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Mother 'horrified' over alleged child assault VICTORIA ROBINSON
Last updated 05:00 13/09/2011
A mother whose son was allegedly kicked and yelled at by a 71-year-old man says she is still ''horrified'' over the incident.
Ian Gibson Wallis appeared in Auckland District Court last week charged with assault on a child.
The woman said she and her two-year-old son were at Auckland Hospital last weekend to visit her father, who had just had a tumour removed from his spine, for Father's Day.
She said they were in the hospital lift when a man and his wife got in.
''My son started to get a bit grisly because he wanted to get out on the floor that they got in on, as children do.
"He turned around to my son as the doors close and started screaming 'shut up!' at him, at the top of his lungs.
"And then he just kicked him clean over onto the ground from standing position to the ground. ''I've never met him in my life, I don't know him from a bar of soap. I'm still pretty horrified.''
The mother said a wild goose chase around the hospital followed, as the man attempted to get away from her.
''We got out on the eighth floor and they started trying to get back into the lift, trying to get away from me.
"I said 'I'm going to follow you guys around until I find security', because no-one else helped me.
There were about six to eight other people in the lift at the time, and none of them did anything.'' The woman said she lost sight of the man, but managed to stick with his wife until a bystander found her a security guard.
''They held me in a separate room because I was just about ready to knock the wife over because I was so angry,'' she said.
Wallis was arrested and charged over the alleged assault.
The mother said her child had no injuries and had recovered from the alleged incident well.
''Children get over that thing quite easily because they don't understand it at their age.''
She said her son's crying in the lift wasn't outside normal behaviour for a young child.
''It wasn't any kind of like screaming it was just a bit of grisly kind of crying.''
Wallis refused to comment when contacted last week.
Auckland City Hospital spokesman Mark Fenwick said the hospital provided police with CCTV footage of the building's lifts.
Police are currently reviewing the footage.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/5612036/Mother-horrified-over-alleged-child-assaultwrap up:
Alleged kid kicker avoids penalty VICTORIA ROBINSON
Last updated 14:31 15/11/2011
A 71-year-old has pleaded guilty to assault on a child after allegedly kicking a toddler in an Auckland Hospital lift.
Ian Gibson Wallis appeared in Auckland District Court today and pleaded guilty to the assault, which Judge Philippa Cunningham described as "low level".
Wallis was visiting Auckland Hospital in September this year when he allegedly kicked an unrelated two-year-old boy, who was playing in a lift.
The judge said she would be lenient on Wallis and declined to impose a penalty on him for the offence.
But she warned if the 71-year-old appeared before the court again in the next six months police would be able to to ask for Gibson to be re-sentenced on the assault on a child charge.
Judge Cunningham said the toddler was running in and out of the lift while his mother held the door open for him.
She said although that may have been annoying, "he's a two-year-old boy and they do these sorts of things".
The judge said the police summary of facts noted that Wallis told the child to "shut up" and kicked him.
Wallis' lawyer, Gary Gotlieb, said he had seen CCTV footage of the incident and the 71-year-old had merely tapped the child lightly with his foot.
Judge Cunningham agreed the police described the incident as a "low level" assault.
The mother of the boy submitted a victim impact statement to the court, which said she was upset and distressed over the incident and she still felt disbelief that someone could do that to a child.
She said the two-year-old was not injured in the incident and had suffered no long-term emotional or physical effects.
Judge Cunningham stressed to Wallis that he needed to practice patience around young children.
"I acknowledge it can be irritating for people to be delayed from where they want to go because a child is being fractious and difficult... But we all need to learn to deal with children."
The judge said the courts would not be as lenient with Wallis if he appeared before the courts again on a similar charge or on any other charge.
She rejected an application by Auckland Now to take a photo of Wallis in court, calling it potentially prejudicial and out of proportion with the 71-year-old's offence.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/5969351/Alleged-kid-kicker-avoids-penalty
