NSW government apologises for leaving foster children in home with triple killer | New South Wales

The New South Wales government has apologized after admitting it left two foster children at home with a convicted triple murderer until this week, despite a report alerting them to the situation in December.

NSW Families and Communities Minister Kate Washington told 2GB radio on Wednesday morning that Regina Arthurell had been removed from the home where she lived with foster children aged 12 and 14, after the radio station announced the situation on Monday.

“It is absolutely unacceptable for a vulnerable child under the protection of the state to live with a triple family.” [killer]. “This should never have happened and I am deeply sorry for what happened,” he said.

Washington, who announced an urgent investigation, said his department was made aware of the situation in late December, but confirmed that Arthurell was not removed from the children until Monday.

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Arthurell, who identified as a transgender woman, was convicted of two counts of manslaughter and one count of murder for three murders committed while posing as a man. These include manslaughter convictions for the stabbing death of his stepfather in 1974 and the death of a 19-year-old teenager in a robbery in the Northern Territory in 1981.

Arthurell, who was on parole for manslaughter in 1995, bludgeoned his former partner Venet Raylee Mulhall to death at her home in Coonabarabran in central NSW and was released and placed on an extended supervision order (ESO) in November 2020 after being sentenced to 24 years in prison for the murder.

At a 2021 hearing, a superior court judge said Arthurell had made sincere efforts at rehabilitation but had a “tendency to end people’s lives through violence.”

On Wednesday Washington said he was concerned by a report from a 2GB individual who identified herself as the daughter of the woman Arthurell was living with and said she had alerted NSW police and Correctional Services this year after attempts to alert government departments last year failed.

“It seems like there were a lot of system failures that got us to this point,” Washington said.

Washington said there were “complexities” in the situation that he could not share publicly to protect the children’s privacy. He said a review would examine “the decision-making process that led to this appalling decision”.

In budget estimates on Wednesday, NSW attorney general Michael Daley was asked why his department did not extend the ESO for Arthurell, which expires in December 2024.

“There is a committee to evaluate high-risk offenders chaired by the commissioner of Corrective Services, and that committee did not refer Ms. Arthurell to the attorney general for further consideration under the statute,” he said.

NSW police and NSW Corrective Services have been contacted for comment.