In Australia, Deborah Melville's case has been widely covered in all major news outlets since 2008. But while the nation may have made been aware of the horrific neglect that Deborah Melville suffered, a largely unpublicized audit claims that her death was only scratching the surface of a much greater problem. According to a 2007 report leaked to the Australian on Feb. 6 and written by psychologist Howard Bath, then the director of a non-profit organization that specializes in support for child, youth and family services, the Northern Territory child-protection system is near collapse. Today, just over two years after Australia apologized for six decades of a policy that forcibly removed Aboriginal children from their homes, a new inquiry into that system is being launched.
Melville's great-aunt and aunt both lived at the home at the time of her death. Both women were charged with manslaughter in the case, but eventually acquitted in 2008 on the grounds that they couldn't have known just how sick she was. Not everyone however, was let off the hook: In an inquiry, completed on Jan. 19, the national Department of Families and Child Services (FACS), the authority that was supposed to be protecting Deborah, was found largely responsible for her death, having ignored the many red flags raised throughout her six years in foster care.