Families finally heard by a system that failed

Cindy Smith.

In December 1987, two Aboriginal girls lay dead in a Bourke morgue, just hours after getting into a ute driven by a 40-year-old excavator driver called Alexander Ian Grant. Witness evidence – including testimony from a police officer – strongly suggested the younger girl, 15-year-old Cindy Smith, had been sexually abused by Grant after she died from massive injuries sustained in the same vehicle accident that killed her 16-year-old cousin, Mona Smith.

Cindy was found deceased and in a near-naked state at the crash site near Bourke, with the unharmed Grant lying with his arm across her exposed body.

Despite the gravity and horror of this case – which The Australian and legal advocacy group National Justice Project have campaigned on for several years – Grant, who died in 2017, never spent a day in jail over the girls’ deaths.

He admitted lying to police and initially told them he was driving the crashed vehicle, yet his not guilty verdict has stood for 33 years.

Now, a long-overdue Bourke inquest has challenged that verdict and has asked tough questions about how an initially botched police investigation – coupled with a contentious decision by prosecutors – saw Grant escape justice over the deaths of Cindy and Mona, and the alleged sexual molestation of Cindy’s body.

As one barrister put it, the inquest has unearthed “overwhelming” flaws in the initial police investigation.

For the families, justice will never be complete. It is scandalous that it has taken more than three decades for a full inquest to be held, meaning that Grant died without facing jail for his alleged role in the girls’ deaths.

Nonetheless, through this often-harrowing inquest, conducted with exceptional compassion by NSW State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan, the mothers of the deceased girls feel they have finally been heard and treated with dignity by a justice system that failed them for so long.