Missing While Blak

investigate cases. Today, we're going to break down in detail exactly the police responses using comparative cases. We're going to look at two very high profile cases, and there are cases that you've probably heard about, one of young Cleo over in Western Australia and then the devastating disappearance of William Terrell and William Terrell is still disappeared.

responses are racialized and are examples of racial violence. So Martin, I wanted to start with you about your analysis into one of these cases. Cleo.

the area for the majority of the day. Task Force Rodeo was launched by the West Australian Police with assistance from the Australian Federal Police, involving more than one hundred officers led by Superintendent Rod Wilde, and the Western Australian

Government offered a reward of a million dollars. The other case we're going to discuss, as Amy said, is William Tyrrel and as many might know, he disappeared at the age of three from Kendall in New South Wales on the twelfth of September twenty fourteen at ten fifty seven am. His foster mother called Triple O to report him missing and New South Wales Police arrived at the scene at eleven oh six am. Motorcycles and helicopters were brought into search.

Two hundred volunteers were used to search overnight and hundreds of people combed rugged terrain around the home. Police divers searched waterways and dams. Police searched every single house in the estate which is near eye to his location, and they actually did this on multiple occasions. Detection dogs were also brought in and managed to detect Williams scent, but

only within the boundaries of the backyard. Strike Force Roseanne was established with a specially trained investigator from the State Crime Command leading it up and again in the same way that the West Australian government did, the new South Wales government offered a million dollar award, but a year before William disappeared. In March twenty twenty three, Tamika Malayy, a young mother, was violently assaulted and left bleeding in

a Broome street by her ex partner Mervyn Bell. Miss Bailey pleaded with police when they arrived to help her, but instead she was handcuffed and sent to hospital. Her father, Ted Malaly, also tried to raise the alarm with the police, telling them that Tamika's baby, ten month year old Charlie was in serious danger. Mervyn Bell, the ex partner, had previously made violent and disgusting threats against the little boy. He urged them to bring Charlie with them, but he

too was ignored and would later be sentenced for obstructing police. Instead. Ten months your old baby Charlie was passed to friends and Tamika was taken away by the police. Tamika and Ted were victims. They begged the police for help, but they are Aboriginal, so instead of help, they were arrested. The police simply didn't care. They arrested an Aboriginal woman who had just been violently assaulted and didn't listen to

her father that his little grandson could be next. There was no seven minute response as there was for Cleo, or a nine minute response as there was for William. That is the response time we should expect for every child. Instead, Tamika, a victim of serious domestic violence, was taken away to Joe and then hospital. In the meantime, Tamika's former partner, the man who had just assaulted her, Mervin Bell, arrived at the house and took ten months old baby Charlie

from friends and a warning for listeners. The next few moments detail some fairly horrific violence. Over the next fifteen hours, Mervin Bell tortured baby Charlie, assaulted him, sexually, abused him, and finally murdered him. It would take the police twelve

hours before they started to look for baby Charlie. They'd misplaced information that had been given to them, They passed on an inaccurate number plate that would have led to Mervin Bell, and they never bothered to use mobile phone data to locate him, the very same thing they used when Cleo went missing. The same Western Australian Police, Baby Charlie was taken by Bell to a road house, already deceeased with visible burns, broken bones, internal bleeding and severe abrasions.

The West Australian Police arrested an Aboriginal woman who had just been violently assaulted, and they let a child murderer run free for hours. Bell would be convicted a year later, but he killed himself in prison. Tamika and her father Ted were convicted for assaulting and obstructing police, and it would take nearly ten years for them to be pardoned.

An investigation by the Crime and Corruption Commission found and I quote there was a delayed and ineffective response by individual officers on the night, but it was impossible to know, they said, whether a more rapid response could have saved Baby Charlie. Saying impossible to know is beyond insulting to Baby Charlie's memory and everything to Meeka and Ted have been through. Had they simply a arrested Bell for his violent assault on Tamika, Baby Charlie would be alive today.

Had they listened to her father, Ted's urging that Mervin Bell had made serious threats and baby Charlie was in danger. Baby Charlie would be alive. Had they commenced a search immediately and tracked his phone, as they'd done for others. Baby Charlie would be alive. Had they been simply smart enough to pass on a license plate correctly from one officer to the next, or done anything that any decent person could and would do, Baby Charlie would be alive.

