What I don't understand from the ABC article released last night is from what search these 163 children were found from and not accounted for by the time the case went to trial?
There were in fact tens of thousands of children who were not accounted for but no one had the resources to cover them all off.
Pages 250 to 251 of "Nice Girl" discusses the first round of the police school searches. The police intended to rely on the birth certificates that schools were required to have copies of when requesting these searches originally. The problem was that the searches actually uncovered that tens of thousands of students born in September 1996 nationwide attending schools without their parents or guardians potentially ever having produced a copy of the birth certificate. The schools had either not asked for a copy or had forgotten to take a copy at the time of enrolment. The police did not have the resources to follow all these up. This is when they decided to narrow the search for females born 12 September 1996. Of course, if "Tegan" was enrolled a different birth date, she would not show up on the narrow subsequent search. They did do a search for the name Tegan Lane and Andrew Morris/Norris which did not come up with anything but I would love to have a copy of the search form. I have read somewhere, which I need to find that it was open to interpretation, and yes, I need to find that reference.
NSW BDM did do extensive searches to cover off the possibility that "Tegan" may have been registered under false details too. They had a dedicated police officer seconded to BDM for this purpose as we have now found out BUT did the other states of Australia do this? There is a statement in the article from Queensland only 4 and a half months prior to Keli being charged that they needed 12 months and 2 full time staff to go through the non-digitised records, I read that as the paper records. I am guessing that it wasn't done as Mark Tedeschi's email to Caro Meldrum-Hanna does not offer any reassurance that this was done at all in Queensland or any other state other than NSW. To directly quote "Out of the 86,430 children whose births were registered in New South Wales as being born in the period 31 March 1996-30 September 1997, not a single one of them could be Tegan Lane under a different name."
There are assurances from Mark Tedeschi that Western Australia and Tasmania had checked all birth registrations for the 12th, 13th and 14th September and none were found to be "Tegan". What about South Australia, Victoria, ACT, Queensland, Northern Territory? These states are not mentioned. Again, the date ranges are narrow here too. There are statements in the details from Marks Tedeschi that indicate that the other states did do very narrow searches.
The searches were extensive, granted but the chances are that something has fallen through the net. Sharon Swinbourne, the former Assistant Registrar of NSW BDM herself acknowledges that something could have slipped through the cracks. She says that there is actually "more evidence about what hasn't been done than there is about what they found, because they didn't find very much." I do wonder what that evidence is but by reading between the lines in all the details of the searches, there are significant gaps. Sure, it is impossible to be 100% but is that good enough as circumstantial evidence for murder?
The simplest explanation is that the birth certificate still might not have been lodged at all even under false details in another state.
And yes, I think "Tegan" could be enrolled at school without one. I did it with one of my children recently!!!! I also have worked out how to get a drivers licence without a birth certificate too. A friend of ours did that recently too. Once you have the driver's licence then it is easier to use that as ID for a bank account. I cannot see how "Tegan" could get a passport without an original birth certificate though as those requirements are very strict.
