Family of Denishar Woods to sue WA Government over electric shock from garden tap
The family of an 11-year-old Perth girl who suffered severe brain injuries and lost her sight after receiving a massive electric shock at her public housing property plan to sue the WA Government for breaching its duty of care.
Denishar Woods was shocked by more than 240 volts of electricity to her body when she tried to turn off a garden tap at her Beldon home in March.
Levitt Robinson Solicitors confirmed this morning it had been engaged by the family to act on their behalf.
Denishar was put on life support at Princess Margaret Hospital after the incident on March 3, and was not expected to survive.
She was able to breathe unassisted when life support was withdrawn, although an MRI scan showed she had suffered a significant brain injury from which she is unlikely to ever recover.
Denishar has remained in hospital since the accident and requires 24-hours-a-day care.
Denishar’s care needs ‘extreme’
Her mother, Lacey Harrison, was also injured in the accident as she tried to drag her daughter out of a puddle of electrified water.
Ms Harrison said her daughter’s care needs were “extreme” and she was disappointed the Government had not offered financial assistance to date.
“We’re not ones to ask for money, but in this instance Denishar has ultimately extreme needs — they’re not just everyday disability care needs,” she said.
Ms Harrison said she was looking forward to bringing Denishar home, but without help she would have to “struggle at home with her by myself”.
“She’s doing it hard. She can hear us but she can’t see us. She’s not walking, she’s not talking, she’s not eating, she’s not drinking … we do everything for her.”
Ms Harrison said her daughter needed a home “fit for her needs” and the family needed certainty about Denishar’s future.
“Me and my children have suffered enough, we’ve been through enough, and we just want some kind of understanding that we’re going to be OK,” she said.
Gerry Georgatos from the National Indigenous Critical Response Service said Denishar was due to be released from hospital next week and the family urgently needed financial assistance from the State Government to cope with her extensive and ongoing medical needs.
“We don’t want to wait and we can’t wait for settlement in court,” he said.
“We’re asking the State Government to step up through ministerial discretion, as it has in the past for other families, to meet advance payments and to secure the immediate management of the care of young Denishar and reduce the distress levels on siblings [and] family.”
He said the family wanted the Government to buy a permanent house for Denishar, so they were no longer dependent on short-term public housing rentals, and an upfront payment of half a million dollars for her immediate needs.
“In the long term we’re talking about millions, a couple of million at least, ” Mr Georgatos said.
Ms Harrison said Denishar would have no accessible shower, no form of transport and no access to support services in the immediate weeks after she was discharged from hospital.
This meant she would be forced to try to meet her daughter’s medical and therapy needs unaided.
“I’m not qualified for none of this but I’ll do the job because that’s my daughter and we love her,” she said.
“Ultimately, this should have never happened, and it should never happen in a Western Australian home ever again.”
Family ‘could be eligible for millions’
The electric shock has been blamed on a malfunction in the property’s electricity supply, known as an “open circuit neutral”.
It hit Denishar with a surge of up to 250 volts of electricity, which is five times the amount that can cause serious damage to the human body.
The Office of Energy Safety is undertaking an investigation to determine what caused the electric shock, but Mr Georgatos said the Government should not wait for the results of the probe to help Denishar’s family.
“They can’t be left stranded to go home with nothing at all, no support whatsoever,” he said.
He said the family were “not hopeful” that she would make any further recovery from her injuries, and the expectation was she would need life-long support.
Premier Mark McGowan refused to be drawn on whether he thought the family deserved compensation.
“That’s really not something that I should speculate on,” Mr McGowan said.
“I want to just make sure that they family gets the best of care in the meantime.”
A Perth barrister has previously said the Woods family could be eligible for millions of dollars in compensation if the Department of Housing is found to have failed to provide them with safe and adequate housing.