Quite frankly, how any of those officers aren't in jail alongside Bell can only be explained by nation that reacts in a moment's notice for some and simply lets black women and children be bashed and killed right in front of their very eyes. And in case you still need more convincing, even after Baby Charlie was found dead, went to his grandpa Ted's home and racially abused him for hours. In nineteen ninety, in September, an aboriginal teenager, Colleen Walker,

went missing from Barraville. Her sister, Paula says, and I quote, Colleen never went anywhere without letting Mum know wherever she was. And I remember Mum coming down and asking did anyone see Colleen? Like he was just mainly family going looking and asking questions about where Colleen is or where she was. When people said they didn't see Colleen, I know Mum started to panic. I'm Colleen's younger sister. I was fifteen

at the time when she went missing. I don't know if it's sunk into myself until a while after that she was never going to come home or we were never going to see her again. Detective Inspector Gary Jubilin from the New South Wales Police was brought on to the case in the year's following and he says, I quote, at the time, there was two schools of thought. She was a sixteen year old girl and whether a sixteen year old girl has inadvertently decided to go to another

location without telling people or acting irresponsibly. I would suggest there was that school of thought, but there was also the concern that something had happened to her. Paula, Colleen's sister, contradicts that she said, I remember the police not taking it seriously when Colleen went missing. They were like, there was never any search parties, no one searched for her. About the family, they told mum awful things like she

probably just went walk about. In the month's following, the same man we all know murdered Colleen would go on to kill two more Aboriginal children, Colleen's little cousin, four year old Evelyn Greener and sixteen year old Clinton Speedy Duro. But again, just like baby Charlie, these were average children. So the police simply didn't care. There was no seven or nine minute response. There was just no response at all. As the Bauerville families gathered in front of police demanding answers,

a senior officer addressed the crowd. He said, and I quote, to do this investigation properly, we've got to have you people on side working with us, you people. Can you imagine if they'd said that to Chloe Smith's family, to William Tyrell's family, to the family of any missing white child,

that officer would lose his job in a moment. Instead, Aboriginal children were not humane enough to be considered, and their angry parents and relatives were more of an agitation to police than anything else when it comes to the media. In the case of Cleo Smith, it was the police themselves that kept feeding the story post her success or rescue. They released audio of the moment of the little girl's rescue and video of her a few minutes later on

the Friday night after she'd been found. It was the police that distributed her statement from the family, who thanked everyone involved in the rescue, particularly the police. So not only had the police acted for the family in finding her, they then went on to act as their own pr

firm and for the family. Amy, I want to ask you how the media generally responds to these cases, Given that we know in Cleo's case that the media was everywhere and all over it, what do you think happens when Aboriginal children go missing.

saw that also with William Terrell. So what I've found is often the Isralian media will be led by the police in determining what is a newsworthy death or what is a newsworthy disappearance, because the media emerges as a really important part of trying to find someone who is missing, because obviously when you put their cases on primetime news, you're searching for leeds, you're searching for any information that could come from there, and so the media become an

organ for the police in order to continue their investigation.

But the issue there is the media having a symbiotic relationship with police, is that then there emerges the silence around children who had disappeared who are not seen as newsworthy, and those are black children, those are Aboriginal children, as if seen in those really horrific examples of Baby Charlie and of Colleen Walker and the Bowable children, Clinton Speedy Dua and Evelyn Greenup, is that they were not afforded the police response that they should have been afforded because

their disappearance, even the disappearance of a little three year old girl like Evelyn Greenup, was still seen as their own responsibility. So the media did not care for them because they didn't see this as even an issue that these were potentially disappearances which were of their own making. And you see particularly the really horrific racial violence in the case of Baby Charlie, which is really really hard to talk about I have trouble listening to the details

of Baby Charlie's case. And I know that if you're here listening and you don't know about Baby Charlie, I imagine that you would have difficulty listening too. But Baby Charlie's case shows exactly how the police a violent towards black women, and how they contribute and reproduce violence on the bodies of not just black women, but black children through their failure to care and through the racial violence they enact on Aboriginal families who are the ones who

cared for them. And there has never been justice for Baby Charlie, and there's never been justice for Colleen Walker, who has still disappeared. And the media coverage that you have seen of Baby Charlie's case and that you have seen of Colleen Walker's case is because of the Aboriginal families. And they stood there and they refused to go away, and they wanted to get the memories of their children heard,

and they are wanting to fight for justice. And I remember when Cleo Smith particularly went missing and there was waves of coverage. It was the number one news story in the country. I remember thinking there were questions that were raised at that time coming from Aboriginal community about the fact where is the coverage and where is the outrage, and where is the concern for black children who go missing?

And there are many black children who go missing every single year, And so there was this small conversation that was happening around the same time, but Aboriginal people who were talking about this were told to shut up and to concentrate instead on the issue of getting Cleo home. But there were really important conversations that had to be had, and it comes down to the very idea of newsworthiness

and how we construct newsworthiness. So Cleosmith's case and William Tyrell's case became widespread news stories because they had these common elements of newsworthiness. In relation to the rarity of the cases. It's incredibly rare for a child to be abducted by a stranger in Australia. In William's Tyrrel's case, we still don't know what happened, but the circumstances of his case was he was at home and suddenly disappeared

from his front yard. And similarly, in Cleo's case, it was always going to be a big newsworthy case because of the rarity because of the idea of a stranger and the images and the fear that that conjure us. And it was really good that Cleo and William both had that coverage, even though in one case where still police are still searching for William. But what happens is that the cases of Aboriginal children, they are cases that

are newsworthy. So you look at Baby Charlie and you look at the circumstances of Colin Walker, They're not seen as that because other things are constructed around them to make them seen as unnewsworthier, as unworthy of attention. And that goes directly to Colleen Walker's case being framed as a case of her going walk about. The other Barville children being framed as cases of their own responsibility. You know, they've just disappeared. There's no one who has caused their disappearance.

