This case has same flavour as the recent $100,000 Women’s Refuge theft case. I asked the question then how often these situations had been processed through the Axminster system (swept under the carpet) rather than the court system.

While this amount of money is substantially less, it is literally stealing from the mouths of babes, using a pre-school’s food money for holiday cash.

An investigation by the Employment Relations Authority confirmed she had used a work account meant to pay for children’s food while on holiday in Fiji with her partner.

This case comes to light not through the courts but through an ERA investigation which finds that a substantial amount of money is unaccounted for.

Authority member Eleanor Robinson also said her employers had found her responsible for accounting discrepancies totalling about $20,000 at the preschool.

There are two obvious flow-on effects here. Firstly if these cases are not processed through the court then there is an under-reporting of female crime – and these are crimes – not disorder offences.

Secondly how can employers rely on criminal record checks when processing employment applications for positions of financial responsibility?

The softly-softly sympathy-for-women approach came back to bite here, the pre-school having previously paid for alcohol addiction treatment for the offender.

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