Missing Justice Pt 5: Exposing Coercion and Evidence of Harm

by Dee McLachlan

As I left off in Part 4: police located them, apprehended the young lass and returned her to detention in Secure Care. Her mum was arrested, but released after a few hours.

The Fugitive and Coercive Control

Do you remember the film The Fugitive with Harrison Ford? His wife is murdered, and he is falsely framed as the killer. On the way to prison there’s a crash, he escapes, and suddenly every unit in the country is mobilized to hunt him down. Helicopters, roadblocks, federal agents — all unleashed. And what does this “fugitive” do? He runs straight back into the heart of the crime, determined to uncover the truth the system refused to see. As the Deputy Marshal (Tommy Lee Jones) pieces it together, he realizes that the entire wild-goose chase has been to find an innocent man.

That was a movie; this is real life.

Let me recap the reality of the 12-year-old Australian fugitive.

Her father committed an act of calculated cruelty: knowing his youngest daughter’s love for her mother, he secretly obtained an Intervention Order (IVO) through misrepresentation, and then weaponized police and child-protection systems to force a recovery order he knew would devastate her.

This chain of events began about eighteen months ago. To avoid being forced back into harm, the young girl hid from authorities. When eventually found, she was detained well beyond lawful limits, then forcibly returned to her father’s care and told she would never see her mother again. Predictably she fled a second time, this time with her older sister. Her instinct for survival pushed her mother and sister into “fugitive” status simply so they could protect her. After her arrest and second detention, child protection placed her with a carer, isolating her from her mum — claiming the mother is the “risk”.

The Department has been told that this was all started when the father coerced the older sister — under an explicit threat of death — into making a false statement. The Department is cognizant of this unlawful coercion.

Ironically, just two days ago, on 3 December 2025, the Crimes Amendment (Coercive Control) Bill 2025 was put forward, aimed at criminalizing exactly this kind of conduct within a family-violence context.

Hoping that the Department might understand the gravity of the coercion and how it poisoned this case, I sent off a letter to the supervising case worker. The extracts below has names and identifying factors changed, and is addressed to Ms A B.

The Letter

Dear A,

Evidence of Harm 

I now find the Department’s actions genuinely indefensible. Worse still, your conduct is inflicting serious — and entirely avoidable — psychological harm on a vulnerable girl who has already endured more than any child should…  and have now effectively sequestered her to enforce a harmful separation, creating your own personalised version of Secure Care 2.0.

These compounding actions — particularly her enforced isolation from both her sister and her mother — are diminishing her as a person… None of this resembles care. All of it resembles punishment.

While you continue to isolate this girl from her family, her advocates, and society, what happened to you saying you’d assist her to make a police statement? You are rather enticing her with nail salon outings — preventing her from correcting a malicious, entirely unlawfully obtained IVO. In fact, every action you are doing flows from this poisoned IVO which you treat as gospel while preventing her from correcting it.

That is obstruction of justice. Let me remind you: Misfeasance in Public Office occurs when a public officer:

1. Exercises power unlawfully or beyond authority,
2. With malice or reckless indifference to harm,
3. Causing disadvantage, injury, or loss.

Your conduct meets every element, and you are squarely complicit in the harm.

…her desperate, instinctive flights back to her mother — are the strongest possible evidence of where she is safe? This indicates – clearly — that [her mum] is the safe person in her universe (and her sister’s), and I can assure you you’ll be on the danger list – along with her father who weaponised the IVO…  yet, you appear, astonishingly, to still be under that spell.

