Alison Meadows at her Montmorency home. Photo: Patrick Scala/Getty Images
A knock at the door of a home in Melbourne’s outer suburbs last month threw three parents, all with children who suffer debilitating epilepsy, into the centre of a political debate about legalising medicinal marijuana in Australia.
Mernda couple Cassie Batten and Rhett Wallace had recently appeared on national television talking about giving their toddler a cannabis tincture oil to stop his life-threatening seizures.
The man standing at their front door was Epping Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Detective Sergeant Brett Meadows, who had been tasked with investigating the couple after a report about Cooper’s welfare was made to police.
But Detective Sergeant Meadows knew better than most what the couple were facing. His eldest daughter has undergone three brain surgeries to stop life-threatening seizures and if they hadn’t worked, his wife says they don’t know what they would have turned to.