Speaker 1: This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances
Speaker 1: of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on
Speaker 1: the darkest parts of our justice system. We ask who
Speaker 1: are the victims?
Speaker 2: I'm aiming Maguire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior Advocate at
Speaker 2: the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning. This series
Speaker 2: contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content
Speaker 2: that may upset some listeners.
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode four of season two of Curtain the podcast.
Speaker 1: This season, as we've told you, we've been investigating the
Speaker 1: disappearances of Aboriginal women and children across the country, and
Speaker 1: one of the questions that often comes up is would
Speaker 1: this have happened to a white person or a white child?
Speaker 1: And we know instinctively, as Aboriginal people that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have happened, and yet there is not a level of
Speaker 1: detail given as to the differences between how the police
Speaker 1: investigate cases. Today, we're going to break down in detail
Speaker 1: exactly the police responses using comparative cases. We're going to
Speaker 1: look at two very high profile cases, and there are
Speaker 1: cases that you've probably heard about, one of young Cleo
Speaker 1: over in Western Australia and then the devastating disappearance of
Speaker 1: William Terrell and William Terrell is still disappeared.
Speaker 2: We're going to.
Speaker 1: Compare that with the cases of Baby Charlie and Colleen Walker.
Speaker 1: These are cases involving Aboriginal children that you may have
Speaker 1: not heard about and yet which are names that are
Speaker 1: well known across Aboriginal Australia, and we think it's very
Speaker 1: important as we continue these investigations that we understand clearly
Speaker 1: the differences in how police respond to missing persons, and
Speaker 1: by understanding those differences, we can see clearly how their
Speaker 1: responses are racialized and are examples of racial violence. So Martin,
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with you about your analysis into
Speaker 1: one of these cases. Cleo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Amy.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Cleo Smith was a four year old Australian girl at
Speaker 2: the time when she was abducted on the sixteenth of
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty one from a camp site in the
Speaker 2: Gascoyne region of Western Australia. Her family briefly searched for
Speaker 2: her and informed police at six twenty three am when
Speaker 2: they realized she was not in the vicinity of the campsite.
Speaker 2: A police car was dispatched seven minutes after the phone
Speaker 2: call and arrived at the remote site at seven ten am.
Speaker 2: Police then conducted an air, land and sea search around
Speaker 2: the area for the majority of the day. Task Force
Speaker 2: Rodeo was launched by the West Australian Police with assistance
Speaker 2: from the Australian Federal Police, involving more than one hundred
Speaker 2: officers led by Superintendent Rod Wilde, and the Western Australian
Speaker 2: Government offered a reward of a million dollars. The other
Speaker 2: case we're going to discuss, as Amy said, is William
Speaker 2: Tyrrel and as many might know, he disappeared at the
Speaker 2: age of three from Kendall in New South Wales on
Speaker 2: the twelfth of September twenty fourteen at ten fifty seven am.
Speaker 2: His foster mother called Triple O to report him missing
Speaker 2: and New South Wales Police arrived at the scene at
Speaker 2: eleven oh six am. Motorcycles and helicopters were brought into search.
Speaker 2: Two hundred volunteers were used to search overnight and hundreds
Speaker 2: of people combed rugged terrain around the home. Police divers
Speaker 2: searched waterways and dams. Police searched every single house in
Speaker 2: the estate which is near eye to his location, and
Speaker 2: they actually did this on multiple occasions. Detection dogs were
Speaker 2: also brought in and managed to detect Williams scent, but
Speaker 2: only within the boundaries of the backyard. Strike Force Roseanne
Speaker 2: was established with a specially trained investigator from the State
Speaker 2: Crime Command leading it up and again in the same
Speaker 2: way that the West Australian government did, the new South
Speaker 2: Wales government offered a million dollar award, but a year
Speaker 2: before William disappeared. In March twenty twenty three, Tamika Malayy,
Speaker 2: a young mother, was violently assaulted and left bleeding in
Speaker 2: a Broome street by her ex partner Mervyn Bell. Miss
Speaker 2: Bailey pleaded with police when they arrived to help her,
Speaker 2: but instead she was handcuffed and sent to hospital. Her father,
Speaker 2: Ted Malaly, also tried to raise the alarm with the police,
Speaker 2: telling them that Tamika's baby, ten month year old Charlie
Speaker 2: was in serious danger. Mervyn Bell, the ex partner, had
Speaker 2: previously made violent and disgusting threats against the little boy.
