Ahlia Raftery was the New Lambton teenager who loved sport, music, the beach, skiing and friends – her parents’ “shining star” and the sister who loved her baby brother “to the moon and back”.
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She was the daredevil girl who, aged five, beat her older brother down a ski slope and, years later, hugged him as they stood under a tree at Nelson Bay and thrilled at a dramatic electrical storm bearing down on them.
At an inquest on Monday deputy state coroner Derek Lee will hear evidence about the circumstances of Ahlia Raftery’s death at Calvary Mater Hospital’s mental health intensive care unit on March 19, 2015, one month after her 18th birthday.
The inquest is expected to consider the level of monitoring of Ahlia that occurred in the final week of her life as she was transferred to four Hunter mental health facilities. It is also expected to hear evidence about staff assessments of her mental state during that time, and whether the transition from juvenile to adult mental health services after her 18th birthday and the transfers between facilities contributed to her emotional fragility.
Her devastated parents, Michael and Kirstie Raftery, said the inquest would “give a voice to Ahlia” who was diagnosed with depression in 2014 and whose final year of life was her toughest.
Mr Raftery wept about his only daughter who “would have contributed to society” and whose death had shattered the family.
“We love our daughter. We’re proud of her. She could have been a police officer, a nurse or a counsellor. She should have married and had children. We expect the coroner will make recommendations after the inquest and we want any recommendations to be acted on,” Mr Raftery said.
At her funeral in 2015 her family spoke of the girl who was named Ahlia “partly for its uniqueness”, who travelled the world because of her father’s work and whose sensitivity was always just below the surface, despite her daring.
She rode motorbikes from a very early age and “took to it like a duck to water” so that “we were always yelling out the familiar words, ‘Slow down Ahlia’,” Mr Raftery said.
She represented Hunter Valley Grammar School in NSW snowboarding championships, and “worked hard to gain acceptance into the Newstep program at Newcastle University” in the months before her death, Mr Raftery said.
“She was so excited about starting at the University and attended O week and a pub-crawl, and we all felt that this would be where she would shine.”
Her baby brother Liam’s birth in March, 2011 was one of the happiest events of her life, Mr Raftery said in a eulogy for his daughter.
“From the moment he was born, she fell in love with him. Just a few weeks ago she said to Kirstie that she ‘could not imagine loving anyone more than Liam’.”
Her older brother Adam spoke of the sister who competed with him throughout her childhood, and despite being three years younger. She was also “a true appreciator of the important things in life”.
“In the past week I found an album of her photography and the beauty of some of her photographs brought me to tears,” Adam Raftery said at his sister’s funeral.
“I will cherish these photos, as for me they are how Ahlia saw the world, even the most average street side to her had beauty in it that I could not see but she could find.”
Mr Raftery said his daughter used to kid him about not wanting to tell people his age.
“Ahlia would turn to me and say ‘Dad, I know how old you are. You are always 30 years older than me’,” Mr Raftery said at her funeral.
“For one more year that is true Ahlia, but you will always be my sweet young child.”
The inquest will be held at Newcastle Courthouse.
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