A LASH OF THE TONGUE [27/05/2001] PRODUCER: PETER STEVENS REPORTER: AMANDA MILLAR Karen Intro: She started off in convents and graduated to prisons. She swears like a trooper and shoots her mouth off a bit too much for her own good. It was her mouth that got the provocative Celia Lashlie fired as manager of Nelson/Marlborough S.E.S., Specialist Education Services. She spoke out about a young boy who she said had a hopeless future, not the first time she's crossed swords with an employer. But this week, she's back in a job, and the chairman of S.E.S. is out of his, because of the way her sacking was handled. Amanda Millar has been with Celia Lashlie over the past few weeks, watching the furore unfold. AMANDA (V/O): It's been 33 days in corporate exile. Now Celia Lashlie, exhausted but vindicated, reflects on how one sentence ignited the rancour of her bosses and the passion of the public. CELIA LASHLIE: He’s five years old, he's blonde, gorgeous smile, angelic face. Sad thing is, he's probably coming to prison, and on the way he'll probably kill someone. AMANDA: What right do you have to say there is a 5 year old killer who's out there and on his way to prison? CELIA LASHLIE: The reality is there are children whose lives are pre-destined from the age 18 months, 2 years, 3 years. I am seeking to touch the nerves of middle class New Zealand to get off their butts and understand how serious a problem we have. AMANDA (V/O): Her profile of the 5 year old was revealed at a Restorative Justice Conference. It was detailed and disturbing. CELIA LASHLIE: He is one of four children to his mother and the 4 children are all to different fathers. He’s been in care since he was 18 months old. He’s not long been at school and they’re already struggling with him. In the 18 months before Social Welfare took him off his mother, she regularly blew cannabis up his nose to sedate him when he was crying. AMANDA (V/O): The headline appeared, and the controversy exploded. Specialist Education Services said she’d breached confidentiality. But Celia Lashlie maintained the profile was made up of a number of kids she knew. (I/V): It's easy for you to say that now, in retrospect. Convince us that it wasn't an individual child. CELIA LASHLIE: I have every awareness that I can't identify one child. Two things drive me to that; one is the confidentiality issue, that I would be destroying the child's life by naming him so publicly. And two, in the current climate in New Zealand, what New Zealand would do would be to reach for that child and fix his life and then they think they've got the problem sussed. AMANDA: Do you accept that you've potentially destroyed the trust in the families you needed to serve? CELIA LASHLIE: Absolutely not. That is a nonsense. I haven't destroyed any trust. We haven't identified a child. You can't find him, therefore how could I have destroyed the trust? AMANDA (TO CAM): Specialist Education Services didn't see it like that. Within six hours of her bosses reading the news, the Nelson manager was sacked. It didn’t matter that she’d spoken about the same profile 26 times before in the last eight months. S.E.S. was convinced that Celia Lashlie had identified a 5 year old Nelson boy, and we're told that staff were even sent searching for the mystery child. And S.E.S. never even contacted her directly to tell her that her contract was terminated. The news came via her employment agency. CELIA LASHLIE: It felt personally brutal. And it's not the way I operate. AMANDA: Do you accept there might be a personality problem between S.E.S. and Celia Lashlie? CELIA LASHLIE: No. I'd be less inclined to...I have seen nothing that would suggest that. Some people have said about me that I'm difficult to manage and I accept that. I know that I'd find me difficult to manage. AMANDA: Why? CELIA LASHLIE: Because I tend to ask why. Because I won't do things because I'm told. I do them because they make sense. AMANDA: You're too scary for them? CELIA LASHLIE: A bit too big in a number of ways really. And some people would think that I put dibs on myself a bit, bit too full of myself. AMANDA: You're bolshie? CELIA LASHLIE: I am bolshie. I'm bolshie when I'm looking down the face of injustice, not bolshie just for the sake of being bolshie. AMANDA (V/O): There was outrage at Celia Lashlie’s punishment, particularly in Nelson where, as the new S.E.S. manager, she had made a big impact very quickly with teachers, including kindy staff like Trish Garjewelo. TRISH GARJEWELO: She is somebody who's got vision, who's got passion, who's got abilities and talents and we need her to advocate for the children of New Zealand. AMANDA (V/O): As well as high school principals, like Charles Newton. CHARLES NEWTON: There's still disbelief about what's happened. I think there is a disbelief about the reasons being given and I think there is still probably, a building anger that this