mark dreyfus – Michmutters

A Queensland mother has described the “soul-destroying” ordeal of her teenage daughter being sexually abused by paedophiles and becoming addicted to ice while she was under the care of the Department of Child Safety, saying every day was “just waiting for her to die “.

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

Three years ago, Helena* was in fear of her life and felt she had no choice but to contact the department.

Her 13-year-old daughter Xanthe* was becoming increasingly violent, hitting her, smashing holes in walls, and ripping doors off their hinges.

“She threw something at me and it split my leg open,” Helena said.

“I realized one of us was going to die.

“I was scared she was going to kill me. Not on purpose, she’s not vindictive or anything like that, it was more that she was so out of control that I was scared she was going to kill me by accident and that she was going to have to live with that.

“That was my biggest fear.”

Helena desperately sought counseling and mental health support for her daughter, but with a limited number of professionals in the regional part of Queensland where she lives, it was around five months before she could get an appointment.

Her daughter was later diagnosed with conduct disorder with traits of borderline personality disorder.

But by this time, Helena had already made the heartbreaking decision to relinquish care.

But worse was to come.

A graphic shows a rope fraying and a woman covering her face with her arm. — Helena relinquished care after facing increasing violence from her daughter.(ABC News: Paul Yeomans)

Men ‘injected her with meth’

Helena said Xanthe has made a number of disclosures to her and her carers about what has transpired during her time in out-of-home care.

She said she learned that a youth worker dropped her daughter at a 16-year-old boy’s house for a “sleepover” four days after she went into care.

She said her daughter was allowed to do whatever she wanted, including being driven by youth workers to buy marijuana every Friday, “then they would come back to resi (residential care) and smoke that until it was gone.”

Helena said her daughter was later moved to another care placement against her wishes and preyed upon for sex by some older men in the area with a criminal history.

A woman sits with her head in her hands, lit by an open door in the background. — Helena said Xanthe would constantly go missing and that “she was with the paedophiles.”(ABC News: Paul Yeomans)

“They injected her with meth (methamphetamines) in the neck and she has been addicted to it since,” she said.

“There were people taking videos of her… while she was flipping out.”

Helena made numerous complaints to the department and asked for her daughter to be moved.

“When her drug addiction started, the department refused to accept that it was happening,” she said.

“They believed [she] was making it up.”

She said her daughter would constantly go missing — “she was with the paedophiles.”

But she said the police could not charge anyone unless her daughter was prepared to make a statement.

“Xanthe constantly stated she didn’t feel safe to press charges until she was moved away from the area.”

Mother constantly feared the worst

Helena said at the age of 14, her daughter was used for sex by a man in his 40s who also had a criminal history.

“That’s when she started getting really sick,” she said.

At one point, she said, her daughter turned up at her home covered in bruises after going missing for days.

“I heard my baby out the front yard just crying, ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum’.

“She flipped out here. I watched her be held down by two policemen in the front yard.”

Xanthe stayed with her mother for several weeks but eventually had to be transferred to a different residential care home to comply with her care order.

“We could have been starting to reunify and bringing her back home, but because of the legislation, we had to send her back to resi.”

Helena said after that “everything got really, really bad.”

“We all knew that she was with the paedophile but we didn’t know exactly where because he was moving her from one place to another.”

She said she constantly feared the worst.

“She was missing all the time, she was basically going on the missing persons (list) every second day.”

‘Shut out’ by department

Helena said at eight separate meetings, she begged the department to transfer her daughter to another location.

“I discovered [later] the department hadn’t even put her on the list for a transfer.”

She said a safety plan was put in place for her daughter but she later discovered that a case worker “was contacting the paedophile to check if [my daughter] was ok … and transporting Xanthe to the paedophile’s address.”

Helena said she was “shut out” by the department.

“I made too many complaints about the neglect and poor conduct of care providers and youth workers.

“The callous disregard for my daughter’s well-being has been frightening to witness.”

She said it was only after the paedophile went to prison and her daughter was moved to a bigger city that life started to improve.

“She’s doing really well,” she said.

“She’s been engaging with normal friendships with children of her own age … and preparing to look for work.

“She says she feels free… [she says] ‘Now I can heal, mum’.”

‘I want my daughter to know this is not OK’

Helena said while her daughter was still in care, she had spent time at a drug rehabilitation center and is hoping they may be able to reunite in the future.

For now, she has decided to speak out.

“I want my daughter to know that this is not OK,” Helena said.

“I want her to know what happened to her is not right.

Helena is hoping she and her daughter may be able to reunite in the future.(ABC News: Paul Yeomans)

“She thinks because it’s happening to her that this is what she deserves. She doesn’t. No child deserves this.

“My daughter’s story reveals the sad reality of the current state of the system.”

Helena has shared her story as part of an ABC investigation into child protection.

Seven hundred people came forward with stories of rape, abuse, neglect and racism within child protection.

“I want the department to realize that they are hurting these kids, they’re not helping them, and if they don’t start collaborating with the parents, the kids and the future generations are just going to go through much of the same, said Helen.

She said while some youth workers were “really good people”, she felt the department failed her.

“They’re more focused on their annual reports than their current outcomes,” she said.

She believes if she had been able to access timely mental health support for her daughter, things might have turned out differently.

“It shouldn’t have happened, she needed help, she needed help to regulate her behaviour.”

Staff work to make sure ‘our most vulnerable children are safe’

Helena said because her child was in care, as a mother she was “perceived as the bad person straight away”.

“I am not the only mum like it, there are hundreds of us,” she said.

