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.