TIBBLE DEATH FINDINGS Air Force failed Tassie cadet

THE Air Force was more concerned with setting an example than protecting cadets from adult instructors when it threatened discharging a 15year-old Tasmanian girl, who took her own life, an inquiry has found.

Air Force Cadet Sergeant Eleanore Tibble should never have faced disciplinary proceedings over a “relationship” with 30-year-old flight instructor Matthew Harper, the child abuse royal commission found.

Ms Tibble thought she was going to be discharged from the Australian Air Force Cadets when she killed herself in November 2000.

She didn’t know senior management had determined two weeks earlier the relationship was not sexual and a discharge could not be supported.

The royal commission said there was no justification for AAFC management to place any responsibility or blame on Ms Tibble and for any administrative action to be taken against her.

“She was the child victim of the advances of an older instructor,” its report released yesterday said.

“At no time should blame be placed on a cadet when an adult instructor or officer engages in a relationship with the cadet. We also conclude that, when considering the discharge of CSGT Tibble, the AAFC was more concerned with the ‘efficiency’ of the flight unit and setting an example to other cadets than it was with the protection of cadets from adult instructors in positions of authority.”

Ms Tibble’s mother Susan Campbell told the inquiry: “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my daughter and the abject waste of her life.”

The commission heard the Australian Defence Force has conducted a number of reviews of the ADF Cadets since at least 2000 in a bid to find an appropriate structure for the management of children.

“Based on the cases the subject of the public hearing, these reviews have not been entirely successful in preventing incidents of child sexual abuse within the ADF Cadets,” the report said.

Defence has adopted a “One Cadet” model for its Navy, Army and Air Force cadet programs and argues it now has an appropriate struc- ture to ensure children are safe.

ADF Cadets conducts military-style activities for 26,000 cadets aged 13 to 20 in 508 units around Australia.

The commission said since at least 2000, the ADF Cadets and AAFC policy guides and training manuals were incorrect, incomplete and misleading about the legal age of consent and special care provisions applying to supervisors.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my daughter and the abject waste of her life