has happened. CELIA LASHLIE: Every child's got magic inside them and if we can get the system working enough to uncover that core of magic, then the problem goes away. AMANDA (V/O): Suddenly every word Celia Lashlie uttered became a potential headline. CELIA LASHLIE: What I need to make really clear right at the beginning; every single kid I talk about for the next half hour - hypothetical. Every single time I mention someone, just made up, alright? Not real. We've got that clear then I can talk freely. AMANDA (V/O): Unemployed but undeterred Celia Lashlie kept thrashing her message over the next four weeks. Here it's to a South Island Intermediate Principals' conference. CELIA LASHLIE: How is it that we can pick up that a 6 year old is going to be very lucky not to be in prison having killed someone when he's 18? How does that happen? AMANDA (V/O): She's staunch with her brown belt in judo and 15 years in prisons, three of them as boss at Christchurch Women's. But challenge her for proof and this tough talker reveals she can still be touched. CELIA LASHLIE: But I am the one who sat and listened to the kid who described what happened to her when she was 8; who looked at me when she was 19 in prison for killing someone, and talked about her mother telling her when she was 14, how she gave her away when she was born because she should never have been born. I'm the one that sits and listens and watches the grief wash across their face, the one who listens to a woman describe that by 11 she's had five men have a go at her body. I don't need proof. I've lived the proof. I've lived the proof of what it did to them and how come they're in prison. So I didn't need to go then and read a book. These women told me and I understood finally. So when I came out of the prison and looked towards the 5, 6, and 7 year olds, I knew that I was looking at the same kids. I was looking at them ten years earlier. AMANDA (V/O): What's more alarming is that kindergarten teachers like Trish Garjewelo say they can see future criminals in their 3 and 4 year olds. TRISH GARJEWELO: We have one child who was born in prison. The parent has been involved in criminal activities for a long time and the grandparent also has. We also have another child that has been identified, that displayed characteristics such as aggression, non compliance and anger, who went through the court systems and now is in prison for murder. AMANDA (V/O): Kindergarten teachers say it's a growing crisis; poor home life equals troubled kids. Teachers believe 30 out of 45 children at this kindy for example, require one on one help from S.E.S. But limited funding and strict eligibility means all they get is two S.E.S. teachers for just two children. TRISH GARJEWELO: I think we need to start looking at the causes, not build more prisons. We have to look at early childhood, otherwise we're going to have an increasing number of children who are coming through the system who will become violent parents. And also, the cycle will increase. CELIA LASHLIE: The saddest thing that I have ever seen amongst the people that I work with in prison is that, in that moment when they wake up and find themselves in a police cell or a prison cell, there's not the slightest outrage. They've just arrived where they've been told they've been heading for their entire life. AMANDA (V/O): No one told Celia Lashlie she was headed for prison. But when her marriage ended 20 years ago, the mother of two young kids needed money. She did a double degree and then got a job as a probation officer. One of her cases was Lynette, a heroin junkie. Three times Lynette overdosed, rescued by her three small boys who found their mother lying out cold with a needle in her arm. And Celia's composite description sounded just like Lynette’s own five year-old back then. LYNETTE: I rung her and said, “Are you talking about one of my sons?” Because that is my son, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, angelic face. Without her, I'd be dead and my children would probably be in jail. CELIA LASHLIE: I lost contact with her when I... she was always kind of special, there was a sense of wanting her life to be different for her. LYNETTE: I remember the day she came and told me that she was going to go and leave Probation and I was just devastated really ’cause she was always there. AMANDA (V/O): Years later, they met unexpectedly at a drug rehab centre. LYNETTE: It was for me to tell my story and say yes treatment works and I’m sort of starting to tell my story and Ces comes in. CELIA LASHLIE: This woman stood up to speak and she looked towards me and the hairs went up on the back of my neck. It was just, it was amazing because as she spoke she looked towards me in acknowledgement. She was a drug counsellor. And it was Lynette. It was just amazing. LYNETTE: I had to stop because she was the instrument of why I was standing there. CELIA