'Cindy's Law' follows tireless fight by families of Cindy and Mona Smith

Australia Broadcast Center

4 days ago

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the names and images of people who have died. This story contains some confronting details about sexual assault.
Standing under a large fig tree near the NSW Parliament, Aunty Dawn Smith wipes away tears as she remembers her daughter Cindy and niece Mona as "good girls".
"I always wondered what she would have been like today," she said.
"What if she got married and had kids? You think of all of these things. I miss them very much."
Teenage cousins Murrawarri and Kunja girl Mona Lisa ('Mona') Smith and Wangkumara girl Jacinta Rose 'Cindy' Smith died following a motor vehicle crash near Bourke in 1987.
Their families have waged a decades-long fight for justice, with a coroner last year finding the police investigation into the man driving the car was "manifestly deficient" and impacted by racial bias.
Now, thanks to their advocacy, a legal loophole that allowed the man to avoid prosecution for interfering with Cindy's body will be closed, nearly 40 years after her death.
Cindy's family called this "Cindy's Law".
"I'm feeling hurt," Aunty Dawn said, "the justice system failed us".
"If we can help anyone, I'm willing to help them and give them advice."
The 2024 coronial inquest found 40-year-old non-Indigenous man Alexander Ian Grant was driving the car in which Mona and Cindy were passengers and he was "highly likely" intoxicated.
It heard a witness found him after the accident with his arm draped across Cindy's near-naked body.
"Horrifyingly, the evidence indicates that Mr Grant sexually interfered with Cindy after she had passed," State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan found.
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.
"Had two white teenage girls died in the same circumstances, I cannot conceive of there being such a manifestly deficient police investigation into the circumstances of their deaths," she found.
Crucially, Ms O'Sullivan noted police prosectors had dropped the charge against Grant of interfering with Cindy's body because they couldn't determine the time at which she died.
With Grant dying in 2017, "the perpetrator escaped justice 'due to a loophole'," Cindy's family told the inquest.
On Wednesday, the New South Wales Parliament introduced a bill that will enable the prosecution of offenders when it is not clear if an act of sexual violence occurred before or after death.
In tabling the bill, NSW Attorney General Michael Daley made note of the family's presence in the chamber and said he was "proud" to be making the reform after their tireless advocacy.
"Allowing a perpetrator to escape accountability through such a technicality is clearly unacceptable," he said.
"Law reform cannot erase the tragedy of the loss of those two little girls but I'm grateful to have the opportunity to improve the law and make sure that no other offenders avoid justice."
The National Justice Project's principal solicitor George Newhouse, who has been acting for the family, said they had long been "let down" by the justice system but felt they had finally been heard.
"At least [in] changing the law, in the future someone might be held accountable," he said.
"But they were let down, not just by the police, but by the DPP at the time who dropped these charges.
"The coroner said if the police had done the investigation properly, there might have been enough evidence to convict the perpetrator at the time.
"They just did not care about this family, and that kind of discrimination against First Nations people continues to this day."
With no-one held accountable for the botched police investigation, Cindy's sister Kerrie Smith said she wants to see more than an apology from authorities.
"We can't get closure now anyway because the bloke who done it, he died, he's gone, he didn't even been in jail for one day," she said.
"So he got away with everything where our little girls, my little sister, my cousin died out on the road out there. And he lived his own life."
Aunty Dawn agreed an apology is "no good because [the police] only say it, they don't mean it".
"I'd like to see something done, get someone to be [held] accountable for not doing their job properly."
Julie Buxton, who acted for Cindy's family at the coronial inquest, told ABC News Breakfast the family first made a complaint to the NSW Attorney General back in 1990.
"It was absolutely devastating to lose the two girls, but then it was devastating to be caught in a system where the police just did not do their job to an adequate degree," she said.
"I think it's a great tribute to the hard work that they have done and a tribute to the love and commitment to their children and to wanting to achieve greater change for others."
Mona's sister Fiona Smith told the Indigenous Affairs Team the decades-long legal process brought up "a can of worms" but she is hopeful this legal change will help others.
"All I'd like to know is that it will work, that it helps somebody down the track somewhere, and it stops this from happening again."
Mr Daley told the Indigenous Affairs Team the reform means a "special verdict" can be granted by a jury where it is unknown whether the offending happened before or after death.
It will carry a three-year maximum sentence.
"It won't bring them back, nothing can, unfortunately, but it'll mean that this circumstance, which is very rare, can't happen again," told the Indigenous Affairs Team.
"It'll shut that unfortunate loophole."
Mr Daley acknowledged Cindy and Mona Lisa's families were let down by the justice system over many years.
"The whole thing was really poorly handled by a range of people and government entities right from the start," he said.
"We've got to learn from those mistakes and help people move on … and make sure it can't happen again."
Kerrie Smith said she wants her sister Cindy remembered for the loving sister, daughter and niece she was.
"She was a beautiful girl, you know."