Home Fam-Court Missing Justice Pt 2: Protection v Punishment

Missing Justice Pt 2: Protection v Punishment

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screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ItIGgnsd

By Dee McLachlan

Part 1 of this series examined the police’s “Missing Persons” post and the so-called “Undisclosed Location” — Secure Care, Maribyrnong. It told the first chapter of this story — how a then-12-year-old, desperate not to be placed with her father, hid from authorities for five months before being apprehended and detained.

The Great Inversion

The purpose of a child-protection system should be obvious: protect the child. Yet, unfortunately, in Victoria — as in much of Australia — the child-removals business operates like a casino. The house always wins. A protective parent raising alarms “tags” the family and a child asking for help becomes “inventory.” Evidence then becomes optional; obedience becomes mandatory.

Despite multiple court orders deeming the mum safe — at least three IVOs and Family Court orders — her status as protector was flipped overnight. A death threat (now confirmed in the older sister’s statement) was used to coerce a false statement against her mum, and the father then passed his personal vendetta baton to police and the Department for Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH). Without ever asking the child in question, the mum was rebranded as the threat, and recovery orders were executed.

There was no universe in which the teen was willingly leaving the safety of her mum, but after an intensive five-month search, the 12-year-old was finally apprehended and detained in a police station for roughly six hours. She pleaded with a DFFH senior practitioner to send her back to her mum — but procedure, once set in motion, rarely bends to reality.

VIDEO — being taken away.

AI

She later told me — and others — that police shoved her face into the ground, they twisted her injured arm despite her warning, ripped off her shirt and bra, pulled her hair, and shoved her into a divvy van where she was held for some time.

Did anyone think — for a moment — that maybe she had been hiding for a reason? This is the dark heart of the protection–punishment divide.

And then came the parental plot twist: the father who initiated recovery didn’t even want her back — not then. The young lass says her father preferred she be placed into detention to “teach her a lesson.”

Going on a Little Holiday

When she arrived at Secure Welfare, she describes being dragged down hallways, mocked by staff, and a male worker touching the top of her thigh. She was told it was a “little holiday,” but threatened that if she didn’t “tick all the boxes,” she wouldn’t be released and would be placed into foster care.

It is 100% illegal to threaten a child in this way.

In the video testimony I was sent earlier this year, the young lass recounted:

“…I was put in secure care against my will, and I was strip searched and my belongs were taken from me. I wasn’t allowed a bra, I wasn’t allowed anything. They didn’t give me new clothes. They let me have my ripped t-shirt. The police ripped. Anytime that I went to the toilet. They threatened that they could come in.

“There were five cameras in the room that I was staying in. There was a hard mattress on the floor. There was nothing to do. The bathroom door would lock and you couldn’t get it open, so you’d have to call them and they could get the keys to open it.

“And I was put in a room and I stayed in that room for most of the time while I was there. And then I took… got taken up to something called the bedroom end. And I stayed there for a period of time, which was about three weeks…

AI

The Great Escape — it seems she would’ve escaped if she could.

“There was bullet-proof windows. There were like five inches thick. There was no way of getting out. The fences — there was an outside, and the fences were eight meters tall. There was no chance of escaping. There was cameras everywhere you turned.”

“If you wanted to cook something, cut up an apple or tomato, you would get this, you wouldn’t get a knife. And if you did get a knife, it was padlocked to the bench with a really short chain. You were always supervised.

“You were only allowed outside for half an hour of the day.”

AI

What does this sound like?

Cut Off From Her Mother

I wrote last week that her mum was never told where she was, and had no contact at all for the first three and a half weeks. When they were eventually allowed to speak, she wasn’t allowed to tell her mother where she was incarcerated.

“They wouldn’t let me talk to my mom. If she said something that… against them, like, I have been abducted, they hang up the call. I was only allowed 30 minutes with her two times a week at four-thirty.”

I want to remind you, that this girl had lived with her mother only. She had written in her diary, that her mum is the only adult she trusts in the world. That is why I find this treatment so abhorrent. Child department employees seem unable to determine protection from brutal punishment.

How about the Father?

The younger sister told me that her father chose to punish her, it seems. He had to denigrate his daughter so that she could remain incarcerated by falsely labeling her schizophrenic and anorexic so that she could be locked up for longer; in addition to adjourning it for another three weeks. She continued:

“I was there for two months.”

Note: the maximum stay is 21 days.

AI

 

The Expert the Department Ignored

Soon after she was incarcerated, the department sent in an “expert”, Dr Deacon. He assessed her sometime in October 2024. His findings were stark, obvious, and prophetic. He warned the Department that the young lass was fearful of her father, that she had disclosed violence, and that she would almost certainly run again if sent back to him. Clinical red flags?  (She told me that she reluctantly agreed to return to her father “for two weeks only,” because they had threatened foster care if she did not go.)

Dr Deacon also described how the girl relayed her relationship with her mum as nurturing, safe and idyllic. These were not ambiguous statements.

So the department was warned that she would run. And if she did, they would be ready to “hunt her down” once again. The Department didn’t just ignore the professional opinion — they engineered the very harm he tried to prevent. This is the essence of the protection–punishment inversion. God help us.