LASHLIE: I think I recall her acknowledging to the audience that she was looking at a woman who had played a part in saving her life, which was, tears were streaming down my face. It was the oddest experience. AMANDA: And again, that still hits you right now? CELIA LASHLIE: It does. It was a magic moment. Absolute and sheer delight at the magic of life that can occur in that moment. And that's the sort of thing that sustains me. That those magic moments can be achieved by everybody and we can save these people. AMANDA (V/O): That mission led Celia Lashlie to prison. In 1985 she became the first female officer to work in a male prison. Then she was appointed Equal Employment Opportunities Co-ordinator. Her challenge, to break down the macho mentality amongst male guards and get more women into the job. The toughest culture to turn was in New Zealand's maximum security jail, Paremoremo. The screws in here didn’t want women doing their job and Celia Lashlie is still haunted by one particularly hostile meeting with the male officers. CELIA LASHLIE: They were all backed against the walls of a big room and I was concentrating on talking to them and looked down and realised my eyes were full with tears and I hadn't noticed that, and knew that I was in personal danger of crying and that was the last thing I was going to do. And realised afterwards in analysing, got out of the room quite fast, and realised afterwards that what had happened, while I was talking, my intuition which is quite well developed, had been circling the room and had sucked up this incredible hostility. And I walked out feeling seriously assaulted. Felt revolting. Took me some days to come back down out of that. AMANDA (V/O): She won them over in the end, and then Celia Lashlie became the manager of Christchurch Women's Prison. The new governor had her own ideas. She didn’t agree that both male and female prisoners should be treated the same. CELIA LASHLIE: I wanted the women to be managed as women. There is a huge body of international literature that shows the difference between men and women offenders. I said to the prison system, “Why you should worry about these 300 women when you've got 6000 men over here, is because they're raising the criminals of the next generation.” AMANDA (V/O): Three years later, she left Christchurch Women’s, battered by the bureaucracy. CELIA LASHLIE: I was in a dance and I was getting tired of it and I wanted to try and lift to a more strategic level to impact the change that was happening. AMANDA (V/O): Celia thought that she could get better results as a consultant for the Department of Corrections but that relationship disintegrated when Head Office mooted a cost cutting plan. It wanted to close the women's prison kitchen and prepare all food in the nearby men's jail. Women inmates went on a hunger-strike and Celia Lashlie leapt into battle. CELIA LASHLIE: In terms of the male prison across the road, there was often as many as six, seven, or eight men who had been their partners and it was not uncommon to hear in a male prison kitchen, “Those bitches over there deserve all they get.” I'd been in the prison system, I'd been on the floors of male jails, I know the sort of things they do to entertain themselves at a variety of levels. AMANDA: But you had to confront management to get that across to them. What did you say? CELIA LASHLIE: I actually said, “This is not about me, this is not about female inmate issues, this is about semen in mashed potato and we need to keep our eye focused on that. Stop making policy decisions that emanate from the top, that are based on money when you're playing with people's lives and you're talking about their most basic right, which is to eat food that they can trust.” AMANDA (V/O): The women's kitchen survived but Celia Lashlie’s career with the Department of Corrections didn’t. The sign is as close as she gets to Christchurch Women’s these days. (I/V): How does it feel to come back here now? CELIA LASHLIE: This was a place where a lot of magic occurred for me and for the team I worked with and for the women who were in here. So a lot of my heart still sits in this place, I guess. AMANDA: It could still be here if you hadn't perhaps opened your mouth and fought as hard as you did. CELIA LASHLIE: I suppose that's true. My mouth continually gets me into trouble. AMANDA: Maybe it's time to consider that your mouth is making you unemployable? CELIA LASHLIE: I certainly thought about it in the immediate aftermath of the S.E.S. decision that I had become unemployable because it seemed as if, once again, I'd crossed the line from being a hero to being a demon almost; that you are, one minute they like the work you do and the next minute you go too far and you're out. AMANDA (V/O): In the four weeks S.E.S. shut her out, local principals paid to get Celia Lashlie back in their schools to help problem students. Today