‘The poor kid never had a chance’ ... Yvette Rigney-Wilson’s dreams dashed in a cycle of despair
THE deaths of Yvette Rigney-Wilson and her children highlight the vicious circle that people in state care can become trapped in. We look at the young woman’s tragic journey from a fresh-faced child to a troubled adult.
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AS a child, Adeline Yvette Rigney-Wilson wanted to conquer the world as an airline hostess, travelling to far flung destinations.
“She had all these big plans of what she wanted to do with her life — she was an absolute social butterfly,” recalls a long-time family friend.
Despite a deeply troubled upbringing, former carers who took her in say, “she was the most loving ray of sunshine as a kid’’.
Against the odds, the bubbly young girl grew to become a mother to three gorgeous children of her own. Sadly though, she never achieved her dream of travelling the world. She never even left Australia.
The 29-year-old’s life was cut short in tragic circumstances this week, less than a month short of her 30th birthday. She was found dead at a remote farmhouse at Hillier, near Gawler, on Monday, along with the bodies of her son Corey, 5, and daughter Amber, 6.
Yvette’s partner Steven Graham Peet, 30, is charged with their murders.
Family members say the young mother’s life had spiralled out of control. She had an addiction to ice and she is alleged to have beaten one of her sons. But family friends who cared for Yvette — as she was known — during her childhood say she suffered terrible abuse herself and later misused substances to “block that out”.
She was admitted to hospital for a number of serious injuries, had delayed speech and development, was moved constantly between homes around the country and grew up around people who used drugs and alcohol.
However, her former foster carers describe Yvette as a funny child with a “beguiling nature” who enjoyed netball, dancing and cracking jokes.
She dreamt of seeing the world and working as an airline hostess but is not believed to have finished Year 12 or ever held a job. Family friends have told The Advertiser they lost contact with Yvette as a teenager when she returned to her biological family.
They did not meet her alleged killer or her children and most saw her for the last time many months or years ago.
It was a shock then to see her as an adult, seemingly ravaged by the effects of drugs.
“She was a shell of a person,” said a family friend who had care of Yvette, on and off, between the ages of about three and 17, after seeing her four years ago.
“She was so thin it felt like I was hugging a bag of bones. You could see that she was using drugs.”
It was a far cry from the active, outgoing girl she had tried to help raise.
“She just had a very mischievous, playful personality. She had this really beguiling nature about her, you couldn’t stay mad at her.
“She was the funniest kid, mimicking people and pulling faces — anything to make you laugh.”
Born on June 20, 1987, in Darwin, Yvette is the third-eldest of nine siblings — four girls and five boys.
She moved back to South Australia with family shortly after her birth and spent time in Ceduna, Mildura and the northern suburbs of Adelaide. She also spent some time at a children’s group home and had on-off contact with her biological family.
One former carer, who did not want to be named, said Yvette had to be flown to hospital once as a child while suffering a severe infection.
“What she went through as a child was just really horrific,” the carer said.
Yvette is also said to have suffered a large scar on her scalp and a serious ear infection.
It is believed she attended schools including Edwardstown and Magill primary schools and Henley High.
Former carers say she was a clingy and unsure child when she first came to their care as a youngster, but grew into a more confident young girl.
Sally Stewart took Yvette in for about eight months around the age of three years after her family arrived in Mildura.
“She shifted around so much, she’d just go from carer to carer all around the country,” Ms Stewart, 67, said.
“Thinking back on it, the pain she was in when she came to me, the poor baby.
“She was damaged. Some things are just so hard to get away from. The poor kid never had a chance.”
Former carers say Yvette did not use drugs when she was young, but was often around drug users growing up.
It is believed she reconnected with her mother, Donna, around 2003. Around January this year, she had tried to sever ties with most of her family but had reached out to some people from her past.
Hardly anyone had met her partner, Peet, who it is believed she had been seeing since at least the beginning of this year.
It is understood the father of her children, Sean Corry had custody of her eldest and surviving son, Sean Jnr, and he was seeking custody of Amber and Corey. There are allegations that Yvette had beat Sean Jnr with a broomstick and tried to drown him.
Families SA documents reportedly show social workers who visited Yvette’s house earlier this year were concerned she was engaging in daily drug use and did not have adequate food for the children.
Family members have disputed this, saying she always “put food on the table” and tucked them into bed.
Another former carer said when she saw Yvette a few months ago she did not talk much about her life.
“She was saying everything’s OK,” the woman said.
“She didn’t want us to worry about any of her problems. But I always worried about her.
“For what she’d been through she had no attitude. She had a really gentle heart.”
Aboriginal children are overrepresented in the state’s child protection system — making up 4.5 per cent of the population in SA but 31.6 per cent of substantiated cases of abuse or neglect.
Indigenous women are shockingly more likely to be the victim of assault than non-indigenous women. Research has found they are up to 35 times more likely to be hospitalised for injuries caused by assault and those living in rural or remote communities are at even greater risk — up to 45 times more likely to experience family violence than other women living in such areas.
Ms Stewart called on authorities to start punishing the perpetrators of family violence “the way they should be — let them know this isn’t OK”.
“When you’ve got really low self-esteem, like a lot of our little girls, if they think someone loves them they’re going to jump at that,” she said of abusive partners who took advantage of women.
The woman who next had care of Yvette, on and off throughout her childhood, said she hoped the tragedy “will change practices for women who have been through what she has been through”.
“A lot of these women who fall into this trap, they’ve had terrible childhoods and they don’t have enough support and they need help,” she said.
“If she’d had counselling and support back then she could have been that airline hostess.
“When people know nothing but abuse and are not loved … the pattern just keeps repeating.
“A big part of why her life ended up why it did is because of what she went through.
“To see how her life and her children’s lives have ended up is just heartbreaking.”
Family friends are putting together a photo album for Sean Jr and Yvette’s younger siblings “so they have some good memories of her”.
They are also considering establishing a foundation in her name to help survivors of abuse.
For help, phone 1800 RESPECT or visit www.kornarwinmilyunti.org.au
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