Sunday Night story defended at inquest

Seven reporter Rahni Sadler has defended a Sunday Night story on a Western Australian family, who lost their daughter in 2009 following her parents’ refusal to undertake her chemotherapy treatment.

Tamar Stitt died from liver cancer in November 2009, two months after her parents took her to El Salvador in defiance of doctors in Perth, who said she would almost certainly die without the treatment. Her father, Trevor, had told police his wife was a healer who believed in natural remedies.

An inquest is now being held to probe how she died, and whether a court-ordered chemotherapy could have saved her.

Trevor Stitt told the court he felt the Sunday Night story, filmed prior to her death, was edited in such a way that was “damning evidence against me”.

But Rahni Sadler defended the program.

“I believe it was an absolutely fair representation of my time with the Stitts,” the West Australian newspaper reports.

“I think I presented both sides of the story.”

She said she had been so concerned when she left El Salvador that through an interpreter, she tried to receive updates on Tamar’s condition.

The inquest continues.