System failure

Mentally ill man raped, murdered daughter after warnings ignored | The Courier-Mail

A spectacularly tragic failure of the system to do any effective in the light of clear danger is detailed today:

THE state's largest hospital was warned, so were police and a doctor, but no one stopped a mentally ill man from taking a family holiday which ended with him raping and killing his 10-year-old daughter.

The man headed off on the fateful Bribie Island holiday with his four children after he was allowed to postpone a check-up with health authorities....

The Courier-Mail revealed in the days after the killing that the man had been released from the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital's mental health unit, where he had been under an involuntary treatment order, on December 21, 2007.

He had been admitted on December 8 after a manic episode in a shopping centre.

The man was allowed to postponea check-up with mental health workers scheduled for December 31. Late that night he ritualistically killed his daughter but spared her three younger siblings...

On December 30, the man's parents were so concerned about their son's behaviour, including a threat that "someone close to me is going to die tonight", that they contacted his GP...

On December 31, the RBWH was contacted by a former girlfriend of the man after he had gone to her home. The documents did not say whether the hospital took any action.

The man - who was found by the Mental Health Court to have been of unsound mind at the time of the murder - did not abide by the terms of his discharge. The judgment revealed he had stopped taking the antipsychotic drug, Risperidone, and resumed smoking large quantities of cannabis.

Um, just how many patients who are supposed to be taking anti-psychotics are allowed by anyone to supervise their children alone? I would have thought that this fact alone would have been reason for action.