Laying her tear-streaked face gently against her little girl’s chest, Kahurangi Ross counted the toddler’s heartbeats, praying that they would keep going.
Three-year-old Anahera was critically ill with severe brain injuries after being punched twice in the head by Kahurangi’s partner, Warwick Kershaw. on the night of the abuse, Anahera had been crying with pain from a burned hand after Kershaw (then 25), cruelly pressed her palm against an oil heater as a punishment for playing with it. Frustrated by the little girl’s tears, Kershaw then landed the two blows that would end her young life.
For a week, the tiny child had battled for survival in Wellington Hospital’s intensive care unit with a devastated Kahurangi at her bedside. (37) With no hope of recovery from such terrible injuries, the doctors decided to turn off Anahera’s life support and, after two days, the courageous little girl finally slipped away while cradled inher distraught mother’s arms.
Kahurangi will never forget hearing the last beat of her daughter’s heart. “I had my ear next to Anahera’s skin,” she recalls. “She was warm, her heart was beating and she was alive. “Then, the next minute, her heart just stopped. Her little body went limp and her breathing stopped. She went cold.
For Kahurangi, and for Anahera’s biological father Terrance Lewis, it was a nightmare made real. “Words cannot explain how painful this moment was for us,” says the grief-stricken mum. At the time, Kahurangi, a midwife from Palmerston North, had a nine-month-old son, Te Au ooko, and was six months pregnant with her second son Awatea – both fathered by her daughter’s killer.
Speaking openly about Anahera’s death in the hope of saving other children from violence, Kahurangi insists she never in her wildest dreams imagined Kershaw was capable of doing something so vile to her daughter. She had entrusted him with Anahera and her brother Te Au ooko that fateful night while she went to work.
“When I got home at about 11pm, I went into Anahera’s room and gave her a kiss, thinking she was asleep. The next morning, she was unconscious. I knew something was wrong and I was in a panic because I didn’t know what it was,” she says. Kahurangi called an ambulance, which took Anahera to the local hospital. The doctors there immediately transferred her to Wellington’s intensive care unit. While at the hospital, Kahurangi had seen the medical staff talking to each other and, although she couldn’t hear their words, she could read their lips.
“The doctors were saying they could take her to Auckland but she would die on the plane, so they had no choice but to go to Wellington,” she recalls. “That’s when I first realised how serious the situation was.” once in Wellington, Kahurangi was told she had to be interviewed by police and a representative of Child, Youth and Family because they believed Anahera’s injuries were non-accidental.
“I was shocked because I realised that they thought I was hitting her,” she says. “But I had nothing to hide.”At that time, Kershaw had said nothing about what had happened and it was only when police were about to question Kahurangi that he finally confessed to causing Anahera’s horrific injuries.
Kahurangi was shocked to the core by what Kershaw told her about that life-shattering night in oay 2003.”I felt like my heart had been ripped out,” she says quietly, the pain as fresh now as it was seven years ago. “It meant the end of any relationship with him.”
Warwick Kershaw later admitted in court that a combination of the possibility of losing his army job and the stress of looking after the children made him snap. Kahurangi says, “He always maintained that if he had known that it was going to cause so much damage, he wouldn’t have done it. I said to him, ‘Your intention was to hurt her, but not to kill her? How is that different?'”
Kershaw was convicted of manslaughter and served only 18 months of a three-year jail term – a sentence that outraged many people around New Zealand. But Kahurangi’s sentence is for life. She has lost her little girl – the child she named after the Maori word for angel because she brought new happiness into the family after Kahurangi’s brother, his girlfriend and their baby died in a car crash just weeks before Anahera was born.
“It was a terrible time for our family when they died and having her at that point in time, well, she was like an angel from heaven,” says Kahurangi. “She was a cool, bright and happy child, and never grumpy at all. She loved being a big sister to her baby brother.”
Kahurangi describes the four years that followed Anahera’s horrific death as her “dark days”. She says her two sons became her only reason for going on. “I spent four years grieving, where every heartbeat said her name and my whole life revolved around Anahera not being around any more,” she recalls. “Time takes away the feeling of wanting to cry every day. Time put some distance between what happened and where I am now. And I’ve got sons that need their mum.”
Kahurangi says she has been open with the boys about what happened and has explained how their father killed their sister. “I have no choice but to be honest,” she says simply.
“They want to know why their father can’t live with us. They get teased at school. They get held accountable for what their father did. It affects them very deeply so they have a right to know what happened. Now, my focus is on mothering my boys so they grow up to be beautiful men. I want to teach them not to lose themselves and not to lash out when they’re angry.”
Although Kahurangi can never forgive Kershaw for what he has done, she says she no longer feels anger towards him. “I stayed angry for years. Every time that I saw him, I had so much rage. But now, I can look at the boys’ father and feel nothing. However, I don’t think I could ever truly forgive him for what he has done – it’s unforgiveable.”
In her quest to do something about child abuse, Kahurangi has agreed to share Anahera’s heartbreaking story in a Maori Television documentary, Tamariki ora: A New Beginning, which explores the issue in New Zealand.
“Society perceives child abuse to be a Maori problem. But I want people to know that even when you come from a good family and you’re intelligent and have a high-profile job in the community, something like this can happen. It’s not an ethnic or indigenous issue,” she says.
Kahurangi is planning to compose a waiata aroha – a love song – in memory of her beloved Anahera, which will be passed on through her family. She says, “I want to make sure that her legacy isn’t swept underneath the carpet, that her story will continue to be told in a way that’s meaningful.”
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