Ghost Child Read online

  Number 12 was the padded cell. People think they don’t exist but they do, and they’re like on the TV, too, with white foam and rough material on the walls and on the floor. Again, it was bigger and more comfortable than a normal cell, but it was full as well.

  ‘Jesus,’ said the first officer. ‘Number 15?’

  Number 15 was the smallest cell, one of the few that had only one bunk. They were trying to find a cell where Lisa could be alone, trying to find a room where she wouldn’t have to share with two prostitutes and a junkie going cold turkey. They were treating her like a human being.

  The guard on duty said, ‘Yeah, okay, Number 15.’ They walked Lisa down the hall. I fell into step behind them. I suppose I wanted to see her go into the cell. I wanted to see the door close. I wanted to look through the peephole, to see if she’d slump down or just stand there, bewildered.

  She said, ‘How long are you gonna put me here?’

  I said, ‘You’ll have a bail hearing in the morning.’

  She was lucky. It was a Friday. In normal circumstances, there would be no bail hearing until Monday, but the Cashman case was special. It had been on the news.

  ‘I don’t wanna stay here,’ she said. I noticed her fingers were stained with ink from the fingerprinting and she couldn’t stop rubbing them.

  ‘I’ve got something I want to say,’ she said.

  I wanted to hear it but the female officer said, ‘You can tell the court tomorrow.’

  I walked back to reception in time to see Peter coming through. We’d been holding him in the back of a divvy van so he didn’t run into Lisa during the admissions process. The cop behind the counter went through the same drill: name, age, fingerprints and photographs. Strip. Bend over. Open your mouth. Okay, down to the cells. All the way down the hall I could hear him saying, ‘This is nothing to do with me. This is an effin’ injustice,’ and that kind of thing.

  The story was in the newspapers the next day. The Sun had gone ballistic. The headline was: ‘Little Jake’s Mum ARREST!’

  The copy said:

  Little Jacob Cashman’s mother has been ARRESTED in connection with his MURDER! Earlier this week, Lisa Cashman made a TEARFUL PLEA to the public to find the MAN who bashed her boy, but police now believe THAT STORY WAS FALSE.

  Cashman’s boyfriend, Peter Tabone, who had been living in the HOUSING COMMISSION house for JUST SIX WEEKS has also been arrested in connection with THE MURDER.

  Lisa Cashman will appear in court TODAY!

  I suppose it was that story that brought the crowds to the court. Lisa arrived in the back of a police car. She had a windcheater over her head and she was flanked on both sides by uniformed officers. This was just a bail hearing, remember, the ‘Have-you-got-a-case-to-answer?’ hearing, yet they needed a flying wedge to get her through the doors. The mob that turned up couldn’t have been from Barrett, because Barrett is a fair way from Russell Street, so I think it’s fair to say that this case had the whole city enraged. There were mums with prams there. One guy had a sign that said, ‘An eye for an eye!’ and another guy was holding a noose. That’s the kind of fever we’re talking about.

  That first hearing was open to the public. It must have been, because the press reported what police told the court. They said Lisa Cashman and her boyfriend had ‘concocted a story’ about a strange man when, in fact, Jacob had succumbed to injuries ‘sustained in the home’.

  The Director of Public Prosecutions applied to have the rest of the hearing held in camera, which basically means ‘in private’. He said the strong public feeling had already created a ruckus outside the court and he wanted to prevent a trial by media. He also wanted to protect the boy’s siblings from any further trauma. That’s something people would take for granted now – that the identity of kids before the court would be suppressed – but back then it wasn’t a given.

  The magistrate got the message. Of course, we’d already told him what we knew, and that probably swayed him, too. He agreed to hold the hearing in secret. He told the court: ‘Any reporting of this matter would, in my view, be entirely inappropriate.’

