The man wore camouflage gear, a long beard protruding below a mask. His features were hidden, but when New Zealand police saw the video showing three figures walking behind him, one name came instantly to mind.

Fugitive Thomas Callam Phillips has been evading police for three years since disappearing with his children Ember, Maverick and Jayda – now 8, 9 and 11 – into the rugged wilderness of the country’s North Island during a bitter family split in December 2021.

At first Phillips was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges of wasting police resources but, three years on, his charge sheet has grown longer and more serious, with allegations that he robbed a bank in May 2023 with an unnamed female accomplice.

Police have scrambled search teams, helicopters and planes to investigate sporadic sightings but have failed to find them.

Last week’s sighting is believed to be the first of all three children since 2021.

“The guy had a big, long beard, and the kids were all masked up, and they were carrying packs, and they weren’t very keen to talk to them at all,” McOviney said.

Instead, his grandson filmed them on his phone, providing the first proof of life of the missing Phillips children that their mother Cat has seen since they left.

The entire country wants to know where they are, and why it’s taking police so long to find them.

“This is not a big country we’re talking about,” said Lance Burdett, a former detective inspector and lead crisis negotiator for New Zealand Police. “It’s very surprising that they haven’t been found, particularly since the number of sightings are in a very similar area.”

Max Baxter, mayor of the Otorohanga district that includes Marokopa, a rural community home to fewer than 100 people, says authorities believe Phillips is receiving help.

“We absolutely believe that somebody, or some people, are helping them,” said Baxter. “Tom still has a number of supporters out there believing that he is doing the right thing for him and his children.”

A family missing in wild terrain

New Zealand’s North Island is home to the wild, awe-inspiring landscape that formed some of the backdrop to Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies.

Steep hills with sweeping views drop away into deep valleys, dotted with caves covered by a blanket of dense forest. Marokopa is the type of place where it’s easy to get lost – and even easier to hide.

“There’s a reason why people live at Marokopa,” said Baxter. “It’s because they love the isolation. They love the fact that they’re on the rugged west coast, that they can go fishing, they can hang out with like-minded people.”

Phillips was raised in the area and his parents still live there in the family home. In a statement provided to TVNZ last year, his mother denied any knowledge of her son’s whereabouts and said the family would “like nothing more” than for the four to return.

It’s not the first time Phillips has disappeared with Ember, Maverick and Jayda. In September 2021, his car was reported abandoned on a beach, prompting a large police search of land and sea.

For three weeks, a police helicopter and drones scoured the coastline, while rescue teams searched on land, but just as the operation was winding down – with fears the family was lost at sea – they suddenly reappeared.

Phillips reportedly told police he and the children had been camping in bushland. He was later charged with wasting police resources and given a date to appear in court.

But before that day came, he disappeared again with the three children. Some assumed he’d “gone bush” again, and would later emerge – but this time, they haven’t come home.

Three children isolated from society

Ember, Maverick and Jayda were just 5, 7 and 8, when they vanished. For more than two years, their mother kept a low profile, releasing written statements through police, appealing for help to find them.

But this June, she introduced herself in an emotional video posted to Facebook.

“Hello world,” she said. “My name is Cat … I’m standing here before you today, begging you for your help to bring my babies home.”

The eldest child, Jayda, had just turned 11. “She will be a young woman now, and she needs her mother,” said Cat, who has not publicly revealed her surname. “Ember is asthmatic as am I … she needs medical care that cannot be provided from the land.”

“I can only imagine how Maverick is coping,” she added.

At the time the video was released, police had just offered a reward for 80,000 New Zealand dollars ($48,000) for information leading to finding the children. It flushed out reports of sightings, but no breakthrough.

The children’s older sister, Jubilee Dawson, made a separate appeal in an interview last year, sharing memories of her siblings.

“Jayda is the more outgoing one … she’s definitely the most confident of the three … loves talking to everybody,” Dawson told a Mata Reports documentary. “Maverick is more introverted, I’d say he’s more shy … Ember is the youngest, and more sweet and bubbly.”

Dawson fears the children may now be “traumatized and scared” and worries that they don’t know that their family is looking for them.

“We love them very much, and we are just waiting for them to come home,” she said.

An alleged bank robbery

Authorities are concerned that Phillips is not just hiding the children, but encouraging them to engage in criminal acts.

In May 2023, two masked people held up a branch of the ANZ bank, escaping on a motorbike with cash. New Zealand Police later named Phillips as the suspect, and said he was aided by a female accomplice. Both were said to be armed.

A witness told local media the accomplice was small, “even shorter than me.”

Phillips is now wanted for aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding and unlawfully possessing a firearm.

Burdett, the former detective inspector, said if Phillips carried out the bank robbery, it suggests the fugitive father was desperate for cash.

