Nigel Adlam: The Advertiser | September 26, 2008
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24405406-911,00.html
A 14-YEAR-old girl who ran away from hospital was beaten with a lump of wood by a younger girl before being dragged into bushes by boys who tried to rape her as she was dying, a coroner has been told.
Observers sat in stunned silence in an Alice Springs court yesterday as a lawyer detailed the girl’s last hours, the Northern Territory News reported.
The inquest was also told that nursing staff failed to follow Health Department rules when the girl discharged herself from hospital.
Police were not alerted until 23 hours after she disappeared.
The girl was admitted to Alice Springs Hospital in January 2006 with a life-threatening blood disorder but left without telling anybody.
Coroner’s counsel Jodi Truman said a night nurse did nothing about her absence until the end of his shift the next morning.
The girl had gone to see her 17-year-old boyfriend but the youth’s 13-year-old “wife” saw the pair together and smashed the sick girl across the head with a 1m piece of wood.
Bloodied and bruised, the girl walked from the camp and collapsed on a footpath where she lay for several hours as people walked past thinking she was drunk.
Three boys came across her and carried her to the nearby grounds of a college, the inquest was told.
Two of them pulled down the girl’s tracksuit pants and tried to have sex with her.
One said he thought the girl was drunk, another thought she was dead.
The girl died of head trauma later that night.
The inquest continues today.
Comment:
I’m just waiting for the do-gooders to blame White racism for the death.
Cailen.
