Speaker 1: Quodcast Unite Our Voices.
Speaker 2: This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances
Speaker 2: of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on
Speaker 2: the darkest parts of our justice system. We ask who
Speaker 2: are the victims?
Speaker 1: I'm aiming Macquire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior Advocate at
Speaker 1: the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning. This series
Speaker 1: contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content
Speaker 1: that may upset some listeners.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Season two, Episode eight of Curtain
Speaker 2: the podcast. Today we are going to discuss a story
Speaker 2: that happened back in nineteen eighty seven. It's the case
Speaker 2: of horrendous violence perpetrated against two young Aboriginal teenage girls
Speaker 2: in the New South Wales town of burk Their names
Speaker 2: were Mona Lisa Smith and just sent to Smith, who
Speaker 2: was known by her friends and family as Cindy. Mona
Speaker 2: Lisa was sixteen and Cindy was fifteen when they died
Speaker 2: in the early hours of sixth of December nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: We're going to discuss a bit about the details of
Speaker 2: this case because last year, from twenty seventh November to
Speaker 2: one December twenty twenty three, an inquest, a long awaited
Speaker 2: inquest was finally held into their deaths in Burke and
Speaker 2: it was an inquest that was held because of the
Speaker 2: long standing advocacy and care of Mona, Lisa, and Cindy's families,
Speaker 2: who never tired in trying to find out the truth
Speaker 2: of what had happened to them. And in a lot
Speaker 2: of these inquests, the stories of the girls or the
Speaker 2: women who have passed is often eclipsed by the horrific
Speaker 2: details of what happened to them. So today on the podcast,
Speaker 2: we're going to open with some of the memories of
Speaker 2: Mona and Cindy as told to the end Quest by
Speaker 2: their families. Mona's mother, June Smith, shared about her daughter Mona.
Speaker 2: She said, Mona was a beautiful baby and she grew
Speaker 2: up you know, lovely, happy, go lucky girl and as
Speaker 2: she got older, her and her cousin Cindy were always
Speaker 2: together every day. She told the inquest that Mona was
Speaker 2: a singer. Around twelve and thirteen, she wanted to sing
Speaker 2: in the talent quest because they used to have Aboriginal
Speaker 2: talent quests every year and everyone joined in. Mona loved singing.
Speaker 2: She said she wanted to be a singer, so she
Speaker 2: used to sing. And then Cindy's mother, Dawn Smith, also
Speaker 2: spoke about her daughter, telling the inquest about her favorite songs.
Speaker 2: One day, she was on a school excursion and came
Speaker 2: home with a picture of her playing the piano, and
Speaker 2: she wanted to learn how to play the piano. Dylan
Speaker 2: also said, and this is I'm quoting from the inquest,
Speaker 2: we would go down the rivers for swimming, fishing, and crayfishing.
Speaker 2: The kids and old people would play games like rounders,
Speaker 2: Skippy's high jump, and marbles. And every Sunday we would
Speaker 2: walk uptown to church. We used to take the children
Speaker 2: out to show them wealth, fruit and bush medicine too.
Speaker 2: She also talked about a love for singing from Cindy,
Speaker 2: although she was a bit more shy. She said she
Speaker 2: used to love taking her kids to the Talent Quest
Speaker 2: where they would perform. Cindy was always too shy to
Speaker 2: get up and sing, but she enjoyed going and watching
Speaker 2: the others. They were young, bright girls, the coroner said,
Speaker 2: sparkling with light and excitement. They had big hopes and
Speaker 2: dreams and so much to look forward to. But over
Speaker 2: the past thirty seven years. Mona and Cindy's family and
Speaker 2: the Aboriginal community in Burke had been devastated by what
Speaker 2: happened to them on the sixth of December nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: It was only recently that the findings into that inquest
Speaker 2: were handed down, and warning to our listeners, the findings
Speaker 2: are very horrific. It tells the tale of what we
Speaker 2: know to be true, the racialized violence not only in
Speaker 2: towns like Burke, where white perpetrators target young Aboriginal girls,
Speaker 2: but also the devastating inefficiencies by the police, which sometimes
Speaker 2: are excused us for example, bad policing, But when you
Speaker 2: read the in quest, and what we're going to tell
Speaker 2: you today is they're very examples of the racial violence
Speaker 2: of policing. And we're going to go through this in
Speaker 2: quest today because I think it says so much about
Speaker 2: the issues that we're talking about through this podcast. But
Speaker 2: I just want us to remember as we tell you
Speaker 2: these really horrific, devastating details that first and foremost, it's
Speaker 2: the families who have been there fighting for Mona Listern Cindi,
Speaker 2: fighting for their memories, fighting for the truth to be told,
Speaker 2: and fighting for a conception of justice that they have
Speaker 2: been pushing for for nearly four decades now, now more
Speaker 2: than four our listeners, Can you tell us a bit
Speaker 2: about what happened that morning on the sixth of December
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, So.
