It’s been known for years by some; confined, by law, within the walls of courtrooms and inside newsrooms. But now the rest of Australia has been told that William Tyrrell, the missing little boy in the Spiderman costume, was in foster care when he disappeared close to three years ago.
That fact is now public knowledge because the New South Wales Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a small, Facebook group called Walking Warriors 4 Missing Children to publish it. It wasn’t a major newspaper, or a commercial current affairs program. It was a 11,600-member Facebook group.
So who are these Walking Warriors ? Why have they spent months working tirelessly, quietly to expose a three-year-old child’s state-care status? Why have they been labelled by some as ‘vigilantes’?
Listen to The Quicky debrief on the truth about William Tyrrell’s parents, and what happened after the three-year-old’s disappearance. Post continues below.
Their national page is littered with posts relating to the disappearance, murder, abuse or assault of young children. But none are so omnipresent as William Tyrrell, who went missing from the front yard of his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, on September 12, 2014.
Mamamia contacted the group, but they were unable to respond in time for publishing. And so the precise motivation for their tireless and no doubt expensive advocacy for this little boy remains unclear, beyond their stated goal: to create “a safer Australia in every community for all our children”.
Top Comments
Why should it be a secret to protect the child? they have nothing to be ashamed of for being in foster care? Their parents do. It is not their fault but by hiding it and, giving them the idea, that they should be ashamed - perhaps we are causing the shame? Being a foster child is admirable (if you survive it !!!!) and these kids should be celebrated and congratulated. It is just something that happened to them - not who they are.
William being in foster care was no secret.