Jacinta Takes a Walk
Copyright© 2025 by BarBar
Chapter 25: Formalities
I was sitting on a bench outside of SHORT, being entertained by a pair of magpies sitting on a fence across the street and happily warbling about whatever mapgies warble about.
I had only been there for a few minutes, when Grace drove up in her car and gave a little bip with her horn. The magpies stopped their warbling and watched suspiciously as I walked over and let myself into the passenger side of Grace’s car.
She glanced over at me as I was fastening my seatbelt. “Hello, Jacinta. Are you ready for this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really understand what’s happening, so I’m not sure how I could be ready for it.”
She nodded as she pulled out into the street and started driving. “It’s really a formality. The judge will go through our paperwork and double check some things with you. Then the judge will stamp some forms and you will officially be placed in the care of the DCP until either you turn 18 or something else happens, like you get adopted, or the DCP changes its name again, or the government passes a new statute. After you turn 18, we offer transitional support until you turn 26.”
“What’s that about transitional support?”
She smiled. “It means we help you with finding accommodation and finding employment and so on. In the past, a lot of people moving out of care found themselves at 18 with nothing and they ended up homeless and living on the streets. About 8 years ago, they brought in some new rules so that we provide some basic support for you after you’ve turned 18. That way it doesn’t feel like we’ve abandoned you. It’s called transitional support.”
“So, essentially you can’t kick me out onto the streets when I turn 18?”
“Hopefully, that transitional support will have seen you find employment and a place to live, so that you don’t end up on the streets at all. That’s the ultimate goal for all of our young people in care. The idea is that we help you get established so that you can look after yourself. But we’re no longer required to provide you with housing and education and so on after you turn 18.”
“What happens if I turn 18 before I finish high school?”
She nodded. “So far, we’ve found that we’ve been able to place almost all of our last year students into transitional housing before they turn 18, so that when they turn 18 and the support level is reduced, they’re already established and can finish their school year without too much interruption.”
“That sounds good,” I said.
She glanced sideways at me, and then turned her attention back to the road.
“But that’s all a long way off. Let’s take one step at a time. And today’s step is to get those forms stamped.”
After driving in silence for a moment, Grace cleared her throat.
“I should mention that your uncle, Mervin Bylik, is going to be at the Court House. Apparently he’s found your birth certificate and some other paperwork that are relevant to your situation, so I asked him to bring it along and meet us there. Is that going to be a problem for you? Seeing him there?”
“No,” I said. “Why should it be?”
“Well,” she replied. “I’m aware that he is on the sex offenders register. I wasn’t sure what sort of relationship you had with him.”
“We get on okay. I’m not scared of him or anything like that. I wouldn’t want to live with him full time, but he’s not going to cause a problem or anything.”
“Well, that’s good. In that case, we might invite him in for the first part of the hearing. He may be able to answer some of the judge’s questions, and save you from having to talk so much.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m fine with that.”
Merv was sitting on one of the row of chairs inside the foyer of the building. He saw us coming and stood up. He was wearing a button up shirt and a decent looking jacket and long trousers. It wasn’t exactly a suit, I doubt if Merv owns one of those, but he’d clearly made an effort. He was carrying a big yellow envelope that was torn open at one end and clearly contained a number of assorted pages.
Merv saw me and said hi and gave me a rough hug, but then quickly backed off. I introduced him to Grace, who showed him her DCP ID, and then shook his hand.
“I found these documents in Jackie’s room,” he said.
“You may as well save it, and we’ll go through it with the judge,” said Grace. “That will save you having to say everything twice.”
Grace led us to a lift and we went up to the second floor, then through a hallway to a small waiting room outside a pair of doors labelled Family Court, Rooms 1 & 2. We took a seat and waited. There was another little clump of people waiting as well.
While we were sitting there, Grace looked at both of us. “I don’t know which judge we are getting. There are four different judges that cycle through here. Use Sir or Ma’am if you need to talk to the judge, unless they say something different. Some of the judges will ask you to use their first name, others won’t. We’ll be sitting around a table with the judge at one end. The judge will have an assistant sitting beside or behind them, but the assistant won’t take part in the discussion. The assistant is there to keep a record of the session and fill out forms and do all the other things the judge needs to get done.”
She turned to Merv. “Either I’ll prompt you or the judge will ask you when it’s time to go through the papers you found. Once the judge has gone through that with you and asked you any questions they have, they will probably ask you to leave. You can wait out here if you want to talk to Jacinta afterwards. Otherwise, once you’re dismissed from in there you can go. Does Jacinta have your number so she contact you?”
“Yeah, I know it,” I said. “Oh,” I pulled a SHORT card out of my pocket. “This is where I’m staying. You can call there if you want to contact me. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks,” said Merv, as he looked curiously at the card.
