Warning: This story deals with the death of a child, and may be distressing. 

On November 15, 2024, Pauline Timu put Rickah’Shae Keefe-Haerewa in the back of her car, after he’d allegedly suffered a serious assault at the hands of another person. 

But rather than race to Whakatāne Hospital, she pulled over for between seven and nine minutes, and rang another occupant of her house to warn him that police might be coming to their address. 

When she arrived at the hospital with the 8-year-old boy, medical staff found him in the backseat, unresponsive. 

Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced dead. 

His cause of death was determined as blunt force trauma to the abdomen, but he was found to have other injuries, including signs of historic injuries consistent with non-accidental assault. 

Now Timu, who was his legal guardian and great aunt, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, accepting her role in his death. 

She failed, without lawful excuse, to provide the child in her care with necessities and take reasonable steps to protect him from injury. 

According to an agreed summary of facts, on the day Rickah’Shae died, Timu had slapped him in the mouth as a “punishment for lying”. 

It’s alleged that, later that day, he suffered a serious assault by another person. 

Timu failed to intervene. 

When she was in her car with him later, and it was apparent he needed medical care, she still failed to seek it, pulling over to make phone calls. 

None of them were to emergency services. 

The 62-year-old also has admitted a series of charges, some of them representative, related to ill-treatment and ongoing violence towards Rickah’Shae. 

She has accepted slapping the 8-year-old or “booting his bum”, hitting him with a pole or stick as discipline, whipping him with a cord, and sometimes filming the assaults to embarrass him. 

In the three years she had legal custody of him, he was regularly observed with black eyes. 

She would shave off his hair as a punishment, keep him home from school for “weeks at a time” without justification, and send him to school without food. 

Then she would tell the school not to provide him with the free school lunches. 

As Timu entered guilty pleas, a large number of family members and supporters of Rickah’Shae were in attendance. 

Rickah’Shae’s mother was seen crying as the various charges were put to Timu, and she admitted her guilt. 

Supporters of Timu shook their heads and, at some points, called out during the hearing. 

Nearly a decade of violence towards children 

Timu also pleaded guilty to violence charges related to other children, some of whom were in her fulltime care, with the offending dating back to 2013. 

Timu pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including the manslaughter charge, and the violence and ill-treatment charges related to Rickah’Shae. 

They include charges of assault, assault with a weapon, and ill-treatment of children. 

The summaries of facts detail assaults against several children, including punches to the arms and stomach, and hits to the face, that were hard enough to leave bruises. 

She hit one child with a belt and a wooden spoon. 

On one occasion, she punched a young teen in her care in the mouth, causing the teen’s lip to bleed. The punch forced the teen’s head back, and it hit a door. 

The summary said when she hit one of the boys in her care, it was so hard that it hurt her own shoulder. 

Timu accepted charges of ill-treatment, which included shaving the children’s hair to embarrass them, and withholding food. 

The Crown has asked for charges held by the District Court to be transferred to the High Court, so that all matters can be sentenced together. 

A preliminary date in May has been set down for sentencing in the High Court at Hamilton. 

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.