A state government is under fire for allowing two vulnerable foster children to be placed in the care of an elderly woman living with a triple murderer.<\/p>\n
NSW Families and Communities Minister Kate Washington said the children, aged 12 and 14, were put in danger by being allocated to the home where 78-year-old convicted killer Regina Kaye Arthurell resided.<\/p>\n
“It’s entirely unacceptable for a vulnerable child in the care of the state to be living with a triple murderer,” she told Sydney radio 2GB on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“It should never have happened and I’m deeply apologetic.”<\/p>\n
Her department was first made aware of the unusual living situation in December but “some very poor decisions” taken at the time didn’t rectify their placement.<\/p>\n
She confirmed that the murderer, formerly known as Reginald Kenneth Arthurell, was no longer living in the same residence as the children and had relocated.<\/p>\n
The radio station revealed the disturbing allegations on Monday and were pounced upon by coalition MP Damien Tudehope in his grilling of Attorney-General Michael Daley during a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
An extended supervision order slapped on Arthurell which lapsed in December 2024 needed to be on Daley’s radar, Tudehope said.<\/p>\n
“You took no action to seek an extended supervision order and the circumstances of this person… now living with a woman who is significantly at risk and her foster children,” he said to Daley in a testy exchange.<\/p>\n
“No one in the government took any any steps in relation to it. Do you think that’s acceptable in protecting community safety?”<\/p>\n
The convicted killer was released on parole in November 2020 after serving a 24-year sentence.<\/p>\n
Arthurell first killed in 1974, having committed the manslaughter of her stepfather Thomas Thornton who was said to have been very abusive.<\/p>\n
In 1981, she committed the manslaughter of naval officer Ross Browning in a Northern Territory robbery.<\/p>\n
A few years after being released, she murdered her former partner Venet Mulhallby, bludgeoning her to death in 1995 with a piece of wood at her Coonabarabran home in central NSW.<\/p>\n
Alcohol was implicated in all of the killings, which were committed under her birth name Reginald Kenneth Arthurell before she came out as transgender in 2021.<\/p>\n
The woman was charged with several counts of sexual touching without consent of a man in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A state government is under fire for allowing two vulnerable foster children to be placed in the care…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-323864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}