Names of dead baby, relatives, suppressed on eve of inquest into Child Protection Dept’s failings over his death in squalor

On the eve of an inquest into the death of a baby boy living in squalid conditions – not made public for years – the Department for Child Protection has won a court order to suppress critical details.

The Department for Child Protection did not make public the death of an 11-week-old baby in the care of a “immature” teen mother for four years and has now, on the eve of an inquest into its failings, won a court battle to suppress critical details including the infant’s first name and image.

Never publicly reported by police or the department at the time, the baby boy died on a foldout couch while co-sleeping with his mother and two older siblings.

The house in regional South Australia they lived in was crowded, covered in faeces and home to drug use and violence.

The department had been notified 23 times that the children were at risk.

Now, as an inquest that will analyse the institutional failings in the lead up to the child’s death is set to begin on Tuesday, the department has acted to, by its argument, protect the family – by seeking to suppress crucial details of the case.

On Monday, State Coroner David Whittle granted a suppression order preventing publication of the identity of the child and his siblings, their fathers – each child has a different father – and maternal grandmother.

Mr Whittle also suppressed the identity of the mother – who has been convicted of three counts of failing to provide for her children – to spare her “embarrassment”.

Finally, the court suppressed the rural setting of the child’s death.

During hearings about the suppression last week, Mr Whittle was told that at the heart of the inquest would be the interactions between the family of the child and the department, which was alerted about the mother when she had her first child at 15.

The inquest will investigate the child’s cause of death including that he was sleeping on a fold-out couch with his mother and two older siblings and had a respiratory tract infection at his time of death.

The inquest will also investigate circumstances including the state of squalor of the home and the department’s knowledge of the living conditions and its assessment of the safety of the surviving siblings.

During hearings about the suppression, counsel assisting the Coroner, Sally Giles, said the inquest would include a number of photos and videos of the squalid state of the home in which the infant, his mother and siblings were living at the time of his death.

“There will be a number of descriptions of the house which will detail there being faeces on the floor, rotten food in the pantry, on the floor and on the stove in the kitchen, several baby bottles which contained putrid liquid which appeared to be curdled milk, no food in the fridge, small amount of food in the pantry but which was infested with cockroaches, a baby formula tin which was open in the kitchen surrounded by dead flies, all of the rooms in the house smelling of faeces, urine and rotting food, soiled nappies in a cot.”

Ms Giles said a forensic paediatrician had concluded the family’s living conditions placed the children at risk of both physical and psychological harm, and that the mother had not engaged with services.

Ms Giles said the 23 notifications about the family included “details of the mother lacking maturity and parenting skills, various concerns about the unhygienic home environment, in particular faeces being found in the hallway of the home and the home being overcrowded with 10 people living at the address at one point”.

She said other notifications included the father of one of the children threatening to kill the mother, her young age and inability to cope with her young children, drug use by a man in the home and concerns about the mother’s mental health.

The department last week told the court the fragile mental health of the children’s mother would suffer if she was to become stressed and tendered an affidavit to the court from senior staff in the department talking about the adverse effects of media scrutiny on children.

The court heard the mother had made efforts to care for her surviving children.

Sentencing remarks made in June this year in the mother’s criminal case, obtained by The Advertiser, note the mother was “perhaps too young” and had initially “resisted the assistance of authorities and those who could help” her, but that had changed after her son’s death.

In those remarks, Magistrate Roderick Jensen said police investigating the child’s death had “found a confronting sight in terms of the conditions that your house was in”, and that a paediatric physician had deemed the conditions at the house “not suitable to be lived in by children”.

He said the mother’s older children were back in her care within three days of the infant’s death.

He noted the mother had become “overwhelmed” by her situation but with help was now “proud” of her house which was now “kept in a very good state”.

“What you were doing was simply not enough for your children and you have taken steps yourself to improve that and to change your habits,” he said.

Mr Jensen spared the mother a conviction and imposed a 12-month good behaviour bond.

An SA Police spokeswoman said the infant’s death was not made public at the time because the mother’s charges “referred specifically to the conditions in which the children were living”.

“Had she been charged in connection with the sudden death of the infant, a media release would have been published, as had occurred in other recent cases,” she said.

The case is not the first time the department has blamed media scrutiny for internal failings.

A report published earlier this month was criticised by the families of other children who had died after multiple notifications to the department as glorifying a failing system and criticising the media for seeking to shine a light on the issues.

Child Protection Department deputy chief executive Fiona Ward said: “This is a matter for the Coroner and the reasons for his decision are outlined in today’s judgment.”