Opinion: The ultimate betrayal of Australia’s children
ABUSED children are being sent back home to the care of unhinged drug addicts. And it is being done with the “grudging” approval of our Child Safety department, Des Houghton writes.
Opinion
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IS THIS the ultimate betrayal of our children? Neglected and abused children are sent back home to the care of parents who are unhinged drug addicts. And it is done with the “grudging” approval of our Child Safety department because it is often difficult to find foster homes. There is also a strong push to give erring parents another chance.
It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.
Police told me children have been sent back to homes where other children were known to have been sexually abused by a father or a relative.
It doesn’t happen often, but it happens, more frequently in Aboriginal communities. It is an unseen scandal quietly being played out around the nation.
Two professionals with decades of experience in the welfare industry told me children were returned to drug users’ homes after the parents swear blind they won’t touch drugs again. Yet they were shooting up again within a week. With no money for food, hungry young children have been found roaming the streets late at night.
I’m told other neglected children are sent back to homes where the mother is a part-time prostitute. Again, they are returned with the reluctant approval of the department.
The two professionals relate stories of child neglect and deliberate cruelty that would make your skin crawl. In this state, we now have 9000 children who have been taken into care because they have been harmed by their own parents.
Many become lost souls facing the added pain of being torn from flawed parents they still love. What wretched lives they must lead. Many carry the grief of sexual assaults all their lives.
Hundreds of other cases reported by doctors, nurses, teachers and neighbours are yet to be fully investigated.
I was told many Child Safety workers who report on this disgusting war on children find it too traumatic and quit. Others with too many cases to handle start at six or seven in the morning and are still working at 10pm. They burn out.
A new crisis is emerging. Parents who can no longer control rebellious children are turning up at child safety centres asking to “relinquish” them into the care of the state. I’m told children aged 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 have been “handed in”.
There were other shocks yesterday with the disclosure that one child a week known to the Child Safety department dies. No fewer than 51 children died last year.
Not all of the deaths were suspicious, of course, but several are being investigated by the child protection investigation unit.
The tragic case of Mason Jet Lee has highlighted our abysmal failure to protect vulnerable children.
Police, doctors, and Child Safety officers had all been warned Mason was in trouble, but still he died.
There are now three or four investigations into his death. It’s too little, too late for Mason, I’m afraid.
The toddler was found dead at his Caboolture home on June 11 after suffering months of violence and neglect when he should have been in care.
The boy had earlier been admitted to hospital with injuries suffered at home.
A parent who met the tragic tot told me Mason did not smile and was like a startled sparrow when they saw him at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in February.
The mother from a southeast Queensland country town said one of Mason’s legs was bandaged from his groin to his ankle and he had numerous other dressings and a catheter in his penis.
She provided a lengthy statement to police.
The young mum said Mason was in the same ward as her son, who was recovering from surgery on his chin. She watched him for hours and she was impressed at how the nurses tried to jolly him along.
Mason could not walk and had to be lifted onto the play mat he shared with the other children in the ward. Eventually he smiled.
Hospital sources confirm Mason was a patient at Lady Cilento from February 14 to March 5. His stay overlapped that of another baby, Asher, from Nauru detention centre. Asher remained at the hospital from January 26 to February 22 while controversy raged about her deportation.
But there were no protest marches for little Mason, who did not have the luxury of being born in detention.
Mason’s mother visited him at Lady Cilento and demanded he be returned to Caboolture hospital.
She told doctors and nurses she was broke and complained she and her partner had to sell their tattoo gear to raise money for fares.
When doctors also quizzed her about an apparent anal tear she told them Mason may have suffered the injury after being dragged across a floor with broken tiles.
Mason’s mother said her son may have suffered burns like nappy rash after sitting on Nair hair removal cream he was playing with in the bathroom.
Police said Mason’s mother was not at home the night he died. There were several visitors to the house in the days before he died.
Health Minister Cameron Dick would not confirm whether Mason had suffered a broken leg and had boils when taken to Lady Cilento from Caboolture Hospital to be examined by specialists.
However, he said he was told by the Department of Health that the health services involved in this case had complied with their reporting obligations.
He added: “I am advised that this matter is the subject of ongoing investigation by the Department of Child Safety, the Queensland Police Service and the State Coroner.
“I have directed the Department of Health to co-operate fully with these investigations.
“As these investigations are ongoing; it would not be appropriate for me to comment further at this time.”
