then the actual kidnapping, I’ve never had anything quite like this before.’’
Manukau-Togiavalu, 21, had spun lie after lie to friends, family, her ex-boyfriend, her employer and even a costume hire store. They were all duped by the seemingly caring young woman with doleful eyes, who drew sympathy with tales of tragedy in her life.
‘‘She seemed very kind and open,’’ says Louise, who chose Manukau-Togiavalu on the strength of references and high recommendations from a professional agency. ‘‘Ironically enough she seemed sincere and I thought we’d get along well.’’
But Manukau-Togiavalu was leading a double life. Secretly she was plotting revenge on an exboyfriend, a schoolboy who’d dumped her.
She lied when she told him she was pregnant to him. Over nine months she conned her whole family, hiring a series of pregnancy bellies and staging a baby shower. She convinced them, as she packed her overnight bag, she was off to hospital to give birth.
‘‘Surely to get to that point, a lot of people have missed a lot of things,’’ says Matt.
But the nanny’s planning was extraordinarily elaborate. She enlisted her young cousin Sydnee Taulapapa, convincing the 18-yearold that Chloe was her own baby who’d been adopted out.
Taulapapa later told police she declined money from ManukauTogiavalu to stage the kidnapping.
But Taulapapa did agree to help Manukau-Togiavalu out of a sense of duty to her whanau. The pair nutted out the details by text. One exchange, while ManukauTogiavalu was watching the prison television drama Wentworth, shows they knew the seriousness of what they were about to do.
Nadene: Lmao (laughing my arse off) our future on the tv
Sydnee: Hhahaha fml (f**k my life). I’m shit scared now
Nadene: Imagine how I feel
That text, seen for the first time by Matt and Louise this week, is devastating. ‘‘That little joke shows how cold, callous and calculating they are. They are completely incapable of considering the damage their actions will cause.’’
Manukau-Togiavalu was sentenced to three years imprisonment for her crimes, but Taulapapa was discharged without conviction, a decision this week upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Three judges believed the consequences of a conviction outweighed the gravity of Taulapapa’s offending, noting she was young, easily led, and may have been influenced by a sense obligation to her whanau.
‘‘We were violated once on the day of the kidnapping and then again by that decision,’’ says Matt. ‘‘There have been no consequences for her whatsoever. The justice system has completely failed us and all parents in New Zealand.’’
‘‘Sydnee of her own free will broke into our house, took away our baby daughter and drove around with her for seven hours,’’ says Louise. ‘‘How can you say she was manipulated into doing something like that? She knew exactly what she was doing.’’
For Chloe, now 14-months-old, perhaps the only lingering impact of the day will be knowing how much she is loved.
‘‘She is delightful,’’ says Louise. ‘‘She makes friends with everyone.’’
But the heartache of losing her for a day and the fear that something might happen again, is never far from their thoughts.
‘‘On a logical level you know you can lock the back door but that doesn’t alleviate the ongoing fear of losing her,’’ says Louise. ‘‘It’s always with you.’’
The most important thing in Matt’s life is making sure his family is safe and he still struggles with a sense of failure – that he couldn’t protect his daughter that day.
But spend any amount of time with these parents and you quickly realise Chloe will not be defined by what happened to her when she was just 10 days old.
That little joke shows how cold, callous and calculating they are. Matt and Louise
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