The life was long drained from Lynette Daley by the time the police arrived at the beach where her naked body lay.
Her blood was everywhere: It was between her legs and on the remains of the recently burned mattress partly hidden in the sand. And it was on the jeans worn by one of the two men who were with Daley when she died.
A coroner would later find Daley bled to death from a sex act she was subjected to while so deeply intoxicated she could not have consented. A forensic pathologist dubbed her injuries more severe than those which occur in even precipitous childbirth.
However, for five years, despite the urging of the coroner and police, prosecutors refused to try the men charged with her death. It was not until June, under pressure from an outraged public, that they at last agreed to bring the case to court.
Prosecutors have never publicly explained their reluctance to take the case, but Daley’s parents believe the reason is both painful and obvious: Their daughter was Aboriginal. The two men accused in her death are white.
“If it was two Indigenous people who’d done it to a white girl,” her stepfather Gordon Davis said, “they’d be in jail.”
Whether racial prejudice played a role in Daley’s case depends on who you ask. Some suggest there might have been a problem with the evidence. Others say that, as a poor mother of seven battling alcoholism, the 33-year-old might not have been viewed by prosecutors as an “ideal” victim.
Whatever the truth, the horror of Daley’s death has shaken a nation long uncomfortable talking about race, especially when it comes to the suffering of Australia’s original inhabitants. The denial runs so deep that anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner once dubbed it “the Great Australian Silence.”
When the British claimed Australia in the 1700s, they did so by declaring it terra nullius — owned by no one — ignoring the fact that Aboriginal people had lived there for at least 50,000 years. Forced off the land by colonists and exposed to new diseases, the Indigenous population shrank drastically.
Today, Aboriginal people make up just 3 percent of the population of 24 million. And by almost any measure — from health to wealth, employment to imprisonment — they lag far behind everyone else.
“The shame of this country is the treatment of Aboriginal people,” former New South Wales State lawmaker Jan Barham said. “Lynette’s case — it’s an example of that cultural ignorance or denial that we don’t value equally the lives and the treatment of an Aboriginal person.”
Daley, a cheeky tomboy who preferred the nickname Norma, started out so strong, her parents remember. When it came to boys, she was fiercely competitive; she threw stones farther than them, climbed trees higher. Her mother, Thelma, daydreamed her athletic daughter might one day be an Olympian.
However, as a teen, she fell in with a bad crowd and began drinking heavily. By 16, she was pregnant with her first child. Several of her children were fathered by men her family says controlled and beat her.
Davis and Thelma eventually took custody of the children.
No one knows exactly when Adrian Attwater and Paul Maris entered Daley’s orbit.
Attwater told police he and Daley were dating, though her family does not believe it.
By 33, Daley was homeless. One January day in 2011, she showed up at Davis’ house and spent a couple of days there, drying out.
Gordon Davis thought maybe she had finally hit bottom.
And then, he says, either Maris or Attwater called her.
Daley told her father they were going fishing.
The trio traveled to desolate Ten Mile Beach, on the New South Wales coast.
The state coroner compiled a detailed summary of what happened next, based on the statements of Attwater and Maris and testimony from witnesses, police and paramedics: They had all been drinking when they parked in the dunes. An autopsy later showed Daley’s blood alcohol level was between 0.30 and 0.35 percent, high enough to leave her severely incapacitated.
At some point, Attwater told police, he and Daley began to engage in what he described as a consensual sex act in which he inserted his fist inside her.
Later, Attwater changed his account: He had used only four fingers, he said.
Just before dawn, Maris set fire to the blood-soaked mattress from the back of his truck, along with Daley’s blood-stained bra. Then he called paramedics. By the time they arrived, Daley was dead. The men told paramedics that Attwater had had “wild sex” with Daley.
Police charged Attwater with manslaughter, and Maris with accessory after the fact, but a few months later, prosecutors dropped the charges, telling Daley’s family they could not prove the men intended to hurt her.
A charge of manslaughter does not require proof of intent.
State coroner Michael Barnes subsequently agreed to hold an inquest, a court-like proceeding convened after unusual deaths. His findings were unequivocal: Daley died of blood loss caused by blunt force genital tract trauma — injuries undoubtedly inflicted, Barnes wrote, by Attwater.
Barnes determined that there was a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction. So he referred the case back to the prosecutors.
However, for a second time, prosecutors declined to press charges, saying there was not enough evidence.
“Indigenous people have got no chance,” Davis said. “Not with the justice system here.”
Countless studies suggest Davis is right to remain wary. Aboriginal Australians make up more than a quarter of the prison population, and rates are rising. Legal experts also said cases involving Indigenous victims often are dropped before trial.
The Davis’ were running out of hope. Then the Australian media jumped on the case.
An online petition demanding the head prosecutor justify his actions gathered tens of thousands of signatures. Protesters rallied outside the office of a local politician.
There was particular anger among Aboriginal rights advocates. Many saw what happened to Daley as achingly familiar.
Indigenous women and girls are about 35 times more likely to be hospitalized due to family violence than their counterparts. And Indigenous mothers are nearly 18 times more likely to be victims of homicide. Yet few cases of violence are ever reported, and far fewer make it to court.
Part of that is due to a deep distrust of authorities that dates back to European settlement.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
RSS