Adelaide girl, nine, left living in squalor after police warned SA Child Protection
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A nine-year-old girl was left to live in a house police described as an ‘animal toilet’ despite two reports detailing the ‘sickening’ squalor to a child protection agency.
During welfare checks on the girl who was living with her grandfather in regional South Australia, police reported the house was partly flooded, strewn with animal faeces, reeked of urine and was filled with rotting food.
Photos taken by police reveal a filthy interior with clothes and debris heaped in festering piles, a disgusting toilet and what looks to be bread rotting into mounds of mold in the kitchen.
The horrifying conditions were uncovered during a court hearing dealing with another matter and have sparked to questions about how the little girl was allowed to stay in the house even after officers made reports.
The girl first entered the custody of her grandfather when she was only 12 months old and lived with him in a public housing property, which he had occupied since June 2013.
Police said the room that the girl slept in was covered with animal faeces (pictured)
Police conducted a welfare check on the girl on January 27, 2019, after being told she was home by herself.
When two officers knocked on the front door at about 9.45am the girl answered the door alone, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.
‘We had a conversation with her and she advised us that she was home alone and that her grandfather had left the address to go shopping,’ the officer told the court.
‘I then asked if I could see her bedroom and the front door was ajar and I could see the state of the house.
‘The outside area where we were on the front porch wasn’t flooded.
‘It was as soon as we stepped through that entrance into the dining room … those rooms were flooded as well as the hallway.
A court case has revealed the squalid living conditions endured by a nine-year-old girl in South Australia who was in the care of her grandfather
The girl who cannot be named for legal reasons, led police through the house where they saw the kitchen covered in ‘dirt, mold and grime’.
There was ‘a branch or a log in the hallway covered by clothing’ the officer said.
Officers were shown where the girl slept in the corner of a room covered with ‘animal faeces’, ‘dirty hair’, and with ‘very limited linen’.
‘There were no mattresses or bedding or anything that I could see to conclude that it was a safe place for a kid to be, it was just all clutter and rubbish and filth,’ police said.
Officers commented that everything in the house was ‘damp’, it was a ‘very humid environment’.
When the girl’s grandfather arrived home he was irritated that police were in the house.
‘He was more concerned about us being in the address while he wasn’t there,’ the officer said.
Police testified that the house was in a disgusting condition throughout and had a strong smell of urine
‘We advised (the grandfather) about the living arrangement being in our word sickening and that she should not be left alone at the address at her age.’
The officers made a report to the Child Abuse Report Line that day.
Police were called to the property again on July 7, 2019 for a second welfare check.
Officers arrived at the property at about 1.45am and banged on the doors and window for 10 minutes before the grandfather opened the door.
According to the officers he was unsettled by their visit.
‘Yes, it was 1.40am, but his level of aggressiveness was something that would usually warrant me to think about use of tactical options in a public setting,’ one of the officers told the court.
‘That wasn’t our purpose, we were there to check the welfare of the occupants and make sure everyone was all right, so we were trying to be as diplomatic as possible.’
The grandfather had a warrant for breaching bail and the officer took him into custody.
‘The assessment of the frontyard and property, it became clear that it was a lot more than just a standard welfare check,’ he said.
‘When we entered the property it was in a state of disgrace.
‘There was faeces everywhere. There was a very hot ammonia smell that burns your nose as you walk in.
‘Not just animal faeces – it was like a hot urine smell, it was quite bad, as well as the domestic rubbish.
‘The smell, like the whole area was just an animal toilet, everything was littered with filth. The smell was horrendous.’
Officers saw the girl asleep on couch cushions on soiled bed linen in the living room with a dog curled up at her feet.
Despite police reporting twice on the ‘sickening’ house after making welfare checks the girl was left in the appalling conditions
‘(The grandfather) walked up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her,’ the officer said.
‘He said ‘Wake up, wake up, the dogs are here, the mutts are going to put me inside’.’
The grandfather and the girl were taken to the police station but both were sent back to the house that night.
It was not until 20 days later that the girl was removed from the house.
Daily Mail Australia have contact the South Australian Child Protection Department has been contacted for comment on the case.
Every room of the public housing property, which has since been demolished, was filled with debris and mould
Child Protection Deputy chief executive Fiona Ward told The Adelaide Advertiser that the department found the volume of cases it was dealing with ‘challenging’.
‘Last year, about 39,000 individual children were reported to the department,’ a spokeswoman said.
‘The majority of families reported to child protection have multiple and complex needs with active domestic violence, unmanaged mental illness, current substance addiction and housing instability as key underlying factors driving children’s experience of abuse and neglect.’
After other living arrangements were made for the girl police visited in the house once more in late 2019 and took photos indicating it was still in a state of squalor.