Mental health was never on my radar. I never believed in it.
In the winter of 2020, a ten-year-old girl named Biddy Porter lost her life at a rural New South Wales property, killed by a fourteen-year-old in the grip of undiagnosed schizophrenia and acute psychosis. An inquest now examines not only the tragedy itself but the long chain of unheeded warnings — a mother's unfamiliarity with mental illness, a referral lost to a spam folder, a system that came too late. It is a story about what happens when the language of suffering goes unrecognized by those closest to the one who is suffering, and about the children — both of them — who bore the cost.
- A fourteen-year-old girl had been telling the adults around her, in the clearest terms available to her, that something was terribly wrong — and no one translated those words into action.
- Her mother, who did not believe in mental health as a framework for understanding her daughter's behavior, turned to a naturopathic herbalist while her child confessed to relentless thoughts of killing.
- A GP eventually recognized the crisis and issued a psychiatric referral, but it vanished into a spam folder and was never acted upon — leaving a one-week window in which the unthinkable became possible.
- Exactly seven days after that appointment, Biddy Porter — ten years old, described as vibrant and creative — was left alone with the teenager and did not survive the afternoon.
- The New South Wales Supreme Court found the teenager not criminally responsible due to mental illness; she remains in custody under mental health tribunal oversight while the inquest probes the systemic failures that preceded the killing.
On a winter afternoon in July 2020, ten-year-old Biddy Porter was killed at a rural New South Wales property by a fourteen-year-old girl who was experiencing acute psychosis. The killing was not an act of criminal intent but of untreated mental illness — a distinction that would later shape how the law responded. An inquest is now examining the cascade of missed interventions that made it possible.
For months before the killing, the teenager had been showing unmistakable signs of severe psychological disturbance. She harmed herself, became preoccupied with knives, reported feeling unreal and disconnected from her own body. Most starkly, she told her mother she thought about killing people constantly — not as a fleeting impulse but as an intrusive, relentless presence. Two psychiatrists would later confirm she had schizophrenia and was in acute psychosis at the time of the killing.
Her mother, however, did not recognize any of this as a mental health emergency. Mental health, she told the inquest, had simply never registered as a concern for her. When her daughter killed six chickens on the family property in June 2019, the mother's response was to remove her bedroom door and break her video game — frustrated not by the act itself but by the lack of permission. She consulted a naturopathic herbalist rather than a psychiatrist. Only after her daughter confessed to intrusive thoughts about murdering her own family did the mother finally see a GP.
The doctor recognized the severity immediately and wrote a referral to a psychiatrist in Sydney. It ended up in the mother's spam folder, unseen until after the inquest had already begun. One week after that appointment — before any psychiatric help could arrive — the teenager was left alone with Biddy Porter. Biddy was ten years old, remembered as vibrant and creative. She did not survive the afternoon.
In 2021, the New South Wales Supreme Court found the teenager not criminally responsible due to mental illness. She has remained in custody since, now under mental health tribunal oversight. The inquest, presided over by state coroner Teresa O'Sullivan, is tracing the full arc of what went wrong — the gaps in awareness, the absence of intervention, and the question of what might have been different had any one of those moments been met with recognition rather than silence.
On a winter afternoon in July 2020, a ten-year-old girl named Biddy Porter was killed at a rural property in New South Wales while in the care of a fourteen-year-old who was experiencing acute psychosis. The killing was not an act of criminal intent but of untreated mental illness—a distinction that would later define how the law understood what happened. Two years after Biddy's death, an inquest began examining the cascade of missed interventions, misunderstandings, and systemic failures that preceded it.
The fourteen-year-old who killed Biddy had been showing signs of severe psychological disturbance for months. She had harmed herself. She had become preoccupied with knives. She reported feeling unreal, as though she were not inhabiting her own body. Most starkly, she told her mother that she thought about killing people constantly—not as a passing thought but as an intrusive, relentless presence in her mind. These were the words of a child in crisis. Two psychiatrists would later confirm she had schizophrenia and was in acute psychosis, likely experiencing delusions and a complete loss of contact with reality.
But her mother did not recognize these signs as a mental health emergency. When asked at the inquest why she had not sought psychiatric help, the mother was direct: mental health had never registered as a concern for her. She did not believe in it. She did not understand it. When her daughter killed six chickens on the family property in June 2019—an act that should have alarmed any parent—the mother's response was to remove the teenager's bedroom door and break her video game in half. She later explained to the court that the chickens were going to be culled anyway, and her real frustration was that her daughter had not asked permission first. She did not see the killing as a warning sign of something darker.
Instead of turning to a psychiatrist, the mother consulted a naturopathic herbalist about her daughter's behavior. The herbalist suggested she see a general practitioner. Only after her daughter confessed to having intrusive thoughts about murdering her parents and sibling did the mother finally make an appointment with a doctor. The GP, recognizing the severity of what he was hearing, wrote a referral to a psychiatrist in Sydney. But the referral ended up in the mother's email spam folder. She did not find it until after the inquest had already begun.
Exactly one week after that doctor's appointment—before the psychiatric referral could be acted upon—the fourteen-year-old was left alone with Biddy Porter in the farmhouse. Biddy was remembered as vibrant, clever, and creative. She was ten years old. She did not survive the afternoon.
In 2021, the New South Wales Supreme Court found that the teenager was not criminally responsible for Biddy's death due to mental illness. She has remained in custody since her arrest, now overseen by the mental health review tribunal. The inquest, presided over by state coroner Teresa O'Sullivan, is examining not just what happened on that day but the systemic failures that made it possible—the gaps in mental health awareness, the absence of intervention, the referral lost to spam. Counsel assisting the inquest, Peggy Dwyer SC, has outlined the teenager's documented descent into psychosis in the months before the killing, a trajectory that should have triggered intervention but instead went largely unrecognized by the adults responsible for her care.
Citas Notables
Mental health was never on my radar. I never believed in mental health, I didn't understand mental health so it didn't come up to me as something I needed to do.— The mother of the fourteen-year-old, at inquest
I don't understand why that was such a big red flag— The mother, referring to her daughter killing the chickens
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why didn't the mother see these signs—the self-harm, the preoccupation with knives, the confession about killing thoughts—as a mental health crisis?
She simply didn't have the framework. She told the court that mental health was never on her radar, that she didn't believe in it or understand it. When her daughter killed the chickens, the mother saw a discipline problem, not a symptom.
But the daughter actually told her mother she thought about killing people all the time. That's not ambiguous.
No, it's not. And the mother did eventually make a doctor's appointment after hearing that. But by then, a week was all that separated the GP visit from Biddy's death. The referral to the psychiatrist got lost in spam.
A spam folder. So close to intervention, and it missed by that margin.
Yes. The GP recognized the emergency and acted. But the system—or rather, the mother's email—broke the chain. And there's no way to know if a psychiatrist could have prevented what happened, only that the chance never came.
The inquest is looking at systemic failures. What does that mean in this context?
It means examining why a fourteen-year-old in acute psychosis, showing clear warning signs, was never connected to mental health care until it was too late. It's not just about one mother's lack of understanding. It's about whether there were other points where the system should have caught this.
And Biddy Porter—she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She was a ten-year-old girl staying at a property during school holidays. She was in the care of someone experiencing untreated psychosis. That's the tragedy at the center of this.