"I haven’t been right since," Ms Mullaley told the Herald. "My dad hasn’t been right since. Both our mental health is no good." Charlie Mullaley. Charlie was left in the custody of Bell's cousin that night, despite Ms Mullaley's father's requests that police take him, while Ms Mullaley was driven to hospital in handcuffs following a physical confrontation. Six years later, Ms Mullaley and her father Ted on Tuesday will commence human rights proceedings against WA Police in the federal court. "We’re doing this because we need justice and the police need to be held accountable for not looking for my son," Ms Mullaley said.

"When I came out of the coma in the morning at the hospital, I thought my dad had my son. Loading "But he was still missing and the police had done nothing. I had to go to the police station straight from the hospital when I should have been going in for surgery." A 2016 report into the incident by WA's corruption watchdog found police failures had contributed to a delayed and ineffective response on the night of March 19 and morning of March 20, 2013, but that no serious misconduct took place. However the family's lawyer George Newhouse said he was critical of that investigation.

“What astounds me is that in the years since Charlie's death no one has examined the conduct of the WA Police when baby Charlie was alive and under their control," he said before the case management hearing on Tuesday. "It seems obvious that the police should have intervened to protect Charlie when they arrived on the scene, but it appears that the WA Crime and Corruption Commission inquiry totally missed this critical aspect of the case." The statement of claim alleges police breached their duty of care and did not ensure Charlie's safety at the scene of a domestic violence attack. It argues that one reason for this was because Ms Mullaley and her father were Aboriginals. "The race discrimination complaint is significant because the Mullaleys argue that a non-Indigenous child and a non-Indigenous victim of an extremely violent gender-based attack would not have been treated with such disregard," Mr Newhouse said.

Loading Mr Mullaley made multiple reports to police after learning Charlie had been abducted by Mr Bell. About midnight, a police officer allegedly said words to the effect of "come back in the morning" and "talk to the Aboriginal Liaison Officer". Mr Mullaley was later described in an officer's report as "heavily affected by liquor [or] drugs", "erratic" and "aggressive", despite no evidence of substance use and CCTV footage showing him to be either animated or calm when he attended the station.

The Mullaleys' case argues those assumptions may have been a result of stereotypes about Aboriginal people which led to a delayed police response. "If this was a white person’s baby, a lot more would have been done," Ms Mullaley said. Their claim states that "if a non-Aboriginal 10-month-old baby had been taken by the abusive de facto partner of his mother without his mother's knowledge, it would not have taken over 12 hours to initiate a formal missing person search for the child. "If a non-Aboriginal baby had been found at the scene of a violent assault with the mother lying on the ground, naked, wrapped in a bloodied sheet ... officers would have made reasonable attempts to transfer the baby to a parent, guardian or relative rather than to two acquaintances and failing that would have placed the baby under police supervision."