How Could You? Hall of Shame-Australia Foster Care UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Australia, a foster mother’s conviction for torture of a 12 year old girl was overturned. Her case will be re-tried. She admitted guilt in court in September 2010 but now claims that she did not know what that meant as she received poor advice from her attorney who is now dead.

She was convicted and sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison with parole in 2013.

“Her new lawyer, Angus Edwards, argued the woman did not  understand the nature of the charge, and that her previous  lawyer had “instructed her to simply stand up in court and  say guilty”. [How did this brilliant woman even qualify to be a foster carer? She didn’t know the meaning of “guilty”?]

She said she had not tried to torture the girl, but had  instead locked her in her room because she was violent,  killed animals, set fire to items in the house and wrecked  furniture. ”

“”(She) swore that when she locked the complainant in her  bedroom at night it was not done to cause the complainant   significant emotional and psychological pain, but to keep her  family and the complainant safe,” Justice Hugh Fraser said in   a written judgment published today. ”

Foster mum’s torture conviction overturned

[Courier Mail 5/29/12 by AAP]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “A QUEENSLAND foster carer has admitted she cruelly failed to provide adequate clothing, accommodation or care to a 12-year-old girl.

The 42-year-old woman pleaded guilty in Brisbane District Court on Monday to cruelty to a child between December 2007 and June 2008, at Woodridge, south of Brisbane.

The plea came unexpectedly as the case was set down for pre-trial evidence recording following a Court of Appeal decision to order a trial.

The woman had pleaded guilty in 2011 to torturing the girl but had her 4.5 year jail sentence set aside when the appeal court found a miscarriage of justice.

Details of the latest allegations the woman has pleaded guilty to will not be revealed until the sentencing hearing on a date to be fixed.

Justice Fraser, in the appeal court judgment from February 2012, said the Crown had alleged the Grade 7 student was only allowed to shower once a week and was forced to sleep on a bed frame without a mattress, in a room without any light or windows, beneath the family home.

He said the child alleged her foster carer would tie her clothing at night so she could not remove them or move freely and would lock the door which meant she was forced to soil herself.

Other allegations included the girl being forced to wash her soiled clothes in the laundry sink, using grey water from the washing machine, before she could go to school.

The Court of Appeal judgment also spoke of not allowing the girl to eat inside the house or have social contact with other children.

The accused woman successfully argued she did not get adequate legal advice and pleaded guilty without understanding the nature of the allegations against her.

In affidavits to the court, the woman said the girl kept lighting fires that could have burned the house down, that she stole belongings from everyone in the house when they slept, she broke possessions, ripped her own clothes and killed animals.

The woman swore she lived in constant fear of what the girl would do to her, her family and her belongings.

“She swore that she did not lock the (girl) in the room to be nasty or to cause her physical or emotional pain, but to keep the (girl) safe and to keep the other people in the house and their belongings safe,” the judgment read.”

Foster carer pleads guilty to acts of child cruelty

[Sunshine Coast Daily 1/14/13 by Rae Wilson]