William Tyrrell’s foster mother allegedly hit a child with a wooden spoon and kicked her on the floor when the girl was misbehaving, a Sydney court has heard.
The woman, who the Herald is prohibited from identifying except by the pseudonym SD, was charged with two counts of intimidation and two of common assault in October last year, in relation to several alleged incidents in March 2021.
William Tyrrell’s foster parents outside Parramatta Local Court on Thursday.Credit:Nick Moir
“This type of exchange between parents and children often occur in the family setting,” Magistrate Peter Feather said, calling the police prosecution case “not particularly strong”.
“This is [a case] where a child has been misbehaving. A six-year-old child placed in the care of SD and her husband, and that caused difficulties,” he said.
“[The] allegations by SD that child was misbehaving are not supported,” the police prosecutor said in response.
William Tyrrell vanished in 2014.Credit:NSW Justice Department
“The intimidation relates to an ongoing [alleged] pattern of violence.”
SD appeared in Parramatta Local Court flanked by her husband and a friend.
In applying for the case to be dealt with under mental health legislation, her lawyer Sharon Ramsden said it is “unlikely if not impossible” for SD to commit another similar offence.
Both children have been removed from her care, with Magistrate Feather noting she is unlikely to be a foster carer in the future.
William Tyrrell, who was in foster care with SD and her husband, vanished from SD’s mother’s home on the NSW Mid North Coast, aged three, in September 2014.
Despite the offer of NSW’s first $1 million reward, a high-profile police investigation canvassing more than 600 persons of interest, a dedicated strike force and a coronial investigation, no trace of the little boy in the Spider-Man suit has ever been found and nobody has ever been charged over his disappearance and presumed death.
In a stunning change of focus, SD was last year revealed to be the sole person of interest in William’s baffling disappearance by then-police commissioner Mick Fuller as Strike Force Rosann detectives undertook yet another forensic search at the home from which he vanished.
Police last year also seized the car that belonged to SD’s mother at the time of William’s disappearance.
More to come.
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