Baby Q’s murder ‘a sad indictment’

Child protection advocates are calling for a multi-state review of interactions of authorities with ‘Baby Q’, the little girl killed when she was tossed into the Tweed River.

The judge accepted the opinion of psychiatrists that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong because of chronic schizophrenia, exacerbated by decades of drug and alcohol abuse and refusal to take anti-psychotic medication for two years before the killing.

Child protection advocates are calling for a multi-state review of interactions of authorities with “Baby Q”, the little girl killed when she was tossed alive into the Tweed River by her father.

Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston said the lack of intervention by child safety workers in Queensland and NSW, when the nine-month-old girl and her two-year-old brother were living with their parents on the streets, warranted investigation.

“That those two kids remained with those parents is quite extraordinary and very sad,” Ms Johnston told The Australian.

“It was obvious to anyone who had any interaction with them that those children were not in a safe place. That they were left there is a really sad indictment on the whole system.”

After a judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, judge Helen Wilson this week absolved the 49-year-old father of criminal responsibility for killing his daughter.

The judge accepted the opinion of psychiatrists that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong because of chronic schizophrenia, exacerbated by decades of drug and alcohol abuse and refusal to take anti-psychotic medication for two years before the killing.

Believing the girl was cursed, he threw her into the water on the far north NSW coast to “save the world”, the court was told.

The family cannot be identified under court orders but the girl was called “Baby Q” in Justice Wilson’s 15-page judgment.

A relative of a renowned land rights campaigner, the father was born in Mackay and raised in Queensland and Western Australia. At the age of 12, he started sniffing petrol, the judgment says.

From his late teens until his ­arrest, he abused alcohol and cannabis daily.

In his early 30s, he was admitted to Mackay Base Hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Apart from some unskilled work in the 1980s, he had never had a job. He lived rough and had run-ins with police for stealing and public nuisance.

Despite this background, in March 2016 he won the affection of a woman 23 years younger than him, who was studying for a double degree at Griffith University. She was a former Victorian private school sports captain who also had a mental illness. They barely knew each other when she fell pregnant, abandoned her studies and adopted his lifestyle.

They had a son together in December 2016. When his partner fell pregnant with Baby Q, the ­father saw doom, calling the unborn child a “bad spirit”.

Baby Q was born in Mackay on February 2, 2018.

As the family of four moved between hotels and the streets in Queensland and northern NSW, he tried and failed to give the baby away to relatives.

“Their lifestyle attracted the attention of the Queensland Child Safety authorities, and of Queensland police,” Justice Wilson said. “The accused resisted all attempts to assist the family and was hostile to officials.”

In October 2018, a month before the killing, the couple bought a van “in an attempt to evade authorities” and continued to spend most of their time on the streets.

Efforts by mental health ser­vices to track and treat the father were “made almost impossible by the accused’s transience”.

Yet authorities had every reason to be worried about Baby Q. During 35 separate admissions to psychiatric facilities since he was first diagnosed with an alcohol-induced psychotic disorder, the father had spoken many times about voices commanding him to kill a baby.

In the weeks before the killing, one witness saw the father throw Baby Q into a stroller and call her a “demon”. Another saw Baby Q’s back pockmarked with cigarette burns.

On November 16, 2018, Queensland police spoke to the couple and thought their children were at risk on the streets. The officers offered help with accommodation, but the father was rambling and said cops “killed black fellas”.

He threw his daughter in the river the next day. Her body washed up at Surfers Paradise.

The mother, 23 at the time, was charged with failing to provide for a child, causing danger of death. The charge was dismissed at Tweed Heads Local Court last August on condition she comply with a Mental Health Act treatment order.

Red Rose Foundation chief executive Betty Taylor said a review of child safety and police interactions with the family was necessary. She was concerned Baby Q could fall into a “grey area” because the case involved multiple states.

“Each state has its own child protection mechanisms. How children are protected across borders is a big issue,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Queensland’s Child Safety, Youth and Women Department said there was a review of the death of every child known to the department but “as the death occurred in NSW, further inquiries are a matter for NSW authorities”.