Child death acquittals, but system failures laid bare
Natasha Robinson; 16/8/08
It was a Thursday morning in a suburban Darwin child protection office and Sarah Deery had raised the alarm. The young Irish-born child protection worker had just finished writing up her report of a disturbing visit the previous day to the home of foster carer Denise Reynolds. In the report, Deery documented the obvious distress of a 12-year-child, who had been lying weeping on the kitchen floor of the foster home, later to stagger down the hallway to the bathroom, unsteady on her feet and gripping the walls for support. As Deery’s report landed on the desks of bureaucrats in the Northern Territory’s Department of Family and Community Services on July 12 last year, the child, Deborah Melville, was being carried into the backyard of her foster home in the Palmerston suburb of Woodroffe, outside of Darwin. There she was propped up by a trailer in the dirt. By day’s end, she was dead.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24188582-5013404,00.html