Jail house makes great escape
A teenager who helped kidnap a baby had been fooled into thinking her cousin had unwillingly given it up for adoption.
Instead her cousin had been lying to her boyfriend and family that she was pregnant, wearing a fake fat belly strap-on, and decided to kidnap the baby she was nannying.
Sydnee Shanunna Toulapapa, 19, pleaded guilty to one charge of kidnapping and one of burglary and was discharged without conviction in the High Court at Auckland by Justice Peter Woodhouse.
She was ordered to pay a reparation of $2000 to the parents if they wished to accept or a children’s charity and undertake 400 hours of community work.
On August 9, 2017 Toulapapa crept into a house in the Auckland suburb of Epsom wearing a homemade balaclava and took the 11-day-old baby from her cot.
She had been asked to take the baby by the baby’s nanny and her cousin – Nadene Manukautogiavalu – who had pretended to be pregnant and said she had given the baby up for adoption.
Crown prosecutor Kirsten Lummis said Manukau-togiavalu had signed herself up as a ‘‘homehelp nanny’’ and had spent two nights at the Auckland address.
‘‘On the third night, before 7am, she arranged for Toulapapa to take the baby.’’
Lummis said there was premeditation and a lot of planning had gone into the kidnapping.
She said the grandparents and other family members of Manukau-togiavalu were getting suspicious after an initial baby shower was thrown for a boy then quickly changed to a girl.
Lummis said Toulapapa thought the baby was rightfully Manukau-togiavalu’s.
Defence lawyer Annabel Creswell told the court Manukautogiavalu had approached her cousin asking for help.
‘‘I’m in trouble, I’ve adopted out my baby and I forgot I’d signed adoption papers and I want my baby back and I’m going to stay with the adoptive parents to help with breast feeding.
‘‘Everybody in her family believed that Nadene was pregnant and had pretended to be pregnant for months, she’d hired a baby belly and thrown a baby shower.’’
Police were alerted about 7am by the child’s parents, and the infant was found and returned to her parents about 1.30pm safe and well.
The father of the baby was in court and read his and his wife’s victim impact statements.
The mother of the baby said it was the ‘‘worst seven hours of my life and my worst nightmare’’.
Manukau-togiavalu had been recommended to the parents as a good nanny by an agency and they trusted her to look after their newborn baby.
‘‘It was an absolute violation of trust. We welcomed her into our home,’’ the mother said.
The father recalled watching the CCTV footage of Toulapapa wearing a balaclava opening the back door and creeping up the stairs and then walking out with their baby girl.
He was watching this footage with Manukau-togiavalu and the police at the time and he asked her ‘‘where’s our baby Nadene?’’
‘‘I didn’t think she was capable of such a thing,’’ he said.
‘‘We trusted an agency to do background checks and not provide a nightmare nanny that would kidnap our baby.’’
Defence lawyer Annabel Cresswell told the court that Toulapapa accepted she was naive.
After kidnapping the baby and becoming aware the police had become involved, Toulapapa eventually told police about 1pm that day she had the baby.
‘‘She still didn’t understand the gravity and still thought she had Nadene’s baby,’’ Cresswell said.
Justice Woodhouse said he was satisfied that Toulapapa was ‘‘extremely remorseful’’ of what she had done. It was a great escape from Rimutaka Prison, but it was not a prisoner that cleared the razor-wire, but a house.
Built by eight prisoners for Housing NZ, the two-bedroom home is destined for a site in Lower Hutt.
With a large crowd of nervous officials watching, it was gingerly lifted over the wire and on to the back of a waiting truck.
The house was built under the supervision of Weltec staff who run six trade programmes in the Upper Hutt prison.
Rimutaka Prison director Viv Whelan said the project was a significant one. ‘‘Not only is this the first house to be built in the prison, it also provides hope for a positive future for the men who built it, and for the family who will live in it,’’ she said.
‘‘The men now have practical, hands-on experience backed up with a qualification that will help them into employment on release.’’
One person who understood the importance of gaining a qualification was one of the prisoners, who cannot be named, who was doing a Weltec course. A first-time prisoner, he was working on getting a plumbing qualification he hoped would help him find a job in the agriculture sector.
He accepted that he had made a mistake and said he did not want to waste his time in prison.
The public had the wrong impression of prisoners. Just about everyone in prison would one day get out and the best way of making sure they did not return was finding them a job, he said.
If he was not studying, he would be back in his cell doing nothing. He would be ‘‘an idiot’’ to turn down the opportunity of free education, he said.
Chris Hipkins, who is the local MP for Rimutaka and Minister of Education, said upskilling prisoners meant they were less likely to reoffend. It also helped deal with the ‘‘wider ‘‘ issue of the need for more houses.
Prisoners are building a second home and Hipkins said the scheme had the potential to supply houses on a larger scale.
It was also good to see Housing NZ, Corrections and education providers working together cooperatively, he said.
Corrections chief executive Ray Smith said providing training was ‘‘absolutely critical’’ to reduce prison numbers.
Two-thirds of prisoners were unemployed when they committed their crime and it was in society’s best interests to find them work when they get out, he said.
For many men, the the qualification they get in prison will be their first. Nationally, there had been a change of attitude and employers are now much more willing to employ prisoners after they have been released.
In the last financial year, 3894 prisoners achieved a qualification nationally, Smith said.