Well, maybe you can stop being a bleeding heart yourself, and come to an understanding that "LIFE ISN'T FAIR". As soon as you stop whinging about what others get, and don't get, and move on with improving your "own" life, the happier you'll be. But hey, you sure sound like a typical bleeding heart to me.

I point out that families of AUSTRALIAN diggers are doing it tough while the government throws millions at a GERMAN fruitloop and I'm the bleeding heart?

Are you joking or are you a cupid stunt?

You're right though, life isn't fair. You're allowed to breathe my air.

Perhaps a reasonable approach to the question of compensation is to ask the following question:

Would an intelligent, well-informed, competent, reasonable person have locked Cornelia Rau up as a result of the information at hand?

If the answer is "yes", then no compensation is needed. If Rau was so incapable of looking after herself, then where were her carers at the time of her incarceration? How did they let her venture so far from safety? Perhaps they should be compensating the state for the waste of time and resources.

Alternatively, if the answer is "no", then by all means compensate the lady. It would not be her fault that incompetent officials put her away; the trauma that she suffered would be enormous and her arrival in this traumatic position would have been beyond her control.

I don't know the answer to my question. I do suspect, though, that the outcry surrounding her incarceration would have made compensation inevitable - we don't want to appear inhumane now, do we?

Otokonoko - most people wouldn't want to appear inhumane, but it's apparent from their comments that some people here wear their inhumanity like a badge of pride. My guess is that they confuse textual chest-beating with real life strength and courage.

Austin Powerless,
Fact: of life the case was heard and judged by people who know more than we do so and in context any comment you or the dissenters make are based on part information and therefore gratuitous and irrelevant.

Regarding the 'US' wars bit yes there is injustice there but...

Fact: Individuals join the military in full knowledge of what might happen.
Ms Rau didn't and was mentally ill. Her mental state was obvious the compensation came about because of departmental and site incompetence.

Fact: Mentally ill people with Schizophrenia and/or Bi polar aren’t always psychotic all the time both diseases tend to be episodic. These episodes SOMETIMES can be managed with medication. However there is a price to pay for being on meds. Suffers often delude themselves that they are well and no longer need the meds or find the meds inhibit essential parts of what is them…creativity… imagination…reduces the ability to think as clearly as they did once.

Fact: many mentally ill people are extraordinary bright or gifted in some way being psychotic doesn’t preclude these skills.Many great people have and do suffer from episodes of mental illness.

Fact: When in a psychotic even the individual usually doesn’t comprehend that they are in this state.

Fact: 5% of the population will suffer diagnosable mental illness in their life. The most common form is depression.

Fact: having a mental illness doesn’t necessarily mean that the person can’t function as a normal person.

It is one thing to have an opinion but it is unwise to voice it if it is based on ignorance.

If you want to run an argument that the compensation or the methods of awarding it wrong then do so but (my advice) you would be wise to stick to that point and avoid the areas you clearly know little about. You make yourself appear fearfull/foolish and insult others.

Cornelia Rau was handed over by our police, but held in a detention centre, run by a US company who carry their own insurance.
You can just imagine how the Government would want to sue them. That’s what ‘should have’ happened. The problem then would have been a bum fight between US and Australia as to who made the blunder in the first place. It would have led to even more expense and red faces and bad blood. If this lady didn’t suffer from mental illness before she would be now.

Let me put it this way. I have seen along with some friends years ago little old ladies tied up with a sheet and drugged to the eye balls! With a mini mental health test being carried out at the same time.
In fact we supported one lady to take her mother out of the hospital and hide her from the authorities. She then engaged a good lawyer and placed her mother under a new Dr.

It seemed the lady was very wealthy and her daughter when returning from overseas was shocked to find her mother in such a state.

She was suspicious right from the beginning so she saw the head of staff and said- Do not make ANY arrangements for my mother. I am her daughter and I will take her home and look after her.
They acted against her instructions.

I don’t think Cornelia Rau is safe and her family should be appointed to be in control of her.
Accidents happen out of your own patch and a 2 mill savings would be a big temptation to some very support people.

I wouldn’t trust her guardian as far as I could kick them if she were my relative.