So the Government has apologised to Tom Phillips' children for failing to keep them safe. And, man, that apology is not overdoing it when you read the report and realise just how many times officials completely stuffed up trying to find those kids and keep them safe.

Probably the most shocking mistake was made by the police. A woman called them and said she had Phillips in her car, and she even took a photo of him to show them, but they never showed up.

She'd come across his broken-down car somewhere around Marokopa and the kids were with him. She and another family member, a mother-in-law or something like that, tried to help him jump-start the car. After they'd done that, she went home and immediately called the cops.

The police sent officers over but they ended up being redeployed to another job before they even reached her so they never turned up.

That was May 2023. Those kids had already been in the bush for 18 months. Everybody in this country knew about the Phillips family by then. It wasn't as if the police didn't know who they were looking for. There was no excuse for treating it that way.

For me, the second most alarming thing is that police knew Phillips was an alcoholic and a weirdo who'd done strange things, like wearing a full military gas mask around Ōtorohanga, talking about doomsday prepping and at times drinking a box of beer and a bottle of vodka in a single day.

And yet, he had the kids in his care.

And that was known in October, by the way. October is important because that's the month he runs away the first time. He comes back and authorities realise what they're dealing with: an alcoholic, deeply eccentric man. Yet before he runs away the second time, they leave the kids in his care.

How is this a country where we leave kids with someone who gets that drunk?

Now, what I've told you is by no means an exhaustive list of what went wrong. There was the case of OT actually closing its file in February 2022. The kids had been missing for 74 days  and they said they had no concerns for their welfare.

When he first disappears the second time, police say they're not worried about the kids' safety. Again, this is a guy who gets completely rotten drunk on a frequent basis.

When his ute is found near Marokopa a month after he disappears, police don't bother turning up for nearly a week. They leave it there for six days. When they finally arrive, they simply leave a note and then leave.

And it goes on and on and on, the failures.

The basic finding in this review is that police and OT could have stopped him from going bush with the kids the second time but they didn't. Police also could have tried to get those kids out earlier but they didn't.

Which means, if you know what the suppressed information is, they could have stopped all of that from happening and they didn't.

And that is more horrific than bears thinking about.

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