Thursday 14 April 2011

How did this happen?

The Veronnica Baxter Inquest
"I have been going to Coronial Inquests for over 20 years and never have I attended an Inquest with so many anomalies."


From the SMH :
Two years after Veronnica Baxter died in a men's jail, her brothers are still asking why.

A coronial inquest into Ms Baxter's death last week found she committed suicide at Silverwater in 2009, sometime between her single-cell door closing on March 15 and when it was opened the next morning.

Greens MP David Shoebridge said questions remained about why Ms Baxter, a transgender Aboriginal woman, was put in an all-male facility when she identified as a woman, and why she was not given hormone medication prescribed to her.

Corrective Services policy states transgender prisoners should be put in a centre based on which gender they identify with - unless there are concerns for their safety or that of other prisoners. Mr Shoebridge will refer her death to a parliamentary inquiry with the power to call witnesses.

''It is a serious disappointment and a failing in the system that there was a two-year delay for a half-day coronial inquest,'' he said. ''That delay has meant that witness recollections were stale.''
...
In her last hours, Ms Baxter made emergency calls from her cell to corrective services officers. These calls were not recorded, and officers at Silverwater could not say who answered them.
A Parliamentary inquiry may get rid of some of the coronial whitewash. And whitewash it was, the Coroner didn't enquire why or how Ms Baxter was given this 'special treatment' by persons unknown, nor what threats she may have been reacting to when she called for help. There is a real fear that the "suicide" may have been "assisted".

I fear the trail may be cold, but we're not giving up on this one.

2 comments:

Major said...

''It is a serious disappointment and a failing in the system that there was a two-year delay for a half-day coronial inquest,'' he said. ''That delay has meant that witness recollections were stale.''

It is a failing, but it is not a specific failing. There is a two year delay in all death in custody inquests for a number of reasons starting with the fact that Glebe pathology is permanently slammed (it takes at least twelve months to get a final autopsy report). If you look at the Coroner's website you will see that the current death in custody reports are all from 2009.

Anonymous said...

I will tell you how it happened. Assuming she was a true-TS and not simply a TG man living as a woman, the lies, slander, and being called a TG is what killed her. True-TS women are not TGs, but women born with a birth condition who don't deserve the discrimination that TGs get. If you are going to be bashed, you should have the right to be bashed for what you really are.

The TG community, with its lumping, they are who killed her. The suicide or the murder disguised as one was really just the weapon of the oppressive TG community to eliminate a true-transsexual and her influence on society.