“Because of your history, you won’t be able to visit Jacinta at SHORT,” said Grace to Merv. “It’s a licensed children’s residential facility and as such you are barred from approaching or entering it. But if you want to meet up at a coffee shop or something, that’s entirely up to the two of you.”
She glanced at me as if to say that she wouldn’t be impressed if I did that, but that she couldn’t prevent it.
She turned to me. “The judge will ask if you want to be represented by a lawyer. You can ask for one if you want, and the judge will get one in here for you. But honestly, given your circumstances, this is such a clear case that the judge has no choice but to place you in care. This isn’t a situation where either having, or not having, a lawyer will make a difference.”
At that moment, the left door opened and a youngish woman stepped out. She consulted a clipboard and called out, “Jacinta Mells?”
The three of us stood up as I said, “Yes, that’s me.”
The woman introduced herself as Judy and led us inside a medium sized room that was dominated by a table. At the other end was an elderly woman with grey hair and glasses. She was standing up as we entered. Judy ushered us to take a seat on one side of the table and then went and sat at a desk behind, and to the side of, the judge. The desk had a computer and trays of papers and various other bits and pieces.
Grace organised us to sit with me closest to the judge, and then Grace, and then Merv. As we were sitting, the judge pulled up a chair on wheels and sat as well.
“Good afternoon, my name is Judge Withers. That means in a proper court, we would all have to stand when I stand, and call me ‘Your Honour’ and so forth. We try to be a bit more relaxed in Family Court. We don’t have so many rules. It is sufficient to address me as Ma’am.”
I nodded to show my understanding but I didn’t say anything.
She glanced down at a form in front of her. “So, this is regarding Jacinta Mells. Is that you, dear?”
I nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Are you represented by a lawyer today?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Would you like me to supply you with a lawyer?”
I shrugged. “From what I understand, today is just a formality so I don’t really need one.”
She glanced down at her paperwork. “I tend to agree with you.” She hesitated. “Let’s do this. If I come across a situation today where having a lawyer would potentially make a difference to you, I’ll stop the proceedings and we’ll have this discussion again. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Just bear with us for a moment, will you dear? We need to go through some things, then we’ll get back to you.”
She smiled at me and then turned to Grace.
“And who else do we have here today?”
Grace introduced herself and showed her ID card. The judge compared what she was saying to an entry on the form and nodded.
Merv introduced himself. The judge raised an eyebrow and flipped to the second page of the form.
“Ah yes, you are the brother of Jacinta’s stepmother. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Merv.
The judge frowned, “Why aren’t you ... Oh. I see.”
She’d read more of the entry about Merv. I saw a tight expression in the judges face, which I interpreted as passing judgement about Merv. I guess that’s understandable in the situation.
She glanced at Grace. “So why is Mr Bylik joining us today?”
“He’s located some relevant paperwork that he would like to provide to the court. In addition, he may have some answers that Jacinta would be unaware of, due to her age when various events occurred.”
“Excellent. What documents do you have for me?” asked the judge.
“Well, this is Jacinta’s birth certificate,” said Merv, handing it to Grace who then passed it on to the judge. “And this is the death certificate of her father.” That document was also passed over.
“Ah yes, we needed both of those,” said the judge. She took the documents and glanced through them quickly before passing them to Judy. “Tick BC presented on line two,” she instructed Judy. “Enter the DoD for the father on line 7. Mark it confirmed, and tick DC presented.”
She turned back to Merv. “What else do you have for me?”
“Jacinta’s birth mother disappeared when she was two,” explained Merv. “She left without explanation and, as far as I know, never contacted Jacinta or her father again. About three years after that, my sister, Jaqueline Bylik, began a relationship with Jacinta’s father and they lived together until his death.
After he died, the judge at the time stated that...” He started reading from the page, “I recognise that a de facto relationship existed between the two of them for the purposes of the Family Law Act of 1975 and, in the absence of Jacinta’s birth mother, I award custody of Jacinta Mells to Jaqueline Bylik, also known as Jacqueline Mells.”
He stopped reading and passed the document over. “Here is a copy of the ruling. It was all together in the same envelope.”
“This is excellent, thank you,” said the judge. She took a moment to look through the document and then turned to huddle with Judy to discuss how to enter that information on the form.
I was looking at Merv, feeling surprised. I had a memory of Jackie in a pretty dress marrying my dad in a garden somewhere. But maybe they couldn’t do it formally because my birth mother was missing so, technically, Dad was still married to my birth mother. But surely her being missing would have been enough for a divorce so that they could have legally married if they wanted to.
