Baby murder’ rocks child protection system
- Details
- Category: Child abuse industry deaths in NSW
- Created: Monday, 08 January 2018 09:59
- Written by Laura Banks - The Daily Telegraph
A WOMAN caring for a 20-month-old foster baby has been sensationally charged with his murder in the latest case to rock the embattled child protection system. The 40-year-old carer, who cannot be named under NSW law, was arrested yesterday over the suspicious death of the toddler in 2015. The fatality occurred in a small rural town 100km northwest of Dubbo. A police statement confirming the woman was “charged with murder and refused bail” comes after The Daily Telegraph made multiple inquiries. The newspaper had discovered the Aboriginal child had a broken femur and multiple bruises on his face at the time of his death. His biological mother said she was “desperate for answers” and had been “left in the dark” by the government and the foster care provider — Uniting.
“We didn’t even get to see him until three weeks after he died.” The mother said she was the victim of an abusive partner and reached out for temporary help until she could provide a safe home for her son. Two months later he was dead.
READ MORE: Coroner finds state left teen ‘open to abuse’.
The boy was found unresponsive in his bed by paramedics just after 5am on March 23 in 2015. It is also understood the foster carers held a “gathering” at their home the night before the boy was found dead.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal investigators removed a bathtub from the home following the death. The little boy’s case had been handed over to the State Coroner while police continued their investigation, but an inquest is now expected to be delayed while the court process is underway.
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The family at the centre of the murder had provided foster care in the past. The 2015 death is the latest scandal to hit the Australian foster care system. The Daily Telegraph last year revealed the shocking case of Girl X, a 15-year-old girl who died of a drug overdose in a residential foster care home in Sydney’s inner-west just one year after she was allegedly raped by a youth worker in another.
Less than a year later, a five-year-old boy passed away under the watch of foster carers with a burn on his back and a cocktail of drugs in his system. An autopsy report revealed the five-year-old had cockroach bites on his neck.
— Laura Banks is a Crime Reporter with Seven News
Source : https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/baby-murder-rocks-child-protection-system/news-story/436dc00a2c8222b89c52b6b0eb9e0141
