Hog-tie mum Rebecca Haliday wants a fresh start

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IT'S a bitterly cold Melbourne afternoon when we pull up outsidethe grungy brick block of units in the city's inner west.
It's a poky, depressing place, squeezed into the backstreets ofthis working-class suburb, but the battlers who live here can'tafford to be choosy. Loud music blares from a flflat as I make myway up the concrete stairwell to the second flfloor and knock on adoor.
The woman I'm here to see, 27-year-old Rebecca Mae Haliday, isn'texpecting this visit, but neither is she surprised to see me.Journalists keep tracking her down no matter how many times shemoves.
She made national headlines fifive years ago when she and formerboyfriend Daniel Ronald Green pleaded guilty to killing Haliday'stoddler, Beanca.
During the two-day sentencing hearing it was revealed the pair hadbeen hog-tying the 18-month-old girl in bed night after night intheir caravan home at Caboolture, north of Brisbane, in a misguidedattempt to set her a bedtime routine. The cruel practice, in whichher hands and feet were separately bound and then tied togetherbehind her back, eventually led to Beanca suffocating in her sleepon July 29, 2001. Haliday and Green were both jailed for six yearsfor manslaughter.
The horrific crime made Haliday a marked woman.
Even when she was released from Brisbane Women's CorrectionalCentre on parole two years later and relocated to Victoria, she wasconstantly scrutinised.
It's been a while, though, since anyone checked in on her, and thechanges are remarkable. The obese, angry girl with long, messy hairhas gone; she's lost weight, her hair is shorter and lighter, herfeatures soft. I tell her I'm writing about the case - about thedeath of Beanca and the - about the death of Beanca and theprogress of her brother Chris, who was two-and-a-half when Halidaylost custody of him after Beanca died. She agrees she should beinvolved.
She's dressed in black pants, sneakers and a long cardigan, whichshe pulls tight around her as she leads the way into herone-bedroom unit. She has only a few possessions but they fifillthis tiny space. A card table holds a stereo and a few CDs; atwo-seater black lounge, some white plastic chairs and a secondhanddesk are the only other furniture in the room.
Haliday pulls out one of the plastic chairs and takes a seat. Wemake small talk for a while - about the glimpses of Flemingtonracecourse she has from the loungeroom, the complete works ofShakespeare on her windowsill; her painting hobby. I ask her aboutthe photos on the wall behind her. There are about fifive stuck toa tatty manila folder, a couple badly out of focus. One has beencut from a newspaper.
"They're pictures of Beanca and Chris. They are pretty muchall I've got," Haliday says.
She speaks very little about Beanca. She can't stop talking abouther son. "Chris was an angel, an absolute angel. I miss himevery day and I would really love to be able to just give him acuddle and tell him how much I love him." She fantasises aboutseeing him again but fears the outcry that would follow if sheinquired about visitation rights.
Over the next hour, she talks about how it went wrong. The mistakesshe made as a young mother.
How it came to be that she allowed her boyfriend of just a fewmonths to tie up her little girl regularly.
There's another thing in the flflat she knows I've seen, and shepoints to it now. It's a dark blue pram.
She smiles shyly and leans in to tell me her secret.
"I'm actually pregnant." She's fifive months along. Andshe's determined it is going to be different this time around.
Beanca Newman wasn't an easy child to manage. Chris was quiet andcompliant but Beanca, 11 months younger than her brother, was aclingy baby and a poor sleeper. It left Haliday, who had bothchildren by the time she was 19, sleep-deprived, stressed anddepressed. At least, that is her version of events. The casepresented by Queensland police and the prosecutor at her sentencingin the Supreme Court in Brisbane in March 2003 was that she was ahopeless mother from the outset, devoid of even the most basicparenting knowledge. It was a scenario ultimately accepted bysentencing judge Roslyn Atkinson, who said it was apparent from theevidence about the children's early years in Melbourne that theywere "almost relentlessly neglected".
"The children were not properly fed, not properly lookedafter, not properly clothed," Atkinson said.
"The way of getting them to sleep was really just to let themfall asleep where they dropped ... if they happened to be in bed,well and good, if not they fell asleep wherever they were."Haliday and the children's father, Simon Newman, who was 17 yearsold when Chris was born in 1999, stayed together for a couple ofyears, moving between flflats in and around Melbourne, but in theyear after Beanca's birth the relationship broke down and Newmanmoved out. By that stage, Haliday was reportedly putting thechildren to bed by locking them in their room at 7.30pm and turningthe stereo way up to drown out their screams. One day inearlytomid-2001, Newman arrived at the flflat to fifind the triogone. Unbeknown to him, Haliday, then 20, had taken the kids toQueensland where she had started an immediate live-in relationshipwith Daniel Green, a 23-year-old family friend she had known sinceshe was a teenager. The instant family moved into a caravan parkedin the back yard of Green's family home at Caboolture.
