3 months ago
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One April evening in 2022, Tiffani’s grandmother answered a frantic call from her family.
Tiffani was lying in her cot, in a darkened walk-in robe in her Gold Coast home. The 12-year-old girl weighed just 7.4 kilograms.
“All I could hear was [Tiffani’s mother] Carrissa in the background with this horrible scream and cry,” the grandmother told police, according to Supreme Court documents released for the first time about the night Tiffani died.
“I said, ‘what’s happened?’ ... I couldn’t get answers out of anybody, because they were hysterical.”
Then, she recalled, Tiffani’s aunt told her the girl wasn’t breathing.
Carissa Scholten, 37, and her partner Aaron Paul Richardson were charged with the murder of Tiffani. The prosecution alleges her death was a result of malnutrition.
Tiffani was diagnosed with genetic neurological disorder Rett syndrome about the age of two, and had developmental issues.
Court documents show her family spent $100,000 provided by the National Disability Insurance Scheme, but they could not produce invoices for an investigator.
Tiffani attended a special school until the year before her death. Teachers there remembered her as constantly hungry and unsettled, but no child safety concerns were ever raised.
Carrissa Scholten is currently in custody.
The night Tiffani died
Tiffani slept in a cot in a darkened room, which her family said she preferred.
Photos taken after her death and submitted to court show the cot was set up inside a 2.5-metre by 2.4-metre wardrobe, a fan attached to a shelf above and a small chest of drawers nearby.
There were also children’s clothes and an empty purée pouch in the en suite, and a sippy-cup lid on the vanity.
Scholten said she went to feed Tiffani that night about 7.45 and found her in a bad condition. She called Richardson to come home, and he performed CPR.
At 8.16pm, there was a call to Triple Zero, with Scholten telling the operator: “My daughter is dead.” She then performed CPR on her daughter’s frail body, telling them: “She is so cold.”
A critical care paramedic arrived at 8.24pm to find Tiffani on the floor at the end of the bed in an upstairs bedroom, wearing nothing but a nappy. He said Scholten was sitting beside her, crying.
Tiffani’s cot in the wardrobe. Her family said she preferred the room to be dark.
Defibrillation pads were attached to her chest and back because she was so small. She was emaciated, the paramedic said in court documents, pale and cold to touch. Her eyes were sunken, and the paramedic said she reminded him of starving children in Africa.
The paramedic was told Scholten last saw the girl alive at 1pm, and there were signs she had died “some time ago”. Resuscitation was futile, and he told Scholten that Tiffani had died.
According to the documents, Scholten was comforted by another paramedic who said: “It’s OK.” Scholten replied: “It’s not OK, though, is it?”
Scholten later said she had had a “tough night” with Tiffani the night before, but would not elaborate on her daughter’s symptoms. She claimed Tiffani had been losing weight since the Christmas holidays, but had experienced similar cycles of weight loss before.
The mattress in Tiffani’s cot is shown in a previously unreleased photo.
The mother told the paramedic Tiffani usually woke up when she went in to check on her but at 1pm, she had not. Scholten appeared to be unsure whether she saw the girl move or breathe, the paramedic told police.
The morning after, Tiffani’s grandmother took Scholten to Starbucks to talk to her alone. She said Scholten made a comment she found strange – that she had bathed Tiffani after the girl had died but before calling an ambulance.
“I asked Carrisa why. Carrissa replied: ‘Because she was cold.’ I said: ‘If she was cold, and she wasn’t breathing, had she been gone for a little while ...?’
“Carrissa just said, ‘Well, she was really cold.’ That’s all she could say.”
The grandmother told police she believed Scholten bathed her either to warm up her body, so it didn’t seem like she had been dead for so long, or because Tiffani had soiled herself.
By the following afternoon, Scholten had told family the autopsy report said Tiffani had died of a seizure.
The grandmother told police she did not believe Scholten was speaking with anyone from the Coroner’s office, and instead had been likely speaking to her father. The father died the next morning, before anyone but Scholten was able to speak with him, documents say.
Tiffani and Scholten’s father were cremated together, within three days.
The grandmother said in the following days, her daughter confessed that her life had been “hell”, and accused Richardson of “drug running”.