Theo Lampropoulos, who earlier this year successfully sued Princess Margaret Hospital for a payout expected to reach into the multiple millions in a negligence claim relating to a young girl, said the family could be eligible to a substantial payout for pain and suffering.
Mr Georgatos said a meeting had been scheduled with Housing Minister Peter Tinley to discuss the family’s needs next week.
EXCLUSIVE: Family suing WA Government after public housing accident leaves girl with severe brain damage
On Monday morning the family will officially announce their plans to commence legal proceedings against the Western Australian Government with lawyer Stewart Levitt acting on their behalf.
By
Madeline Hayman-Reber
When Lacey Harrison and her family began noticing electrical faults in their home, she feared that worst-case scenario, her home could catch on fire.
But something far more sinister occurred, leaving her 11-year-old daughter Denishar Woods blind and with a catastrophic brain injury after being electrocuted when touching a garden tap.
On Monday morning the family, alongside Gerry Georgatos from the National Indigenous Critical Response, and their lawyer Stewart Levitt of Levitt Robinson Solicitors will announce that they will be starting legal proceedings against the Western Australian State Government and the Department of Housing.
“The best case scenario would be to have my little girl back. No money, not nothing is going to change how we feel or the traumatisation we’ve been through,” Ms Harrison told NITV News.
Around 8pm on March 3 this year Ms Harrison was watering the garden of her Perth home.
She called out to her girls to turn the kettle on so she could make a coffee, but upon one of them turning the kettle on, the family claims it short-circuited the house, with the meter box giving her a small electrical shock when she attempted to reset the main power switch.
Identifying a potentially dangerous situation, she contacted Homes West to have it fixed immediately.
“I thought I was using my own initiative to try and keep my kids safe, to protect them from the house lighting on fire,” Ms Harrison said.
She said she questioned the operator as to whether or not it was safe to stay at home, and was advised that an electrician would head out either that evening, or the next day.
Telling the kids they’d head across the road to McDonalds for some ice cream and a coffee while waiting for the electrician to arrive, Ms Harrison asked 11-year-old Miss Woods to turn off the garden tap for her.
The next thing she heard was her 14-year-old son’s bloodcurdling screams as he witnessed his sister being electrocuted, or as Ms Harrison describes it, ‘burning from the inside out’.
“I went running around clockwise to her and I see my daughter stuck on the tap, her whole body convulsing and shaking all over,” she said.
“As I’ve gone running to grab her, I’ve fallen on the brick paving and laid down beside her for 15 minutes.”
Ms Harrison also experienced an electric shock, while her horrified children watched on.
The family’s lawyer Stewart Levitt said it will be claimed that the Western Australian Government appears to be in breach of its duty of care.
“The family has suffered grievously as a result of the fact that their property was not properly wired or maintained and were exposed to this terrible risk that actually materialised in a tragedy,” Mr Levitt alleges
He is hoping to secure compensation on behalf of Miss Woods and Ms Harrison so that Miss Woods can be looked after comfortably for the rest of her life.
Mr Georgatos said although the Department of Housing has relocated the family, more needs to be done on their part.
“The Department of Housing has relocated the family to a more appropriate home and an onsite carer facility with occupational therapy infrastructure, hoists, ramps, etcetera, has been committed to by the Department but much more needs to be committed to and achieved expeditiously,” Mr Georgatos said.
“The family will have to lifelong manage the care of Denishar, who is likely permanently blind, who has little mobility, who is enduring cognitive narrowing. This incredible solid family will never be able to leave Denishar’s side.”
The Minster for Housing, Peter Tinley is meeting with Ms Harrison on May 30. He said the ‘tragic incident’ was being investigated by the Office of Energy Safety WA, which is under the Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Bill Johnston.
A representative of Mr Johnston’s office said the investigation is ongoing, and are unsure whether or not a report would be released.
“In relation to the meeting with Denishar’s family on 30 May, I am reluctant to pre-empt any outcome or to take any expectations into that meeting. I will be there to listen,” Mr Tinsley said.