Merv seemed to know what I was thinking because he looked at me and said, “I believe that your dad started the process to formally divorce your birth mother in her absence, so that he could make his marriage to Jackie official, but he never got around to getting it all done. I’m sorry.”
I nodded to him. That sounded like Dad.
The judge had finished the discussion with Judy and turned back to us.
Merv handed over some more papers. “Here are some medical records for Jacinta, from when she was young. There are vaccination cards, and treatment for a broken wrist when she was five, and things like that. There’s nothing more recent. I guess Jackie wasn’t so good at keeping records together once Jacinta’s dad was gone.”
The judge glanced at them and handed them straight back to me. “Get these put in your file at SHORT,” she said. “Those things can be useful, sometimes.”
“I have one more thing, Ma’am, that I discovered this morning,” said Merv. “Apparently at some point, Jacinta’s father employed a private investigator to try to find her mother. I have the report here. He traced her living for a few months in two different places within South Australia and then using her passport to fly from Adelaide to Cambodia. At this point, the direct trail goes cold. As of when this report was written, the passport had not been used again, and there was no record of her name appearing in any of the Cambodian databases, or elsewhere. The investigator did find a woman of Western appearance who vaguely fitted the description, living with a cult in Cambodia and calling herself Rainbow Apple, or at least the Cambodian equivalent of that. The investigator was able to find one fuzzy photo that included Rainbow Apple, but the face is indistinct, so the photo is inconclusive. It seems Rainbow Apple died shortly after that, when one of the cult buildings collapsed during an earthquake. There is a Cambodian death certificate for Rainbow Apple here, with an English translation attached. The dates suggest that, if this is the correct woman, Jacinta’s mother passed away ten years ago, when Jacinta was six.”
He passed over the last little collection of pages. The judge flipped through them. “Hmm. I heard a very big if in that last sentence. IF this is the correct woman. But this is evidence that a genuine attempt was made to locate the birth mother. And that her last known activity was to leave the country more than ten years ago. With the unconfirmed possibility that she then passed away shortly after that.”
Grace leaned forward. “Ma’am, I can confirm that the passport has not been used since then, as of this morning.”
The judge nodded, then looked at Merv. “Do you have any reason to doubt that this report is correct? Have you had any contact with her, or heard any reports of her in the time before or since this report was prepared?”
“No Ma’am.”
I was looking at Merv. “If Dad knew all this, why didn’t he tell me?”
Merv looked sad. “The date when the report was finished was after your father died. Jackie would have got it at the time when both her and you were struggling pretty badly. Jackie must have just thrown the report in her drawer and forgotten about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if that is what happened.”
I looked at Merv for a moment, and then looked away without saying anything. The judge had scribbled some notes on a page and handed it to her assistant to enter into the form.
She looked at Merv. “As a de facto uncle of Jacinta, do you wish to challenge for custody of Jacinta?”
Merv looked at the judge and then looked at me and then looked down at the table.
“No Ma’am. I think it’s best if I don’t do that. Given my history, I doubt if I’d get approval. Even if I did, I don’t think it would be good for Jacinta to be living with me full time.” He looked sad when he said that.
Then he continued, still looking down at the table. “It would be nice if we could stay in touch, though. I do think of her as my niece and my only remaining family.”
That last bit was aimed at me. I looked down at the table and didn’t say anything.
The judge looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “Is there anything else?”
“No Ma’am. That’s all I have.”
She consulted the form. “And to the best of your knowledge, not counting her birth mother, does Jacinta have any living relatives on either her mother’s side, or her father’s side, or on her stepmother’s side, excluding yourself.”
“No Ma’am. Her father was an only child, his parents have passed, and he told me once he had no cousins and that his only uncle passed when he was young. Jacinta’s mother was abandoned as a child and grew up in the care of the DCP, or whatever the department was called in those days. Jackie and I were the last of our family here in Australia. I might have some distant cousins living in Eastern Europe but I have no idea of their names or how to contact them, if they are even still alive.”
The judge had been scribbling notes while Merv talked, which she then passed to Judy to enter onto the computer. “Very well, thank you for your contribution. You are excused from the rest of these proceedings.”
Merv nodded and left the room.
The judge turned to me and gave me a smile. “Sorry that you have to sit through all of that. I’m sure it’s not pleasant to hear your life laid out like that as a series of documents.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Yes Ma’am.”
“I’m going to ask you similar questions. Are you aware of anything regarding the fate of your birth mother that Mr Bylik didn’t mention?”
“No. I was hearing most of that for the first time. I was told stories about my mother, but I doubt if any of them were true. I never heard directly from her, and my father never told me anything about where she might have gone after she left us.”
She nodded. “Are you aware of any other relatives that Mr Bylik didn’t mention?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Do you claim any relationship to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples?”
“No. Why would that matter?”
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