As long-term foster parents my wife and I have always been concerned at how easily a family can be destroyed by false allegations and overly ambitious investigators.
By John Silvester, The Age
Jack and Jill Hill* are the sort of people who should be the subject of warm and fuzzy stories, the sort that make us smile after digesting the grim news of the day. For they are a couple who, having drawn a lucky hand in life, decided to give back by becoming foster parents to help the disadvantaged.
So this should be a happy yarn about a happy couple. It isn’t.
Instead it is about well-intentioned people behaving like knuckleheads, leaving the Hills to confront the wickedly false claim they are secret sex offenders - a wrong that two years later has not been righted.
When foster parents are accused, police are duty bound to investigate. But in this case the process left much to be desired.
Jack and Jill were police officers for more than 10 years, Jill spending most of her career in community policing, where she had to deal with many claims of child abuse and sexual assault. Jack was general duties - now known as first responders, sorting through the distressed, damaged and deranged.
With young children, they made the choice to leave policing, believing a 9-to-5 work regime was more in tune with parenting. ‘‘Our family has lived a privileged life,’’ says Jack.
The family owned two small farms and were able to raise their three boys in a close-knit rural community.
‘‘After leaving the force, [Jill] felt her efforts would be better served fostering children and with three children of our own we felt there was always space for one more,’’ says Jack.
To be accepted as foster carers they underwent thorough background checks that they passed easily. After all they were ex-police, financially stable, married for more than 20 years and shared a strong desire to help kids in desperate need.
‘‘Years later, after a revolving door of children coming and going, we received a phone call asking if we could foster a four-week-old baby girl. No other carers were able to assist as the baby girl was categorised as high needs with a cleft palate, requiring feeds via a gastric nasal tube. She was also withdrawing from a cocktail of illicit substances that she had been exposed to during the pregnancy.
‘‘The baby girl, our daughter, is now nearly nine years old. My wife and I have a permanent care order making us her legal guardians. The journey has at times nearly destroyed us. Early in the piece we learned that our daughter is Indigenous, we are not, so one particular worker made it her sole mission to find Aboriginal carers.’’
When this failed, Jack and Jill felt that as everyone in the community knew their story they should move to the other side of Victoria so their daughter, Jane, could have a fresh start without people knowing her disadvantaged background.
Sometime in 2017 - after a child abuse awareness team visited the small country school - two grade five and six girls came forward to say they had heard a much younger girl say something about "Dad" that would indicate she may be the victim of repeated sexual assault in her own home.
‘‘This girl was identified as our daughter although no one is really sure of the exact details, surname unknown, grade not sure and there are three other children at the school who share the same Christian name. Nevertheless, police decide to run with it and so starts our experience as alleged offenders. After all, it was an Aboriginal girl in foster care with ex-police parents. What risk-averse police wouldn’t run with it?’’ says Jack.
There are hundreds of shameful cases where children in care have been abused and left in danger when there was ample evidence they were at risk. Catholic cops covered up for predatory priests and no one seemed to check up what was happening in care facilities. When one kid jumped the wall and went to the local station to report he had been raped, the sergeant cuffed him over the ear, called him a liar and sent him back. And so when an allegation like this is made, it needs to be thoroughly - but fairly - investigated.
One day nearly two years ago, the principal at Jane’s* private school rang Jill to inform her that police had contacted him to say they were investigating a complaint of serious sexual assault against a student and while they could not clearly identify the alleged victim, believed it could be her daughter.
Nine days later - a ridiculously long time if the child was in the care of a paedophile - they contacted the Hills. Any chance of conciliation was quickly replaced by confrontation in that one phone call. The police officer dealing with the complaint demanded the Hills bring their little girl in for a formal Visual and Audio Recording of Evidence (VARE). The parents knew that was not the usual first step and Jill asked, and was refused, details of the alleged crime.
According to Jill, the officer referred to her daughter by the wrong name and was vague about how they had concluded that Jane was the person in question.
Although a more informal initial process (known as a disclosure interview) is the usual model the investigator pushed the VARE process, even threatening to hit the Hills with a protection order which would have resulted in them losing Jane.
The Hills suggested police come to their home and interview Jane in familiar and less intimidating surroundings. Police contacted the school to find personal details, including the names of Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) case workers - details that could have been provided by the parents, who had already indicated they would co-operate fully.
Eventually police said they would interview Jane in the family home and DHHS had been notified and could have chosen to be present during the interview. The police did interview Jane, while the parents remained outside the house.
After the interview police told the parents there had been a complaint that a child had been heard making a ‘‘disclosure’’ of a sexual nature at a school function but after talking to Jane they now knew it wasn’t her.
Case closed, you would think - but then DHHS workers rolled up late and insisted on questioning Jane again, ‘‘exacerbating [her] distress. They advised that no further action would be taken by their office as [Jane] clearly did not make the disclosure.’’
One of the case workers said as they were about to leave the property: "Thank you for your time guys and, yeah, we won’t be around again.’’ Surely that was the end.
Think again.
More than a month later child protection workers turned up at the school, Jane was dragged from class, her parents were not informed and she was interviewed by strangers for 40 minutes (the third such interview), this time leaving her in tears.
‘‘She was asked leading questions on an allegation that had already been dismissed weeks earlier,’’ says Jack. ‘‘We once believed we could give a child in need a safe and loving home. We now feel we are constantly defending ourselves.
"We are an ordinary family. We are law-abiding. We truly believed foster care was something we should do.’’
The school issued a half-baked apology and after much urging, the child protection authorities conducted a review. Eventually the Hills received the following, signed by the operations manager of child protection:
‘‘An internal review of the investigation carried out in respect to [Jane] found that usual process was not followed.
"I apologise for the length of time taken to conclude this investigation and the decision not to seek your prior consent to interview [Jane] at school. I am sorry for any distress caused to you and your family as a result of this.
"This matter is the subject of a practice review to better understand why our processes broke down and how the actions of individual staff may have contributed to this.’’
In another letter they were told: ‘‘I am writing to advise you that following the completion of a child protective investigation into concerns that had been expressed in relation to the care of [Jane], Child Protection will not continue to be involved with your family.
"I recognise that the process of Child Protection involvement can be difficult and regret any distress that this may have caused.’’
Having ultimately been vindicated, the Hills wanted the record to reflect the fact that their daughter was not the victim of sexual assault.
Which brings us to the police who conducted the investigation. According to Jack, the report is still in the LEAP police database, ‘‘detailing a Family Violence Incident with allegations of incest occurring at our home address. I’m listed as person of interest (even though the notes clear him). Despite being exonerated, our privacy has been totally and unjustifiably invaded.
‘‘In fact there was no evidence whatsoever, they didn’t even have our daughter’s correct name when they contacted us, as we gave it to them. We have since removed our children from this school.’’
The LEAP file is littered with provable falsehoods and yet police have refused to rectify the hurtful errors. It is bad enough that the Hills were dragged through the coals, but surely now we can make sure they are not stained by the soot.
* Names have been changed throughout.
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