Two staff members in the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice have been suspended following a review into why two foster children went to live with a convicted triple killer.
The review, which was made public on Wednesday, found “significant failures” by the department led to foster children aged 12 and 14 living alongside convicted murderer Regina Arthurell until her removal from the home last month.
It was initiated in March after the NSW minister for families and communities, Kate Washington, apologised on 2GB radio, confirming the removal only came after the radio station revealed the situation two days previously. The investigation was led by the department’s secretary, Michael Tidball.
On Wednesday, Washington, who has weathered calls for her resignation since the revelations, said two staff members had been stood down pending misconduct investigations into allegations they had not followed departmental procedures.
She said their future was a “decision to be made by the department”.
“There are difficult decisions made daily by our case workers, but we do expect them to follow department policies and procedures, and that’s what didn’t happen on these occasions that led to this awful situation,” she told 2GB radio.
The review said the department was warned about Arthurell’s presence in the home on 23 December via a report from a member of the public via the department’s Child Protection Helpline.
But that report was closed on the basis of “unverified” information about Arthurell’s “age, mobility and supervision assumptions”. Washington said this included that she purportedly used a wheelchair and required a full-time carer.
“It just wasn’t investigated, and that was contrary to policies and procedures in the department,” said Washington. “We had capacity in the system at the time for an investigation to be undertaken. We had the resources. This was a wrong decision made against department policies and procedures.”
The review identified a second failure on 5 March, four days before the initial radio report aired, when a second child moved into the home.
Washington said approval for the move had gone ahead without a “simple check” of the department’s system.
“We would have been able to see, from the previous report made in December, that there were concerns raised previously around Arthurell being in that household.”
Arthurell was convicted of two counts of manslaughter and one count of murder over three killings. They include manslaughter convictions for the stabbing to death of her stepfather in 1974, and the killing of a 19-year-old in a robbery in the Northern Territory in 1981.
While on parole for manslaughter in 1995, Arthurell bludgeoned to death her former partner Venet Raylee Mulhall at her Coonabarabran home in the NSW central west, and was sentenced to 24 years in prison for murder. She was released in November 2020 and placed on an extended supervision order (ESO).
At a hearing in 2021, a supreme court justice said Arthurell was making sincere efforts at rehabilitation but had a “proclivity to violently terminate the lives of fellow human beings”. Her ESO was not extended by the NSW attorney general after it expired in December 2024.
Last month, a 2GB caller who identified herself as the daughter of the woman Arthurell had been living with, said she had alerted NSW police and Corrective Services after her attempt to warn the Department of Communities and Justice in December was unsuccessful.
NSW police visited the home in February on a call-out at a time when Arthurell was not present.
The review said there had been “failures in the triage of the report received and assessment of risk”.
“Information was accepted at face value without adequate investigation,” it said.
“The children were not placed at the centre of the decision-making processes, and this is unacceptable.”
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