Speaker 1: The night prior, a man known around town, Alexander Ian Grant,
Speaker 1: who was forty at the time, was a known predator.
Speaker 1: He was often seen patrolling around town in his white
Speaker 1: highlucks looking for young Aboriginal girls. He'd often offer young
Speaker 1: Aboriginal girls vast quantities of alcohol. And it's important to
Speaker 1: remember that in a previous occasion, Cindy had done an
Speaker 1: excellent job of protecting another family member, another cousin, from
Speaker 1: this same man. But he was an itinerant worker. He
Speaker 1: was married and had lived in the town not very long,
Speaker 1: and he spent a lot of time buying alcohol and
Speaker 1: then going out to the reserve. And on the night,
Speaker 1: the girls had gone into town and then were making
Speaker 1: their way home when he picked them up in his
Speaker 1: Toyota highlucks intoxicated and had bought more alcohol which he
Speaker 1: plied the girls with. And then sometime later on that night,
Speaker 1: there was a horrific accident and the Toyota Highlarks rolled.
Speaker 1: There were skid marks nearly two hundred meters down the road,
Speaker 1: and tragically both the girls Mona, Lisa and Cindy were killed.
Speaker 1: Grant was largely uninjured. And so what the inquest first
Speaker 1: had to do was resolve what had happened. Now, we
Speaker 1: should explain that there was a police investigation, and we
Speaker 1: will come to that shortly. And mister Grant was eventually charged,
Speaker 1: but he was never convicted, and that's why the inquest
Speaker 1: that the family called for had to happen. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: were never going to get any answers, and it took
Speaker 1: them all these years before anyone would agree to give
Speaker 1: them that in quest to find out exactly what had
Speaker 1: happened on that night.
Speaker 2: So, mardon, there was a car crash involving this high
Speaker 2: loox what had happened afterwards?
Speaker 1: So it wasn't until early on in the morning. It
Speaker 1: was probably still dark, the light just coming up that
Speaker 1: passers by came across the crash site. And for our listeners,
Speaker 1: the following does contain some distressing material. The car was
Speaker 1: severely damaged and destroyed, and it obviously rolled, and tragically
Speaker 1: both of the young girls had been ejected from the
Speaker 1: vehicle during the accident. The first people on the scene
Speaker 1: noticed that both girls were clearly already deceased, and that
Speaker 1: Grant was heavily intoxicated and had made no effort whatsoever
Speaker 1: to assist the girls in any way. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there is the possibility, and the coroner found it most
Speaker 1: likely that even after the accident, Grant had sexually assaulted
Speaker 1: one of the girls. But these passes by were not
Speaker 1: exactly here to help. One of the passes by who'd
Speaker 1: stopped a mister Batty told Grant, and I quote, you
Speaker 1: have two dead gins here, mate. Mister Grant responded, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're all right, they've had too much to drink. Mister
Speaker 1: Baddy recalled. The male then became agitated and abusive. The
Speaker 1: male was intoxicated. Mister Baddy could smell alcohol, and there
Speaker 1: were bottles and cans around the area. Now, for those
Speaker 1: listeners overseas or in Australia who don't know, gin is
Speaker 1: perhaps the most violent, misogynistic term that anyone could use
Speaker 1: to describe an Aboriginal woman. The fact that both young
Speaker 1: girls were deceased and this first witness on the scene
Speaker 1: described them that way shows you the kind of racist
Speaker 1: attitudes that were all to prevalent in Burke then and
Speaker 1: remain a reality in this country today. Grant had clearly
Speaker 1: offered no assistance whatsoever to the girls, and the other
Speaker 1: passer by went to police to notify them to get
Speaker 1: someone to come out of there. But although one individual
Speaker 1: stayed at the scene, he soon left because Grant became
Speaker 1: aggressive and abusive.