The NDIS money
In May 2019, Tiffani was approved for a $25,259 NDIS package for a 12-month period. By February the following year, court documents state the funds were all used, which prompted an early plan review.
In March 2020, a second plan for $31,780 was approved. A year later, a plan meeting was scheduled, but Scholten didn’t attend, and the plan was automatically extended to March 2022.
According to court documents, NDIA financial reports show $109,390 had been claimed for Tiffani between May 2019 and April 2022.
Previously unreleased photos show the dark room where the 12-year-old Tiffani slept.
In July 2022, investigators met with Scholten, asking her to provide records of the NDIS payments. According to court documents, she replied it would be difficult to provide invoices, as a dog had eaten many of them.
Scholten agreed to pass the request for information to her sister, who was identified as being an NDIS service provider for Tiffani.
Reports submitted by the prosecution state information from family members and school teachers indicated Tiffani was not accessing any NDIS supportive care for her disability from 2019 until the time of her death.
Tiffani weighed about seven kilograms when she died. According to Queensland Health, the average weight for a healthy 12-year-old is 40 kilograms.
She appeared to have been accessing therapeutic support at school in 2021, the documents state, but she did not arrive at school with an appropriate mobility device, and the school provided her with a wheelchair.
Scholten’s legal team said suggestions she had misused the money were not relevant to the murder charge, and she was not facing charges of fraud.
“It is understood that the grant of assistance permitted a high degree of discretion: notably there is no evidence of a lavish lifestyle or drug or gambling misuse,” court documents state.
In an affidavit filed on behalf of Scholten, she said the allegations she misused the NDIS funds obtained for her daughter’s condition were untrue.
Tiffani’s life at school
Accounts before the court from teachers at Tiffani’s school paint a picture of her life before she stopped attending in late 2021.
One teacher recalled how for a tiny girl, she “was like a bottomless pit for food. When she would first arrive at school, she would eat seven Weet-Bix with custard and milk”.
The teacher had to continually remind Scholten to make sure she was sending in more food and nappies for Tiffani, she told police.
Tiffani was diagnosed when she was a toddler.
Another teacher prepared food, stocked the kitchen cupboard and brought in second-hand clothing specifically for Tiffani.
“There were a few times throughout the year where Carrissa would send in large containers of food and we would divide it up in portions and freeze it,” the teacher told police.
“Tiffani would never come to school with a backpack. If I really asked Carrissa to bring something in with Tiffani, it would come with her in a plastic shopping bag.”
Another teacher recalled that Tiffani was constantly hungry, and would scream when she wanted to be fed. She said she had never seen a child so unsettled.
“I was genuinely concerned about Tiffani, if she was being fed at home, her personal hygiene and the care being provided for Tiffani at home,” she told police.
“I recall I mentioned to Carrissa that Tiffani had been put in fresh clothing, but regardless of that conversation, it would have been obvious to Carrissa that we [at the school] were providing basic necessities for Tiffani.”
Tiffani’s medical care
Tiffani had not received general or the specialist medical care she required from late 2014 until her death in 2022, according to prosecution documents.
Reports submitted to the court state Tiffani would have very unwell, or in a life-threatening state, to an observer in the days before her death. She would have been weak and unable to move. Her autopsy reported pressure sores to her hips.
As part of Scholten’s application for bail, her legal team submitted the issue of reckless indifference was not so clear-cut.
They said photos of Tiffani were confronting, showing a tiny child so brittle and obviously undernourished that, it was accepted, reasonable persons would hold grave concerns for her wellbeing without medical intervention.
And yet, Tiffani, who was born with a number of significant medical conditions, had always been tiny and significantly underweight.
“This was known to practitioners and documented in medical records: at no point was any intervention sought nor any child safety concern raised by any treating practitioner [who were subject to mandatory reporting obligations regarding abuse and neglect].”
It was submitted that Scholten was not a drug user, or otherwise absent parent. Others had said she was trying to feed Tiffani leading up to her death.
Scholten’s legal team said she had engaged with doctors over many years, and the lack of doctor visits in the months before Tiffani’s death must be considered in light of the COVID pandemic.
“Cases of parental negligence resulting in death, where there are potential conflicting medical explanations/diagnoses, are notoriously [factually] complicated, often involving competing experts.”
Scholten and Richardson’s cases remain before the court.
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