Louise Miles

[1] Born as Louisa Spencer on 4 January 1918, in Wellington, her father, Harry was a coal merchant and her mother, Mary-Ann (née Stewart), from Newtown, was a foster carer.

Throughout the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s Little Acre appears in the local newspapers as the recipient of much community goodwill and supplemental funding, with Louise regularly giving interviews to journalists and associated photographers.

In this period, Louise was uncritically praised in the press for being 'gentle and sympathetic' and having 'mental empathy...with a high sensitivity for the physical and emotional states of the children' in her care, in her 'Home with a Special Touch'.

[17] In December 1968, it was announced that a four year old child with Down Syndrome who lived at Little Acre, Tony Reilly, was chosen to front the 1969 Intellectually Handicapped Children (IHC) Appeal for funds.

[21] In a photograph taken by the Christchurch Star as Little Acre was about to move in to Huntsbury House, Louise is shown looking out over the balcony of the home, and also inspecting the kitchen with Valerie Joan Henry.

'[28] In February 1974, the Miles' were presented with a large cheque for $3,000 from the United States Navy Antarctic Support force, where a broadcaster Al Bray had broken a record for a continuous radio show over Christmas at McMurdo Station.

A consignment of 600 pairs of shoes from a fire sale was sold to members of the public who flocked to Little Acre to purchase them, netting 300 pounds for the couple.

Louise said she did dress-making for the children and smocking for a local business as well as knitting up to 80 skeins of wool each holiday period to produce woollen garments for the babies in the home.

[33] In November 1977, Little Acre was one of the two recipients of funds from a City South Charity Auction, presented by local Radio Avon D. J. Murray Inglis.

[34] In December that year an anonymous Christchurch family gave gifts, including a trampoline, to the children at Little Acre as they were about to embark on their annual holiday camp at Pleasant Point.

[40] On 16 November 2024, an extensively detailed investigation titled "Little Acre: The friendly children's home run by a 'monster'"[41] was published in Christchurch newspaper The Press in its Mainlander section.

Written by senior features writer Charlie Mitchell, it included interviews with three survivors of Little Acre: Renée Habluetzel, a woman known only as Christine, and a man with the pseudonym 'Jack'.

The interviews with Christine and 'Jack' corroborated Renée's testimony provided to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, recounting seeing and/or experiencing regular beatings, kicking, hair-pulling, prolonged chest-deep cold baths with their heads held under the water, humiliation, theft and starvation at the hand of Louise Miles, who 'gathered up children like she collected dolls'.

Mitchell writes that, 'like the castle at the centre of Disneyland, Little Acre was a facade, a beautiful edifice that was hollow inside...enabled by a system that ignored obvious warning signs, one that fell under the spell of a woman who sold herself as the kind face of institutionalisation'.

[41] Barry Helem, co-chief executive of Presbyterian Support, who had oversight of the home, told Mitchell that the organisation had not kept detailed records on Little Acre 'as it had been common practice to destroy documents every decade or so', and that what Miles had done to the children in her care was 'deplorable, it's abuse, and even by the standards of the 1960s it should not have been tolerated.

[41] Mitchell also interviewed a disabled full-time care-giver at Little Acre, Valerie Joan Henry, who loved and cared for Renée and 'Jack' as a mother would, providing badly-needed comfort and affection.

Renée told Mitchell that after she escaped from Little Acre, '[t]he ongoing grief for me was the loss of people like her in my life...Valerie Joan should have got the British Empire Medal'.

', Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced on 12 November 2024 at the Crown's apology to survivors of state and faith-based care that honours of 'proven perpetrators' would be removed.

[44] In February 1979, Louise and Ronald Miles closed Little Acre, and left Christchurch for Tauranga, taking six children and a foster daughter with them.

The press reported on a farewell community luncheon at St Martin's Church, Christchurch on 23 February, at which Louise estimated that she had cared for more than 500 children over 40 years.