“But I would like to say that I have previously visited Denishar while she was in hospital and met her mother at that time under very difficult circumstances for her and her family.
“As a father myself, my heart went out to that woman – I can only imagine her pain. During that meeting, I offered Ms Harrison and her family all the support and assistance that was within my remit.
“That offer remains.”
Mr Tinley said the Department had so far provided the following support for the family:
– Relocated Ms Harrison and her family to a four-bedroom property in Marangaroo, which they occupied on 27 March 2018.
– In consideration of the circumstances and on compassionate grounds, the Department is not currently charging the family rent for the Marangaroo property until 30 June 2018.
– Arranged a referral for Ms Harrison to its Support and Tenant Education Program (STEP) for further assistance and support.
– Rent concession of four weeks rent provided to the tenant as the family were not occupying the Beldon property as a result of the incident.
– Other tenant charges were waived from Ms Harrison’s account.
However the past few months have still been a long emotional and financial struggle for the family, with Mr Georgatos saying when he first spoke with the family, they had received hardly any support in their additional day-to-day expenses.
“When I first met this family at the hospital a week after this happened, services had not supported them at all,” he said.
“I found the siblings, the mother, and the family with only $10. That’s all they had to feed themselves with at the hospital during the vigil.
“This isn’t the state I should have found them in in a critical period. I should have found them supported by all the critical services.”
For Ms Harrison, the life changing tragedy certainly hasn’t been easy for her family financially, living on a single parent pension.
But although she fears she will not be able to cope financially, she says it’s not about money for her, it’s about justice – and the best compensation she could have would be for it to have never happened.
“It’s sad. It’s so sad and I’m so angry and frustrated.”
Hero pensioner on a roll, offers to pay pregnant woman's fines to prevent jail
EXCLUSIVE: The pensioner who shot to fame after paying the fines of a WA Indigenous mum to prevent her being sent to jail has done it again, this time paying the fines of a second WA woman he does not know.
By
Madeline Hayman-Reber
Melbourne pensioner Peter Clark has offered to pay yet another fine for a young mother who is at risk of incarceration for unpaid fines.
Previously, he paid an incarcerated Noongar mother of five’s fines after reading a media story about her.
The woman had been locked up after she called the police regarding a domestic violence incident. The police conducted a background check on her instead, and arrested her for unpaid fines.
This time, Mr Clark had been browsing Facebook when he came across NITV News’s article about a heavily pregnant single mother who was at risk of spending 6 days in jail if she did not come up with $1000.
“I’m putting my hand up and saying, ‘for heaven’s sake! If this is what it takes…’ I’m a pensioner, I’ve got no money, I’ve got a credit card,” he told NITV News.
“I’m more than happy to pay the $1000 to keep the police away from her door, and I’m sure there are other folks in the community who could make up the deficit.”
Social Justice Activist Gerry Georgatos, who is advocating on the young mother’s behalf, said that there have been many offers to help.
“Peter and many others have put up their hand and we can’t say no to this, so we will take up the generosity of one these people,” Mr Georgatos said.
“We’ve worked with police and they’ve dished up discretion in lifting the warrant so that the mother does not finish up in jail,” he said.
“A repayment plan has been agreed to by the mum. We are still going to accept the generous donations and pay down the fines so there’s respite for the mum and that her focus is to afford the essentials for her baby.”
However, he worries that the generosity of others will soon wear thin, so he is urging the West Australian state government to look into making fines more reasonable.
“We need to make fines affordable and not punish the poor for being poor,” Mr Georgatos explained.
“We can’t keep on reeling on the generosity of others and for everyone that we do help and get across the line, we have scores of others who we don’t even know about who are falling right through the cracks. That comes with damage, and some of that trauma is irreversible.”
One of the suggestions Mr Georgatos has for the WA State Government is the implementation of a fine system modelled from the Scandinavian system, which sees the cost of a fine based on individuals incomes.
