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A cleaner suspected she had found a foetus in a girls' toilet. She alleges she was told to flush it away
A subsequent Queensland police investigation failed to interview the two women until a year later.
Published 30 July 2024 12:52pm
Updated 30 July 2024 3:06pm
By Dan Butler, Karla Grant, Michael Carey, Dan Rennie
Source: NITV
Image: The Springfield school is home to some 300 students, most of whom are Aboriginal.
Warning: this article discusses sensitive themes that may be distressing to some readers.
Two cleaners at an independent Aboriginal school in Brisbane say they were instructed to flush away what they suspected to be a foetus, discovered in a student girls toilet block, .
The school denies that what was found was a foetus.
A subsequent Queensland Police Service (QPS) investigation into the incident failed to interview the two women until a year after the incident, following questions from NITV’s Living Black program.
Hymba Yumba Independent School (HYIS) has nearly 300 students enrolled from kindergarten to year 12, most of whom are Aboriginal.
The modern facility is funded some $9 million dollars annually by state and federal governments.
In July last year, Liz* (not her real name) was filling in as a cleaner at the school, located in Springfield, in Brisbane’s outskirts.
“There was a bunch of girls in the toilet,” she told Living Black of the incident.
“I waited for them to come out … I walked in there [and] on the bottom of the toilet there was a foetus.”
After locking the toilet, Liz disclosed her discovery to a cleaner colleague, who upon inspection agreed that it appeared to be human foetal tissue.
Liz told Living Black's Karla Grant she felt "traumatised and scared" after her shocking discovery.
“She took photos of it and [said] it wasn't a foetus, but we were trying to tell her that it was, because it had legs [and] hands.
“But she still turned around to us and told us it wasn't.”
Living Black has obtained an image of the discovery taken on the day.
Dr Alec Welsh is a professor of maternal-fetal medicine at Univeristy of New South Wales, and examined the photo.
“It looks to be foetal tissue, almost certainly human foetal,” he told Living Black.
“By the degree of development, probably around eight weeks or so gestation.”
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Duty Of Care
episode • Living Black • Current Affairs • 35m
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Liz claims the staff member instructed her to flush it away.
“I was traumatised, I was scared … [I] told her that I would take it out of the bowl for some kind of investigation.
“She gave us a toilet brush … lifted it up and just flushed it.”
A report was made to Queensland Police Service (QPS) by local Elder Theresa Tyson, Liz’s Aunty, who had concerns for child welfare.
“I was thinking all the time [about] how this child's coping,” she told Living Black.
“I'm sure it's a child because they found the foetus … in the girl's toilet.
“She could have bled to death, or it could be a normal thing for her, getting sexually abused.”
Aunty Theresa Tyson made a report to police, saying such matters too often go overlooked.
“Police attended the school the next morning, and, with a senior specialist support staff member, established that what was found was not a foetus but was a decidual cast,” the statement reads. A decidual cast refers to a spontaneous shedding of the uterine lining.
QPS confirmed to Living Black that officers attended the school on July 27, two days after the incident, rather than the next morning as the school said.
“Ipswich Child Protection Investigation Unit attended the school,” QPS said in a statement.
“At the time, no child was identified as being involved, and no offences were detected.”
Police failed to interview cleaners for a year
Anna (not her real name) is a former teacher at HYIS.
She was at the school on the day police attended in 2023.
“The police turned up … because they'd had a call from one of the cleaners, which they [told me],” she told Living Black.
“[It] was really inappropriate for them to say who had made the anonymous call.”
Anna said the police were shown the photo, and that she explained her knowledge of what had happened.
However, Liz and her colleague, who had made the discovery, were not interviewed.
“No, there was no investigation whatsoever,” Liz told Living Black.
“No cop, no nothing.”
On June 18 this year, Living Black sent a list of questions to QPS, asking why the cleaners had never been interviewed and whether, given the vast majority of underage students, enough weight had been given to the investigation.
A response to those questions was never received.
However within days Queensland’s Child Protection Investigation Unit had finally interviewed the two cleaners, almost a year after the original incident.
Liz says she was asked for the ages of the girls who were in the bathroom at around the time of the discovery.
“I said, ‘Probably around about grade six till grade 8.’
“They said they were gonna open up the investigation again, but that was pretty much all they said about it.”
‘The witch hunt needs to stop’
Hymba Yumba Independent School in Queensland receives millions of dollars of government funding each year.
“What you need to do is not have an assembly, not make a big deal about it,” she told Living Black.
“You need to collect your pastoral team; you need to talk to them about it. Keep it as private as you can.”
On the morning after the Child Protection Unit visited Hymba Yumba last year, the school CEO, Karla Brady, sent an email to shut down any further inquiry into who the student might have been.
“I want to call in the few girls [who have been] spoken to, to tell them the witch hunt needs to stop and if I hear any more rumours or that they are asking other girls, there will be serious trouble,” Ms Brady wrote to a colleague.
“I want to nip this all in the [bud] immediately before the drama queens, make it more than it is.”
In a statement to Living Black, HYIS said the term ‘witch hunt’ was an “admonition to a staff member to cease questioning jarjum [children] that they believed to be sexually active and making false claims it was a miscarriage.”
Anna believes the term “drama queen” was a reference to her, one which made her feel “devalued”.
“That was a regular feeling there by this point.”
Complaints of mismanagement at the school
The revelations come as HYIS
A Living Black investigation has revealed a litany of complaints from parents and former teachers, including accusations the school mishandled allegations of inappropriate teacher behaviour.
In a statement, HYIS said it rejected the accusations, calling them “part of a vexatious campaign by people from outside our school community.”
“Hymba Yumba has detailed and effective processes through which teachers and others can raise concerns about child welfare or other issues.
“HYIS has been affirmed by the Queensland College of Teachers, Queensland Police Service, Independent Schools Queensland and the Independent Education Union as having acted appropriately and correctly.”