Speaker 2: And Martin's exactly right in that racialized and really violent
Speaker 2: language of the us gins was used by one of
Speaker 2: the witnesses. And it should also be noted that this
Speaker 2: witness in particular had only provided a statement to police
Speaker 2: on the fifteenth of February twenty twenty three and then
Speaker 2: gave evidence at the inquest, and so that's thirty seven
Speaker 2: years afterwards. So that speaks to one of the deficiencies
Speaker 2: in the police investigation already, is that one of the
Speaker 2: key witnesses to what had happened, the first person other
Speaker 2: than Grant to arrive on the scene, had actually not
Speaker 2: even been asked for a statement by police until thirty
Speaker 2: seven years later. The family of Cindy and Mona Lisa
Speaker 2: also said, particularly the mothers said that the police never
Speaker 2: even told them about what had happened. They had actually
Speaker 2: been called by relatives to go up to the hospital
Speaker 2: to identify the two girls, and that was the first
Speaker 2: time they said the police had not even kept them
Speaker 2: updated or had never even told them about what had happened.
Speaker 2: And that speaks directly to what we're going to start
Speaker 2: unraveling today around the really horrific police reaction to the
Speaker 2: deaths of Mona, Lisa and Cindy. So Martin, how did
Speaker 2: the police respond first?
Speaker 1: So when the police arrived on the scene, it was
Speaker 1: fair to say they had no real regard for the
Speaker 1: girls either. Constable Mackenzie was the first person on the
Speaker 1: scene and initially that he was told by Grant that
Speaker 1: Grant was the man driving the vehicle. He admitted as much,
Speaker 1: but when the case was handed over to Detective Sergeant
Speaker 1: Peter Ashman, he claims that he asked Grant who was driving,
Speaker 1: and Grant claimed that Mona had been driving the vehicle,
Speaker 1: even though in his notebook, in his logs, in his diary,
Speaker 1: in his initial evidence, and his following evidence to the inquest,
Speaker 1: Mackenzie has always maintained that he told the detective that
Speaker 1: it was Grant who was driving and Grant admitted that
Speaker 1: he had, but Eshmand never questioned Grant. He simply took
Speaker 1: him at his word. A man who was found with
Speaker 1: two dead children by the side of the road, heavily
Speaker 1: intoxicated and abusive, and the coroner questioned him about this.
Speaker 1: She asked, did you then by the time the crime
Speaker 1: scene unit came, did you have any doubts about who
Speaker 1: the driver was? Answer? I didn't have any doubts. No.
Speaker 1: Grant told me one of the girls wanted to drive.
Speaker 1: Question you believed him? You accepted that answer? Yes? Question
Speaker 1: why answer from the detective? He told me what happened,
Speaker 1: and this would plague the horrific police investigation that detective
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pete Ashman would take Grant's word for everything he
Speaker 1: told him had happened that night. Even though Grant was
Speaker 1: a predator found with two deceased Aboriginal girls, he also
Speaker 1: did next to nothing to secure the crime scene. He
Speaker 1: himself took no photos of the crime scene. He did
Speaker 1: no real investigation into what had led up to the
Speaker 1: incident or any of the other contributing factors. Mackenzie, it
Speaker 1: has to be said, did take photos and did draw
Speaker 1: a map of the crime scene. But by his own admission,
Speaker 1: he was a very inexperienced police officer and this was
Speaker 1: not really his task. And so for all these years
Speaker 1: it is his work that has had to be relied
Speaker 1: upon to piece things together, because Eshmund did such a
Speaker 1: terrible job.
Speaker 2: And at this point, the fact that the police have
Speaker 2: not really contacted the family to get statements became quite important,
Speaker 2: didn't it, Martin, Because it's not only just that the
Speaker 2: police have ultimately believed without questioning the white man's version
Speaker 2: of events. They didn't take into account that Mona couldn't
Speaker 2: even drive a manual car, because the Hilux was a manimal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this became a very important part as
Speaker 1: well of the investigation, which Mona's family, her mother, her brothers,
Speaker 1: they could all tell the police very easily that there
Speaker 1: was no way Mona could have driven a manual vs vehicle,
Speaker 1: And in fact, crash investigators who had analyzed the information
Speaker 1: both a few years later and then more recently for
Speaker 1: the inquest, basically found there's no way Mona could have
Speaker 1: been driving. It was a heavily ladened early model Toyota Highlux.