“They can try and make it affordable for all people and not impose an unaffordable fine on someone from the beginning. It will never be paid off because they can’t afford to pay it off,” he insists.
“If some fines are that high and don’t take into consideration things like living below the poverty line for instance, for those in acute poverty, it discriminates against them.”
A spokesman for the WA Attorney General said there were talks under way regarding the implementation of a Scandinavian-like fine system.
“We are at the stage of talking to the Commonwealth as it would require intergovernmental arrangements. We have not yet arrived at a concluded position,” the spokesman said in a statement.
Mr Georgatos has personally rallied funds together for hundreds of people over the years. He has even used his own money.
“I have spent tens of thousands of dollars getting people out of jail,” Mr Georgatos admitted.
“We can’t keep on doing this. Everyone knows if they call me up that I’ll pay it out of my own pocket. But how long is this going to continue on? It becomes exhaustive.”
EXCLUSIVE: Heavily pregnant single mother threatened with jail over unpaid fines
A heavily pregnant 23-year-old West Australian single mother said she has been threatened with six days in jail unless she can come up with $1000 to pay her fines.
By
Madeline Hayman-Reber
NITV News
17 Oct 2017
A young single mother says she is at risk of being jailed under Western Australia’s jail-for-fine-defaulter laws that saw Ms Dhu locked up before she died.
The woman, who has asked not to be named for privacy reasons, is 37 weeks pregnant, has a 16-month-old son and survives on little more than $300 a week on the single parent pension.
She reportedly has $4123.45 in unpaid fines and has told NITV News that she has been subject to repeated police visits that she believes to be excessive.
“They just have been rocking up at random times of the night, 11 o’clock at night you know, and banging on my back door with their torches,” she said.
“[They’re] pretty much giving me the feeling where I have to wake up in the morning and leave with my son.
“I feel like they’re going to come into my house and take me away from my boy and take [my son] into the Department for Child Protection.”
She said she has been offered “a few days” to make up her mind about whether or not she will make a payment of $1000 or do six days in jail.
Although the police have already spoken to the woman, she says she does not know why they continue coming over.
“They’re harassing me because they never had an address for me for quite some years, but now that they do, they feel the need to harass me every day,” the young woman said.
WA Police have been approached for comment.
Social justice activist Gerry Georgatos said he has asked the West Australian Attorney General John Quigley to act urgently.
“I’ve contacted his Chief of Staff, Colleen Egan, and asked them to go to Parliament, first opportunity, and do what is appropriate to suspend the current legislation that warrants or forces police officers to do background checks for unpaid fines for individuals and then arrest them,” Mr Georgatos said.
“I’ve asked that this come to an end while they continue to inquire into alternatives to unpaid fines that will not see people jailed.”
After speaking to the young mother herself, he said that she is quite shaken up over the whole ordeal.
“She’s quite distressed about the prospect of having to go to jail for unpaid fines,” Mr Georgatos said.
“She cried when the police told her she’d have to go to jail to pay them off. She doesn’t want her bub born in jail.”
But the terrified young woman feels powerless and fears for her son if she gets locked up.
“They have too much power over me, and I just don’t like the feeling that I have to leave my house,” she said.
“If I did go to jail, then I’d probably be a bit of a mess in there because I would be worried about my family. I’ve never been to prison, let alone seen one.”
Previously, the Attorney General supplied NITV News with a statement on the jail-for-fine-defaulter’s system, labelling it as ‘scandalous’.
“I intend to introduce a package of amendments to the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notices Enforcement Act 1994 (WA), the effect of which will be to reduce the number of people imprisoned for fine default alone,” the Attorney General said.
“I have examined the approach taken in other jurisdictions in relation to jailing for fines and I will be in a position to bring forward a reform package to Cabinet before the end of the year.”
The Attorney General also expressed that “the McGowan Labor Government has committed to introducing the Custody Notification Service:”.
