Violence hurts 2 in 3 women

12th August 2006, 14:30 WST

Two-thirds of West Australian women aged between 18 and 34 have experienced physical or sexual violence in the past year, new Australian Bureau of Statistics research shows, sparking fears about the State’s burgeoning violent underbelly.
The bureau’s latest personal safety survey shows an alarming number of women have been stalked, assaulted, threatened or victimised.

One in five women surveyed said they had been stalked at some stage, having been followed or had people loiter with the intention to harm or frighten them.

About 18 per cent had been harassed by obscene phone calls, subjected to inappropriate comments about their body or sex life and unwanted sexual touching in the past year.

And 17 per cent of respondents had been subjected to violence at the hands of a previous partner, while 15 per cent said they had been sexually assaulted.

Thirty-five per cent of respondents said they felt unsafe walking alone in their neighbourhoods at night and a quarter said they did not use public transport alone after dark because of safety fears.

Women’s Council for Domestic and Family Violence Services executive officer Angela Hartwig said data provided in the new survey was the tip of the iceberg and the issue needed to remain on the agenda of State and Federal governments.

“For us (these statistics are) not surprising given one in two women are turned away from women’s refuges in WA,” Ms Hartwig said. “Seeing these sorts of statistics is alarming for us because there’s a lot of State and national interventions in place and it’s not serving to reduce things in any sort of way.”

Victims’ advocate Georgia Prideaux said she was not surprised by the data that showed an overwhelming percentage of women — as many as one in four — had endured physical and sexual violence.

Ms Prideaux said violent outbursts were often prompted by emotional issues and compacted by alcohol or drug abuse or mental health problems.

“It would be a large majority (of incidents) that would be quite severe,” Ms Prideaux said. “Really it is a huge problem and it can escalate to the point where people lose their lives over it.”

Advocates for Survivors of Child Abuse spokeswoman Michelle Stubbs encouraged women who had been sexually assaulted to report incidents to police in an effort to minimise the risk of reoffending.

Nicole Cox

The West Australian

Trainee pilots tested after TB case

12thAugust 2006, 14:30 WST

The Health Department has been forced to test 260 international aviation students for tuberculosis after a Chinese man studying at a WA pilottraining college was diagnosed with the highly contagious disease.

The department has screened staff and students from the China Southern West Australian Flying College, based in Jandakot and Merredin, who may have had contact with the infected man. It is understood the man is being treated for tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that mainly affects the lungs and is spread by inhaling airborne germs, after contracting the disease last month.

Department spokeswoman Shirley Bowen said it was likely the man contracted tuberculosis in China. The 45 students deemed at risk of getting the disease had been placed on a preventive treatment regime. Staff and students having the preventive treatment would have further tests and chest X-rays in a year if they remained in Australia, Dr Bowen said.

She said although refugees and migrants were screened routinely for tuberculosis, people entering Australia on an international student visa were not tested. But Dr Bowen said people should not panic because extensive screening meant there was little chance of the disease spreading in the community.

“In terms of risk to the wider community, we are doing everything we can to make sure the transmission risk (is minimised),” she said. “There is nothing else that could be done.”

About 65 cases of tuberculosis are reported in WA each year.

Flying college administration officer Burt Hoogland said students’ medical information was confidential and refused to discuss the issue. More than 100 cadet pilots graduate each year from the college and return to work for China Southern Airlines, the company’s website says.

Opposition health spokesman Kim Hames yesterday renewed his call for mandatory health screenings for skilled migrants working in WA in light of the push by business lobby groups to increase the number of skilled migrants coming into Australia by 40,000 a year.

“We should have mandatory screenings,” Dr Hames said. “Tuberculosis is a dangerous disease. It doesn’t just cause lung disease, it causes severe illnesses.”

He said considerable effort was made to prevent the disease spreading through foreign plant matter and the same effort should be made to protect the community from illness.

“If it is a plant (being brought into Australia) we are rigorous in trying to keep it out,” Dr Hames said.

Megan Sadler and Nicole Cox

DCD blamed for infant’s death14th

August 2006, 14:00 WST

A tougher sentence on serial baby basher Kriston John Scale would have made no difference to the plight of an 11-month-old baby who died while in his care, WA Chief Justice Wayne Martin said yesterday.

Justice Martin defended retired magistrate Robert Burton’s sentencing of Mr Scale to a total of 17 months in jail in 1999 and pointed the finger squarely at the Department of Community Development.

“If the department is not paying attention to prior convictions then it doesn’t matter what sentence is imposed,” he said.

But former community development minister Sheila McHale yesterday refused to take responsibility for the Shoalwater boy’s death, despite criticism from the Chief Justice and her successor, David Templeman.

Wade Scale drowned in a bath which his drug-addicted parents, Mr Scale and Angela Jakins, had failed to empty in 2003 — Ms McHale’s third year as community development minister.

