A 12-year-old girl accused of stabbing murder had been repeatedly rejected as she was moved from place to place in Victoria’s child protection system.

The girl, called WD for legal reasons, was accused of stabbing a 37-year-old woman to death in Footscray, in Melbourne’s western suburbs, in November 2023.

Prosecutors withdrew the charge in May, citing no reasonable prospect of conviction under the presumption of doli incapax.

Doli incapax is a legal principle according to which a child under the age of 13 is incapable of understanding the wrongfulness of his or her actions and therefore cannot be convicted of a crime.

Victoria’s Children and Youth Commissioner opened an investigation into the matter because DEO had been in out-of-home care for years.

In the committee annual reporttabled in state parliament on Thursday, Chief Commissioner Liana Buchanan said the case exposed some of the “deepest service system failures” she had seen.

“At every stage of DEO’s childhood, opportunities were missed to disrupt the ever-increasing risk that DEO was exposed to and posed to herself and others,” the report said.

“Simply put, the systems – including out-of-home care, mental health, disability support, policing and justice – were not meeting his needs. »

DEO spent three years going through 10 different “urgent care” placements, designed to serve as emergency housing, at a cost of $3 million.

The commission said the placements were inappropriate and unsafe and led to disruption to the girl’s schooling and access to support.

She was reported missing hundreds of times, sometimes for days, before her arrest.

Efforts to respond to his absences were ineffective and “at times appeared to be affected by service fatigue, desensitization and lack of clear, coordinated action between Victoria Police, child protection and service providers.” care “.

“There were many different case managers and workers who were very, very busy trying to protect this child over that three-year period,” Ms Buchanan told AAP.

“But none of it was effective, the efforts were very fragmented and it took significant escalation to bring all the agencies together.

“That didn’t happen.”

For the first time, the commissioner shared the inquiry’s findings with Prime Minister Jacinta Allan in a bid to spark change and shine a light on the “invisible” issue.

“I can’t change what happened in the past for this child,” she said.

“What I was really interested in was trying to make sure, given the pretty devastating failures of this child’s experiment, that we as a collective use these results to actually take urgent action .”

She made 19 recommendations, including improving the ministry’s oversight and recourse to emergency placements.

Other suggestions included coordinated, inter-agency responses to child sexual exploitation, not relying as much on children to make formal statements to trigger a response, and better access to forensic examinations for children with complex trauma and disabilities.

Children’s Minister Lizzie Blandthorn declined to discuss details of DEO’s case but said emergency care placements were rare.

“Since we have been in government, we have reduced emergency care placements,” she told reporters in Parliament.

“We have one at the moment.”

She acknowledged that services could work better, but that who, if anyone, would be held accountable for the systemic failures suffered by WD would not be called upon.

The commissioner has not received a formal response to the inquiry’s recommendations from the Allan government after the report was delivered two months ago.

Ms. Buchanan said the department had “significantly reduced” the use of emergency care placements since the end of 2023, but she did not know that was a direct response to the DEO case.

During the 2023/24 year, the commission recorded 1,892 notifications of allegations of child abuse and child-related misconduct by workers and volunteers, an increase of 30% compared to 2022/23.

Forty-three other children died within 12 months of their last involvement with child welfare services, including eight Indigenous children.

Lifeline 13 11 14

Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redressal Service 1800 211 028