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Wednesday May 23, 2012

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DHS lose 14-year old girl

Posted by: Derryn Hinch | 17 February, 2012 - 5:25 PM
Derryn Hinch

I said on air the other day that I was working on a story about another DHS  shambles. Another disaster. This one is a shocker because it involves a 12-year-old girl voluntarily entrusted to DHS care. Over the past two years she has been sexually assaulted, shuttled around, and is now missing. Missing!

She has now been missing for nearly eight weeks. She is out there on the streets. Probably being abused. The state authorities whose care she is in have no idea where she is. And is still only 14 years old.

Because of the sexual abuse I cannot, and would not name her. But I can tell you some of the story.

The girl has a mental health problem. She had been a patient at the Royal Children’s and later the Austin Hospital’s  children’s psychiatric unit.Two years ago her mother found she could no longer cope. She took the advice of a local Community Policing Officer, who regularly visited their home and asked the DHS to temporarily put the girl into ‘voluntary foster placement’.

*Scroll down and listen to Derryn's interview with Bernadette McMenamin, AO, Chief Executive Officer, Child Wise*

That happened. The mother retained legal guardianship but for the first five months, despite repeated phone calls to the DHS, there was zero contact between mother and daughter.

The girl was placed with the now de-funded Orana Family Services. The foster family were not told about the child’s mental problems or the daily schedule designed for her by the Austin’s Eagle Unit.

The mother says she discovered her daughter was allowed to ‘ hang out around the Broadie shipping centre and local parks’ and in December 2010 reported she had been ‘ raped’ by several adolescent boys in the park. The mother wasn’t told and she was allowed to return to the park where she reportedly had been forced to perform oral sex on several youths. This is a 12-year-old.

In March last year progress reports were prepared for Court by Orana and the DHS to further the foster order.   No mention of the sexual assaults. In fact they said she was happy and emotionally and physically being well cared for.

The mother found out about the assaults during a weekend visit home by her daughter. A DHS worker told her it was her decision to suppress that material.

By mid-2011, the  mother says, her daughter was absent from the foster home, absent from school, in and out of new foster care, in and out of so-called ‘secure lock-up’. Twice while in lockup she tested positive for sexually- transmitted infections.

She hooked up with a boy four years older.  Was last released from lockup on Christmas Eve and hasn’t been seen since.

Her mother knows frightening fragments of what has happened since. Was a passenger in a stolen car with two youths involved in a high-speed Police chase. She has been charged with theft from a Frankston supermarket but failed to appear in Children’s Court. A bench warrant has been issued for her arrest.

Meanwhile a mother who put her child into DHS care because she was told it was for the best now waits for a knock on her door she thinks will be Police asking her to accompany them to identify her daughter’s body. Sadly, I suspect this case is not uncommon.

PLAY: Bernadette McMenamin, AO, Chief Executive Officer, Child Wise on 3AW Drive

Derryn Hinch needs your help to take on the DHS

Help Hinch fight DHS 'pinheads'

UPDATE: The foster Mum and her three kids have been reunited, but the fight to keep them together is far from over. Derryn Hinch spoke to Mary Wooldridge, Minister for Community Services, who admits the DHS has handled the case 'poorly.'

Blog comments Your Say

  • Caroline ,Mental illeness does not justify harming another person in any way

    Dominic Lombardo Thursday 23 February, 2012 - 8:40 AM

  • No sympathy for bridge killer. I am in a fathers group to protect the rights of fathers No sympathy for fathers who harm their children. This coward should have been here for his child even if he lost a custody battle.
    He would have been needed by his child when he would grow and meet his father again!

    Dominic Lombardo Thursday 23 February, 2012 - 8:35 AM

  • I try to send Mary Wooldridge news archives and attach material on child abuse She always claims she never receives them to try a different format Every body else in Australia and the world receives them. I am having doubts on her credibility

    Dominic Lombardo Thursday 23 February, 2012 - 8:21 AM

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