Speaker 2: He urged them to bring Charlie with them, but he
Speaker 2: too was ignored and would later be sentenced for obstructing police. Instead.
Speaker 2: Ten months your old baby Charlie was passed to friends
Speaker 2: and Tamika was taken away by the police. Tamika and
Speaker 2: Ted were victims. They begged the police for help, but
Speaker 2: they are Aboriginal, so instead of help, they were arrested.
Speaker 2: The police simply didn't care. They arrested an Aboriginal woman
Speaker 2: who had just been violently assaulted and didn't listen to
Speaker 2: her father that his little grandson could be next. There
Speaker 2: was no seven minute response as there was for Cleo,
Speaker 2: or a nine minute response as there was for William.
Speaker 2: That is the response time we should expect for every child. Instead, Tamika,
Speaker 2: a victim of serious domestic violence, was taken away to
Speaker 2: Joe and then hospital. In the meantime, Tamika's former partner,
Speaker 2: the man who had just assaulted her, Mervin Bell, arrived
Speaker 2: at the house and took ten months old baby Charlie
Speaker 2: from friends and a warning for listeners. The next few
Speaker 2: moments detail some fairly horrific violence. Over the next fifteen hours,
Speaker 2: Mervin Bell tortured baby Charlie, assaulted him, sexually, abused him,
Speaker 2: and finally murdered him. It would take the police twelve
Speaker 2: hours before they started to look for baby Charlie. They'd
Speaker 2: misplaced information that had been given to them, They passed
Speaker 2: on an inaccurate number plate that would have led to
Speaker 2: Mervin Bell, and they never bothered to use mobile phone
Speaker 2: data to locate him, the very same thing they used
Speaker 2: when Cleo went missing. The same Western Australian Police, Baby
Speaker 2: Charlie was taken by Bell to a road house, already
Speaker 2: deceeased with visible burns, broken bones, internal bleeding and severe abrasions.
Speaker 2: The West Australian Police arrested an Aboriginal woman who had
Speaker 2: just been violently assaulted, and they let a child murderer
Speaker 2: run free for hours. Bell would be convicted a year later,
Speaker 2: but he killed himself in prison. Tamika and her father
Speaker 2: Ted were convicted for assaulting and obstructing police, and it
Speaker 2: would take nearly ten years for them to be pardoned.
Speaker 2: An investigation by the Crime and Corruption Commission found and
Speaker 2: I quote there was a delayed and ineffective response by
Speaker 2: individual officers on the night, but it was impossible to know,
Speaker 2: they said, whether a more rapid response could have saved
Speaker 2: Baby Charlie. Saying impossible to know is beyond insulting to
Speaker 2: Baby Charlie's memory and everything to Meeka and Ted have
Speaker 2: been through. Had they simply a arrested Bell for his
Speaker 2: violent assault on Tamika, Baby Charlie would be alive today.
Speaker 2: Had they listened to her father, Ted's urging that Mervin
Speaker 2: Bell had made serious threats and baby Charlie was in danger.
Speaker 2: Baby Charlie would be alive. Had they commenced a search
Speaker 2: immediately and tracked his phone, as they'd done for others.
Speaker 2: Baby Charlie would be alive. Had they been simply smart
Speaker 2: enough to pass on a license plate correctly from one
Speaker 2: officer to the next, or done anything that any decent
Speaker 2: person could and would do, Baby Charlie would be alive.
Speaker 2: Quite frankly, how any of those officers aren't in jail
Speaker 2: alongside Bell can only be explained by nation that reacts
Speaker 2: in a moment's notice for some and simply lets black
Speaker 2: women and children be bashed and killed right in front
Speaker 2: of their very eyes. And in case you still need
Speaker 2: more convincing, even after Baby Charlie was found dead, went
Speaker 2: to his grandpa Ted's home and racially abused him for hours.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety, in September, an aboriginal teenager, Colleen Walker,
Speaker 2: went missing from Barraville. Her sister, Paula says, and I quote,
Speaker 2: Colleen never went anywhere without letting Mum know wherever she was.