“They have to be surviving on something. You do need money. You can only live so much on the land, and particularly with three young kids,” Burdett said. “They’re going to be growing in three years.”

In November 2023, Phillips and an unnamed child are also alleged to have smashed the window of a shop at 2 a.m., before fleeing on a stolen quad bike. Phillips has also been seen on CCTV, with his face covered, buying supplies in a hardware store.

“We know Tom has been sighted at retail locations across the Waikato region disguised with various masks,” police said in a statement. 

Burdett said police need more resources to search the area and suggested a general call-out might help boost numbers on the ground.

“Let’s get in there and saturate the area. I’m sure if you asked a lot of locals – can you spend one or two days walking across these hills? – a lot of people would do it. Not just locals,” he said.

However, Mayor Baxter suggests venturing into the dense bushland around Marokopa is not a good idea for those unaccustomed to the terrain.

“For an inexperienced person out there, you could find yourself two meters off the track and may not find the track again,” he said. “We’re talking very, very deep bush and rugged countryside.”

Have they been living rough?

Their most recent statement says the “credible” sighting of Phillips and the children on October 3 prompted a three-day search but “nothing further of significance was located.”

“Police continue to urge those in the Marokopa community to remain alert and report any suspicious activity, no matter how minor, to us,” the statement added.

Mayor Baxter said the search had divided opinion in the community between those who believe Phillips should give the children up and others who defend his rights as a father.

Many just want the entire police operation to go away, he said.

Baxter said he finds it hard to believe the children have been living rough for three years in an area frequently pelted by wind and rain, where winter temperatures dip below freezing. That’s why he believes Phillips and the children must be receiving help.

“We all know it, but it just gets very uncomfortable when it’s raining day after day after day,” he said.

“I think there has to be either a shearer’s quarters, another house somewhere, a woolshed where they’ve been holed up for extensive periods of time, and they’ve been given supplies,” he said.

McOviney, whose grandson took the recent footage, posited a similar theory, noting that woolsheds and houses are dotted across the remotely populated area, used by workers tending livestock that graze in the hills.

“I think they’ve got help. I don’t know that for sure, but to keep little kids like that isolated from the family and from everybody else, you’d think they’d need some help, wouldn’t you?”

In her video message, Cat hinted at resistance in the community to the search from people who don’t believe her children need saving.

“Many of you say that the children are fine, that they’re being well looked after. How do you know, have you seen them, or is it just bush talk?” she said.

“What Thomas is doing is not okay…  It is not okay to isolate and control. It is child neglect. It is child endangerment … None of this is okay.”

Criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh,” the Indian government has said, in a blow to campaigners ahead of a long-awaited Supreme Court decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people in India for generations.

In India, it is not considered rape if a man forces sex or sexual acts on his wife, as long as she is over 18, due to an exception in a British colonial-era law.

Most Western and common law jurisdictions have long since rectified this – Britain outlawed marital rape in 1991, for example, and it is illegal in all 50 US states.

But across the world, about 40 countries do not have legislation that addresses the issue of marital rape – and among those that do, the penalties for non-consensual sex within marriage are “significantly lower” than other rape cases, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2021 State of World Population review.

Campaigners in India have long fought against the clause, with the country’s top court currently hearing petitions seeking to amend it, after the Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the issue in 2022.

In its formal opposition to those petitions, the government’s Ministry of Home Affairs argued a man should face “penal consequences” for forcing himself on his wife. But punishing it as rape would “severely impact the conjugal relationship” and “have a far-reaching effect on the institution of marriage.”

Classifying marital rape as a crime, “can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh and therefore, disproportionate,” the government said.

The government’s written affidavit is its clearest position yet on the issue of marital rape in India.

Advocates for criminalization said the government’s arguments were not surprising, but it represents a “step back” for women already living in a deeply patriarchal society where sexual violence is rampant.

“It speaks to India’s acceptance of sexual violence in our culture,” said Ntasha Bhardwaj, a criminal justice and gender scholar. “We’ve normalized that sexual violence is a part of being a woman in our country.”

In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government overhauled the country’s 164-year-old penal code with new criminal laws, but the exemption for marital rape stayed on the books.

India has struggled for years to tackle high rates of violence against women, with a number of high-profile rape cases sparking nationwide anger and drawing international headlines.

The government’s formal opposition to the marital rape criminalization campaign comes two months after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the West Bengal city of Kolkata sparked mass outrage and protests in the country, with hundreds of thousands of doctors striking to demand better protection for health workers.

‘Consent is consent’

In its argument against criminalization, the Indian government said that a woman’s consent is protected in marriage, but there is “a continuing expectation, by either of the spouse, to have reasonable sexual access from the other.”

It added that, “though these expectations do not entitle the husband to coerce or force his wife into sex… the consequences of such violations within marriage differ from those outside of it.”

