Woman loses bid to legally work with children after machete attack on young girl at playground

A Victorian woman who struck a five-year-old girl with a machete has explained why she carried out the horror attack as she applied for a working with children check.

The woman did not receive a conviction and was instead handed a community corrections order with requirements she undertake mental health treatment. Picture: Thinkstock

A woman who attacked a five-year-old girl with a machete at a playground has lost her fight to legally work with children.

The woman, whose identity has been protected, was “motivated by delusion” when she struck the girl at random with a metre-long machete at a playground near her home in January 2022.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard the five-year-old was treated in hospital for abdominal pain and developed a fear of parks, believing them to be dangerous, after the incident.

The woman’s doctor submitted to the tribunal that on the day of the attack, the woman – diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder – had not taken her antipsychotic medication, instead smoking illicit drugs which led to the delusion that the girl and her family were responsible for poisoning her “beloved cat”.

The machete attack happened at a playground in January 2022.

The woman had charges of assault with a weapon and affray proven against her but she did not receive a conviction and was instead handed a community corrections order with requirements she undertake mental health treatment.

Her Working with Children (WWC) check was subsequently revoked, sparking an appeal by the woman who was prevented from returning to work as a volunteer consumer consultant.

The tribunal heard the woman has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and may never return to work but views the WWC Exclusion Notice as a “stain on her reputation” and she doesn’t want to die with it “hanging over her”.

However the tribunal last week upheld the decision to refuse her a WWC clearance.

VCAT deputy president Ian Proctor said public confidence in the WWC scheme’s ability to protect children was paramount.

“In my view the reality is that the horrifying assault with a machete on a five-year-old child in the playground, whatever the motive of the attacker and whatever follows in terms of minimising risk of re-occurrence and remorse, would not bring a reasonable person to allow the child to have direct contact with the Applicant while the Applicant was engaged in any type of child-related work,” Mr Proctor ruled.

“The reaction of the reasonable person would be one of horror, quite reasonably.”

Mr Proctor found the woman was genuinely remorseful for her actions, had an “admirable history of dealing with mental illness”, contributed to the community and had no prior criminal record.

“(However) the reasonable person … would remain highly concerned that relapse could not occur leading to dangerous conduct.”