The tragic case was highlighted in a damning report released last week by State Coroner Alastair Hope.

Mr Hope attacked the DCD in his report for giving Mr Scale custody of Wade and another baby despite having been jailed in 1999 for beating a 17-month old baby and two toddlers. He was released after just six months.

But Ms McHale, who was dumped from the contentious DCD portfolio in February after a litany of negative reports about children being abused in foster care, said she had been “misinformed” by her department and was therefore not at fault.

That put her at odds with the Community Development Minister’s view that the Gallop government was to blame for Wade’s death.

“The government of the day and indeed successive governments failed Wade because the department was under-resourced,” a spokeswoman for Mr Templeman said.

In his findings, the Coroner concluded baby Wade’s body contained high levels of a prescription sedative for adults. Mr Hope said it was possible the drugs had been given to the infant to keep him quiet and that only his parents would have had a motive to do that.

The Opposition seized on the conflicting views of Ms McHale and Mr Templeman yesterday, with shadow community development minister Robyn McSweeney saying it was indicative of the farcical state the DCD was in.

Ben Spencer

Wherever trail starts, buck must stop somewhere

14th August 2006, 14:15 WST

There are so many grotesque aspects to the case history surrounding 11-month-old Wade Scale’s death in July 2003 that it is difficult to know where to begin.
But November 1, 1995, is perhaps the most obvious starting point.

This is the date that baby Wade’s father Kriston John Scale beat a twoyear-old boy so badly he left the child with a fractured skull and eyelids so swollen he couldn’t see.

The toddler wasn’t his. He was the son of a woman Mr Scale was seeing at the time. As unimaginable as this will be to anyone with even a hint of humanity, no complaint was laid against Mr Scale for his brutal assault on the defenceless little boy and no charges were laid against him.

He beat the child black and blue, resulting in the boy being treated at two major hospitals, and somehow Mr Scale got away with it scot-free.

Move ahead three years to October 2, 1998, and Mr Scale is now in a relationship with Angela Jakins — the mother of two little girls aged three and 17 months.

In the most cowardly of violent acts a grown man could ever resort to, Mr Scale bashed both children over a two-day period leaving them with extensive facial and other injuries. Despite Ms Jakins staying loyal to this most disgusting human being, police charged him with two counts of assault occasioning bodily harm.

By the time he appeared in Rockingham Magistrate’s Court a third assault charge had been added to his file in relation to the 1995 bashing.

But it is at this point the questions about the handling of this horrendous serial child-beating case really start to emerge.

If, as Coroner Alastair Hope wrote in his findings into baby Wade’s death, Mr Scale punched his 1995 victim so hard he fractured the child’s skull, why wasn’t he committed to stand trial in the District Court for grievous bodily harm?
His charges of assault guaranteed him a lighter sentence in the Magistrate’s Court and that is exactly what he got.

For all three shocking crimes Mr Scale was sentenced to 17 months jail after Magistrate Robert Burton rolled each bashing case into one rather than punish him with the two years maximum jail sentence available to him on each charge.
Magistrate Burton also made Mr Scale eligible for parole and he was a free man six months later.

Within a couple of years of being released, Mr Scale was caring for another baby with Ms Jakins and then on August 7, 2002, Wade was born. Only two days before Wade’s birth Mr Scale tested positive for amphetamines and opiates under a Department for Community Development monitoring regime. Four months later both Mr Scale and Ms Jakins tested positive for the use of speed.

How could someone so violent towards children ever be allowed care for another? Why wasn’t Mr Scale’s and Ms Jakins’ blatant rejection of the DCD’s anti-drug program enough for the department to say enough is enough?

Incredibly, the DCD’s response to continued positive drug tests was to discontinue them on June 10, 2003.

Wade’s grandmother Margaret Jakins knew that young lives were facing a clear and present danger and when her pleas to the DCD failed she penned letters to MPs and even the premier at the time, Geoff Gallop.

“I hope my fears for the two little ones are only that and it does not end in tragedy,” she wrote.

But she was continually given the brush-off, according to Mr Hope’s findings, and on top of that current Labor Government Minister Mark McGowan, her local MP at the time, was misled when he inquired into the level of supervision being applied to Wade’s parents.

On July 30, 2003, Wade was found dead in a bath which had been left full of water from the night before. His body contained enough adult prescription sedative to have put baby Wade into a deep sleep.

The Coroner’s open finding into his death leaves room for blame to be laid, but as in the manner in which this comment piece began, it’s difficult to know where to start.

A man so repulsive he can pummel little children with his bare fists? A mother so selfish and negligent?

A justice system so devoid of reality that it results in such brutal crimes being punished with just six months in jail?

A government department that can blame understaffing and a lack of funding when just the stroke of a pen could have saved a baby’s life?

Politicians who put their pay packets and positions above any accountability when it comes to accepting that the buck must stop somewhere?

One thing is for certain. No one can blame an 11-month-old baby who didn’t stand a chance.