Soon Green had had enough of Beanca. While Chris would sleepthrough the night, the little girl would scream and refuse to stayin bed. Green flfloated an idea: what if he restrained her?
Haliday consented and every night a screaming and thrashing Beanca- who, Haliday later told police, hated being confifined, even in acar seat - was tied in bed by Green. Green claimed it happened fora fortnight, Haliday said six weeks. Haliday didn't get involved;she later said she didn't want to know what was happening."Daniel would tie Beanca so she wouldn't come down to our bedand annoy us ... so she learned that bedtime was bedtime," shesaid in a police interview. "We had talked about it and both(said) it was a bit on the cruel side but she had to learn thatbedtime was bedtime and this was the only way she'd do it,otherwise she'd end up throwing herself around and hurting herselfwhen she got told 'no' to coming up in the bed." Haliday toldpolice that after a few weeks, she thought Green was tying thetoddler's already separately bound hands and feet together in a"hog-tying" fashion. Green denied this.
On July 30, 2001, Haliday woke about 11am to fifind her little girldead. She had passed away during the night from what was believedto be a combination of pneumonia and asphyxia. Green told policethat on the night Beanca died he had separately tied up her handsand feet, then wrapped a doona around her shoulders. A sheet wasalso then rolled tightly around the doona.
Justice Atkinson was shown pictures of the caravan and told thecourt that like Haliday's home in Melbourne, it was "grosslydirty and untidy and an unsuitable environment for any human beingto live in, let alone children". She accepted that neither ofthe adults had intended to kill Beanca. "It was a misguidedand naive attempt to set a bedtime for the child but it was alsocruel and deliberate. These were deliberate acts of assault withfull awareness of the distress that was caused to this baby."
For Haliday, it was another chapter in a tragic story. She was borninto a household marred by violence. Her parents split when she wasfour, and from the age of fifive she was sexually abused by aseries of men. At 13 she escaped to the streets but was raped andfell pregnant; the baby girl was given up for adoption. Marijuana,binge-drinking, speed and cocaine helped numb the pain.
And then, at age 17, she met Simon Newman, a 16-year-old boy from aworking-class home. Before long she was pregnant.
Jenny Newman vividly recalls the days of her son's relationshipwith Haliday. The entire story is a nightmare that plays over andover in her brain:
the fifilthy Melbourne flflats the couple lived in, her fears forher grandchildren, Haliday's vanishing act.
And then the news that turned her life upside-down.
"I was at work when Simon got a (anonymous) phone call from awoman saying that Beanca had died," Newman says softly."He had already been told Haliday could be in Queensland, so Istarted making phone calls up there but was running into brickwalls until the (Queensland) Coroner's department told me who toring at the Caboolture Police Station: I knew things were not rightwhen I got put through to the homicide department." We'resitting in the loungeroom of Newman's modest rented home at CroydonHills in Melbourne's east. She's a resilient, no-nonsense kind of50-year-old; a divorced single mum who's raised four kids of herown. She was a nurse, then ran her own contract cleaning company.These days she operates a flfledgling real estate franchise.
"Simon and I jumped on a plane and went straight to the policestation and we were interviewed," she says. After many hours,"child protection workers who became involved made it clear tous that if I didn't take Chris then and there that night he wasgoing to be put in foster care, and I didn't want that to happen tohim. The police said, 'Okay, you need to go and get Chris - wecan't go in and get him (without court orders) but we will supportyou.' " When Newman and her son arrived at the house whereChris was being kept, Haliday came to the door "and I couldsee Chris was asleep on the couch and I said to her, 'Look, Simonreally needs to give Chris a cuddle' ... so she moved back and letSimon pick him up ... and when she walked out of the room we justtook off." Newman straightens in her armchair as if she'sshaking off the memory of that moment.
She grows quiet. "It was like being in a movie; we shouldnever have been put in that position." She doesn't really havetime for this interview, but this is important to Newman. Keepingthe story of what happened to her granddaughter alive in the mediamay help save another child. It has also proved successful to datein keeping Haliday away from Chris, now nine. After Beanca's death,Newman spent about $25,000 - money she was saving for a housedeposit - on legal fees to secure full custody of him in the FamilyCourt of Australia. Simon was left devastated by Beanca's death,and Newman accepts it will be a long time before her son is capableof managing Chris's needs, which are immense.
She had long suspected her grandson was autistic, but it was onlyafter she became his full-time carer that specialists diagnosed thefull extent of his condition. He has severe autism, globaldevelopment delay, ADHD and an intellectual disability. Theseverity of his disability is diffificult to gauge, as he hasn'tuttered a word since his grandmother rescued him. While he spokesome words as a toddler, intensive work by a speech therapist hasnot yielded results and it's feared he may never talk again. He nowcommunicates via sign language.