Speaker 1: It was a manual. Her family had absolutely told police
Speaker 1: that Mona had only ever driven a car once and
Speaker 1: it was an automatic, And as the crash scene investigators
Speaker 1: years later would explain, such a heavily laden vehicle that
Speaker 1: was full of tools and other equipment would have required
Speaker 1: an extensive amount of manual gear changes to get it
Speaker 1: up and going and then to maintain the speed. And
Speaker 1: the vehicle was found more than thirty kilometers outside of Burke,
Speaker 1: So there's just no way that Mona was driving. And
Speaker 1: yet again the coron questioned Eshman about this, about the
Speaker 1: fact that he was a detective, and that why would
Speaker 1: he just accept as a detective at face value mister
Speaker 1: Grant's story, And we see some of Eshman's racism come
Speaker 1: through immediately. He said, it wouldn't be unusual for young kids,
Speaker 1: unlicensed drivers to be driving cars. There's nothing unusual about that,
Speaker 1: But he never checked. This was a pure assumption based
Speaker 1: on the fact that the girls were Aboriginal. The coroner
Speaker 1: then asked a further question, but in case the allegation
Speaker 1: was that it was an unlicensed teenage girl driving a
Speaker 1: manual utility, do you think you should have made some
Speaker 1: inquiries at the time about whether or not either of
Speaker 1: these girls could drive a manual utility. Answer no. Question
Speaker 1: you don't think that was a legitimate line of inquiry?
Speaker 1: Answer no. And for the record, the coroner note and
Speaker 1: I quote, I was troubled by this evidence from mister Eshmond.
Speaker 1: Not only had he, as the senior officer, not bothered
Speaker 1: to go to the homes of the girls and inform
Speaker 1: their families of their tragic passing. He had no care
Speaker 1: in the world, despite being a detective sergeant of solving
Speaker 1: this crime, of doing any work whatsoever that would get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of what happened. He simply took Grant's
Speaker 1: word for it and was done with it. His callous
Speaker 1: disregard was as racist as that of the first person
Speaker 1: to turn up on the scene who called the girl's gins,
Speaker 1: and as racist as Grant's behavior of applying young Aboriginal
Speaker 1: girls with alcohol. And then there was a further problem.
Speaker 1: Any crash scene investigator will tell you that measurements need
Speaker 1: to be taken. This was never done. There should have
Speaker 1: been markers laid out on the road as to where
Speaker 1: the first skid marks occurred, where other debris was found,
Speaker 1: and where the vehicle ultimately came to a stop. This
Speaker 1: was not done. There should have been markers place by
Speaker 1: the side of the road where the girls were found.
Speaker 1: This was not done. Nothing was done as per police
Speaker 1: instructions for what they are supposed to do when they
Speaker 1: come to a crime scene. And worst of all, the
Speaker 1: vehicle was never properly taken into custody. It was towed
Speaker 1: back into Burke and then the chain of custody was
Speaker 1: completely lost and the vehicle would end up at mister
Speaker 1: Grant's former workplace.
Speaker 2: And that's really important, isn't It might internote that the
Speaker 2: car has never been probably examined, including a steering wheel,
Speaker 2: and this just is so it's not an aberration. It
Speaker 2: happens in a lot of cases we've looked at, particularly
Speaker 2: around this time, where key evidence, for example cars or
Speaker 2: key evidence that could indicate the guilt of the accused
Speaker 2: is handed back to the accused. So this isn't something
Speaker 2: that is even an aberration in a lot of the
Speaker 2: investigations that we've looked at. It's something that happens quite
Speaker 2: a lot, and it seemed to happen in this case
Speaker 2: as well, where they're not even looking at what has
Speaker 2: happened and the scene as even a crime. And that's
Speaker 2: shown by the fact that they so readily believe that
Speaker 2: Mona is responsible for the traffic accident, and then that
Speaker 2: nothing has happened afterwards, no other crime has taken place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think this was something that stood out
Speaker 1: to senior sergeant from Sydney who was involved in this
Speaker 1: sort of investigation in Sydney and had been out to
Speaker 1: other crime scenes around the state, and he was troubled
Speaker 1: by just a memory of hearing about that investigation, to
Speaker 1: the point that he had his inspector called the Burke
Speaker 1: Police station and speak to the officer in charge out
Speaker 1: at Burke. And this was the response when a senior
Speaker 1: police officer from Sydney with serious concerns a man had
Speaker 1: got away with murder rang Burke. This is the response
Speaker 1: by the head of Burke Police over the telephone. Well,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, you can hop in your
Speaker 1: car and piss off back to Sydney, because my detectives
Speaker 1: did this job and I'm content with what they did. Now.
