By Aja Styles
A Supreme Court judge has ruled against a coronial inquiry being held into the death of 17-year-old schoolboy Cohen Fink, saying nothing more would be gleaned from such an extensive, potentially expensive and “aggressive” inquiry.
Cohen took his own life days after sitting his mid-Year 12 Australian Tertiary Admission Rank exams at Warnbro Community High School in late May, 2019.
Pamella and Chris Fink’s fight over their son Cohen’s death in Year 12 has ended in the Supreme Court.Credit: Marta Pascual Juanola
Cohen was one of eight students doing ATAR in Year 12 and was being privately treated for major depression and anxiety disorder in the year leading up to his death.
However, he was never put on a Student at Educational Risk list, designed by the Department of Education to be a way of alerting teachers to a student’s mental health condition and other risks, as recommended by the school’s psychologist.
His schoolbooks contained scribbling about suicide ideation and his exams caused enough alarm among his teachers that a meeting was intended to be held with Cohen the week he was meant to return to school after the exams. But he died in the early hours of Tuesday June 4, after a long weekend.
The Finks’ attempts to penetrate the secrecy surrounding the public school system’s role in managing Cohen’s mental distress before he took his life included multiple Freedom of Information applications.
They argued before the Supreme Court on July 29 last year that a coroner’s administrative review over his death contained factual errors, and it was in the interests of justice to hold a formal inquiry.
“I do not accept Mr and Mrs Fink’s submission that because an inquest is a more formal and reliable fact-finding procedure it should be preferred to an administrative investigation,” Justice Jeremy Curthoys said in his findings, published last Friday.
“It seems to me that such an approach puts the cart before the horse.
“The relevant question is whether it is necessary or desirable in the interests of justice for a formal inquest to be held.
“Although an inquest may generally be more exacting than an administrative investigation (for example, through the power to call witnesses and test evidence) the quality of fact-finding undertaken for an administrative finding should not be discounted as unreliable.”
Justice Curthoys went further to say that he did not accept that “the opportunity of the coroner to make comments or recommendations to advance the interests of public health and safety in the WA school system and prevent the recurrence of student suicide [was] a sufficient reason for ordering an inquest”.
“It is evident that the Department was not seeking to whitewash the events surrounding Cohen’s death,” he ruled.
“The Department’s review concluded that in Cohen’s case, [Warnbro Community High School] did not comply with the Department’s policies and procedures.
“Accordingly, they have put in place procedures to prevent it from happening again.”
Cohen Fink at school before he took his life in 2019.
Cohen’s parents have condemned the ruling, which effectively ends their three-year battle to examine the department’s policies and procedures and the schools’ duties of care on behalf of other families who hold concerns over the mental healthcare given to their children.
“I honestly am terrified for kids in school because they are not protected one bit,” Pamella Fink told WAtoday.
“We had a professor who deals with inclusivity and disability in schools write a letter in support of an inquest, there’s no mention of that.
“So many people were hanging on us getting an inquest to shake up the education system.”
Mr and Mrs Fink helped form an online group called the Accountability for Children in Education WA as more stories about mental health issues in public schools emerged following their son’s death.
However, Justice Curthoys said the Finks did not present evidence from other families and “given that the facts relate at best to the individual circumstances of Cohen it is difficult to see how an inquest could or should be a forum for the coroner to make comments or recommendations on public health and safety in the WA school system”.
He also went on to say that it was “unrealistic to expect that staff forensically scrutinise a student’s notebooks looking for instances of suicidal ideation”.
“Although Cohen was omitted from the SAER list, for that omission to be relevant Mr and Mrs Fink would need to raise at least some evidence that his inclusion in the SAER list might have led to a different outcome,” Justice Curthoys ruled.
“Once again even though Cohen was omitted from the SAER list, he was seeing a psychologist.”
But Mrs Fink questioned how they were supposed to provide evidence that Cohen being on a SAER list would’ve changed things.
“Isn’t that what an inquest would make clearer?” she said.
“It’s obvious that the SAER list means nothing, being on it or not on it means nothing. One teacher made a comment online that if Cohen was on the SAER list as soon as an incident report was filled out it would have notified the teacher that Cohen had mental health issues.
“But again we aren’t allowed to feel critical of this?”
Justice Curthoys’ only concession on hindsight was that the Finks should have been contacted late on Friday about the exams, rather than staff leave it until the Tuesday after a long weekend.
“However, that is mere speculation. One cannot conclude that the decision by WCHS not to contact the parents was thoughtless or negligent,” he said.
“Perhaps if WCHS had contacted Mr and Mrs Fink on Friday then Cohen may not have committed suicide. One can speculate endlessly as to what Cohen’s reaction might have been if his examination performance had been raised with him.
“However, we simply cannot know. An inquest will not be able to answer that question.”
He said he was “not unsympathetic to the concerns raised” by Mr and Mrs Fink about never truly knowing the nature and extent of the factors that may have caused or contributed to Cohen’s death.
But “in the absence of any real evidence”, Justice Curthoys said an inquest would be incapable of providing the explanations they sought.
Crisis support can be found at Lifeline: (13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au), the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467 and suicidecallbackservice.org.au) and beyondblue (1300 22 4636 and beyondblue.org.au).