Cindy’s Law closes legal loophole after 37 years of effort

After 37 years of seeking justice, Cindy’s Law has passed the NSW Parliament thanks to the work of lawyers and the families of 16-year-old Murrawarri and Kunja girl Mona Lisa ‘Mona’ Smith,16 and 15-year-old Wangkumara girl Jacinta Rose ‘Cindy’ Smith.

Cindy’s Law effectively closes the loophole in the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), making sure that offenders who commit acts of sexual violence or indecently interfere with a body, when the time of death is uncertain, cannot escape prosecution.

The two young cousins, Cindy and Mona, were discovered beside a wrecked ute on the Mitchell Highway in December 1987. Non-Indigenous man, Ian Alexander Grant, who was 40 at the time and died in 2017, was found by witnesses with his arm splayed over a bare-chested and partially naked Cindy. On the eve of his trial, the charge of interfering with a corpse was dropped, and he was ultimately acquitted of driving-related offences in 1990. He was not charged with manslaughter, which he should have been according to then-Detective Inspector Paul Quigg, who said as much to the Court at the coronial inquest.

After years of lobbying by the Smith family, and assistance from the National Justice Project, the inquest commenced in 2023. The inquest exposed numerous shortcomings, including the initial investigation into the deaths was inadequately conducted, officers failed to preserve evidence to the standard required, police did not contact the mother of Mona Lisa Smith after her daughter’s death, and the “inexplicably” deficient police investigation was rooted in racial bias.

Adjunct Professor George Newhouse, NJP CEO tells LSJ, “Before the 2023 inquest, the family were never listened to, despite advocating for justice at the time of the original case when the charges against the perpetrator were dropped, and then consistently throughout the decades until the inquest was finally resumed and at last the girls’ story was finally going to be told. The inquest revealed that substantial evidence was completely ignored or missed during the original ‘deficient’ investigation, including the horrific assault of Cindy.”

In her findings, State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan found, “Horrifyingly, the evidence indicates that Mr Grant sexually interfered with Cindy after she had passed.”

Ms O’Sullivan also found “numerous, significant failings” in the police investigation that led to Grant’s acquittal on charges of culpable driving in 1990.

Newhouse says the passage of Cindy’s Law is a hard-won legacy of family courage after nearly four decades.

“For 37 long years, the families of Mona and Cindy Smith have carried the unbearable weight of grief and injustice, and their tireless pursuit of truth has been vindicated … The coronial inquest confirmed what the family has always known; that the legal system and police failed their daughters and failed them.”

Newhouse describes as “harrowing”, the decision of the DPP not to proceed with charges against Grant, who sexually assaulted Cindy as she lay helpless by the side of the road. This decision was based on the inability to determine whether the assault occurred before or after Cindy’s death.

The Coroner was able to make findings 35 years after the girl’s deaths, that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute at the time.

Newhouse says, “It brings the family some comfort to know that other families won’t have to face the same injustice they’ve faced, and to finally be taken seriously by someone in the government …

“They long for further changes in the way the NSW Police force treat Aboriginal families, including Aboriginal victims of crime and the way that they investigate crimes against Aboriginal people.”

Julie Buxton, the barrister who represented the family at the inquest says it was a privilege to assist the families of Mona and Cindy to pursue this important legislative reform.

“This law reform is vitally important to protect the legacy of deceased victims and their families who continue to live with insufferable pain,” she says.

“The reform is also vital to ensure sexual offending does not go unpunished in the future, particularly given the disproportionate rate such crimes impact First Nations girls and women. It is abhorrent that the law allowed for a horrendous sexual crime to go unpunished due to a legal technicality.

“I pay my enormous respect to Mona and Cindy’s family – the bravery and grace with which they conducted themselves throughout the harrowing evidence at the inquest, and their fierce determination to seek legislative change to prevent other families enduring such horror and injustice.

“It is also a great credit to the NSW State Coroner that she referred the proposed reform to the Attorney-General so swiftly after delivering her findings.”