Victoria's commissioner for children and young people has identified a series of failures in the care provided to a 12-year-old girl who was charged with murder last year. Details from the inquiry into her care have been made public today in the Victorian parliament.
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00:00In November last year, Victorian police arrested a 12-year-old girl and charged her with murder
00:07over the death of a 37-year-old woman in a Melbourne apartment.
00:10The case shocked the nation, not only because of the girl's age, but because it was revealed
00:15she was living in out-of-home care at the time.
00:18The charges against her were eventually dropped.
00:20It was found she couldn't be held criminally responsible.
00:24The girl suffers from a mental impairment, which means she has the mental capacity of
00:28a six-year-old child.
00:29It also led to an investigation by Victoria's Commissioner for Children and Young People.
00:34The details of that investigation will forever largely remain secret, handed directly to
00:39the ministers relevant and involved, as well as, unusually in this case, the Premier.
00:44But scant detail, and the most the public will likely ever hear, has been released in
00:49Parliament today as part of the Commission's annual report.
00:52That annual report details failures in every aspect of this child's care.
00:58From the way she was cared for in out-of-home care, to the way she was dealt with when she
01:02tried to report sexual exploitation against her.
01:06It found that over a three-year period, she was moved between 10 out-of-home care placements.
01:12And it meant she didn't have stable relationships with any adult at that period in time, increasing
01:17her risk of exploitation.
01:19The report also noted that she'd been reported missing from out-of-home care hundreds of
01:23times in the lead-up to her arrest.
01:25And some of those times she'd been missing for days at a time.
01:28It also found that while she was missing, she'd experienced sexual exploitation.
01:35Now the Commissioner has made 19 recommendations.
01:38Most of those recommendations won't see the light of day, or public scrutiny at least.
01:43They'll be kept behind closed doors.
01:46But some of those recommendations have been made public.
01:48And they centre around ensuring that what happened to this girl, WD, will never happen
01:53to another child in Victorian Government care.
01:56Now for WD, she remains in out-of-home care in a residential home, a bespoke residential
02:02home built specially for her.
02:04But she is largely isolated.
02:06She doesn't have other children in her life.
02:08And that will be where she remains for the time being.
02:11Her care is being overseen directly by the Commissioner for Children and Young People.
02:15And that care will be reviewed by the courts in December.