Kate had been charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm after her estranged husband, a senior NSW Police officer, claimed she attacked him during an argument at her home one afternoon. He’d arrived that day to carry out some maintenance, but ended up trying to take an item from her shed. She confronted him, and a tug-of-war broke out, which she filmed on her phone.
“For years I had taken his abuse without retaliation,” Kate said. “All I did on this occasion was stand up for myself and try to stop him from removing joint property.”
But her ex relayed a different account of the tussle. He rushed down to the local police station — where he worked for many years — and told the officers on duty Kate had dug her fingernails into the back of his hand. Kate was devastated: “It was completely untrue,” she said.
She had been to the same station a number of times to report his abusive behaviour, which had escalated, she said, when she took steps to leave him. The first time she sought help, she told police she’d never reported before because her husband had always warned her not to: “No-one will believe you,” he’d say, “because I’m a cop.”
Kate’s experience reveals how disturbingly wrong things can go when police investigate domestic violence matters involving their own. As an ABC News investigation this week revealed, police in Australia are too often failing to take action against domestic violence perpetrators in their ranks, with advocates claiming the practice of police investigating officers from the same station or region is resulting in alleged abusers evading scrutiny and putting victims’ safety at risk.
But it also raises questions about the capacity of the complaints and police oversight system to hold officers to account. Experts say the complaints process — one Kate is now painfully familiar with — too often repeats the same “inappropriate” pattern of police investigating each other and finding no evidence of wrongdoing.
“At the moment, the complaints system is failing to provide just outcomes for complainants, and perpetuating an insidious culture of impunity among police,” said Samantha Lee, head of Redfern Legal Centre’s police accountability practice. “It’s time for immediate change.”
Read the full story here (ABC News, 25 October 2020)