This is a spectacular inversion of the facts. Your actions have exacerbated harm… and you have rained down punishment and persecution on this girl. This is what the department has done to her:

• Accepted an IVO with complete disregard to her wishes
• Humiliated her with “Missing Persons” posts
• Hunted her down with squads of police, causing extreme fear
• Apprehending her with “force” causing extreme fear
• Locking her up as a punitive measure beyond limits causing distress
• Submitting to parental abuse by keeping her in detention at his will
• Forcing her back to the person that she said threatened her life
• Failing to heed the doctor’s advice or warnings
• Simply not listening to her for about 18 months
• Refusing to deescalate matters after my correspondence and pleas
• Restricting her liberty for over a year and a half, and
• Allowing the family to lose their home — housing, then
• You locked her up – again — as a punitive measure
• Obstructing her from making a statement to revoke a defective IVO
• Punish her with isolation and restricting contact with her mum
• Failed to facilitate a modicum of education
• Leaving her alone at the carers unsupervised and alone (when you claim she is being supervised)
• Not making sure she has food and getting fed properly
• Providing false information to her mother and using a tainted psychology report as a weapon against her mum
• Not facilitating her living with her sister
• Enticing her with cosmetic nail salon visits, while blocking judicial remedy
• Trying to claim her mum needs permanent housing (under DFFH control)
• Sabotaging reunification, and generally
• Perpetrating psychological harm.

No wonder the young lass wrote in her diary: “I am terrified of all of these people except my Mum.”

This is not child protection. It is bureaucratic persecution.

It is you who must now demonstrate that you are not the source of harm. It is clear to any reasonable person that your decisions have exponentially increased the young girl’s risk and distress…

Evidence of Safety

There is zero evidence against the mum, yet overwhelming evidence confirming she’s “safe”. The young lass’s statements (I asked AI to reword and rephrase these from the actual original statement — but remain accurate):

• The only people who have ever made me feel genuinely safe are my mum and my sister; nobody else gives me that sense of security.
• I’ve always known that my mum loves me and puts me first — that’s been clear to me my entire life. She has treated me with care and kindness for as long as I can remember, and she has always been the one who protected me.
• It feels unbearable that I’ve been stopped from living with the two people who make me feel secure and loved.
• When I was younger, everyone understood that my mum was the protective parent, and I still believe I should be allowed to live with the person who raised me and has always looked after me.
• To me, she is an amazing mother, and nothing anyone says will change that. No foster home could ever compare to the love and everyday care she gives me.
• My mum has always made sure I’m looked after — and whenever she’s allowed to, she still does.
• When I’m with her, I feel completely safe and loved. She makes my life happier, she makes things fun, and she lets me talk openly about anything.
• She ensures I have what I need, never lets me go without, and she would never hurt me — not ever. Whenever I’ve needed a doctor or dentist, she has always taken me.

From my older sister’s perspective, things were no different.

• She says our dad controlled her access to the only parent she trusted. She doesn’t trust anyone except our mum and me.
• When we ran, the entire plan was simply to reach our mother because that was the only place we believed we would be safe.
• She also said that he [her father] wanted our mum jailed so we would have no one left to run to.

The girls’ words could not be clearer.

Meanwhile, the mum — the only safe parent these children have ever had — is still being treated as the offender or the “protective concern”. To be clear, she was the one that acted lawfully and morally to protect her daughter when you and the department refused to do so and was intent on placing the child at risk. …Why are you and department acting with such willful blindness?

…From my perspective, your stance reads as though, if given the authority, you would happily consign her to a “Chinese-style parent re-education camp.” Yet even that would not dismantle what is obviously a loving mother–child bond forged over thirteen intense years. Many mothers would be envious of such a relationship.

It is as simple as that. You have to stop harming her….And we are all gravely concerned that you are intentionally isolating this girl from assistance, advocacy, and independent support. This conduct is unlawful… 

Sincerely,

As a Final Note

I fully understand that my letters and reporting is an uncomfortable truth for the DFFH. But I hope that the Secretary and DFFH staff act appropriately — and do not punish the young lass or her mum for being heard.

Many years ago, when I wrote countless letters and confronted the Department for Child Protection in South Australia, what did they do? They immediately punished the mother and the child. I remember we forwarded a scribbled note to the then minister, Rachel Sanderson. What did they do when they received the note from the eight-year-girl begging her mother to help her? They punished the child and restricted contact with her mother.

It was truly the most malicious action imaginable — basically torturing the girl.

I suggest, as per Part 4 or this series, that the DFFH follow the law, address the wholly defective and coercive IVO, and do the right thing … in the best interests of the young lass.