“We are working through the coroner’s recommendations with a view to improving outcomes for Indigenous people in our community,” the statement read.
“Recommendations 6 and 7, which sit under the portfolio of the Attorney General, are both under active consideration.
Today Mr Quigley exclusively told The West Australian that he was considering a Centrelink repayment system for fine defaulters.
“I am considering a number of enhancements to the fines-enforcement system, including garnishing welfare payments to recover unpaid debt,” Mr Quigley said.
“We are at the stage of talking to the Commonwealth as it would require intergovernmental arrangements.
“We have not yet arrived at a concluded position.”
Gerry Georgatos has also started a petition to stop jailing people for unpaid fines.
EXCLUSIVE: Warrant out for arrest of Ms Dhu’s cousin over unpaid fines
West Australian Yamatji woman and mother of four, Alira Kelly-Ryder, has been told a warrant is out for her arrest over $3744 of unpaid fines.
By
Madeline Hayman-Reber
NITV News
9 May 2018
Since Monday, Alira Kelly-Ryder has lived in fear of having police knocking on her door to arrest her in front of her children, after being told by a Government agent that a warrant was out for her arrest.
UPDATE: ‘Funny, you wanted me to go to jail on Monday’: Warrant dropped for Ms Dhu’s cousin
Ms Kelly-Ryder is a qualified youth worker. She has worked with the community her whole professional life – most recently at Banksia Hill Youth Detention Centre as a Liaison Officer.
But when her contract wasn’t renewed recently, she had to get by on a Centrelink payment. As a result, she became unable to continue paying her fines.
She let the Fines Enforcement Registry know immediately, keeping them updated as much as possible.
On Monday, after receiving a new job offer, what should have been a time of celebration quickly turned into despair.
“I contacted them on Monday because I’ve just signed a new contract with a new employer for 12 months, so I’m confident I can start paying again, I want to go back to my $160 a fortnight and I offered them $500 up front,” Ms Kelly-Ryder told NITV News.
“Basically she stopped me halfway through and said I’ll just stop you there, I need to let you know that we cannot do you any more favours, we have a warrant out for your arrest, and we cannot give you any other option other than to go to jail and serve your time or pay $3744.”
Following the phone call, Ms Kelly-Ryder received what she perceived as a “bullying email” outlining the phone call. It left her in tears and feeling very threatened.
While Ms Kelly-Ryder fears what might happen to her children and her career if she gets locked up, she also fears for her life.
“It took me straight back to the death of my cousin in Port Hedland,” she said.
“She died in a cell because of unpaid fines, other reasons, but first and foremost, if she wasn’t locked up because of unpaid fines, she wouldn’t have died.”
Since Ms Dhu’s death in custody, countless other men and women have been locked up at a rate of $250 per day to pay off their fines, despite commitments made by the West Australian Government to discontinue the practice.
As Ms Kelly-Ryder owes $3,744 in unpaid fines, she’d have to serve four days in jail to pay off her highest court fine of $1031.70. Serving time would mean a permanent record, which would affect her future employment prospects.
Last year, the Attorney-General told NITV News the jail-for-fine-defaulter’s system was “scandalous”.
“I intend to introduce a package of amendments to the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notices Enforcement Act 1994 (WA), the effect of which will be to reduce the number of people imprisoned for fine default alone,” the Attorney General said in a statement.
“I have examined the approach taken in other jurisdictions in relation to jailing for fines and I will be in a position to bring forward a reform package to Cabinet before the end of the year.”
In October last year, Mr Quigley told the West Australian that he was considering a Centrelink repayment system for fine defaulters.
His office replied to NITV’s request for comment saying that the State Government was still working on it.
“The WA State Government is looking at a range of measures to stop imprisonment from fine default, including a requirement for welfare recipients who have outstanding fines to enter into time to pay (TTP) arrangements,” a spokesperson said.
