Pastor took in lost girl
Samantha stormed out of psychiatric intervention to get her help
agreed to get psychiatric treatment. However, Pastor Brad Blacker said, she stormed out at the end of the meeting.
She eventually ended up in Dublin in September.
A few weeks after arriving, on October 10, she was found in a distressed state outside Dublin’s GPO. Because of her youthful looks and behaviour, gardaí believed she was 14. She communicated only via drawings and because of their sexual A PASTOR and his wife arranged a psychiatric intervention for the Australian fraudster initially thought to be a child victim of sex-trafficking in Dublin.
Two years ago, a clinical psychiatrist and other medical staff attended a New South Wales hospital to try to get Samantha Azzopardi help.
At the time, the 25-year-old – who flew from Dublin to Australia on Thursday – had convictions for fraud. She had also spun a series of lies about herself to persuade families to take her in.
She told them she was a victim of sex abuse, was from Finland or other European countries, that her parents were dead and she had been abandoned in Sydney by a relative. Documents she used to back up her stories turned out to be forgeries.
Initially taken by surprise at the March 2011 ‘ intervention’, she nature detectives believed she had been the victim of child sex trafficking. Unable to identify her they released her photograph this week.
A member of her family then came forward. Her true identity and convictions for fraud came to light. And on Thursday, she asked to be flown home to Sydney.
Pastor Brad Blacker told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I just hope she can be convinced to be happy with who she really is and get the help she clearly needs. I don’t believe she is a bad person, but she has issues that she needs help to work through.’
Mr Blacker’s wife Naomi said: ‘We first found out about what had happened in Dublin on the news. It was like she had taken everything to another level.’
The couple took her in in February 2011 after she made contact asking for help. However, matters grew tense when she ‘became like a dependent child’. She left to visit a relative in Sydney. One week later she called them claiming to have been raped. They met her at a hospital where they had the intervention.
‘But she kept mixing her answers up or simply wasn’t able to give an answer. That was the last we saw of her,’ Pastor Blacker said.
‘To hear that she is still carrying on with her lies is sad and shows she is trapped up in all these lies.
‘I hope she finds help.’