The government also claimed existing laws on sexual and domestic violence were sufficient to “protect consent within marriage.”

Mariam Dhawale, General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association – one of the petitioners fighting for criminalization – said consent inside and outside of marriage are “not two different things.”

“Consent is consent,” she said. “In our country, a woman is not thought of as an independent human being, as an independent citizen of the country. She is like, sort of an appendage to the husband. She’s subordinate, she’s not a separate identity as such.”

Dhawale said marital rape is a big part of the violence reported by women who seek help from her organization, but they often avoid coming out in the open with their allegations.

“Because they know that nobody will believe them, and it’s not considered as a crime,” she said.

Shifting that belief will take more than changing a law, but it’s the “first step,” said Bharadwaj.

“It’s a cultural revolution underneath,” she said. “Until and unless you make a big statement that this is not okay, the culture will never shift, because by not having that law, the culture is accepting of that violence.”

Other laws not ‘sufficient’

Women alleging rape in India have some avenues of potential legal action against their husbands, but advocates for criminalization say the current laws don’t go far enough.

Women can seek a restraining order under civil law or charges under Section 354 of India’s Penal Code, which covers sexual assault short of rape, and Section 498A, which is intended to punish cruelty toward women specifically in the context of dowry, and India’s Domestic Violence Act.

But the laws are open to interpretation and women face hurdles even when even trying to file initial police complaints, according to recent studies.

In May, a judge in Madhya Pradesh dismissed a woman’s complaint that her husband committed “unnatural sex” by citing the country’s marital rape exemption and saying in his judgement that in such instances, “consent of the wife becomes immaterial.”

AIDWA’s Dhawale said women often remain trapped in abusive households with no recourse or way out, especially if she is financially reliant on her husband.

“We don’t have any kind of safe places, shelter homes, institutions. So she has to remain in the four walls of that place. She cannot complain, because if she complains, she has no place to go… nobody will stand by her, unless and until it’s recognized as a crime.”

‘Serious disturbances in the institution of marriage’

India’s Supreme Court increased marital consent from the age of 15 to 18 in a landmark judgement in 2017.

“The Supreme Court debunked that argument,” she said.

Now, recognizing marital rape, Kothari said, “is a crucial way in which women’s equality within the marriage is going to really be bolstered.”

Similarly, Dhawale said “the sanctity of marriage, or the harmony within the home is actually getting disturbed by the man who is committing the violence, not by the woman who is asking for justice.”

A major concern of the government and of men’s rights groups is that a marital rape law will lead to women falsely accusing their husbands of rape.

Kothari said that already, it’s extremely hard for women to report sexual violence, even when the laws support them.

“All the claims of domestic violence being misused, it’s largely untrue, because it takes an immense amount of effort for women to come out and report it,” she said.

“It’s not like floodgates are going to be opened with hundreds of marital rape cases [being reported]. It’s still going to be very difficult.”

The Israeli military is carrying out a widespread operation in northern Gaza, issuing evacuation orders and blocking food supplies, just weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to be mulling a plan to besiege the area to starve Hamas and force it to release hostages.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week launched the operation following intelligence that it said showed “the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the area of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, as well as efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities in the area.” In practice, the renewed offensive has been far more widespread than the Jabalya refugee camp.

The operation comes at a time when the Israeli government is known to be considering several plans to reset the war in Gaza.

Eiland last month proposed forcing all civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, and then cutting off all supplies to the area. The goal, he said, was to force a reset in the war and upend Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s calculus. “The reality today in Gaza is that Sinwar is really not stressed,” he said in a video released at the time.

On Monday, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson ordered all Palestinians in Gaza’s northern-most communities – Beit Hanoun, Jabalya, and Beit Lahia – to leave and relocate to Al Mawasi, an Israel-declared “humanitarian area” in southern Gaza that has nonetheless come under intense aerial bombardment for months.

The military on Saturday added additional mandatory evacuation zones, dropping flyers and posting on X, ordering people in the Nazla area and more areas of Jabalya to leave.

The military “is operating with great force against terrorist organizations and will continue to do so for an extended period,” Avichay Adraee said on X. “You must evacuate the area immediately via Salah al-Din Street to the humanitarian zone.”

Most intense action

“Virtually the entire area is under evacuation orders, and thousands of families have been forced to flee amid intense airstrikes and military operations on the ground,” WFP said in a statement on Wednesday. “With the main aid crossings into northern Gaza closed and WFP-partner kitchens forced to shut down, WFP is no longer able to distribute food in any form to families that desperately need it.”

“Even the basic necessities of life for the besieged people are unavailable,” Ibrahim said. “There is no safe drinking water, no adequate or healthy food, no medicine, no treatment, and no hospitals. They are working at minimum capacity and are exhausted. Even the safe places are bombed with shells and rockets.”

