A youth worker says a 12-year-old girl charged with the murder of a 37-year-old woman in Melbourne last week was failed by the system that should have been looking after her.

The girl was charged with murder on Thursday following the fatal stabbing of a woman at an apartment complex on Barkly Street Footscray at 2am.

The ABC can’t name the girl or the victim for legal reasons, and their relationship remains unclear.

Youth worker Samantha Cafaro first raised alarm bells about the girl late last year after meeting her in the area.

“What we’d heard in, like, so many words [was] that she was selling herself to older men for money. When I first heard it, it was hard to believe,” she told 7.30. 

“Because you don’t think in a world or in 2023, that that would be something that would actually be happening.

“What we got told by them [the police] is that they can’t do anything, they can’t approach her, and they can’t stop these men.

“What we actually said to them was … isn’t there anything more that you can do?

Ms Cafaro said she made seven calls to police and one of her colleagues raised the girl’s situation with child services.

She told 7.30 what happened last week could have been prevented.

“Of course it could have been prevented. If we could have picked this up a year ago, got this child into services that could have kept her in school engaged in other programs, she wouldn’t be down here,” Ms Cafaro said.

“No child wakes up and says, ‘This is my life. This is what I want for my future.'”

‘Time bomb’

Ms Cafaro’s boss is youth worker Les Twentyman, who has worked with young people in Melbourne’s western suburbs for 30 years.

“It’s tragic, it was a time bomb everyone knew was going to go off and it did. That girl was reported to me in November last year by Samantha,” Mr Twentyman said.

“What’s a 12-year-old doing with a 37-year-old? At 2am in the morning, when this kid was in state care?”

Mr Twentyman says the state’s police, mental health and child protection services are severely under resourced.

“[There’s] not enough resources and everyone thinks someone else is doing it. If everyone was doing their bit this crime may not have happened, but they weren’t doing their bit and this is the outcome.”

Dr Berhan Ahmed runs a youth and community services not-for-profit in the area and also called the police in recent months, pleading for them to help the 12-year-old.

“What happened was an outcome of no action; if there was action, this girl would have been helped to be in a process of moving forward,” Dr Ahmed told 7.30.

Dr Ahmed said he has written to the Victorian government twice in the last year asking them for help, to no avail.

“The police, sometimes they come and sometimes they don’t. And then most of the businesses, they continue to call police,” Dr Ahmed said.

“The police have got other priorities as well, they’ve got some other places, you’ve got no choice but to accept the reality.

“It’s a clock ticking. Something is going to happen, and this will happen again, and again, if we don’t deal with these problems.”

‘Things were getting out of control’

ABC’s 7.30 spoke to a number of people in the area who cold-called police to report the 12-year-old’s increasingly erratic behaviour in recent weeks.

Chris Tabone runs a barber shop in the area and said he spoke to police a week ago when he saw the girl looking extremely unwell and in need of urgent help.

“I reported extra information in regards to what I’ve seen over the past four, four to five weeks with that young girl,” Mr Tabone said.

“And that’s something [that] needed to be done because this was the start of something bigger.”

Traders in Footscray say they are dealing with an increase in anti-social behaviour and not enough is being done about it.

From his shop, he often has a front row seat to the antisocial behaviour and crime taking place on the street.

“We have a great community here. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed the most out of it. However, we do have a lot of challenges,” Mr Tabone said.

“Drug use and alcohol abuse that is happening during the day in broad daylight, that turns to something as the day progresses, they get worse and worse.

Caleb Baker runs a bar in Footscray, and along with Mr Tabone and other traders, have been trying to work with local police to make the area safer.

“Around six or seven weeks ago, we had a meeting with the police minister, with the local traders, a lot of the local traders and local MP,” Mr Baker said.

“All the different traders put forward was that … people need more help, and there needs to be a more long-term strategy to fix these issues.

“And … we need more help and more support from the police.”

The Victorian Minister for Children and local representative for the area in the Legislative Council, Lizzie Blandthorn, declined the ABC’s request for interview citing the active police investigation into the alleged murder.

In a statement, a Victorian government spokesperson said: “This is an horrific situation for everyone involved and our thoughts are with the affected loved ones. As this is an active police investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

The last time Ms Cafaro saw the girl was about a week before the alleged murder.

“This child has been failed every step of the way, leading up to the most horrific of crimes and the most horrific of circumstances and now two lives are lost.”

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