A leading criminal psychologist has expressed grave fears for three children who have spent almost four years on the run with their dad in the New Zealand wilderness. 

Dr Tim Watson-Munro believes a recent public plea by the family for the kids to be returned will have zero effect on fugitive father Tom Phillips. Phillips vanished from the rural town of Marokopa on New Zealand’s North Island in December 2021, following a custody dispute with the children’s mother, Cat. 

NZ Police have a warrant out for Phillips’ arrest after he took Jayda, now aged 12, Maverick, ten, and Ember, nine, off to live with him in bushland. 

Dr Watson-Munro – who is regularly a court expert on criminal psychology matters in Australia – warned that, even if the police rescued the children tomorrow, they may be so indoctrinated they would have ‘to be deprogrammed’. 

Sightings of the four have verified that the children are alive, with phone video footage in October last year showing them walking in single file through farming country near their hometown.

But CCTV footage of a shop robbery, a burglary attempt and other incidents have led  Phillips’ family to fear that the children are being inveigled into criminal life to help their father evade police.

This week, Phillips’ mother Julia and sister Rozzi made an emotional appeal for the children’s urgent return. 

The latest plea comes almost a year after pig shooters filmed Tom Phillips and his children in bushland west of Marokopa last October (above) walking in single file

Two masked intruders seen fleeing an attempted burglary in security footage are believed to be Tom Phillips and one of his kids, inveigled into allegedly committing crimes by their father

Tom Phillips (left) vanished from the rural town of Marokopa, 250km southwest of Auckland on New Zealand ‘s North Island in December 2021 following a custody dispute with the mother of his children, Cat (right)

Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro fears the children may need serious deprogramming if they have been indoctrinated by their father over four years

‘Every day I wake up and hope that today will be the day that you will come home,’ Julia said. 

Rozzi added: ‘I’d love to see you again and be part of your lives, and know for myself that all is truly well in your world’. 

Dr Watson-Munro was more blunt. 

It was time that New Zealand Police acted, immediately he said, to ‘go in and get them’ because the children may have already suffered irreversible psychological damage.

He believed that, instead of tearfully being asked to bring his children home, Phillips should instead be warned about ‘the damage to the children’s lives if this continues’. 

‘It’s been a long time at a critical moment in those children’s development and the longer it goes on – assuming they are not watching TV or reading books – their objective reality would be a warped view of the world,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘Part of the equation is how much the children have been indoctrinated by their father, and we don’t know … living like Robinson Crusoe (a castaway) and not being educated or socialised as far as we know.

‘That stuff is critical in kids’ development to learn to problem solve and become social beings. Their father is alienating them from others and she (their mother) is a distant memory.

‘Again, we don’t know if he’s replacing good stuff to maintain control over them with a differing narrative of their mother, and perhaps inveigling minors to commit crimes.’

Reports of these incidents included an attempted burglary on November 2, 2023, when security footage showed a masked pair, believed to be Phillips and one of his children, smashing the front glass of a shop and then fleeing on a motorbike after the alarm went off.

Phillips is also accused of robbing a bank and shooting at a supermarket worker in Te Kūiti, south west of Marokopa, in May 2023.

A sighting of four people dressed in camouflage clothing spotted sitting near State Highway 4, south of Te Kūiti, in February this year, were believed to have been the family.

Cat said of her daughter Jayda, now 12: ‘She will be a young woman now, and she needs her mother’ and about her nine-year-old son, ‘I can only imagine how Maverick is coping’

Of the youngest of her children, now aged nine, Cat said ‘Ember is asthmatic, as am I, and she needs medical care that cannot be provided from the land’

Tim Watson-Munro said the children (above) ‘may have been indoctrinated by their father, in a form of psychological child abuse living like Robinson Crusoe and not being educated or socialised’

Dr Watson-Munro suggested the children, ‘even if their captor is their father’ might be suffering Stockholm Syndrome, when captives identify and sympathise with their kidnappers.

‘It’s been four years not four days, and they’ve had to survive harsh conditions and are all moving to the age of eleven to 12, when you move into formal cognitive thinking and will start to think in more profound ways about their circumstances and wonder about their mother.

‘Who knows what they’ve been told about mum, if it was that she didn’t want you, just to weaken her position.’

The children’s mother delivered an impassioned and angry plea via Waikato Police last year begging the NZ public for help to bring her kids home.

‘They are just innocent children,’ Cat said. ‘They do not deserve the life that is being provided to them right now.‘

Of her eldest, Jayda, she said: ‘She will be a young woman now, and she needs her mother.’

‘Ember is asthmatic, as am I, and she needs medical care that cannot be provided from the land. And I can only imagine how Maverick is coping.’

Cat has made previous pleas amid the numerous police search operations and the offering of a NZ$80,000 reward. 

Cat with her three children (above). She said ‘they do not deserve the life that is being provided to them right now’

Tom Phillips was caught on CCTV at Bunnings warehouse, Te Rapa, on August 2, 2023 (above) wearing a mask and pushing a trolley to collect supplies for his life on the run

During an interview, Rozzi Phillips removed from her boot a letter written by her mother Julia ‘from her heart’ but which Dr Watson-Munro fears may not stir the fugitive dad into handing back the kids

Part of Julia Phillips’ heartfelt letter to her son in which she addresses him directly about the hurt he has caused his family by taking off with the children

Cat believes she personally saw her runaway husband in a ute at a Bunnings store in the year following his disappearance with her kids.

She claimed the vehicle belonged to an associate of Phillips. It has long been theorised that he may have been helped by locals in the Marokopa region.  

Police believe his main motive for taking his kids off into the bush was the fact he had lost legal custody.

Custody now sits with Oranga Tamariki, a government department in New Zealand responsible for the wellbeing of children, which has already made arrangements for when the children are finally located.

But it may be too late. In Dr Watson-Munro’s knowledge and experience, the kids may already be misanthropes who are unable to relate to the broader community and ‘need to be deprogrammed’ over a ‘long period of readjustment’.

He cited the case of the children kidnapped into the Moonie cult, or Unification Church movement founded by Korean Sun Myung Moon which entailed brainwashing and financial exploitation of members.

He said US parents who had lost their kids to the cult turned to commandos to rescue them, and a renowned counsellor – Albert Einstein’s granddaughter Evelyn Einstein – had to supply massive amounts of deprogramming therapy to the damaged kids.

‘I don’t know what is the case with these (Phillips children), but my takeaway (from the Moonies case) was it was hard to break down all this garbage indoctrination. It took a big period of readjustment.’

Dr Watson-Munro said he believed if the case had happened in Australia that police and welfare authorities would have stormed in and retrieved the children by now.