Trigger warning: This post deals with child abuse in graphic detail and may be triggering for some readers.
The Adelaide house was home to 21 children, but it was so filthy you wouldn’t house a dog in it.
The “house of horrors” had faeces-smeared walls and was infested with cockroaches, maggots and flies.
A dead dog was also found rotting in the house’s yard, according to The Australian.
The Daily Mail reports the brains of children living in the squalid home had shrunk from nutrient deprivation, while many had ulcers on their legs and feet and scabies sores.
The children’s hands had been tied to prevent them from eating at night, the Daily Mail reports, and they were at times starved and made to stand against a wall holding phone books over their head, according to The Advertiser.
“The manner in which these children were treated is beyond comprehension,” a Supreme Court Justice Kevin Duggan later said of the horrifying case.
“It reached the point where the children were made to stand in the same position from morning to night.
“The adults were vigilant to make sure they were prevented from eating anything more.”
The disgusting conditions in the South Australian Housing Trust home were uncovered by police six years ago when one of the children was taken to hospital, starved and bruised, The Advertiser reports. The five-year-old boy’s body was atrophied and his core temperature had fallen so low he needed help to breathe, the Telegraph reports.
Five adults from the three different families in the house, including three men who were part of a complex web of relationships with the children’s mothers, were ultimately convicted and jailed for the abuse.
Another adult escaped a jail sentence after being deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
Six of the children “virtually unknown” to authorities
Six of the children housed in the squalid conditions were “virtually unknown” to state authorities prior to police uncovering the house, The Advertiser reported last year, and Premier Jay Weatherill, then the Families Minister, said there had been no notifications to raise concerns about the situation.
The government released its response to 32 recommendations by The Child Death and Serious Injury Review Committee regarding the horrific case last year; At the time of those responses’ release, Committee chairwoman Deej Eszenyi and Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine both said poor information-sharing practices between government agencies was a major contributor to the oversight.
Ms Rankine said no one government agency “had the full picture of information or knew that the six children were in the house”, but stressed that “(i)n the five years since the case was discovered, the government has put in place many measures to prevent this type of tragedy from occurring again”.
The children had only recently moved to Adelaide from Victoria, so little information had reached authorities, news.com.au reports.
Claims that a welfare worker visited the house
One of the survivors of the abuse has alleged, however, that one welfare worker then employed by Families SA visited the squalid house but failed to alert authorities, news.com.au reports.
The woman, whom the Daily Mail reports is now engaged to one of the men charged in the case, allegedly refused to go in the house after her initial visit and would sit on the front porch during subsequent visits.
She reportedly did not have a legal obligation to report any concerns about the children’s welfare because she was not visiting the property in an official capacity.
One of the child abuse survivors told The Advertiser that Families SA separated the three families in the filthy house case after it discovered the home in 2008.
As of 2012, twelve children from one family were living in seven different foster homes or care centres, while five children from another family lived together in foster care.
The oldest child in the house has spent time in prison for assault, another is living independently with her children, and another child has been fostered by a relative, the survivor told The Advertiser.
If you need help contact the National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 24 hours: 1800 RESPECT or 1800 737 732 or visit: https://www.1800respect.org.au/ adelaide
Top Comments
They should be shot honestly who could do this to children also the people living around and next door to this house should be fined as well for not reporting anything surely neighbours would of seen and heard things fuckn terrible government should be ashamed digusting shouldnt of went on as long as it did and the welfare worker OMFG are you serious she needs a bitch slap and should be fired what a excuse like c'mon these people should be named and shamed.
These people were from Geelong and would have had some interaction with DHS in the area. I know a large number of DHS staff in the Barwon South West Region and worked for the Department up to the end of 2000. More than likely this family wasn't able to be attended to because there are not enough Child Protection Staff in the Department to adequately manage a case load. Also you need to be able to rotate staff away from the "frontline" after a six month period. Quite frankly the work is soul destroying. I have two friends who have had complete mental breakdowns from working in this field. Government does not support these staff with enough debrief counselling and also does not back the staff up when they try to have children removed from dangerous living situations be they deliberate abuse or neglect. Then when things go wrong because a child is removed and there is no appropriate immediate foster care available and they are placed in group housing and they are exposed to a minimally controlled environment the workers are blamed. Or when the workers are so completely run off their feet and a family is missed or not followed up on they are crucified again. Then as someone below has stated when a stable foster family is found and the child is starting to progress and adjust they are uprooted again often against the advice of the workers and returned many times unsupervised to the biological family. Then when that reunion fails the workers are castigated for "allowing" it to happen. Finally because of the lack of support and also reasonable pay scales and progression those that stay and build up the experience necessary to do this work effectively leave. They are replaced by recent graduates who valiantly try to do the work but have not life experience just knowledge from books. All this contributes to situations like these. Finally life and living skills need to be taught in school. Basic Hygiene, cooking and budgeting skills so that kids have a modicum of a chance at surviving. Hoarding and living in squalor stem from the lack of life skills and they take over peoples lives and they cant seem to know where to try and start to clean up and fix their houses up and return them into being homes. The worker in this may not have been able to report at that time because of the "silos" in government departments. This was one of the reasons in Victoria for implementing the "one DHS" method of operations. No "silos" and no interdepartmental "privacy" issues. Each division now talks and works with each other to implement strategies across each area to try and make sure no one slips through the net. It is having an impact. We all can help by getting governments in all states to recognise the difficulty of working in this area and getting them to stop taking away funding for the so called "back room jobs" which are essential for the front line staff to effectively do their work.