I came across  the official website for what was previously known as DoC’s in Australia – this organisation does the same job as social services do in the United Kingdom…or is meant to do anyway but the one thing that is certain is that their failure rates are infuriatingly identical. DoC’s (The Department of Community Services) is responsible for family issues, community issues and child welfare and protection – the whole gamut actually – and they have now changed their name to simply Community Services. Saving money I suppose, they probably ran out of places to cut staffing…

This organisation promotes itself with a very cheery homepage on it’s website but the realities of the operations of this bunch of bureaucrats is anything but cheery because vulnerable Australian children continue to suffer abuse that goes unchecked, and they continue to die at the hands of their abusers. Here’s an example: between 2002 – 2007 a total of 201 children died at the hands of their carers in just Western Australia alone – now in those figures you have a fair number of Aboriginal children included and due to the politically correct policies of the department those kids would have had little chance of rescue because it is taboo to remove indigenous children from their ‘communities’ nowadays regardless of any dangers…but that’s what you get when activitists scream loud enough – ‘Damn the kids, save the culture’…

With little John Ashfield’s story currently in the news I wonder if those from Community Services remember a little boy who was born almost at the same time as John was being killed – again I do -  and I remember well what happened to him when DoC’s just could not get it’s act together. The death of Wesley Thwaites was a tragic story almost too unbearable to read about when it was front page news in August 1996. Wesley, three years of age, lived at Lithgow in western NSW with his five year old brother, his mother and – of course – her de-facto husband (boyfriend in other words…). Despite being notified by his day care nursery, and getting numerous calls from concerned neighbours, DoC’s failed to act to save Wesley from literally being tormented to death by his step-father. Neighbours reported seeing the little boys being punched by the step-father, that they would wander into neighbours homes looking for food and that on several occasions the children were locked in a barrel in the backyard where it was left in the sun while their mother and her partner sat on it and laughing at the children’s cries from inside. Wesley died at the age of three having been beaten systematically over the course of several days and being made to stand naked under a freezing cold shower for several hours until he passed out. This was at the height of a very cold winter. Wesley’s brother was sent to live with relatives after the tragedy and it was sickening to watch as his mother was treated with kid gloves by DoC’s, social workers and lawyers. She did not go to prison – she was made to attend ‘effective parenting courses’ so that she could retain custody of a baby girl she had not long after.

You wont find anything at all about little Wesley Thwaites on the internet, nothing about his story – I am drawing on vivid recall because at the time it all seemed so incredible that DoC’s workers could have left this baby to his fate. After some very intensive searching I managed to discover the NSW Parliamentary Hansard Report from November 19th 1996 where a very brief mention of Wesley’s murder is made and how they vow to re-address issues regarding child protection and DOC’s procedures…

Hansard Transcription Excerpt 26 Nov. 1996:

“Reverend the Hon. F. J. Nile referred to a particularly tragic case that occurred recently near Lithgow. I can name the child because, regrettably, the child is deceased. He was Wesley Thwaites. His was a tragic case and it is a clear illustration of the importance of interagency cooperation, exchanging information and promoting the interests of a child whose interests might otherwise be at risk – and in this case certainly was at risk, to the extent that the child regrettably lost his life at the hands of his de facto father. That tragic case will be reviewed by the child death review team, which was set up by the Government late last year with the unanimous agreement of this House. That was a first for Australia.

It is tragic that the death of a child has to be reviewed. However, it should be recognised that, from time to time for one reason or another, human nature being what it is – and it is so difficult to predict how people will behave – deaths will occur despite all the systems that are in place. I hope that they are rare and at an absolutely irreducible minimum. However, I believe that the child death review team, made up as it is of equal representatives approximately of relative government agencies and representatives of the community being experts in child protection, will be able to learn lessons from what has happened in tragic cases such as that of Wesley Thwaites and, one would hope, build for the future a system that will absolutely reduce to a minimum the prospect of further wilful child deaths.“…

They have a long way to go as hundreds of children have died in the years since and they continue to suffer abuse, neglect and die to this day. ‘Community Services’ might be their new name but nothing else is new about them…

What a shame Community Services does not remember all these children on their own website.

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