Police set up a joint investigation into the disappearance of William Tyrrell so they could use a secretive commission’s powers to coerce information. One of the missing toddler’s former foster parents has previously been acquitted of lying to that commission and the other has pleaded not guilty to similar charges.
Reading transcripts of the hearing with Lonergan in the witness box, English said his client had readily acknowledged he may have been incorrect when presented with contradictory information. The foster mother pleaded guilty in September to assaulting a child in their care, who is not William, kicking them and hitting them with a wooden spoon. “I hit really hard with that wooden spoon,” the foster mother said in a recorded phone call to the foster father, played to the court on Monday.