“At least my daughter had me there advocating for her rights. Imagine what’s happening to the children in care that have no-one.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Children in Queensland said the Child Protection Act prevented the department from disclosing whether an individual or family was known or not known to the department.

“However, whenever any criminal activity is disclosed to the department, staff work with the child and family to report this to the police and support the child,” the spokesperson said.

“Sexual offending against children is an abhorrent crime.

“No-one wants to see children harmed or suffering, and child safety staff work every single day to ensure our most vulnerable children are safe.

“Many children who are placed in residential care have very complex needs and have often experienced deep trauma.

“Staff work hard to ensure they are connected to the right services to get them the help they need, including specialist services for substance misuse.”

As part of the department’s policies and procedures for residential care providers, “no illegal substances are to be used within homes.”

“Staff also work with parents if they wish to make a complaint through the department’s complaints processes,” the spokesperson said.

System ‘broken’: Children’s Commissioner

Ms Hollands is the National Children’s Commissioner.(ABCNews)

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus held a meeting with National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollands following the “horrific” cases the ABC investigation uncovered.

Ms Hollands described the system as “broken”.

Principal Commissioner for Queensland Family and Child Commission Luke Twyford said he could not comment on individual cases, but called for a greater national focus on early intervention.

“Child protection workers respond to a crisis, an emergency much like an ambulance or a police officer responds to a report,” he said.

“Really, what we want to focus on is how do we prevent the urgency or the crisis from ever occurring? That means we need services focusing on the underlying causes that are making children unsafe.

“Improving access to education and employment, improving housing, improving the cost of living for families living in poverty… looking at our domestic violence responses and other forms of harm that are out there in families.”

Mr Twyford said he would welcome a further meeting with the federal Attorney-General involving children’s commissioners from across the country to discuss the issue.

*Not their real names.

A Melbourne GP is taking legal action against the federal Attorney-General to fight what he calls an “extraordinarily prohibitive” law that prevents doctors from communicating via modern technology with terminally ill patients about assisted dying.

Dying with Dignity Victoria board member Nick Carr said he had pursued legal action in the Federal Court to clarify the definition of suicide in the Commonwealth Criminal Code 1995.

Under the code, it is illegal for a person to discuss suicide through a carriage service, which includes phones, text messages, emails and telehealth services.

Dr Carr said he filed the affidavit after federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus did not respond to a letter warning legal action would be taken if the code was not clarified.

He also said former Attorney-General Michaelia Cash wrote to him in February saying she would not change the code.

Big ends for breaking the law

To be approved for Victoria’s assisted dying scheme, two doctors need to verify a patient has less than six months to live for a physical illness and 12 months for a neurological condition.

But breaking the communication laws can result in ends of up to $222,000 for individuals or $1,110,000 for businesses.

Dr Carr, who was one of the first GPs trained in Victoria to provide voluntary assisted dying support, said current laws were “extraordinarily prohibitive” for people living with disability and in regional or rural areas.

“If it changes, what it means is that it will make it much easier for patients to be able to access voluntary assisted dying — and crucially it removes doubt for practitioners,” he said.

“At the moment if we make a single phone call, text message or email to a patient, there is doubt about whether or not that could be crossing a legal boundary, and we could be at risk of prosecution.

“We desperately need that to be clarified so that we can make those calls, emails and contacts with patients, which is an integral part of this process.”

Lobbying for two years

Dr Carr said he had been lobbying current and previous Victorian state and federal attorneys-general for nearly two years about clarifying the law.

“All have either passed the buck or said they have no intention of changing the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act,” he said.

“And having no response from the new Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, we felt that there was no choice other than to go down the legal path.

“Even if the court does decide that assisted dying services are restricted by the criminal code, medical practitioners will at least then have necessary clarity … and the issue of whether there should be any restriction will be squarely a legislative issue.”

Protesters rally outside the Victorian Parliament during 2017 to call for voluntary euthanasia.(Supplied: Dying with Dignity Victory)

Dr Carr said he would argue assisted dying was not suicide, which is a widely held consensus in the medical community.

“Suicide is usually done in private, and it’s not supported by family or friends who are devastated when it happens,” he said.

“Voluntary assisted dying is about giving patients who are already dying a choice about how to die.”

An Attorney-General spokesperson told the ABC he was not able to comment while the matter was before the courts.

Doctors are ‘too cautious’

Victorian crossbench MP Fiona Patten, who was central to Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying legislation in 2019, said she did not believe legal action needed to be taken.

Victorian crossbench MP Fiona Patten believes doctors are unlikely to be prosecuted under the laws.(abcnews)

She referred to advice from barristers Robert Richter QC and William Stark in 2020, who concluded it was “extremely unlikely” a doctor would face criminal charges under the code.

“It was an absolute unintended consequence of the legislation, but I think the doctors are being too cautious,” she said.

Ms Patten added, however, that the law had not yet been tested in court.

While she said the Victorian government would look at the state legislation “in the next year or two” when the voluntary assisted dying program is scheduled for review, the federal government could “easily clarify it.”

“Given every state in Australia has legislated assisted dying, that would be a practical solution,” she said.

A Victorian government spokesperson said it had made “numerous requests to the former federal government to make changes to the code”.

“Working with other jurisdictions, we are continuing this advocacy and look forward to working with the new Commonwealth government on this issue,” the spokesperson said.

Western Australia implemented its voluntary assisted dying laws in a way that allowed telehealth consultations, according to Dying With Dignity WA.

It is understood voluntary assisted dying will be discussed in a meeting between the state and federal attorneys-general next week.

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