Maker: Michelle Richards

Panel number: 457

Petition sheet number: Did not sign 1893 petition

Person honouring: Celia Lashlie

Relationship to maker: friend

Cecilia (Celia) Margaret Mary Lashlie was born in Taihape in 1953. She married at 19 and had two children. Following the end of her marriage, she became a solo mother and completed a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and Māori.

In 1984 Lashlie became a probation officer in the Hutt Valley, and in 1985 she was appointed as a prison officer at Rimutaka Prison, becoming the first woman in that role in a New Zealand men’s prison. She was later the manager of Christchurch Women’s Prison for almost four years, until September 1999. 

Lashlie was appointed a transition manager for the Nelson Specialist Education Service (SES) in 2000, but in April 2001 she was controversially removed from that position following a speech in which she spoke about a hypothetical five-year-old boy who was “blond, with the most angelic face you can imagine and he is coming to prison … and he is probably going to kill someone on his way.”

Her sacking led to the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, ordering an inquiry into the matter by the State Services Commission. As a result of the commission’s report, the chairman of SES, Graham Lovelock, lost his job.

During the controversy, Lashlie was approached by Nelson College headmaster Salvi Gargiulo to advise the school on discipline in its boarding houses. The work with Nelson College led to the ‘Good Man’ project, where Lashlie worked with teenagers in 25 boys’ schools in New Zealand. She also advised parents on how to raise boys through her book He’ll be OK. She spoke widely on the subject in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the United States. 

Lashlie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late 2014, and died in Wellington on 16 February 2015.

Panel materials: Felt, buttons, hessian, cardboard, butterflies.