Mum leaves her kids alone to go boozing
A Hamilton woman who left her children home alone to drink with her neighbours is five months pregnant with her fourth child.
Channelle Hemaima Tepania, 26, of Melville, avoided a jail term, instead was sentenced to three months’ community detention and nine months’ supervision in Hamilton District Court on Tuesday.
Tepania admitted a charge of committing a criminal nuisance by leaving her three children without reasonable supervision and care knowing it would endanger their safety overnight on March 6.
When pleading guilty at her earlier appearance in June, the judge indicated she would get a sentence that benefited her children.
Making submissions, Tepania’s counsel Russell Boot said she had now completed a Salvation Army parenting course and she was about to start an eight-week course with alcohol rehabilitation organisation Care NZ.
Boot said Tepania now had all three children back in her care and was five months pregnant with her next child.
A pre-sentence report showed that community detention was the most suitable sentence for Tepania, he said.
Judge Peter Spiller agreed with the report and ordered that the community detention sentence have a curfew of 7pm to 7am.
He hoped that the supervision sentence would back up the work that she had been doing already.
Child Matters chief executive Anthea Simcock hoped that Tepania would receive all the help she needed.
‘‘It’s not uncommon for children to be neglected where drugs and alcohol and mental health and family violence are concerned. They are three of the major and very common issues.’’
Simcock said there was usually something in the person’s background that caused them to abuse substances.
However, if the person received the proper treatment it could turn their lives around.
‘‘I would like to think that [supervision] provided an opportunity for people to really understand the effect of their behaviour on children and to learn about children really need and what they can do that’s different.’’