Speaker 2: And I remember Mum coming down and asking did anyone
Speaker 2: see Colleen? Like he was just mainly family going looking
Speaker 2: and asking questions about where Colleen is or where she was.
Speaker 2: When people said they didn't see Colleen, I know Mum
Speaker 2: started to panic. I'm Colleen's younger sister. I was fifteen
Speaker 2: at the time when she went missing. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's sunk into myself until a while after that
Speaker 2: she was never going to come home or we were
Speaker 2: never going to see her again. Detective Inspector Gary Jubilin
Speaker 2: from the New South Wales Police was brought on to
Speaker 2: the case in the year's following and he says, I quote,
Speaker 2: at the time, there was two schools of thought. She
Speaker 2: was a sixteen year old girl and whether a sixteen
Speaker 2: year old girl has inadvertently decided to go to another
Speaker 2: location without telling people or acting irresponsibly. I would suggest
Speaker 2: there was that school of thought, but there was also
Speaker 2: the concern that something had happened to her. Paula, Colleen's sister,
Speaker 2: contradicts that she said, I remember the police not taking
Speaker 2: it seriously when Colleen went missing. They were like, there
Speaker 2: was never any search parties, no one searched for her.
Speaker 2: About the family, they told mum awful things like she
Speaker 2: probably just went walk about. In the month's following, the
Speaker 2: same man we all know murdered Colleen would go on
Speaker 2: to kill two more Aboriginal children, Colleen's little cousin, four
Speaker 2: year old Evelyn Greener and sixteen year old Clinton Speedy Duro.
Speaker 2: But again, just like baby Charlie, these were average children.
Speaker 2: So the police simply didn't care. There was no seven
Speaker 2: or nine minute response. There was just no response at all.
Speaker 2: As the Bauerville families gathered in front of police demanding answers,
Speaker 2: a senior officer addressed the crowd. He said, and I quote,
Speaker 2: to do this investigation properly, we've got to have you
Speaker 2: people on side working with us, you people. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine if they'd said that to Chloe Smith's family, to
Speaker 2: William Tyrell's family, to the family of any missing white child,
Speaker 2: that officer would lose his job in a moment. Instead,
Speaker 2: Aboriginal children were not humane enough to be considered, and
Speaker 2: their angry parents and relatives were more of an agitation
Speaker 2: to police than anything else when it comes to the media.
Speaker 2: In the case of Cleo Smith, it was the police
Speaker 2: themselves that kept feeding the story post her success or rescue.
Speaker 2: They released audio of the moment of the little girl's
Speaker 2: rescue and video of her a few minutes later on
Speaker 2: the Friday night after she'd been found. It was the
Speaker 2: police that distributed her statement from the family, who thanked
Speaker 2: everyone involved in the rescue, particularly the police. So not
Speaker 2: only had the police acted for the family in finding her,
Speaker 2: they then went on to act as their own pr
Speaker 2: firm and for the family. Amy, I want to ask
Speaker 2: you how the media generally responds to these cases, Given
Speaker 2: that we know in Cleo's case that the media was
Speaker 2: everywhere and all over it, what do you think happens
Speaker 2: when Aboriginal children go missing.
Speaker 1: I think you've raised a very important point Martin, particularly
Speaker 1: in relation to the police feeding the story, and we
Speaker 1: saw that also with William Terrell. So what I've found
Speaker 1: is often the Isralian media will be led by the
Speaker 1: police in determining what is a newsworthy death or what
Speaker 1: is a newsworthy disappearance, because the media emerges as a
Speaker 1: really important part of trying to find someone who is missing,
Speaker 1: because obviously when you put their cases on primetime news,
Speaker 1: you're searching for leeds, you're searching for any information that
Speaker 1: could come from there, and so the media become an
Speaker 1: organ for the police in order to continue their investigation.
