Thinking of sending your children to New Zealand because you think its a safe place for them to be educated in?

First ask yourself “how do I know it is safe, what facts are there to support that assumption?” and then ask how would young offenders that do this be punished in your country.

“Community-based sentences have been imposed on three teenagers who bit, punched, and held a knife to the throat of a Korean student at a bus-stop.

One of the offenders was a 16-year-old girl with a long-standing alcohol abuse problem.

Christchurch District Court Judge David Saunders has said he wants all three of them to write letters of apology to be sent to the young victim who is now back in Korea.

He described the attack as “an appalling piece of behaviour”.

He contrasted the position of the student who had come to New Zealand and paid to use our education system, with the three offenders who had spurned their chances of education.

Before the court were Michelle Jade Corina Kerr, 18, Chonttae Rose Sibley, 16, and Dylan Takitimu-McKenzie, 17.

The attack occurred in August 2009 when Kerr approached the student at a bus stop. The police alleged it was a robbery attempt but that charge has since been dropped.

She attacked him, including biting him, and Sibley produced a knife and held it to his throat…” Read the full sorry story here

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