A Whangārei early childhood centre manager who force-fed toddlers, made racist remarks, and roughly handled children has had her teacher's registration cancelled.
Sonya Kay Costello, who was a registered teacher in Whangārei, faced a charge of serious misconduct at the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal for incidents that happened between February 2015 and July 2018.
The charge contained 11 specific incidents that fell into three broad categories: inappropriate uses of force, force-feeding, and inappropriate comments towards and about children.
In one incident, Costello called a Māori child "thick" and that this was "what happens when your people are raped and pillaged".
The teacher who reported this said Costello's comments towards the child "did not sit well with me, because I considered that it was racist".
Another teacher said they witnessed Costello forcefully try to push a spoonful of food into the mouth of a child who was under two years old as they tried to turn their head away. Costello also "roughly fed" a child a piece of broccoli. In that instance, after the two-year-old had coughed up the broccoli she told them to go to bed in a "belittling manner".
In another incident, while trying to get a child aged approximately two years old to go to sleep, Costello put her hand over the child's ear and held them down while they were wriggling and trying to get up.
The tribunal found that if there had been only one or two alleged incidents, with only one or two witnesses, then they might have been more cautious and would want to hear from witnesses in person.
"Here though we are presented with a pattern of very similar conduct and behaviour over several years, through multiple witnesses," they said.
"We are really presented with two options. Either multiple professional teaching staff have conspired and colluded to bring these allegations, which would be extraordinarily coincidental and bad luck. Or, the allegations are truthful.
"We consider it appropriate to consider the similarity between the allegations as lending support to their truth.
"Given the breadth of allegations and their similarity, and the lack of any plausible motives to lie or collude etc by any of the witnesses, we have no hesitation in finding all particulars proven on the balance of probabilities."
The tribunal ultimately found that due to the nature and breadth of Costello's conduct, the "only appropriate outcome" was the cancellation of registration and censure.