Speaker 1: But the issue there is the media having a symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationship with police, is that then there emerges the silence
Speaker 1: around children who had disappeared who are not seen as newsworthy,
Speaker 1: and those are black children, those are Aboriginal children, as
Speaker 1: if seen in those really horrific examples of Baby Charlie
Speaker 1: and of Colleen Walker and the Bowable children, Clinton Speedy
Speaker 1: Dua and Evelyn Greenup, is that they were not afforded
Speaker 1: the police response that they should have been afforded because
Speaker 1: their disappearance, even the disappearance of a little three year
Speaker 1: old girl like Evelyn Greenup, was still seen as their
Speaker 1: own responsibility. So the media did not care for them
Speaker 1: because they didn't see this as even an issue that
Speaker 1: these were potentially disappearances which were of their own making.
Speaker 1: And you see particularly the really horrific racial violence in
Speaker 1: the case of Baby Charlie, which is really really hard
Speaker 1: to talk about I have trouble listening to the details
Speaker 1: of Baby Charlie's case. And I know that if you're
Speaker 1: here listening and you don't know about Baby Charlie, I
Speaker 1: imagine that you would have difficulty listening too. But Baby
Speaker 1: Charlie's case shows exactly how the police a violent towards
Speaker 1: black women, and how they contribute and reproduce violence on
Speaker 1: the bodies of not just black women, but black children
Speaker 1: through their failure to care and through the racial violence
Speaker 1: they enact on Aboriginal families who are the ones who
Speaker 1: cared for them. And there has never been justice for
Speaker 1: Baby Charlie, and there's never been justice for Colleen Walker,
Speaker 1: who has still disappeared. And the media coverage that you
Speaker 1: have seen of Baby Charlie's case and that you have
Speaker 1: seen of Colleen Walker's case is because of the Aboriginal families.
Speaker 1: And they stood there and they refused to go away,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to get the memories of their children heard,
Speaker 1: and they are wanting to fight for justice. And I
Speaker 1: remember when Cleo Smith particularly went missing and there was
Speaker 1: waves of coverage. It was the number one news story
Speaker 1: in the country. I remember thinking there were questions that
Speaker 1: were raised at that time coming from Aboriginal community about
Speaker 1: the fact where is the coverage and where is the outrage,
Speaker 1: and where is the concern for black children who go missing?
Speaker 1: And there are many black children who go missing every
Speaker 1: single year, And so there was this small conversation that
Speaker 1: was happening around the same time, but Aboriginal people who
Speaker 1: were talking about this were told to shut up and
Speaker 1: to concentrate instead on the issue of getting Cleo home.
Speaker 1: But there were really important conversations that had to be had,
Speaker 1: and it comes down to the very idea of newsworthiness
Speaker 1: and how we construct newsworthiness. So Cleosmith's case and William
Speaker 1: Tyrell's case became widespread news stories because they had these
Speaker 1: common elements of newsworthiness. In relation to the rarity of
Speaker 1: the cases. It's incredibly rare for a child to be
Speaker 1: abducted by a stranger in Australia. In William's Tyrrel's case,
Speaker 1: we still don't know what happened, but the circumstances of
Speaker 1: his case was he was at home and suddenly disappeared
Speaker 1: from his front yard. And similarly, in Cleo's case, it
Speaker 1: was always going to be a big newsworthy case because
Speaker 1: of the rarity because of the idea of a stranger
Speaker 1: and the images and the fear that that conjure us.
Speaker 1: And it was really good that Cleo and William both
Speaker 1: had that coverage, even though in one case where still
Speaker 1: police are still searching for William. But what happens is
Speaker 1: that the cases of Aboriginal children, they are cases that
Speaker 1: are newsworthy. So you look at Baby Charlie and you
Speaker 1: look at the circumstances of Colin Walker, They're not seen
Speaker 1: as that because other things are constructed around them to
Speaker 1: make them seen as unnewsworthier, as unworthy of attention. And
Speaker 1: that goes directly to Colleen Walker's case being framed as
Speaker 1: a case of her going walk about. The other Barville
Speaker 1: children being framed as cases of their own responsibility. You know,
Speaker 1: they've just disappeared. There's no one who has caused their disappearance.