  He scheduled a committal hearing for March 1983. By then, all the other Cashman kids would be in foster care. I kept an eye on proceedings, as much as I could. I was pleased with the verdict and the sentence was about right. Lisa got fifteen years. There was some kerfuffle about the fifteen years that the boyfriend also got, with his family saying he had been in Lisa’s house only six weeks when the incident occurred, but frankly, you can do a lot of damage in six weeks. It was best for everybody that he was taken out of circulation.

  Elizabeth Costa, Social Worker

  I realise that some people have some valid questions about the way the Department of Human and Family Services in Victoria handles its most difficult cases. The Cashman children were certainly a difficult case, and I am pleased to take this opportunity on behalf of the Department to explain the manner in which it was handled.

  Allow me first to introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth Costa – my colleagues and friends call me Liz – and I am Divisional Head at the Department’s Metropolitan and Western Region Office. I guess you could say I’m a career public servant. I joined the Department at twenty-two, after graduating with honours from LaTrobe University. My degree is in Literature. I have served nine ministers and six state governments and, in my current role, I have overall responsibility for some 3000 children in state care and 600 staff. Plus I oversee a program involving some 250 foster parents.

  Much of what I can tell you comes from the Department’s files. The Cashman children came into the care of the Department in November 1982. I was not then in a position to oversee their case, but I have reviewed the file and I believe the matter was handled in an appropriate way.

  Police on the Barrett Estate contacted the Department shortly after 1 p.m. on November 12. They had a situation on their hands: a five-year-old boy had died in the Children’s Hospital, and his mother was assisting police with their inquiries.

  There were three other children, and no known relatives.

  The Department applied to the Supreme Court in Melbourne for a temporary care order, which would allow us to take the three children into foster care while the case against the mother was heard. Two social workers went to the Barrett Police Station to collect Lauren, Harley and Hayley.

  There may be some criticism of our decision to place the children in different foster homes, but remember, if these children had come into care in the 1950s or 1960s, as opposed to the 1980s, they wouldn’t have been placed in private homes at all. They would have been put in an institution, where they would have stayed until adulthood. The main homes in those days were ‘Turana’ – officially, it was the Victorian Children’s Welfare Department Receiving Depot for Boys, but every body called it Turana – and Winlaton, which was a similar institution for girls. It did not matter if a child was abused or neglected, or if they were a delinquent serving a custodial sentence after committing juvenile crime. All children went to the same institutions.

  By the late 1970s, the Department adopted a new model of care, known as ‘out-of-home’ care, for children who weren’t delinquents and therefore shouldn’t be sent to institutions with young criminals. As I’ve said, the Cashman children came into the Department’s care in 1982, and that is why they went into foster care, and not into an institution.

  Foster care is a temporary arrangement. It is not adoption. Most of the children who go into foster care in Victoria do so for a short time. The Department aims to reunite them with their parents. They might be removed from their homes because they are at risk of abuse or neglect, or perhaps because the mother is suffering mental problems, or because there is drug abuse in the home, but very, very few children are in foster care for longer than a year. Foster care is a stop-gap measure. The ultimate aim is to get children home with their parents.

  So, what kind of people might take children into their homes on a temporary basis? Well, some of the foster
parents we had in the early 1980s – and still today, to some extent – are people who have a bit of extra room, a desire to do good works, and perhaps they are also in need of a bit of extra money. They might be on some kind of disability pension or unemployment benefit, and if they take in a foster child they can get a stipend from the Department, which is tax-free.

  We do have some affluent families on the books, but not many. No, wealthy couples don’t often inquire about becoming foster parents. They’d rather go on IVF, or adopt from overseas. They want a child of their own; one they can keep, if you like. Those who do apply to take a foster child seem to have this idea that they can make a difference. In many cases, they believe they can improve a disadvantaged child’s life. As a social worker, whose job it once was to vet these couples, I’m cautious of this group. Children who come into the Department’s care aren’t exactly cute. They often display a range of challenging behaviours. Not to put too fine a point on it, they might bite or kick or swear. They may come with lice. They may be unable to use a knife and fork. They might steal money. These behaviours are confronting. I find that when these children are placed with affluent foster parents, the relationship frequently breaks down.