"I think it (his lack of speech) is probably a combination ofall of his conditions but I think the autism played a huge part init," says Newman. "A great majority of children withautism have speech but Chris spent a lot of time on his own,isolated ... Haliday and Green both admitted to Beanca being tiedup and left there for long hours and Chris was obviously there aswell; being autistic he would have gone further into himself. Andthen you have the trauma of him being there, listening to Beancascream and struggle on the day that she died." Chris willprobably always need a carer, she says.
As an adult "he may be able to live in a shared housearrangement where there is someone else there to help him ... butit is unlikely he will be able to live independently".
Over the past seven years, Newman has battled through a web ofgovernment red tape to secure her grandson the best network of careshe can. A psychologist, paediatrician and occupational therapistwork alongside the speech therapist, while a team of carers with aschedule of activities ensures he is supervised and stimulatedwhile Newman is at work.
The next day, Newman brings Chris home early from his specialdevelopment school, and he highfifives me hello. He's a slim,good-looking boy. Happy, too. His grandmother puts on a Hi-5 videoin the TV room next to the kitchen while she makes him a snack. Hewanders back to her after a while, they have a cuddle and a tickleand then he sits down to eat. He wants a second cup of juice, whichhe gets.
A request for more juice a few minutes later is refused, and theresponse is immediate. Chris throws himself on the kitchen flfloor,repeatedly slamming his legs and fifists on the ground and lettingout a tirade of loud grunts and groans that makes conversationimpossible. There's no consoling him, and it's diffificult towatch. During a particularly bad spell last year because of somefrustrations he was having at school, he smashed ten windows in thehouse. "Some carers give in to him at this point," Newmantells me above the racket, "and just give him what he wants tomake him stop." But Newman is to make him stop." ButNewman is no pushover. She directs him to a special blue mat hispsychologist has recommended for times like this, a place where hecan safely unleash his frustrations. It works. After ten minutes orso, the tantrum is over. Newman's youngest daughter Rebecca, 19,walks in with a packet of chips and offers Chris some, and hehappily returns to the kitchen table to eat them.
Newman takes some picture cards from a cupboard.
Each has a cartoon face displaying a different emotion - fear,sadness, happiness, shyness, anger.
She lays them out in front of her grandson, rufflfling his hair asshe stands beside him. "How did you feel before, Chris? Showme on the cards." An index fifinger shoots out from the chippacket and he taps two of them in quick succession. Happy. Sad.
Newman doesn't want haliday anywhere near Chris. Not because she'sfearful of losing custody, but because she's fearful of the damageit could do to him. "I don't think he needs to go back andhave that all dragged up again ... to go back into that world ofwho she is and what she's capable of." I tell Newman aboutHaliday's tragic childhood, details of which I found among courtdocuments.
The psychologist who assessed her diagnosed fifive separatedisorders - including chronic post-traumatic stress, severedepression and a borderline personality disorder - and theorisedthat those conditions, combined with chronic sleep deprivation andthe dysfunctional, power-imbalanced relationship he alleged she hadwith Green, "would have signifificantly impaired herdecision-making ability concerning the tying up of Beanca". Inher sentencing remarks, Justice Atkinson said the physical, sexualand emotional abuse Haliday had been exposed to as a child"made her particularly vulnerable to offending in the way inwhich has often (been) described as a cycle of abuse". "Aperson who has been treated in the way in which she has beentreated fifinds it a struggle to look after herself, let alone beresponsible for two young children, who I have no doubt she lovedintensely." Newman is unmoved. "You can have any excuseyou want ... but at the end of the day the reason you have a brainis to use it, and the reason you have a heart is to think about whyyou're doing things. I don't believe there are many people in thisworld who could sit by while a baby is held down, hog-tied, wrappedin a blanket, and then listen to her screaming for 16 hours.
"If she had said, 'I can't do this, I need your help, pleasetake the kids, please come in and help me', that would have beenacceptable. She was offered all the help in the world from us. Allof it. But she would not let us help her. She would not let us nearthem." Newman is unaware Haliday is pregnant again, and Idon't feel it's my place to tell her. She has previously said shelives in fear of the day Haliday has more children. I tell her theyoung woman I met the day before seemed to have matured and shownsome insight into her past behaviour, but Newman is sceptical."I think she knows when she's beaten.
I think she is a very manipulative person and I don't see how shecould have changed so dramatically from the person I know.