Speaker 1: The fact that he would say this means either he
Speaker 1: had clearly not reviewed the work of his detectives, who
Speaker 1: had done no work whatsoever he had, and he was
Speaker 1: satisfied that what they'd done nothing was okay, and this
Speaker 1: would come out even further because the police officer, who
Speaker 1: had raised doubts about the investigation, decided not to leave
Speaker 1: it there. He asked a colleague to go out and
Speaker 1: locate the vehicle, and the vehicle couldn't be found at
Speaker 1: the police station where it should have been being held
Speaker 1: as evidence. Instead, it was that we wore electrics where
Speaker 1: a man had purchased the vehicle from Grant. Grant had
Speaker 1: been allowed to take ownership of the vehicle, the potential
Speaker 1: murder weapon and key piece of evidence in this case,
Speaker 1: and sell it. He owned the business mister Grant where
Speaker 1: the vehicle had been stored major metals excavations until he'd
Speaker 1: sold the vehicle. But when mister Hurle purchased the vehicle,
Speaker 1: crucial key pieces of the Highlarks had been removed, one
Speaker 1: of which was the steering wheel, which would have allowed
Speaker 1: police had they bothered, to dust it for fingerprints. And
Speaker 1: if Mona's fingerprints were not on that steering wheel, clearly
Speaker 1: Grant was lying and she could never have been driving it.
Speaker 1: Grant obviously knew this and took the steering wheel from
Speaker 1: the vehicle. The fact that this was allowed to happen
Speaker 1: just shows the level of care the police had. It
Speaker 1: is criminal that they were able to do this and
Speaker 1: get away with it and be backed up and defended
Speaker 1: for all these years by their most senior colleagues.
Speaker 2: And this color's disregard to evidence and to securing the
Speaker 2: crime scene and the severe deficiencies in the police investigation
Speaker 2: were really highlighting the racialized nature of the way police
Speaker 2: were responding to this because it was about two Aboriginal
Speaker 2: girls who had lost their lives and this is what
Speaker 2: came out of the inquest. As an example of this
Speaker 2: systemic racism is that Mona in Cidy's family had always
Speaker 2: said that they felt severely discriminated against because they were Aboriginal,
Speaker 2: and this is something that a lot of family, I
Speaker 2: mean majority of Aboriginal families feel when dealing with police.
Speaker 2: But we have to remember that this is a time
Speaker 2: when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Death in Custodies. The
Speaker 2: momentum was building for that the death in custody of
Speaker 2: Lloyd Berney out at Rawarna, which isn't far from Burke,
Speaker 2: and also David Gundy in Sydney, and this affected the
Speaker 2: way that the police was responding to the community. So
Speaker 2: there was one constable who spoke about the reason that
Speaker 2: he even attended the site of the crash was too
Speaker 2: in his words, keep the peace. He said, the main
Speaker 2: aim was to go down there and assist Constable Mackenzie
Speaker 2: being the fact that it must have we must have
Speaker 2: been told that there were two Aboriginal girls that had
Speaker 2: been killed. That was part of the reason we went.
Speaker 2: And I've had the scenario before where this sort of
Speaker 2: thing where Aboriginal people had been injured and then everyone
Speaker 2: finds out about it and everyone swarms it or swarms
Speaker 2: this in and I just didn't want twenty or thirty
Speaker 2: Aboriginal people there upset, and Ken had to deal with
Speaker 2: it by himself. He claimed that it wasn't a racist
Speaker 2: thing to do. This was severely racialized. This meant that
Speaker 2: they considered it a key concern that Aboriginal people would
Speaker 2: come and in effect riot or swarm the scene, which
Speaker 2: is horrific. You know, that is incredibly insensitive to the
Speaker 2: families and the community, and it affected the way that
Speaker 2: they were dealing with the family. They couldn't see this
Speaker 2: as the tragedy it was. Instead, it almost became an
Speaker 2: inconvenience to them, but it has really affected the way
Speaker 2: that this case has been born out over the years.