  So, no, the homes are not affluent, but the foster parents must be in good health and, where possible, they must also agree to maintain the children’s routine. In other words, when we place a child, we try to find a good, solid couple, in a home near the child’s school and near the child’s friends.

  The Cashman children lived on the Barrett Estate. When they came into the Department’s care in 1982, the first port of call on the Barrett Estate for needy children was the home of Mrs Edna Islington.

  Mrs Islington is now deceased. Shortly before she died in 1995, she received an AO – an Order of Australia – in recognition of her efforts, having taken more than 100 of Barrett’s needy children into her home over a period of thirty years.

  I did not meet Mrs Islington but, based on information in the files, she was clearly a model foster parent. She understood the role. She provided shelter for children on a temporary basis, always hopeful that things would ‘come good’, as she used to say in her reports to us, so that the children would be able to return to their parents. She was not the type to seek attention. Like everybody in Barrett, she would have known exactly who the Cashman children were – their photograph had been on the front of the newspaper, after all, and the case involving their mother was the subject of ongoing attention – but I feel certain that she would have put all of that to one side, and cared for the Cashman children as she cared for all the children who came into her home.

  I believe that Mrs Islington provided a haven for the Cashman children, at least when they first came into care, and, in particular, for Lauren. Indeed, there is no question that Lauren settled happily at Mrs Islington’s. She did not seem unduly troubled by the separation from her mother, and Mrs Islington’s reports to the Department, compiled on a monthly basis, suggest that Lauren was able to stay at the Barrett Primary School, where she continued to do well. Lauren had a good relationship with many of her peers. She had an astute and inquiring mind. Lauren did not complain about Mrs Islington. She did not wet the bed, or destroy her books and toys. She did not have tantrums. On the contrary, she became devoted to one of Mrs Islington’s special dolls, a doll that was popular then, with hair you could retract and pull out of the head again. There is actually a photograph on file that Mrs Islington took with her Polaroid. It shows Lauren at seven, some several months after she came into the Department’s care, hosting a tea party for Mrs Islington’s dolls.

  Mrs Islington introduced Lauren to books, and Lauren soon became an avid reader. At seven, she was working her way through What Katy Did and The Secret Garden and Little Women – opportunities, I suggest to you, that she would not have received in institutional care, and perhaps not even in her own home.

  The Department monitored the psychological development – in those days, it was called ‘the mental health’ – of all the Cashman children while they were in Mrs Islington’s care and, indeed, until they were discharged from the Department’s care. They attended group therapy, where they were encouraged to use textas and poster paper to express themselves, and those drawings were later analysed for such things as colour, spacing, positioning and themes. Lauren was also chosen to be part of an exciting new program known as ‘Think Good, Feel Good’, in which she was observed during a period of guided play. She was encouraged to express positive emotions such as through smiling, laughing and clapping, and taught to recognise signs of stress. There was no indication from Lauren’s drawings, or from Lauren’s program reports, that she was a troubled child.

  Now, when the Cashman children came into the Department’s care, they were assessed as having ‘short-term’ needs. In other words, we did not know how long they would need to be in foster care. Then, in March 1985, the Cashman children were moved from the Department’s ‘short-term’ list to the ‘long-term’ list. It seems that this occurred because their mother, Lisa Cashman, had finally exhausted her appeals and would be incarcerated for an extended period of time.

  When a child moves to the long-term-care list, they do not necessarily become available for adoption. A child who is orphaned, whose parents are deceased, might be adopted, but the Cashman children were in a different category. Their mother had pleaded not guilty to charges laid against her; she had been found guilty and then appealed, and appealed again. At any time in that process, she might have been released and would have wanted – and had the right – to be reunited with her children.