Dr. Hussam Abu Saifiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said the facility was informed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Tuesday that medical staff and patients must evacuate the hospital “within 24 hours.” They were not told where to go, he said. Al Awda and the Indonesian hospitals have also been ordered to leave, according to local officials. Hospital officials say Israel’s intense bombardment of the area makes it impossible to leave safely.

Meanwhile, seven attempts this week by the World Health Organization to reach northern Gaza were “denied or impeded,” Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday.

“The team was unable to carry out the medical evacuation of critical patients from Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals to Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa, due to delays of over 10 hours at checkpoints,” he said in a statement on X.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is now entering its third month, with scores of settlements still firmly under its control.

The operation marked the first time foreign troops entered Russian territory since World War II – embarrassing the Kremlin and proving to Kyiv’s backers and the rest of the world that Ukraine’s military was not perpetually on the back foot.

Some nine weeks later, Ukraine’s advance has stalled, and neither side has made major gains or counterattacks in recent days.

The endgame is unclear. Analysts believe Kyiv is trying to use its initial momentum for a morale boost and a potential bargaining chip, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to downplay the entire incursion and limit the resources Russia’s war machine devotes to countering it.

What’s the latest on the ground?

Ukraine has maintained a foothold in Kursk of about 786 square kilometers (300 square miles), according to the latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank in Washington, DC.

Ukraine’s main foothold is around the Russian town of Sudzha and its military is trying to establish a second foothold around Veseloe village. Ukraine has not disclosed how many troops it has sent to the region.

Russia has deployed a reasonably large number of troops – estimated at 40,000 – to defend and counterattack in Kursk, but analyst Mark Galeotti described the initial force as “built from wherever they can find,” with Russia using conscripts and reservists at the outset of the incursion.

Moscow has since deployed more experienced forces, but not as many resources as Russian civilians in Kursk would perhaps want.

As fighting in the area continues, Russian authorities say more than 100,000 civilians have been displaced, while many others find themselves living behind Ukrainian lines.

“Over time, there is a degree to which the Kursk operation has become normalized,” Galeotti said. “We shouldn’t assume that Russians have just come to accept it… I think Putin has managed to postpone judgment, but I don’t think it’s been completely waived.”

Why hasn’t Russia’s response been stronger?

Russia is trying to avoid diverting any resources from the frontlines of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine to fight in Kursk.

Although the incursion was initially a shock to both the government and ordinary Russians, “the Kremlin has played this down,” according to John Lough, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Program. “The strategy is to distract the population from what’s happened, which is undoubtedly a major embarrassment, and to create the impression that this is not serious.”

Putin’s government has characterized it as a “raid” and even downplayed their counterattack as a “counterterrorism mission.”

One Russian military blogger put the normalization into stark words, saying: “Most of Russia has already got used to the fighting near Kursk… Those who have nothing to do with the Kursk region are rather sluggishly interested in what is happening.”

Frontlines are moving only slightly, but the fighting is reportedly fierce, with Russian forces deploying numerous drones, barrel artillery and aerial bombers, according to the Ukrainian commander.

“They don’t hesitate to drop a bomb on a tree line if they assume we have troops there,” Ukrainian battalion commander “Kholod” said. He claims Russia has now sent a powerful group of troops and combat brigades to where his unit is fighting in Kursk, and argued the Russian counterattack was staved off by Ukraine’s drone and mine attacks.

What has Ukraine achieved?

The incursion into Kursk likely had multiple goals, analysts say, including giving Ukraine a narrative win.

“Their goal was to demonstrate to Ukraine’s Western allies that the Russians are vulnerable and that there are limits to their ability to deploy combat power,” said Lough, adding that the incursion also highlighted how “Russia’s red lines are rhetorical.”

Yet Ukraine’s goal of diverting troops from the eastern frontline to Kursk has so far failed.

Kursk could still be a bargaining chip for negotiations in the future, though, experts said.

“By taking this territory, they immediately ruled out the possibility of both the Russians and the Western allies saying, ‘Now it’s time to stop. Let’s have a ceasefire,’” Lough said.

Focus still on eastern Ukraine

Meanwhile, the primary focus of the war remains on the frontlines in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where its troops are fighting to retain control of the strategic city of Pokrovsk.

Rather than focus resources on liberating their own territory, the Russian military has expanded its assaults on multiple fronts in Ukraine, including in key areas of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.

“It seems to be a very high priority for the Kremlin to advance as far as possible in Donbas, regardless of the losses,” Lough added. “There is a sort of window that is about to close, because you get to this time of year when the roads turn to mud.”

Russia’s daily attacks on Ukraine continued Thursday, with several people killed in the regions of Odesa, Kherson and Donetsk.