Office of the Public AdvocateNo one told Dorothy Armstrong in her first ever police interview she was allowed a support person; someone to help understand the jargon, comfort her, encourage her description of who attacked her and how.
Neither was she given this information in any of the near-dozen police interviews that followed in later years as both victim and suspect: situations in which her complex personal history had given rise to such fear of the uniform she would agree – and confess – to any suggestion put to her if it meant she could just leave the room.
“It was beyond astonishing,” Ms Armstrong said of finding out about the decades-old Independent Third Person program, coordinated from the Office of the Public Advocate for the sole purpose of protecting cognitively impaired people like her.
