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May 14th, 2013 
BANNING children from a clinic’s treatment rooms would have prevented the death of a toddler who was crushed when a massage table was lowered, an Adelaide coroner says.
Sophie Ann Schulz was 18 months old when she became trapped in the hydraulic mechanism of the table at the Fravira Clinic in Adelaide’s St Morris on June 17, 2009.
Her mother, Justine Schulz, was receiving treatment while Sophie and her four-year-old brother were playing in the same room with toys supplied by the clinic.
Deputy Coroner Anthony Schapel made recommendations on Tuesday including that children be banned from being in a room where such a massage table was present, except when they could be put into a playpen.
Ms Schulz was being treated by an experienced therapist, Mira Maric, who pressed a pedal to lower the massage table for the last stage of the session.
Despite evidence by the clinic’s proprietor, Elvira Blunt, that the death was “just such a freakish accident”, the coroner found it was foreseeable.
“One only has to contemplate an 18-month-old child alone in a room with this machinery in operation to appreciate how dangerous a situation that would be,” he said.
Mr Schapel said the “inescapable conclusion” was that a small child, totally naive to the nuances of moving machinery, could foreseeably be attracted to it.
Given that the clinic accepted the presence of children in the rooms, the only way to ensure their safety was to maintain sight of them while the table was lowered, he said.
“It is not the point to say there was no child-minding responsibility adhering to Ms Maric’s duties,” Mr Schapel said.
“The machinery should not have been operated unless every person in the room was accounted for and no one was near the machine.”
The death would have been prevented if small children had been banned from the treatment rooms, he said.
Ms Blunt was prosecuted by Safework SA, but the charges were later withdrawn.
AAP ms
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