Nayland College staff want her to set up a project to track high risk pupils. CELIA LASHLIE: But then at the other end, start using my ability of knowledge of bureaucracy if you like to go in and talk to the appropriate people. AMANDA (TO CAM): Last Monday night, a Crown driver hand-delivered this document to Celia Lashlie in Nelson. This was what she'd put her life on hold for. It was the State Services Commission investigation into her sacking, and it stated that S.E.S. did have the legal right to terminate her contract, but quote: “The question remains however whether all the information was adequate to support the decision. That was and remains a matter of judgement”. It also said that in hindsight the entire process would have benefited from direct meetings between S.E.S. management and Celia Lashlie. This wasn't good enough for her. CELIA LASHLIE: I'm tired, it has taken its toll, and I thought the report would spell out a way forward, and it didn't. AMANDA (V/O): The next day, Celia Lashlie is in for some unexpected news. CELIA LASHLIE (on phone): Hello. Where I'm at so far is I've received the report and am waiting to get a copy of the press release so that I know what the Minister's reaction to the report is. AMANDA (V/O): It's a shock to hear that the Minister has just appointed a new S.E.S. chair, Doug Martin, and he's on the other end of the line. What’s more he's telling her there's sixty thousand dollars for projects she's been setting up in Nelson schools and how does she feel about working on those for the rest of the year? CELIA LASHLIE (on phone): Thank you. I think happy would be a good word, yes! AMANDA: How do you feel about that? You're obviously delighted. CELIA LASHLIE: I'm absolutely delighted, yes yeah. Mainly, aside from the personal issues, it obviously spells that there's now going to be some resolution to this, and it has been a long four weeks, and the last 24 hours have been quite difficult. But what it really says is that it's validating the need for work, that there's validating the issue that there are children in schools who are predestined for prison. So it’s like a validation of the whole issue. AMANDA (V/O): Hours later, the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard makes an announcement on Celia Lashlie's sacking. And while the journalists took their places, a parliamentary messenger with the Minister's press release tried to find Celia's place. CELIA LASHLIE: I’m the person you're looking for, I think. Yep, Celia Lashlie. Thank you very much. Sorry about the climb. TREVOR MALLARD: I think the treatment of Ms Lashlie was unfair. I think her dismissal without the right to make comment, without being invited to make comment by S.E.S. is something which is not a proper way of dealing with someone who has given good service, to the public service of New Zealand for a period of time. CELIA LASHLIE (Reading): Great, really great. TREVOR MALLARD: I think it’s fair to say from the report, that any reasonable reading of the report, would be that this incident wasn't well handled. AMANDA (V/O): Mishandled to such an extent that the S.E.S. board chairman lost his job for what was seen as defensive and closed management. (TO CAM): In fact, Specialist Education Services has completely shut down on the Celia Lashlie saga. Our request for an interview was turned down and a list of supplied questions went unanswered. We wanted to know in particular, when Celia Lashlie declared the offending description was a composite of children, why didn’t S.E.S. review its decision. And why was she never given the right to respond before she was dismissed. All we could get out of the new chair, Doug Martin, was that he wasn't prepared to revisit the whole episode and it was important to move on. Ask the woman herself about S.E.S.'s management and she’s untypically circumspect. And there is one issue that is still unresolved for her. CELIA LASHLIE: At no point has anyone yet declared, both for me and for those who follow me in the public service, that I in fact did not breach confidentiality. And for the sake of the public service and for the fact of robust social policy, it is something that we need to get clear. AMANDA (V/O): Thirty-three days of high-profile turmoil are behind Celia Lashlie. Now she’s planning on keeping quiet - that’s her line anyway. Time to focus on what's important, kids. Her own especially. Daughter and economist, Rebekah and son Gene, a diesel mechanic. CELIA LASHLIE: When I woke up, my first day unemployed ever in my adult life, a letter came from my daughter and they’d taken a photo. Here she is, this very fit looking and very attractive young woman smiling at the person she's running with, and I looked at the photo and thought, and the rest don't matter. I just turn back and look at my two children and think, y'know, that's what life's about and the rest is icing on the cake I guess.