Child protection worker to continue to receive assault compensation despite convictions

A former South Australian Department for Child Protection worker who used her government position to threaten to take away a couple’s baby unless they dropped a robbery complaint against her partner will continue to get workers compensation for her time at the agency.

The woman — Vicky Lorraine Morris — has fought off an appeal by the Department for Child Protection to stop her weekly payments for an injury and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by an assault when she worked there. 

She received $319,000 in compensation in 2003 for the assault that occurred the year before and then, in 2015, started receiving weekly payments.

In 2017, she was found guilty of trafficking in methamphetamine and in 2018 a judge found she attended the house of a couple who her partner had threatened with a knife while one of them was holding their baby.

He stole a laptop and mobile phone from them.

Morris pretended to be representing the department “and left them with the impression that if they did not immediately withdraw the charges, their child would be taken away from them”, the judge in that decision wrote.

However, the judge allowed her to continue receiving compensation because the Return to Work Act only allowed for payments to be suspended “for a breach of mutuality if a worker retains some capacity to perform work”.

Morris was declared unable to work at all in 2015.

Her employment with the Department for Child Protection was terminated in 2018 after her drug trafficking conviction.

Morris ‘totally incapacitated for work’

In a decision handed down on Wednesday, tribunal deputy president Mark Calligeros agreed with the original judge’s decision that Morris could continue to receive compensation.

He agreed she was “totally incapacitated for work by reason of a work injury at all relevant times” so any argument about her “egregious” behaviour was moot.

He said the department could have argued Morris “had some capacity to work” since she was employed in drug trafficking, but it did not.

Tribunal deputy presidents Margaret Kelly and Miles Crawley agreed with Judge Calligeros’s decision.

The department spokesperson said it would “be conducting a full and detailed review of the tribunal judgement and will assess the most appropriate action”.