Australia: Girls returned to 'hell'

AFTER three years in foster care, three little girls have been returned to a "living hell" because of the "bloody mindedness" of three Children's Court magistrates, according to Foster Care Queensland. The girls' foster father has described the heart-wrenching and traumatic reunification in his own words, see below, after the sisters were sent back to their mother after an administrative error by the Child Safety Department. "The department had intended to seek another two-year protection order to keep the girls in care but a mix-up with the dates saw them returned to their birth mother, literally overnight," the foster father said at the weekend.

Child safety officers tried three times to have an interim order granted. However, on each occasion, the sitting magistrate refused on the basis the original order had expired. The foster father said he did not blame Child Safety for the predicament but felt the system had failed the girls. "The case workers have done a brilliant job. It's the Children's Court that has let them down. These magistrates have sent these kids back to a living hell," he said.

FCQ president Bryan Smith said the repeated refusal of three different magistrates to grant the order was nothing but "bloody mindedness" on their part and amounted to a "systematic abuse of the children concerned". "They (the magistrates) only look at what the letter of the law says, rather than the needs of the children," Mr Smith said. He called for the magistrates to be "dragged out of court" and shown the conditions in which the girls now live. "They have absolutely no understanding of child protection. If they actually saw the children we see, with broken jaws and broken arms, burn marks, teeth and fingernails pulled out, perhaps they would judge these cases differently," he said.

Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech was unable to comment directly on the case but admitted her department was not "above the law and officers had to abide by the decisions of the courts". "In cases where the department believes children could be at risk as a result of a court's decision to return them to their natural parents, there are avenues of appeal," Mrs Keech said. Mr Smith said child safety officers were preparing a fourth appeal aimed at returning the three girls to their foster family. "The department would not be going to this much effort if it wasn't deeply concerned for the girls' safety," he said.

Report here



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