State ‘changed rules’ for Fong’s pay deal15th

August 2006, 9:15 WST
The public service watchdog has detailed how the State Government quietly watered down a crucial WA Inc-inspired regulation so Neale Fong could keep his exorbitant salary when he became Health Department director-general.

In a discussion paper to be released today, Maxine Murray, the Public Sector Standards Commissioner, warns that the action was against the spirit of WA Inc royal commission recommendations and placed the integrity of senior public service appointments at risk. Dr Fong was made acting director-general of the Health Department in November 2004 but had to wait until October 2005 before he became the “substantive occupant” of the job.

According to Ms Murray, that was because the initial $538,000 pay packet he brought with him from his job as head of the North Metropolitan Health Service was outside the range available to the Government for a Health Department boss. Dr Fong was appointed to the NMHS ostensibly to oversee the implementation of the Government’s Reid report into the WA health system. Under the Act governing the service, his salary was at the discretion of Health Minister Jim McGinty.

But not long after joining the NMHS, the then Health Department chief Mike Daube resigned and Dr Fong became acting director-general. At that stage, the Government removed the position from the jurisdiction of the Salaries and Allowances Tribunal where the top level for a director-general of health was $288,000 a year.

But even then a troublesome formula contained in Public Sector Management Act regulations meant Dr Fong could only be paid the sort of money other health bosses around the country were getting, and that was a long way short of $538,000.

The Government amended the regulations in September last year to do away with the formula and put payment of non-SAT chief executives at its own discretion. Dr Fong’s annual pay has since risen to more than $634,000.

The amendments were not debated and passed through State Parliament largely unnoticed but have since become known in Government circles as the “Fong amendments”. Ms Murray only became aware of them when they were published in the Government Gazette.

She was at pains yesterday to point out that Dr Fong was well-qualified to get the job but said the process by which he was appointed “creates a serious risk to the integrity of the senior appointments process for the public sector”. “If it were used to appoint friends, party political colleagues or those who do not possess the necessary skills or qualifications, as the WA Inc royal commission identified had occurred, this would exacerbate the problem,” she said.

Mr McGinty said last night: “Dr Neale Fong was appointed director-general of Health because he is highly qualified, suitable for the role and the best person to implement the biggest reform of the health system in the State’s history.”

Ms Murray also raises concerns in her paper about the way former environment minister Judy Edwards was apparently able to sidestep regulations governing the appointment of a chief executive by keeping former Department of Environment boss Derek Carew-Hopkins in an acting role for three years.
Robert Taylor, State Politics Editor, EXCLUSIVE

Mother fears son’s stabber will go free15th

August 2006, 15:45 WST

The mother of a bouncer who was stabbed outside a Joondalup pub says she is appalled that his teenage attacker is likely to get off with a slap on the wrist, accusing the boy of scheming and lying.

In a bizarre case, the Turkishborn teenager has avoided having his case heard in an adult court by convincing a magistrate he was only 17 at the time of the stabbing, despite his Australian passport and WA driver’s licence showing he was 19.

Mimi, the bouncer’s mother, said she held little hope of the teenager receiving the jail term she says he deserves when he is sentenced in the Children’s Court next month and she is calling for a thorough investigation into the matter. “If he gets away with it, it just makes a mockery of the whole system,” she said.

The teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, stabbed Mimi’s son in the stomach and bystander Keith Lowrie in his leg and shoulder outside the Grand Boulevard Tavern on January 29 last year. Mimi’s son, who has three young children, required surgery to a damaged liver and spent several weeks off work. Mr Lowrie received a total of 38 stitches. Police charged the teenager as an adult after the stabbings because Australian records showed he was born in 1985 — making him 19.

But after a trip to Turkey last year, the teenager produced documents and testimony from his mother to convince Children’s Court Magistrate Tim Schwass that he was born in 1987 — making him 17.

The teenager pleaded guilty in Perth Children’s Court last month to one count each of grievous bodily harm and unlawful wounding and is due to be sentenced on September 1.

Mimi says the notion that the teenager and his family suddenly realised he was 17 after he was charged is ridiculous. “The mother has just said: ‘whoops, I do remember he was born two years later than what I actually said, sorry’, and the court just accepts it,” Mimi said. Mimi says that if the teenager really is 17, he and his family must have lied to Federal authorities about his age when they came to Australia in the 1990s and the teenager had therefore been driving and attending licensed premises underage.

“He should be charged one way or the other,” Mimi said. “If he gets off by the courts, then all the other things at least should be taken up by the police.”

But Mimi has not been encouraged by the response from authorities. The Immigration Department has investigated the matter and says it found no evidence of fraudulent behaviour. Police have not laid any new charges and a spokesman said that any future charges would be dependent on the evidence available.

Mimi plans to write to Premier Alan Carpenter and Attorney-General Jim McGinty to call for an investigation into the matter.
Ryan Pedler
from The West Australian