John Marsden - Circle of fight

I submit that it’s a highly prejudicial word to use in a report that means not much less than life and death to these young people. You are bandying about a word that implies behaviour that fits into the clinical range of schizophrenia. Yet the irony is that their so-called paranoia was completely justified wasn’t it Ms Randall?

I’m not sure what you mean.

You say they were unreasonably fearful that your department would take Gavin away?

(No reply)

Did your department in fact take Gavin away?

Yes, you know we did, and for very good reasons.

So might not what you call paranoia in fact be evidence of their intelligence, that they summed up a complex situation quickly and accurately, and realised that it was in their best interests not to cooperate with the people who were determined to break up the family relationship that they had successfully established?

That’s certainly not the way I see the situation Mr Blaine.

I notice that as you talk to us here today Ms Randall you often put your hand to your mouth in a gesture that might perhaps be a nervous habit.

Do I? I suppose I do. I seem to remember my mother commenting on much the same thing when I was a teenager. Commenting rather frequently actually. (laughter)

It sounds like our mothers came from the same school. (laughter). Gavin is of course profoundly deaf and obtains most of his information by lip-reading. Did it occur to you that what you chose to interpret as lack of cooperation might be a result of his failing to understand you? That you put him in the embarrassing situation of being a lip-reader who was not able to see your lips?

I think he understood my questions perfectly well but he chose not to answer them.

Did you have an interpreter present when you interviewed him?

No, I didn’t feel that there was any need for that.

Does he use sign language?

I’m not actually sure about that.

You didn’t even find out what language he speaks? Do you accept that Auslan is a language?

Oh yes, certainly. I just can’t recall right now if he…

What steps did you take to establish whether he in fact does have serious psychological damage?

Well, we had him assessed by the experts at Holy Cross Children’s Services, and they agree that he is a child in need of…

Was that before or after you took him from his home?

Well it was after, but a very short time after.

So at the time you took him you had no way of knowing whether he had any psychological condition which would require treatment or justify your removing him. And I might mention, and I’ll come back to this later Your Honour, the Department took no steps to ascertain whether Gavin was in better mental health or worse than he was say three months earlier or six or nine. There is no benchmark. He may well have been improving dramatically under the care of Ms Linton.

There are his school reports.

If misbehaviour at school was a reason for taking a child away from his family environment then your department would be busy indeed Ms Randall. Now, let us go through your report in a little more detail, if I could trouble the Court to look at page 3. You say there were dog faeces near the house. How many piles of dog droppings were there?

Just the one. Well, I only saw the one.

Which could have been deposited two minutes before your arrival?

I didn’t take a close look. (laughter)

‘Inappropriate proximity of dog to sleeping area.’ What does that mean exactly?

A dog was asleep on the boy’s bed when I went into the bedroom.

Do you think that’s a common scenario in family life?

I don’t know about that but it’s certainly an unhealthy one.

You don’t know whether dogs sleeping on beds is common or uncommon, is that what you are asking us to believe?

I haven’t done a survey on it, no. All I know is that it’s unhealthy. I’m not required to make a personal judgement on these things, just to report what I see.

Well, we shall come to that presently. ‘Unmade beds and general unkempt conditions in bedrooms. No fruit was observed. A tin of Milo was open on the bench. A wet load of laundry in the washing machine.’ This might be my house on a busy day Ms Randall. It might be anybody’s house. Are you proposing to come and take my children from me because we had a mouse in the kitchen last night?

It’s the totality we look at.

Because you don’t like the number of cans of Pepsi we have in the fridge? Because I’m in the process of fixing the radiator and I’ve got the safety guard off it while I do so?

No, of course not. But when the overall picture is one of…

‘Lavatory appeared to be clean but bath and shower area has been neglected for some time.’ ‘Appeared to be’, it’s like the rest of your report, ‘it is possible that’, ‘it is more than probable’, ‘it seems reasonable to suppose’… your report is nothing more than a collection of guesses and hypotheses, and I put it to you, a mirror of your own prejudices.

It’s not meant to be… it’s not produced to be analysed in this amount of detail by a barrister, let alone one of your… it’s just for the use of the Department, as a guide to us. We, they, don’t normally get the kind of elaborate scrutiny that you’re…

(His Honour) Come now Ms Randall, that won’t do. I think you know better than that.

I’m sorry Your Honour, it’s just that we see so many cases, and not every report has the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed perhaps. I know Mr Blaine’s very good at his job but to my mind the child’s circumstances, living with someone who’s still a child herself, legally speaking, really, it speaks for itself, and so this report is possibly not as detailed as some that we do…

(His Honour) When we are dealing with the intervention of the State in a child’s life, when we are taking a child out of the conditions to which he has become accustomed and in which he may feel secure and comfortable, I say no more at this stage than that we should be very sure indeed that our i’s are dotted and our t’s crossed, yes, and every other letter carefully formed as well.

(Mr Blaine) I won’t keep you much longer Ms Randall but if you’d like a glass of water…?

No, no it’s all right, go on.

Well, let me put this to you. The Act requires you, does it not, to respond to cases of abuse, it speaks of immediate danger to children, it talks about emotional and physical health and so on…

Yes, that’s correct.

Yet according to your report, and I can see by your face that you know where I’m going with this, Gavin’s situation was merely one of a child whose ‘best interests are clearly not being served by his present circumstances’. That falls quite a long way short of abuse and neglect and danger does it not?

Yes, I must admit that my supervisor did point out last week that it wasn’t very well worded. I’d word that differently if I was doing it now. I’ve been told not to use expressions like that any more.

Because if you concerned yourself with children whose best interests are not being served by their present circumstances you would need a hundred thousand extra staff, would you not?

Well, the fact remains that he is a child who needs to be in a very different environment.

You state that as a fact, but it is not a fact, it is an opinion, and it’s because you hold that opinion but are not able to support it with facts that this child’s life has been disrupted yet again and we are here today. Now let me put a few questions to you and then I’ll be finished. Has Gavin ever committed an act of delinquency?

Not so far as I’m aware, not to my knowledge, no.

So your answer is ‘no’ then?

That’s correct, yes, as far as I know.