Speaker 2: Mardin because the family have been requesting an inquest for
Speaker 2: a very long time, but they've been knocked back before.
Speaker 1: One thing that has absolutely struck me a bad but
Speaker 1: the death of Mona, Lisa and Cindy, is the fact
Speaker 1: that the family has never given up. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever seen an example of a large family and
Speaker 1: community who have campaigned for so long, despite the disgraceful
Speaker 1: investigation by police, despite the fact that Grant was acquitted
Speaker 1: at a completely botched trial, despite all of the knockbacks,
Speaker 1: they have never stopped, and thirty three years after, in
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty, via their lawyer, they had written to
Speaker 1: the Commissioner of Police, Mick Fuller, and asked for an
Speaker 1: investigation and an inquest. This is not a lot to
Speaker 1: ask when inquests are such a standard part of our
Speaker 1: legal system and understanding why people have passed away. But Fuller,
Speaker 1: like his counterparts in the eighties, had no intention of
Speaker 1: grand that family's request. He said the brief of evidence
Speaker 1: has been subject to thorough independent reviews in both two
Speaker 1: thousand and four and twenty eighteen, both reviews found that
Speaker 1: an adequate investigation was conducted. How on earth could anyone
Speaker 1: in their bright mind claim that. He also noted that
Speaker 1: the accused, Alexander Ian Grant, had been discharged by a
Speaker 1: jury and was deceased, and that further investigation is not
Speaker 1: planned by police, and he said it was for this
Speaker 1: reason that I quote, I do not believe an inquest
Speaker 1: into the deaths of Jacina and Mona Lisa will adduce
Speaker 1: new or additional information. And as we know from what
Speaker 1: came out of the inquest that was wrong. Why isn't
Speaker 1: Fuller made to answer? This is a man who now
Speaker 1: cops a fortune in pension for being our police commissioner,
Speaker 1: who couldn't other to just ask for an inquest? His counterpart,
Speaker 1: the Attorney General, Liberal Mark Speakman, was written to by
Speaker 1: George Newhouse of the National Justice Project on behalf of
Speaker 1: the family, and he finally received a reply on the
Speaker 1: seventh of March twenty twenty two, and the Attorney General
Speaker 1: advised that he too had decided not to direct a
Speaker 1: coronial inquest, and I quote a further coronial inquest would
Speaker 1: not be capable of finding any new information not already
Speaker 1: known or of providing any meaningful information or closure for
Speaker 1: Mona or Cindy's families, again a lie. The families didn't
Speaker 1: have closure. They were requesting this in quest, and as
Speaker 1: we know, this inquest did deliver findings and did deliver answers.
Speaker 1: Why isn't speakmen held to account for denying this family
Speaker 1: who had campaigned for decades to get the truth of
Speaker 1: what had happened to their daughters any sort of answers
Speaker 1: and he denied them. That he had the role as
Speaker 1: Attorney General to clear this up as best as possible
Speaker 1: and he couldn't be bothered to lift a finger.
Speaker 2: So Martin, with that in mind, the fact that this
Speaker 2: inquest has been really significant and has given some sense
Speaker 2: of justice back to the families, what did the coroner
Speaker 2: actually find well?
Speaker 1: And I think that's a very important part that for
Speaker 1: the family, they did state at the end of the
Speaker 1: inquest that they were grateful for the coroner's work, and
Speaker 1: the coroner actually commended the family and the community immensely
Speaker 1: for their involvement and the way they assisted the coronial
Speaker 1: in quest. And the coroner found quite simply that Grant
Speaker 1: was a predator, that Grant was the only person driving
Speaker 1: the vehicle that night, that Grant was heavily intoxicated and
Speaker 1: his driving had killed Mona, Lisa and Cindy in that accident.
Speaker 1: The coroner also found the serious deficiencies in the police
Speaker 1: investigation and spoke of the racism in the police and
Speaker 1: the way that influenced their investigation or lack their role.
