Latest news with #Rangitīkei
NZ Herald
26-06-2025
- Sport
- NZ Herald
Whanganui club rugby: Taihape face Border in Barracks Challenge Shield match
No 15 Tyler Rogers-Holden was among the Taihape players to get a good hit-out in the Northern versus Rangitīkei sub-union game ahead of this weekend's match against Border. Photo / Kate Belsham, Ivy Digital Brought to you by Whanganui Rugby Memorial Park will host the last Barracks Challenge Shield match for the Tasman Tanning Premier season and may see a decisive switch in who drives where for the following weekend's semifinals. Holders Byford's Readimix Taihape took over the top of the table without even
NZ Herald
24-06-2025
- Sport
- NZ Herald
Northern claim Pownall Trophy with 46-27 victory over Rangitīkei
The Northern sub-union team claimed the Pownall Trophy an entertaining 46-27 victory over Rangitīkei. The Northern sub-union team had the tough hit-out they were after in an entertaining 46-27 victory over Rangitīkei as sub-union rugby returned to the Whanganui Rugby Football Union on Matariki Friday. In front of a good crowd at Memorial Park in Taihape, the new Rangitīkei team struck first as standout
RNZ News
22-06-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Former Lake Alice nurse charged over ill-treatment of children dies aged 93
Dempsey Cockran in court in 2021. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon The only staff member at the notorious Lake Alice child and adolescent unit to face prosecution over the horrors at the Rangitīkei institution in the 1970s has died. Dempsey Corkran, 93, died on Saturday 14 June, according to death notices that appeared in weekend newspapers. The notices said the Marton man "died at home surrounded by his family", and his family thanked Marton district nurses and the Arohanui Hospice in Palmerston North. A private service has been held. "His presence, guidance and wit will be missed by us all," the notices said. Appearing in court under his full names, John Richard James Corkran, the former unit charge nurse faced eight charges of ill-treating children by injecting them with the paralysing drug paraldehyde. He was due to face trial in Wellington in 2023, but in June that year the High Court granted a permanent stay due to his failing health . Corkran first appeared in court in late 2021, then aged 89, at the conclusion of a third police investigation into the Lake Alice unit. That investigation found there was also enough evidence to charge the unit's lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks and one other staff member, but they were unfit for trial. Leeks died in early 2022 in Australia, aged 92. Previous police investigations in the 1970s and 2000s did not result in charges. Corkran faced - and pleaded not guilty to - eight charges of ill-treating children between 1974 and 1977, carrying maximum penalties of 10 years' jail. Court documents said Corkran injected the boys with drugs for reasons including them running away; calling him a bastard; "being smart"; and because a boy was "enjoying himself too much, laughing and having jokes with friends". When the prosecution was halted, survivors of the Lake Alice unit spoke about their disappointment that no one would ever face justice for what happened there - horrors the government now acknowledged amounted to torture. Corkran did not appear at his later court hearings, but was at his initial call in the Whanganui District Court. Outside he declined to comment to reporters, and his family grew angry as television cameras followed him along the street. Corkran worked at Lake Alice from 1960 as a psychiatric nurse, becoming a charge nurse in 1968 and then in the child and adolescent unit, which opened in 1972, from 1974. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
NZ Herald
19-06-2025
- Sport
- NZ Herald
Whanganui rugby: Regional rivalry returns with Pownall Trophy on the line
Brought to you by Whanganui Rugby Regional rivalry is renewed for the first time in 15 years this Matariki Friday, as the Northern sub-union team will face the resurrected Rangitīkei squad in Taihape. Today's fixture will be for the historic Pownall Trophy, which involved these two sides as well
RNZ News
02-06-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Former Justice Minister Judith Collins refuses to apologise to Lake Alice survivor
Lake Alice survivor Karilyn Wildbore and family. Photo: RNZ/Jimmy Ellingham A senior government minister has refused to apologise to a Lake Alice abuse survivor for telling the United Nations more than 10 years ago that there was no state torture in New Zealand. Then-Justice Minister Judith Collins made the comments in 2014, a decade before the government first used the word 'torture' in relation to the Lake Alice child and adolescent unit in the 1970s. She said she was acting on UN reports from the time. The government now says that children and young people who suffered electric shocks or painful paralysing injections at the Rangitīkei institution are eligible for redress, because they were tortured. Included in that is the offer of $150,000 rapid redress payments , which Levin woman Karilyn Wildbore has decided to take up. In March, she also asked for her compensation to include an apology from Collins, now Attorney-General and Minister of Defence, for her 2014 comments. When questioned about New Zealand's obligations under UN conventions, particularly from the Iranian delegate, Collins said: "In response to Iran, I can advise that there is no state torture in New Zealand." In a letter to Wildbore this week, Collins said she would not apologise for the comments. "My response to Iran's remarks reflected the findings of the United Nations subcommittee on the prevention of torture, which had visited New Zealand in April 2013. "In its report, provided to New Zealand in November 2013, the subcommittee found 'no evidence of torture or physical ill-treatment' in places of detention in New Zealand." Collins said she acknowledged the experiences of Wildbore and others at the Lake Alice unit. "However, I don't believe that what I told the UPR [universal periodic review] in 2014, in response to a remark from Iran, was wrong. "As such, I am unable to provide the apology Ms Wildbore has requested." Wildbore said she was not surprised. "Denial's the name of the game at the moment," she said. "No matter what you do, people don't want to be responsible." Wildbore said Collins should have known about what had happened at Lake Alice, especially since the first compensation payments were made more than a decade before 2014. Only last year, the government began using the word 'torture' to describe the unit's treatment of children and young people, under lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks. The $150,000 rapid payments are part of a $22.68 million package for Lake Alice Survivors announced late last year. Survivors who received electric shocks or paralysing injections could either opt for these payments or head to arbitration. Collins' office was contacted for comment. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