SCOURGE OF CHILD SEX ABUSE RISING
CHILD molestation is soaring in Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Children aged between 10 and 14 made up nearly a third of all 4063 reported cases of sexual assaults last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Police said most of the children were attacked by close relatives or extended family members, with 81 per cent of victims girls.
Fiona Simpson, the Opposition spokeswoman on Aboriginal Affairs, said the attacks were shocking.
“These are lives that have been wounded by one of the most personally destructive crimes,” she said.
She said the sexual abuse of children left a legacy of psychological and physical injury that destroyed families.
“It can’t be swept under the carpet or left in the too-hard basket,” she said.
FOSTER CARERS NEEDED
BRYAN Smith has been a foster father to 150 children in the past 25 years and believes there will always be a home away from home found for a child in crisis.
“Sometimes it is difficult, but there are always placement options available,” he said.
The system was stretched, but there were “bloody good people trying to do the best they can with what they have got”.
Smith is executive director of Foster Care Queensland, and he is keen to find more foster care families.
“No child should have to be raised in an abusive household,” he said. “We wish to God we weren’t needed.”
Lindsay Wegener, the director of Peakcare, said it would be rare for children to be returned to homes where drugs were used regularly.
He believes violence associated with alcohol abuse is a far greater problem. And he said removing children from their families could be even more traumatic than the abuse suffered.
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FRECKLINGTON TAMES TRAD
DEPUTY Premier Jackie Trad, the glossy star of Queensland’s Labor Left, was taken down a notch or two in parliamentary Estimates hearings this week. The woman who desperately wants to be premier seems to have finally met her match at the hands of rising LNP star Deb Frecklington, the member for Joh’s old seat of Nanango.
Trad was repeatedly flustered under Frecklington’s sharp questioning, especially during debate over Brisbane’s Cross River Rail, described by one wit as the world’s first railway to operate without trains. It was a very entertaining clash between two feisty women and set the scene for some interesting debates ahead. I would hate to come between them.
PITT CAUGHT OUT
IT WAS a bad week for Labor in parliamentary Estimates, with Treasurer Curtis “Pants on Fire” Pitt spectacularly caught out on his claim that Labor’s $4 billion raid on public service superannuation was approved by State Actuary Wayne Cannon.
Shadow Treasurer Scott Emerson led the attack. From Hansard:
Emerson: Did you make a recommendation of the $4 billion?
Cannon: No.
Emerson: You did not make a recommendation?
Cannon: No, I didn’t.
Emerson: In the first report you made a recommendation of $2 billion, but later on, to use the Treasurer’s terms, you gave advice in terms of if they (took this amount of money out), this is the consequences? Is this correct?
Cannon: Yes, that’s correct.
Emerson: So, the advice was if you take $5 billion out, these are the consequences, if you take $4 billion out, these are the consequences. But nowhere in the report – let’s be very clear about this – nowhere in the report did you recommend $4 billion?
Cannon: No, that’s absolutely correct.
How will Pitt worm his way out of this one?
OLD FOES MEET
AS THE feminist movement gathered pace at the University of Queensland in the early ’80s, two powerful figures emerged – Fleur Kingham and Anna Bligh. If you had asked me in 1983 which one was destined to be premier, I would have nominated Kingham, the sassy, attractive law student capable of producing a compelling argument.
Kingham and Bligh crossed paths again last week when they both received an honorary doctorate from Griffith University.
In her speech, the former premier urged graduates not to fear failure. She said she first learned about failure when running for the presidency of the University of Queensland Union in 1983. The victor was none other than Kingham, now a judge.
Said Bligh: “(Fleur) was a very worthy opponent then, and she is a very worthy recipient of her Griffith University honorary doctorate today.”
Kingham was this week appointed the new president of the Land Court of Queensland. She begins her new gig on August 8.
INDIGENOUS REMINDER
INDIGENOUS artist Judy Watson was selected to create a major public artwork to be set near the front door of Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art.
Watson’s proposal for a bronze sculpture was inspired by the traditional woven fishing nets of southeast Queensland’s Aboriginal communities, said gallery director Chris Saines.
He said the work would be a potent reminder of the role played by indigenous artists in telling their own stories to enrich our cultural heritage.
IRRITANT OF THE WEEK
JIM PEARCE. I can’t recall a more blatant attempt at censorship as I did this week when Labor’s Estimates chairman churlishly tried to stifle debate on the secret new taxes to fund the Cross River Rail project.
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