Worst Fear Confirmed

After about 61 days, the young lass was taken back to her father’s home. Thankfully her older sister was there. She has always been her support and protector. But as soon as she was placed there, she describes that her father told her about the IVO against her mum. She writes:

“He told me directly that I would never see my mother again. This was intended to break the bond between myself and my mother and create fear that she had been permanently taken from me.”

How horrendous — he knew, for sure, this would be highly distressing and traumatizing for her.

Let this sink in — for the reader, and especially for the Department staff who somehow missed the obvious. The father knew both girls adored their mum. He knew the younger girl had an intensely close, stable bond with her, and that she was being home-schooled by her mum. He knew she did not want to be with him — she made that abundantly clear. Yet, he made ups lies to the police and the court — and without her consent or knowledge managed to obtain an intervention order against her mum.

The mum lost all contact with her two girls.

Dr Deacon had anticipated the girl’s next move. The department had been warned, and maybe they anticipated her next move too. (Apparently, the department even paid for a holiday in NSW for the father and girls so the teen would be discouraged from running. It seems no one had the courage or curiosity to question the defective order or consider why a child had gone to such extreme lengths to evade recovery.

The young lass said she would run away — despite knowing that if caught again, she would once again land up in detention and punished further. She was risking possibly landing up in foster care. Such extreme determination!

But she just wanted — needed — to be with the only adult she felt safe with.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

14 COMMENTS

    • Please dig deep, Everybody, and do it right this minute before you forget. See that green line in the middle? Move it to determine what percentage ‘tip’ you wish to give to GoFundMe itself.

      This whole thing is urgent (well, she has postponed it for yonks, not wanting to go to hospitals, right?) this is a desperate matter of pain and disablement.

      Help DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

      • is that the gofund me that punished the Canyards trucker push-back culvidian goto instant solution and then de-banked them(do’nt pretend ya’ll not no meaning).

        Good news, if you want to be on the right side of this, historically, Dee has a more direct funding channel. Will not protect you from “association”, but some headwinds and it is the time of year, we could flick a chip.

        Deeeeeee has given enough, but yes I want more tooS

  2. Turns out Paul has moved into my village just a short walk from me. I suppose we are both fleeing from the legal profession’s horrors.

    I read stories like above and remember the crap I went through in the legal profession. – I can’t see any of this ending except by extreme violence.

  4. Does the mass media follow gumshoe news and would know of all the work Dee does?
    Does any Victorian politicians and their paid staffers know of these horrendous circumstances?
    No!
    Then why do we watch the mass media or trust our PAID representatives to do their jobs.
    547

    • So who is the Victorian government minister and the head bureaucrat/s responsible for and running this cruel and abominable display?
      All those ‘PRIVACY’ excuses for censoring those exposing sheer incompetence and evil should be dumped out to join that dam Dan.
      Surely the responsible ‘DanLand minister’ would have learnt something after the covid injection ‘dictates debacle’ with the ‘freak controller’s’ masks and ‘locked clowns’ policy.
      BTW It seems that ITS BAAACK🙀
      💁🤪
      ‘THE FLU’ OF COURSE
      717

  7. Thank you Dee, for sharing our story!! Lots of love Gypsy and Willow Parker Xx
    Because Dee can’t legally name and shame we will:
    -Cristy Bennett/Seymour child protection
    -Simon alderman/Marysville police station
    -Geoff Shaw/Maryville police station
    -Wendy Marshall/Lilydale police station
    -Ruby Harrison/Lilydale police station
    -Constable Thomas/Lilydale police station
    -Donna Elliot/Seymour child protection
    -Kirsty Lynch/Seymour child protection
    -Magistrate Allison Vaughan/Seymour magistrates court
    -Alex Borley/Box hill child protection
    -Luvia Rivera/Box hill child protection
    -Maddison Albrecht/Box hill child protection
    -Maddison Lucas/Box hill Police Station
    -Meg Jones/Box hill police station
    -Magistrate Melissa Stead/Melbourne children’s court

  8. Dee, that photo of you on the GoFundMe page is particularly nice. I am guessing it was taken when you were on your Lone Bike trip to the Outback. You look healthy.

    But shouldn’t it be a photo of you all hunched over and unable to walk? Shouldn’t you be seen with a grimace due to the pain?

    Excuse me for being maudlin, but the situation is maudlin.

    Readers: We want your pesos, dinars, yen, yuan, gilders, Euros, your mother’s silverware, anything.

  9. Globally the foster care business is designed to make money.In fact if it was scrapped in Australia then there would be catastrophic financial damage.Children are taken in most cases for no good reason.Routinely caseworkers lie,fabricate evidence and cut copy paste affidavits .
    If you give ironclad evidence of corruption and perjury to the courts to politicians to the minister and to the “secretary” and to anti corruption investigators IT IS IGNORED.There is no penalty for lying so lying is commonplace. In “care” children are 5 times more likely to be killed and more than 5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted then if with family and in almost all cases when bonds are broken children never recover.This is cradle to the grave with privatised prisons and work agencies and privatised out of home care agencies and now aged care is in their sights.This is demonic and all those involved are headed to hell.They will be judged harshly when the True God judges according to the Bible .Churches have no right to be involved in this evil.Once they have the children there is virtually no hope of getting them back due to a complicit corrupt court and complacent or corrupt politicians and lawyers.The devil himself designed this system.

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