Girl X: Uniting Care in new abuse case after earlier debacle

EXCLUSIVE: A foster carer charged with sexually assaulting and drugging a 14-year-old girl was being managed by the same organisation operating the facility where Girl X died of a drug overdose.

• Coroner finds teen ‘open to abuse at hands of predatory adults’
• Girl X: Foster mum Maria says FACS needs to be investigated
• Ice-addled parents fight to keep ninth child

A 60-YEAR-OLD foster carer charged with sexually assaulting and drugging a 14-year-old girl he was meant to be protecting was being managed by the same organisation operating the facility where abused teen Girl X died of a drug overdose.

The foster carer accused of raping 14-year-old child in his care

Detectives from the Child Abuse Squad will allege the carer sexually and indecently assaulted the teenager and supplied her with cannabis while she was in his care.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the foster case was being managed by Uniting Care Burnside. It’s the same non-government organisation that operated the Gordon House foster care group home where a 15-year-old girl dubbed Girl X died after injecting heroin and methamphetamine.

An inquest into Girl X’s death exposed systemic failures in the NSW child protection system following The Daily Telegraph’s revelations that at age 14 she had been abused by carers at another facility run by a different ­organisation.

Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard said the charges were a “clarion call” to providers of care “to look closely at where care arrangements have gone wrong and as far as possible, ensure all is done to stop it happening again.”

Girl X rape scandal: Teen victim was pushed to the very edge by her alleged abuser

The 60-year-old man is due to appear at Taree Local Court today. Alternate care arrangements were co-ordinated for the 14-year-old girl last month.

The Daily Telegraph understand that the man and his widow had cared for the girl for 10 years and that when the foster mother died, thought to be in the last 12 months, the foster father “grew close to the girl”, a police source said. It is understood police will allege the first instance of abuse occurred at the start of the year and, the second, last month.

Uniting Care operations director Bob Mulcahy said he could not make any comment on the particular case as it was before the courts.

Girl X’s family claim they were never informed about the rapes.

However, he said where allegations were made against a carer, the organisation took “immediate steps to ensure the safety of the children and notifies all relevant parties including Family and Community Services and the NSW Ombudsman.”

He said the United Church had announced a full and independent review being led by Christine Nixon into the operations of its Out-of-Home Care services.

The latest scandal to rock the state’s child protection system comes as federal Social Services Minister Christian Porter yesterday criticised a decision to allow an ice addict mother and her violent partner, who had previously been stripped by authorities of eight children, to keep their ninth child.

CCTV footage from the night Girl X overdosed at the foster facility. Picture: ABC

The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday that more than 2000 unborn babies across NSW each year were now being identified as “at risk of significant harm” before birth.

Among those babies was the Blacktown case.

The pair have been able to keep custody of their ninth child after taking part in several radical new programs, including having a fulltime care worker in their house after the birth of the baby boy.

Mr Porter said it still “seems to me it would not be a very wise decision to allow that child to stay with that family”.

In response, Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard urged his federal counterpart to see first-hand how the NSW programs worked.

“Some NSW parents know more about dope than they do about the food to keep their babies alive”: Brad Hazzard.

Mr Hazzard had told The Daily Telegraph the “appalling” reality was some NSW parents “know more about dope than they do about the food to keep their babies alive”. But taking these children from parents was not ­always the right answer.

FACS is trialling several new programs in conjunction with other departments, including a new “pregnancy family conference” joint scheme run with NSW Health that identifies unborn babies at risk and then sets up meetings between authorities and the family that friends are permitted to attend. The Blacktown couple was also part of this program.

“There is absolutely no question that removing a baby from a mum is no guarantee that baby is going to have a positive future,” Mr Hazzard said.