Saving Grace: Child Trafficked And Enslaved In New Zealand

Monday, 14 April 2025, 3:20 pm
Article: RNZ

Gill Bonnett, Immigration Reporter

Warning: This story contains content some may find disturbing.

A 13-year-old girl was brought to New Zealand and enslaved, with a paediatrician saying the teenager would most likely have died if she had not been rescued when she was.

But her abusers have never been charged with trafficking the girl - given the pseudonym Grace - and Oranga Tamariki says it would "push a lot harder" for more serious convictions if that situation happened today.

International child protection manager Sharyn Titchener told a webinar last month that a social worker was alerted to Grace's plight by a medical professional, got a warrant and described seeing her when she arrived.

"The social worker wrote the description of how this child came out looking gaunt, sad. And she was only 13 years old. She spoke very little English, but the social worker who collected her was from her country of origin, so was able to speak in her first language. And she used words such as slave and that she was treated like a dog.

"She had 35 current injuries on multiple parts of her body. She was underweight, she had poor hygiene and she had head lice. Due to the appearance of the historical and the current injuries, it was determined that weapons had been used to repeatedly assault her. The paediatrician stated that in his findings - he's an extremely experienced paediatrician - that some of the injuries were the worst he'd seen on a child of that age. The paediatrician also stated that the removal of Grace from the home had very likely prevented a homicide occurring."

It was an example in a webinar being held to raise awareness among health professionals about telltale signs of people being held against their will. The two adults in the house where she lived were convicted of abuse and jailed.

"This was a couple of years ago, we would push a lot harder now to make sure this was handed to Crown [prosecutors] to consider trafficking," said Titchener. "And without a doubt this - Grace's - story was a story of domestic servitude, slavery. She was moved into New Zealand, into this home, and was enslaved."

Servants, drug-growers and acrobats

Forms of trafficking varied from country to country, she added, and while sexual exploitation was also happening, many cases involve forced labour by children trafficked across borders.

"Traditionally, historically and globally, people think of sexual exploitation in brothels etc," she said. "Our New Zealand context includes places like cannabis-grow operations, where children have been brought in as crop-sitters. And obviously we had the [Zirka] circus, children here as entertainers. So we keep our lens very wide as we learn and understand what the New Zealand context is like. It is different to what international studies may indicate."

In the Zirka circus case, children as young as 11 toured the country for years as acrobats before they were uplifted by authorities and returned to China.

Children do not necessarily know they have been trafficked, she said, nor do they always come from backgrounds or countries where child protection officers exist, or government officials can be trusted.

Prosecutions were hard for victims - and not helped by gaps in the law.

"Our current legislation is really tough on children. We have to prove the coercion and deception of a child and in general, trafficking cases - a prosecution - relies on the victim testimony."

ECPAT Child Alert director Eleanor Parkes said that issue of coercion is what needed to change to increase prosecutions. The government was handed a draft bill by advocates and campaigners fighting modern slavery in December, written by experts in the field.

Authorities needed to both enforce existing laws and overhaul the legislation, said Parkes.

"We do have anti-trafficking legislation that isn't being applied in cases like this, where it could be. We also need to really strengthen our modern slavery legislation and make sure that we're not requiring coercion to be proven in these cases.

"When we're talking about a child being exploited, and particularly if it comes to sexual exploitation, coercion isn't a relevant question. Children are often really compliant, and they're going to do what they're told. And so you shouldn't need to prove that they were somehow tricked or forced into doing something. The fact that they were in the situation where that's what was being expected of them, is a crime in itself."

And she said people need to look out for the potential trafficking - of children and adults - that goes on in homes and public places, within New Zealand and across borders.

"This kind of exploitation isn't as rare here as people assume. Generally, people are looking for the wrong thing. They're looking for trafficking the way it looks in the movies, like kids being kidnapped at airports. And really it looks not very glamorous. It looks like child abuse. It can look like sexual abuse, it can look like intimate partner violence.

"And so once people are looking for the right thing, they realise it happens here - all of the time."

New Zealand needed to catch up with other countries on anti-trafficking and slavery legislation, and step up its operating budgets, she said.

Immigration New Zealand said it investigates if it finds red flags in visa applications, and refers relevant cases to partner agencies if there are indications that trafficking may have occurred.

Oranga Tamariki told RNZ it is part of the Interagency Trafficking in Persons Operations Group, which is made up of representatives from INZ, Police, Customs, the Department of Internal Affairs and the Labour Inspectorate.

"One of the interagency group's priorities is to raise awareness that people trafficking happens in Aotearoa New Zealand and improve understanding, so we can work together to eliminate this crime," said Titchener in a written statement.

"The anonymous case you have referenced was spoken about in a webinar that was held to raise awareness within the professional sector and was not for public use. The name used was not the young person's real name and was made up to protect their identity.

"Raising awareness about the signs of trafficking within professional sectors, such as health care, helps give people who work in these industries insights about who these crimes can be committed against, signs they can look out for and ways to respond if they feel like someone they are engaging with might be a victim of trafficking."

Meanwhile, Grace has been sent back to her home country, but other abuse continues.

"We are incredibly busy, which is very sad," Titchener told the webinar, hosted by a Christian medical group, and which has been made inaccessible to public view since RNZ approached Oranga Tamariki for comment on Tuesday. "We're only a team of four. But we are very, very busy - and that just shows what we are facing."

Where to get help:

Sexual Violence

• NZ Police.
• Victim Support 0800 842 846.
• Rape Crisis: 0800 88 33 00.
• Rape Prevention Education.
• Empowerment Trust.
• HELP (Auckland): 09 623 1700, (Wellington): 04 801 6655.
• Safe to talk: 0800 044 334.
• Tautoko Tāne Male Survivors Aotearoa.
• Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) 022 344 0496.
  • Women's Refuge: 0800 733 843.
  • It's Not OK 0800 456 450.
  • Shine: 0508 744 633.
  • Victim Support: 0800 842 846.
  • HELP Call 24/7 (Auckland): 09 623 1700, (Wellington): 04 801 6655.
  • The National Network of Family Violence Services NZ has information on specialist family violence agencies.

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