Today Sue Russell of the Steiner Federation will meet with two members of staff at the Titirangi Steiner School.  They will discuss the matters recorded on this website.

Unfortunately we have had to alert Ms Russell to the fact that two nights ago a “meeting” was held on school premises by Mark Thornton, at which slanderous allegations based on the ‘advice’ of amateur psychologists and ‘hearsay’ in the community were made about us as individuals, as parents and as a family.

We now publish these things here and challenge those who have uttered them to “put up or shut up”.

Either loudly deny that you ever said them, and sue us for defamation, .........

(Actually you can’t really deny that you said them because of the fact that others heard you....oops.)

OR; - own up, you’ll have to anyway because we are going to name you right here.  

If you retract them yourselves in writing to us with an apology and send copies to everyone at the meeting, then we won’t publish your names.  (Hint - this is the RIGHT thing to do.)

Those in the community who took such offence at the suggestion that democracy was an issue here, can now clearly see the nature of the operation of a school that would have a meeting about people without inviting them to attend and manipulate the parents into bad-mouthing us while management and college members just sat there looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.

Firstly, all incidents depicted and reported in our videos were of course rubbished, even the one that I saw with my own eyes.  Although predictable, it is interesting that no-one contradicted them before and Susanne Cole, the teacher had to admit that I did report it to her straight away.  That’s because it is true.  Come on Susanne, tell everyone just how upset I was about it a good 24 hours after the event, come on, tell them that you were shocked by how upset I was.  It happened, and I am prepared to back that up all the way.

If there is material in our videos that you believe to be false, please sue us for defamation and take the burden of proof.  The accusations we have put in that video are of extreme seriousness.  Lying teachers, outrageous Health and Safety breaches, a notorious bully threatening an 8 year old with an axe.....two boys trying to drown someone....... 

Evidently if not true, or if there was even a suspicion that they weren’t true, somebody would have said so very loudly, or issued a writ.  They’ve had months in the case of some incidents.  Of course it’s all true.  Sue us if you disagree.

So, to the meeting:-

Many parents came out that night and some of them even suggested that they should approach us to put their point of view on the web site, where open debate is possible.  Mark Thornton was apparently not open to that.  But yay, a suggestion of democracy!

Others, however, had more sinister points of view:

Apparently our daughter both “made it all up”, according to one amateur psychologist and was “asking for it” according to Mr David Yang who said it was his children who had told him that.  I leave it to you to judge for yourselves such a cowardly act as to put forward such an outrageous point of view and blame it on the kids!

Leah Wilson is of the opinion that we are operating out of ‘guilt’ about our daughter.  She had no problem sharing personal confidences (about totally unrelated very personal incidents) with this group of slanderers, and was giving them the “benefit” of her four years of psychology.  Any professional mental health professional with integrity would NEVER divulge private information in this way.  Tell us who you studied under so we can show them what you’ve done with their teaching.  Shame on you.

The worst allegation, and there were many, was from Liz Weenink , who said that ‘people’ at the pony club (A Charity) said our family is ‘nothing but trouble’, insinuated that we were unfit parents, that another parent told her that children shouldn’t sleep-over at our place, and that on one occasion the police had been involved!  Such poisonous allegations need police attention and we have already contacted them.

Liz said that she could not divulge who had told her this.  She obviously thought it was clever to pass it off as someone else having made these allegations, but we will now pursue them, and she may regret doing that.

Because guess what Liz, you can’t say serious things like that about people and NOT divulge who said them.  So come on now slaggers one and all, put up or shut up.

Either make a formal complaint against us to the police, (we are making such a complaint about you), or retract this utter rubbish and apologise, before we fill your names in the blank spaces above.

That will happen by the end of the week.  

There have now been over 500 visits to this website.  That’s a lot of people reading about all this calumny and slander.  What a shame the school couldn’t just drop all that an deal with the real issues in a real way.  But I guess seeing it degenerate like this with absolutely no real answers to any of the issues we have raised speaks for itself.

That may be why we are getting emails from concerned parents who were thinking of sending their kids to the school.

And also finding out about parents who are withdrawing theirs.

Apparently there is also some gruesome competition about who is the “biggest bully”.  No prizes for guessing who is deemed to have won that.  Interesting however how all those people who wouldn’t hear the word “bully” uttered when our little girl kept coming home with bruises, now can’t use it enough just because we didn’t slope off like good little victims and because we know the business end of a camera.

Sometimes even bullies pick on the wrong people.  Guess you know that by now. :-)