  The Cashman children, therefore, became available for long-term care but not for adoption. From the photographs and the notes I have on file, I believe it would have been a fairly simple matter to adopt the Cashman children out, had that been permitted. None of the children exhibited behavioural problems. The children did not have Down syndrome, they were not autistic and they were not Indigenous. On the contrary, they were bright, happy children, none of them older than six, but their mother was alive, and as long as that was the case, they couldn’t be given up for adoption.

  Obviously, it is much more difficult to place a long-term child than it is to place a pre-adoption child. Most foster parents will take a group of siblings for one or two weeks, but who wants a group for years on end? Only people who want to adopt, and they tend not to be the kind of people who will accept and understand that the children we’ve placed in their care are technically theirs for the long-term, but may in fact be removed at any time.

  The Department did search for a ‘long-term’ placement where all the Cashman children could be kept together, but ultimately they were placed with three different families. I can explain how that happened: first, Hayley’s father was located through dental records. His body had been found in a forest outside Melbourne. Apparently, he’d hanged himself shortly after Hayley was born. We don’t know why. He had an aunt who had raised him, and she was both able and willing to care for Hayley.

  Given that the aunt was a family member, the Department agreed.

  It is reasonable, I suppose, to ask why Hayley’s great-aunt did not also take Harley and Lauren. The answer is: she was under no obligation to do so. She was Hayley’s father’s aunt, and therefore no more than a half-great-aunt, if there is such a thing, to the other children. The Department did ask whether she wanted to take all three children, but she was a single parent herself, with children ranging in age from six months to sixteen years, and she did not want the other children.

  So we had on our hands something of a conundrum. On one hand, the Department strives to keep children together. On the other, it seeks to place children with family members, where possible. A decision was taken to send Hayley to the great-aunt, since that would mean that one of the Cashman children, at least, was with kin. Once that happened, of course, the other Cashman children fell into an interesting place, policy-wise. They were now children who had already been separated from two sibli
ngs: their brother, Jacob, was deceased, and Hayley was with her great-aunt. The requirement to keep the siblings together was therefore breached, and so began the search for long-term carers for Harley and Lauren.

  The Department found a foster carer for Harley first, probably because he was younger and easier to place. The record shows that he went into the care of a first-time foster carer, Mrs Ruby Porter, in December 1985. Mrs Porter lived on a property some hundred kilo metres from the Barrett Estate. She was initially approved to care on a permanent basis for just one child because she had what the Department defined as a significant disability.

  Lauren stayed with Mrs Islington, at least for a time. Then, when Lauren was about ten years old, an attempt was made to reunite her with her brother on Mrs Porter’s property. Ruby Porter was conscious of the fact that Harley had an older sister and the moment she was approved to care for more than one child, she applied to take Lauren. The file shows that Departmental officers did visit the Porter property on the outskirts of Melbourne in 1986, with a view to moving Lauren into Ruby Porter’s care. It was Lauren herself who declared that she was unwilling to go to the Porters. She was adamant. Why that was so, I can’t tell you, but Lauren said she would rather run away than go to the Porter property.

  It was suggested to her – I have the notes here – that it really would be in her best interests to be raised with a sibling. Harley was settled and happy at the Porters, and Ruby Porter was very anxious to have both children under her wing. But Lauren said – and again, I have the notes here – ‘No, I want to stay on the Barrett Estate.’

  I can see that some people might think that was strange. Why would Lauren not want to be raised with her brother? At the Department, we try to consider things from the child’s point of view. Lauren was at school on the Barrett Estate. It’s reasonable to assume that she had friends there. Had she been forced to move to the Porter property, Lauren would have had to start at a new school, make new friends, and adjust to a new home setting with a new foster parent. The Department is mindful of the fact that children don’t always adapt well to change, and given that Lauren was adamant that she did not want to move, the plan to relocate her to the Porter property was dropped, and so began the process of trying to place her elsewhere, a process I think we’d all agree didn’t work out so well.