And the case of baby Charlie where I think the police are made absent in this story where there is a perpetrate who is the man who took baby Charlie's life, who perpetrated violence upon him and who perpetrated violence against

his mother. But the violence of the police in refusing to take refusing to first take the mother seriously and to incarcerate her, to treat her so appallingly, and also the racial violence towards her grandfather and the way he was seen, and I know that they were talking about him being potentially a drunk Aboriginal person, which is totally untrue.

He cared for his grandson and he was deeply fearful for his grandson, and that is shown in a lot of text messages that came out in the CCC investigation. And so even if stories like Colleen Walker, even if stories like Baby Charlie have all of the usual elements of newsworthy and as according to standard journalistic practice, they are still not seen as newsworthy. They're still not seen as life's worthy of being found and of lives worthy of being mourned, and of lives worthy of justice. And

that is the issue. And I think the importance of Martin's analysis there is that you can't deny it because it's as clear as day when you look at the details of the differences between the police and the media response. Aboriginal people aren't making it up when we say this wouldn't have happened to a white child, So why does it keep happening to our black women and our black children.

And I should also say Aboriginal men as well, because there have been cases where Aboriginal men have disappeared and we hear nothing of them until the families rise up and make people know about this. Martin, did you want to reflect on anything I just said there? What came out for you when you were looking at this analysis.

they didn't assist her daughter. They arrested both, just as they'd done in the case of Baby Charlie's mum and grandfather. And this story prompted a chapter in the stellar prize winning book by Jess Hill See What You Made Me Do, about domestic violence, and Jess talks about in the book how shocked she was to hear of such a case. And you have to remember that she's a very senior

leading journalist in this country who's won many prizes. And yet despite the hours I spent discussing this issue with Jess and in many radio interviews and TV interviews, and I know Amy did the same, the response from everyone who supposedly wanted the right thing was to call for more laws, for more police action. Nobody had actually listened to what we said, which was the police were the problem. And so all these years later, we're back having the

same conversation. So I wonder, Amy, given that we have been involved in this discussion, given that we've laid out the facts, given that they just simply can't be disputed that the reaction of police to white and black is so starkly different, is there any way that things can change? And what role does the media have in if they hear these stories and then simply fail to report the truth that the police are the problem.

What happens is that often, and this emerges from coronial inquests, is that the doctors and the nurses don't take the concerns of the mothers seriously and they don't actually look at the underlying issue of why these children are coming to the emergency. Often they're left and sent home with things like pendole and they later pass away of things like sepsis or infections that avoidable deaths, of infections that could have been treated very early on, but are totally ignored.

And that comes down to the callous response shown from doctors and nurses to the mothers and to the families. And when you think of things like sepsis, one of the things that from what I understand, that doctors and nurses have to look at is how concerned the parents are about what is going through, what is happening to their child. That's one of the warning signs for things

like sepsis. And there have been cases where Aboriginal children have guided sepsis because they have been turned away from hospitals, And I think of it similarly in the cases of disappeared Aboriginal children and women and men. Often the families will know something is wrong and that they're not taken seriously.

So we know, I think we've talked about it in this podcast that there are many missing persons who go missing every single year Acrostus country, and the vast majority of them will be missing for a day and then they will be found. So often this means that it might just be a usalert that the police release on social media, and often there's no further coverage than that.

But what a journalist can do is talk to the family and find out why this is so out of character, why you are so concerned, Because Aboriginal women and children just don't go missing, you know what I mean. So there are ways that you can make sure that you elevate the concerns of the families. And even if it's not a continuing news story, the fact a child has disappeared or gone missing should be concerned enough because they're in an unsafe environment. No child should be out there

missing on the streets. That is the first thing you should worry about. There should be concern amongst the community about finding that child. Even if something hasn't happened to them, the fact that they are out there and not at

home should be a concern straight away. And so I think it starts from taking these disappearances seriously and from acknowledging the concerns of the families, because in every case that I've looked at, the families are the ones who are so concerned and report their loved one missing, and so often they are turned away. And the thing you have to know about these stories we talk about is that they're not aberrations. They are happening to what we

consider to be a crisis level. But you don't hear about them because if the media wait for the police to lead, then you're not you're not going to get the coverage that every one of these disappearances deserve. And so you actually have to do journalistic work. You can't be beholden to a police pr department, and there are ways you can talk about that by talking to the families and being of service to the families and finding their loved ones.

Stop copying and pasting pr press releases from the police. Instead, do what you would do in any other case, listen to what the family is telling you, and do your job investigate, because, as we know, the police simply don't do it, they don't care, and there's stronger language that we could use very easily, and the evidence backs that up. Join us again next episode as we further investigate the crisis of disappeared and murdered Aboriginal women and children in

this country. This episode was brought to you by black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can visit us at www dot Curtain podcast dot com, follow us on Twitter at Curtain podcast, and help to support our work at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast