Bourke mother hopes ‘Cindy’s law’ will close loophole that let her daughter’s abuser walk free

‘The justice system failed us,’ says family matriarch who has been fighting for her daughter, Cindy, and Cindy’s cousin, Mona Lisa, ever since their deaths 37 years ago.

Grieving Aboriginal mother, Dawn Smith, right, and her daughter, Kerrie, have travelled from Bourke to Sydney to watch NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley introduce ‘Cindy’s law’, in honour of Dawn’s daughter Cindy, who died in 1987. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

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Dawn Smith is 83 and lost her 15-year-old daughter, Cindy, in horrific circumstances 37 years ago. Yet the Indigenous great-grandmother who still works for the Aboriginal Legal Service in her NSW outback hometown, Bourke, has always concealed her grief from her adult children.

“I don’t do my crying around my kids …’’ Ms Smith said on Wednesday. “I wait until night-time.’’

The matriarch of a large Aboriginal family that includes “about 50 great-grandchildren”, Ms Smith travelled to Sydney to talk to NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley as he introduced into state parliament a long-awaited reform aimed at preventing sexual predators from dodging justice if the exact time of their victim’s death is unknown.

After meeting Mr Daley, Ms Smith wiped tears from her eyes and said the legislative reform that was inspired by her family’s and deceased daughter’s trauma would be “very important’’. “It’s hard when you lose a member of the family; a son or daughter. It’s hard. And then you come up against something like this – (a predator) interfering with a little girl (Cindy) when she’s gone. And the justice system failed us.’’

Jacinta ‘Cindy’ Rose Smith.

Mona Lisa Smith.

The reform to the NSW Crimes Act – which Mr Daley had described as “long overdue” and the Smith family had dubbed “Cindy’s law” – will close a loophole that allowed 40-year-old Alexander Ian Grant to walk free after he sexually abused Cindy Smith, then 15, as she lay dead or dying by the side of a remote highway in December, 1987.

Hours after accepting a lift from Grant, a white excavator driver who ultimately escaped justice, Jacinta ‘Cindy’ Rose Smith and her 16-year-old cousin, Mona Lisa Smith, died from horrific injuries suffered when Grant’s ute crashed and rolled outside Bourke.

Grant was found at the remote crash site drunk, unharmed and with his arm across the near-naked body of Cindy, whose clothing had been interfered with. He was charged with sexually interfering with Cindy’s corpse, but this charge was controversially withdrawn or “no-billed” in 1990 because of a technicality: experts could not identify the exact moment of Cindy’s death.

In 2024, NSW State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan concluded that Grant, who died in 2017, had engaged in “predatory and disgraceful conduct” towards Cindy after she had died. The coroner also found that Grant lied when he said Mona had been driving his ute when it crashed, and that “racial bias” tainted the initial, “inexplicably deficient” police investigation into the Aboriginal girls’ deaths.

Grant had faced charges of dangerous driving causing the girls’ deaths, but was acquitted in 1990 when his lawyers convinced a jury that Mona was driving when his ute crashed, though he had initially told a police officer he was the driver.

His acquittal by an all-white jury caused outrage among Bourke’s Aboriginal community and deepened the Smith clan’s grief.

Dawn Smith, middle, with her daughter, Kerrie, and son-in-law, Reg Robins. Picture: John Feder

The family’s lawyer, the National Justice Project’s George Newhouse, said on Wednesday that if the proposed law was passed – it has yet to be discussed by the shadow cabinet – the dropping of such charges because of a technicality “won’t happen” again.

Mr Newhouse said the Smith family had to “carry in their hearts for 37 years” the “horrific circumstances” of Cindy’s abuse and death.

Mr Newhouse added that “the family is still pushing for a better system” when it came to police investigations of Aboriginal deaths, while Cindy’s mother added: “I would like to see people (who initially investigated Cindy’s and Mona’s deaths) held accountable for not doing their jobs properly’’.

At the inquest, official police investigators described the initial police investigation into the Indigenous girls’ deaths as “a nightmare”, “shoddy” and “unprofessional”.

Asked what kept her going during her long ordeal, Ms Smith, flanked by her daughter, Kerry, and son-in-law, Reggie, replied: “The rest of my family’’.

She had “always wondered what she (Cindy) would have been like today; whether she would have got married and had kids … I miss her very much.’’

Ms Smith said she continued to work at Bourke’s Aboriginal Legal Service in order to be a role model to her grandchildren.