Speaker 1: And the case of baby Charlie where I think the
Speaker 1: police are made absent in this story where there is
Speaker 1: a perpetrate who is the man who took baby Charlie's life,
Speaker 1: who perpetrated violence upon him and who perpetrated violence against
Speaker 1: his mother. But the violence of the police in refusing
Speaker 1: to take refusing to first take the mother seriously and
Speaker 1: to incarcerate her, to treat her so appallingly, and also
Speaker 1: the racial violence towards her grandfather and the way he
Speaker 1: was seen, and I know that they were talking about
Speaker 1: him being potentially a drunk Aboriginal person, which is totally untrue.
Speaker 1: He cared for his grandson and he was deeply fearful
Speaker 1: for his grandson, and that is shown in a lot
Speaker 1: of text messages that came out in the CCC investigation.
Speaker 1: And so even if stories like Colleen Walker, even if
Speaker 1: stories like Baby Charlie have all of the usual elements
Speaker 1: of newsworthy and as according to standard journalistic practice, they
Speaker 1: are still not seen as newsworthy. They're still not seen
Speaker 1: as life's worthy of being found and of lives worthy
Speaker 1: of being mourned, and of lives worthy of justice. And
Speaker 1: that is the issue. And I think the importance of
Speaker 1: Martin's analysis there is that you can't deny it because
Speaker 1: it's as clear as day when you look at the
Speaker 1: details of the differences between the police and the media response.
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people aren't making it up when we say this
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened to a white child, So why does
Speaker 1: it keep happening to our black women and our black children.
Speaker 1: And I should also say Aboriginal men as well, because
Speaker 1: there have been cases where Aboriginal men have disappeared and
Speaker 1: we hear nothing of them until the families rise up
Speaker 1: and make people know about this. Martin, did you want
Speaker 1: to reflect on anything I just said there? What came
Speaker 1: out for you when you were looking at this analysis.
Speaker 2: One thing is I was listening to what you were explaining, Ami,
Speaker 2: is that this is not the first time on this podcast,
Speaker 2: which has been going for more than six years, that
Speaker 2: we've raised this issue. In fact, quite a number of
Speaker 2: years ago we brought up a case again in Western
Speaker 2: Australia where the West Australian police were called by an
Speaker 2: Aboriginal grandmother whose daughter had just been violently assaulted. And
Speaker 2: when the police turned up, they didn't assist the grandmother,
Speaker 2: they didn't assist her daughter. They arrested both, just as
Speaker 2: they'd done in the case of Baby Charlie's mum and grandfather.
Speaker 2: And this story prompted a chapter in the stellar prize
Speaker 2: winning book by Jess Hill See What You Made Me Do,
Speaker 2: about domestic violence, and Jess talks about in the book
Speaker 2: how shocked she was to hear of such a case.
Speaker 2: And you have to remember that she's a very senior
Speaker 2: leading journalist in this country who's won many prizes. And
Speaker 2: yet despite the hours I spent discussing this issue with
Speaker 2: Jess and in many radio interviews and TV interviews, and
Speaker 2: I know Amy did the same, the response from everyone
Speaker 2: who supposedly wanted the right thing was to call for
Speaker 2: more laws, for more police action. Nobody had actually listened
Speaker 2: to what we said, which was the police were the problem.
Speaker 2: And so all these years later, we're back having the
Speaker 2: same conversation. So I wonder, Amy, given that we have
Speaker 2: been involved in this discussion, given that we've laid out
Speaker 2: the facts, given that they just simply can't be disputed
Speaker 2: that the reaction of police to white and black is
Speaker 2: so starkly different, is there any way that things can change?
Speaker 2: And what role does the media have in if they
Speaker 2: hear these stories and then simply fail to report the
Speaker 2: truth that the police are the problem.
Speaker 1: As you were talking, I was reminded of a lot
Speaker 1: of the because I think it is a similar violence
Speaker 1: the cases and stories I've done and also read about
Speaker 1: deaths in the health system, particularly deaths of Aboriginal children
Speaker 1: and the health system. And I know there are cases
Speaker 1: where Aboriginal mothers bring their children to the hospitals very
Speaker 1: very concerned about their well being, they're in such ill health.