"I have no hatred towards Haliday or Green. I am emotionlessabout them. I hope that they can go on and lead good lives and dothe right thing and become good people. But that will never takeaway from what they have done. Every day of their lives they shouldremember that they took away a fragile little person's life. Andthey took away all the joy and pleasure that we could have had fromher life as well." Green, now 30, is still on parole. Itexpires in February. He's had a child since Beanca's death - a boyconceived between his arrest and sentencing - but his paroleconditions forbid him having unsupervised contact with any childunder 16. The mother of his son told The Courier-Mail in 2006 thatshe had no qualms about letting Green near her children. Shedeclined to be involved in this story.
Veteran Queensland detective Denzil Clark is a gentle, quietlyspoken man but he doesn't mince his words on this case, which heranks as one of the worst of his more than 16 years in childprotection.
Beanca's death was entirely preventable, he says:
Haliday and Green just had to call out for help.
"I'm sympathetic to Haliday's upbringing but I'm notsympathetic to the outcome of that upbringing.
No child deserved to suffer the way Beanca suffered and the wayChris was being raised. A lot of people have serious abuse andirregular histories in their lives and go on to be perfectparents."
Back in Melrbourne, Rebecca Haliday has a lot more to worry aboutthan the opinions of Jenny Newman and Denzil Clark. It won't belong before Victorian authorities fifind out about her pregnancy,and that makes her uneasy. Haliday initially swore me to secrecyabout the baby but later agrees it's futile - she's showing, andonce winter's over she'll have no thick cardigans to hide behind."I worry about the Department of Human Services (Victoria'sequivalent of Queensland's Department of Child Safety) a lot,"she says, "but I'm willing to do anything it thinks isnecessary to be able to keep my child." Victorian authoritiesmonitored Haliday once before - when her parole was transferred tothem from Queensland in 2005. The original parole conditions, whichexpired when her parole fifinished in February this year, includedan obligation to inform them if she fell pregnantt.. II assk herabout the baby's father. She hasn't talked about him and theflflat's contents indicate she lives alone. "I actually brokeup with him before I found out I was pregnant." She mumblessomething about him cheating and the fact he was taking drugs butinsists she's got good friends and an uncle who will help her. Hermother supported her after her jailing and when she was fifirstreleased, but Haliday tells me she hasn't had a lot to do with hermum for a while.
"I'm slowly getting bits and pieces for the baby but I had togive up work because of this one." She rests her palm on herstomach and shrugs her shoulders. "I was doing manual labourso I didn't have a lot of choice ... I've been looking for somejobs but I'm not quite qualifified to work in an offifice."Haliday left school at Year 9. After Beanca's death, she told thecourt-appointed psychologist her employment history included fifivemonths in a delicatessen and three months as a prostitute."I've been considering doing some courses to get me up toscratch once I can afford it," she says now. "After awhile, once I can get baby in day care, I can go back to work. I'vegot it worked out in my head, it's just getting it done ... "She looks down at her feet.
"When I found out I was pregnant again I was frightened, Iworried a lot about how people were going to react, but I'm slowlygetting over that. It's like okay, fifine, I've had a badexperience. I'm not the most perfect person but time has moved onand this is my one chance to prove I am not what I used to be.
"If I could go back and change things there's a lot that Iwould, anything to make sure that Beanca was still around. There'snot a day that goes by that I don't think about it. I was 18 whenChris was born - way too young. I was 19 when his sister was born;to have two children that close together it would be hard foranybody, but to be so young ... you do make mistakes. I know nowwhat not to do - I know that I can't just sit there and let otherpeople do things that I know are wrong.
"A lot of the time I was having diffificulty, I didn't askothers for help, I was stubborn. I know now that there is a lot ofplaces I can go and say, 'Look, I am not coping - can you help me?'" Haliday's contrition - and there is plenty of it -disappears when I raise some of the allegations about theconditions she kept her children in: the fifilth, the non-bathing,the poor diets. Claims the children suffered from malnutrition were"bullshit", she tells me, adding that she bathed themtwice a day. Her home was often clean, but no-one visited on thoseoccasions to see it. She's adamant on these points, so there's nopoint taking her through the evidence: the photos of the caravan,the witness statements, the sentencing judge's remarks. Halidaytells me she also disputes the severity of her son's autism, eventhough she hasn't seen him in seven years.
As I'm leaving she pulls me aside, out of earshot of thephotographer. She knows I'm going to visit Chris tomorrow. We standoutside her front door as she fifiddles with her keys and locks itshut.
"I'll tell you something," she whispers as she walks meto the stairwell. "If you want to make Chris smile, call him'Angel Boy'. That's what I used to call him." She writes heraddress down on a scrap of paper - she wants a copy of the articlewhen it comes out. At the very least, maybe there'll be a freshpicture of Chris for her wall. Share this article What is this?