Speaker 1: And finally, there was a very important finding which was
Speaker 1: that the coroner found that Grant had indeed sexually assaulted Cindy.
Speaker 1: Now this was a charge he never faced. It was
Speaker 1: dropped because a ridiculous part of the law said that
Speaker 1: because the time of Cindy's death couldn't be determined, that
Speaker 1: the prosecution for his sexual assault on her after the
Speaker 1: accident couldn't go ahead. And I'm convinced had the jury
Speaker 1: heard this, that despite their own racism in the jury,
Speaker 1: this may have played a role in securing a conviction
Speaker 1: against Grant. So one thing the family asked the coroner
Speaker 1: via their lawyers to do was to amend the law
Speaker 1: so that if the time of death couldn't be determined,
Speaker 1: but that there is sufficient evidence of a sexual assault,
Speaker 1: and there was in this case. That the coroner found
Speaker 1: that the charge can still proceed and I think in
Speaker 1: finding this and in changing this aspect of the law
Speaker 1: and seeking for the Parliament to do that, the Parliament
Speaker 1: owes the families of Mona, Lisa and Cindy this tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of what they have always asked for, and it
Speaker 1: is a key part of the recommendations. But probably most
Speaker 1: importantly is the fact that after all these years, this
Speaker 1: is a huge victory for the campaigning of the family,
Speaker 1: that they are changing the law and influencing the law
Speaker 1: and exposing what has gone on. They have exposed the
Speaker 1: very fact that a white man in a regional rural
Speaker 1: town was able to pray on young Aboriginal girls. We
Speaker 1: know that Sidney had previously protected one of her own
Speaker 1: cousins from him. We know he killed those girls. We
Speaker 1: know he gave no care whatsoever. We know the police
Speaker 1: simply took him at his word. And yet despite decades
Speaker 1: of having to deal with all of this, the family
Speaker 1: have ensured that our society will be safer as a
Speaker 1: result of their loss. And for that campaigning, I think
Speaker 1: we have to be incredibly grateful and in awe of
Speaker 1: the families.
Speaker 2: And with that in mind, I just wanted to give
Speaker 2: the last word to the family. So after the inquest,
Speaker 2: Dawn Smith, Cindia's mother, said, we want to be able
Speaker 2: to hold someone accountable for what we have heard. The
Speaker 2: findings were good, but the pain and the hurt are
Speaker 2: still with us and always will be. That will never
Speaker 2: go away. I hope that other families in our position
Speaker 2: won't ever go through the same thing that we did
Speaker 2: for thirty six years. We hope that there is a
Speaker 2: change in the way the police force treats Aboriginal families
Speaker 2: who have had loved ones who they have lost or
Speaker 2: have been killed. And June Smith, Mona's mother said, for
Speaker 2: the fellows and the police that did the wrong thing,
Speaker 2: they shouldn't be in the police force. If you don't
Speaker 2: like black follows why they come out here. We all
Speaker 2: believe the same. We are proud to be black. For
Speaker 2: cops to treat us different because of racism is wrong.
Speaker 2: If it was two white girls, it would have been different.
Speaker 2: And I think that says everything about the racial and
Speaker 2: gendered violence in the police and in society, and it
Speaker 2: says something about what we hope to do through this podcast,
Speaker 2: and we hope that you'll stay with.
Speaker 1: Us horrifically as we record these post We've just learned
Speaker 1: of the murder of a young Aboriginal girl in Sydney,
Speaker 1: and so in closing this episode of Kurt and the Podcast,
Speaker 1: we ask the police to do one simple thing. Heed
Speaker 1: the calls of Mona, Lisa and Cindy's mums as they
Speaker 1: ask police to either do their job and care about
Speaker 1: Black people or not be in the police force. This
Speaker 1: epidemic of violence against Aboriginal women and children has to end.
Speaker 1: The families of Mona, Lisa and Cydndey have led the way.
Speaker 1: Now it's on the police to show another family the
Speaker 1: due diligence, love and care that Mona, Lisa and Cindy
Speaker 1: never got. This episode was brought to you by Black
Speaker 1: Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can
Speaker 1: visit us at www dot curtinthepodcast dot com, follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Curtain Podcast, and help to support our
Speaker 1: work look at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast.
Speaker 2: M H