Speaker 1: What happens is that often, and this emerges from coronial inquests,
Speaker 1: is that the doctors and the nurses don't take the
Speaker 1: concerns of the mothers seriously and they don't actually look
Speaker 1: at the underlying issue of why these children are coming
Speaker 1: to the emergency. Often they're left and sent home with
Speaker 1: things like pendole and they later pass away of things
Speaker 1: like sepsis or infections that avoidable deaths, of infections that
Speaker 1: could have been treated very early on, but are totally ignored.
Speaker 1: And that comes down to the callous response shown from
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses to the mothers and to the families.
Speaker 1: And when you think of things like sepsis, one of
Speaker 1: the things that from what I understand, that doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses have to look at is how concerned the parents
Speaker 1: are about what is going through, what is happening to
Speaker 1: their child. That's one of the warning signs for things
Speaker 1: like sepsis. And there have been cases where Aboriginal children
Speaker 1: have guided sepsis because they have been turned away from hospitals,
Speaker 1: And I think of it similarly in the cases of
Speaker 1: disappeared Aboriginal children and women and men. Often the families
Speaker 1: will know something is wrong and that they're not taken seriously.
Speaker 1: So we know, I think we've talked about it in
Speaker 1: this podcast that there are many missing persons who go
Speaker 1: missing every single year Acrostus country, and the vast majority
Speaker 1: of them will be missing for a day and then
Speaker 1: they will be found. So often this means that it
Speaker 1: might just be a usalert that the police release on
Speaker 1: social media, and often there's no further coverage than that.
Speaker 1: But what a journalist can do is talk to the
Speaker 1: family and find out why this is so out of character,
Speaker 1: why you are so concerned, Because Aboriginal women and children
Speaker 1: just don't go missing, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: there are ways that you can make sure that you
Speaker 1: elevate the concerns of the families. And even if it's
Speaker 1: not a continuing news story, the fact a child has
Speaker 1: disappeared or gone missing should be concerned enough because they're
Speaker 1: in an unsafe environment. No child should be out there
Speaker 1: missing on the streets. That is the first thing you
Speaker 1: should worry about. There should be concern amongst the community
Speaker 1: about finding that child. Even if something hasn't happened to them,
Speaker 1: the fact that they are out there and not at
Speaker 1: home should be a concern straight away. And so I
Speaker 1: think it starts from taking these disappearances seriously and from
Speaker 1: acknowledging the concerns of the families, because in every case
Speaker 1: that I've looked at, the families are the ones who
Speaker 1: are so concerned and report their loved one missing, and
Speaker 1: so often they are turned away. And the thing you
Speaker 1: have to know about these stories we talk about is
Speaker 1: that they're not aberrations. They are happening to what we
Speaker 1: consider to be a crisis level. But you don't hear
Speaker 1: about them because if the media wait for the police
Speaker 1: to lead, then you're not you're not going to get
Speaker 1: the coverage that every one of these disappearances deserve. And
Speaker 1: so you actually have to do journalistic work. You can't
Speaker 1: be beholden to a police pr department, and there are
Speaker 1: ways you can talk about that by talking to the
Speaker 1: families and being of service to the families and finding
Speaker 1: their loved ones.
Speaker 2: And so I think the message there is really clear
Speaker 2: in terms of the evidence we've presented and then, as
Speaker 2: Ami has explined as both an experienced journalist and a
Speaker 2: scholar in this area, journalists simply have to do their jobs.
Speaker 2: Stop copying and pasting pr press releases from the police. Instead,
Speaker 2: do what you would do in any other case, listen
Speaker 2: to what the family is telling you, and do your
Speaker 2: job investigate, because, as we know, the police simply don't
Speaker 2: do it, they don't care, and there's stronger language that
Speaker 2: we could use very easily, and the evidence backs that up.
Speaker 2: Join us again next episode as we further investigate the
Speaker 2: crisis of disappeared and murdered Aboriginal women and children in
Speaker 2: this country. This episode was brought to you by black
Speaker 2: Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can
Speaker 2: visit us at www dot Curtain podcast dot com, follow
Speaker 2: us on Twitter at Curtain podcast, and help to support
Speaker 2: our work at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast