RAPED BY THE SYSTEM

There was a terrible story at the weekend – a tragic story -- that showed how our system has betrayed a teenage girl. The system has. The government has. You could well argue too that her family has too. Although they are now trying, belatedly, to cope with an emotional and physical mess.

The story has not had much exposure. A small story in the Sunday Herald Sun which searingly, in my view, showed that there is "something rotten in the state of Denmark”. As they say.

Walk through this with me and tell me what has gone wrong. I will admit I don’t know all the details. Especially, importantly, what triggered intervention into a family situation by the so-called Department of Human Services.

The government took a teenaged girl into care back in March. Obviously for them to do that there had to be serious problems at home. But how come those problems got worse when she was taken into state protection?

Eight months later this “protected” child is now an experienced drug user and is five months pregnant. Where was the discipline? Where was the adult control? Where was the guidance? Where was the duty of care?

A State Government department takes a child into care and within months she has been chroming and smoking bongs and snorting speed. And she has become the victim of statutory rape. Little wonder that she has described state care as “a joke”. She says that the father of her child is one of two adult males she met on a train while drunk.

I don’t know how badly she was being treated at home but surely it couldn’t have been much worse than this. Her mother has said: “ If children are taken off their parents these people should be looking after our children .How can they justify this? “And she is right. Even if she was inadequate as a mother.

The Children’s Court has now sent this pregnant child back home.

Today is her fourteenth birthday.

Monday, November 22, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004