This is part nine of a series by Dr Chris Atmore on the Luke Batty inquest.

The inquest into Luke Batty’s death resumed today. For an overview of the key issues so far, see the previous eight days of this blog or the summary in Croakey.

Tensions between victim safety and perpetrator accountability

In the first week of the inquest, the Court heard about problems in the warrant system and with the main police database, LEAP (Days Two, Four and Five), and how these contributed to police inability to find and arrest Gregory Anderson. Detective Acting Sergeant Andrew Cocking gave evidence that he received information from Rosie Batty about Anderson’s current address a week before Luke was killed (Day Five), but held off on executing various warrants for Anderson’s arrest because Rosie had asked him not to let Anderson know that the information had come from her.

DAS Cocking was recalled as a witness today, and was asked by Counsel assisting the Coroner how he assessed the competing considerations of the need to arrest Anderson and Rosie’s concern. DAS Cocking gave evidence that he weighed up consideration of Rosie’s physical safety if he arrested Anderson immediately, against his view that executing the warrant was a low priority because the matters for which Anderson was sought were unlikely to result in his being remanded in custody, and that the family violence matters were ‘relatively stale’ in terms of the time that had elapsed since the incidents, their having occurred in January and May 2013. He therefore concluded that on balance the immediate public risk did not justify an immediate attempt to arrest Anderson on the basis of Rosie’s information.

DAS Cocking said that he had also considered engineering contact between Anderson and the police in another manner that would not implicate Rosie – for example, door knocking in the area – but that logistics, costs and manpower mitigated against this. On cross-examination by Rosie’s legal counsel, DAS Cocking agreed that the day that four police officers served Anderson with a Personal Safety Intervention Order (PSIO) for his threat against his housemate – 27 January 2014 – would have been a perfect opportunity to also arrest him on the outstanding criminal matters. However, DAS Cocking didn’t know about the PSIO at the time, and those police didn’t know about DAS Cocking’s outstanding warrants.

As Rosie’s legal counsel pointed out, if individual police don’t become aware of additional acts of violence known to other officers, this lengthens the time before the perpetrator might be held to account, and thereby contributes to the ‘stale’ quality of the family violence incidents. Yet more time gets spun out when the perpetrator, as with Anderson, also fails to appear in court.

The decision-making process that might be engaged in in this kind of context raises a potential logical tension between victim safety and perpetrator accountability. This tension is not inevitable, but rather results from a system that has neither ‘joined up’ responses nor an embedded understanding of the dynamics of family violence.

On the one hand, a decision is made not to act on a victim’s information because of the assessed risk to her from the perpetrator. But on the other hand, this decision is supported by an assessment that the family violence the perpetrator has committed is ‘stale’ and therefore there is no urgency to arrest.

It is difficult not to conclude again (see Day Five) that such an approach is about managing the perpetrator’s violence rather than holding him accountable – in much the same way as many women learn to anticipate what point is next in the cycle of violence and do their best to ‘manage’ potential flashpoints.

As the Coroner, Judge Gray, commented, if Anderson had been arrested, accountability could have been enhanced via tightened bail conditions, providing ‘an opportunity to do something more than had been done in this man’s case’.

Bail and family violence

We heard early in the inquest about the issues that can arise if police wish to oppose bail when perpetrators of family violence are arrested (Days Four and Five). Today another of the police prosecutors involved in bail hearings for Anderson, Leading Senior Constable Brownyn Martin, was cross-examined, focusing on the hearing of 11 June 2013.

This was the third in a series considering whether Anderson should get bail while charged with the child pornography and family violence offences. We heard audio recordings of the three hearings, including that by 11 June Anderson had been on remand for 11 days having dismissed his lawyer and failing to make arguments as to why he should be bailed.

LSC Martin explained that prosecutors rely on the mention coordinator, who negotiates with the defence and then directs the prosecutor as to whether bail should be opposed. The mention coordinator on that day, Sergeant Stephen Neville, also gave evidence about the process involved.

Again it seems that there is significant risk that the way the system operates will result in a series of failures to ‘join the dots’. If the offences charged indicate that bailing the defendant might place others at risk, the usual approach is for the prosecutor to alert the Magistrate that the defendant is in a ‘show cause’ situation. This means that rather than the presumption being that the defendant will receive bail, the onus is then on the defendant to show why they should receive bail.

But the Magistrate was not alerted. It was also assumed by both LSC Martin and Sergeant Neville that the previous bail hearing, on 6 June, had addressed the formal requirements and therefore that the live issue on 11 June was the question of whether Anderson had an address to be bailed to. In fact, there had been no formal bail application before 11 June.

Once again, it appears that the presence of different personnel at different stages combined with fallible data collection and communication methods to contribute to the case not being identified as a ‘show cause’ situation. LSC Martin gave evidence that successive prosecutors share information about the same case via notes on the brief. However, criminal matters and family violence intervention order matters are not kept together on file, so for example, Sgt Neville was not aware of the no-contact order against Anderson made by Magistrate Goldsbrough on 24 April and the evidence from Rosie that Anderson had made the knife threat in Luke’s presence.

DSC Cathie, Police Prosecutor in the 24 April hearing, had emailed various police about his concerns and view that bail should be opposed – but Sgt Neville was unaware of this and had had no contact with other officers who as a result of their dealings with Anderson had serious concerns about the risk he posed.

Sgt Neville gave evidence that as mention coordinator he might deal with 150 briefs and up to 15 bail hearings in a day, meaning a very short time for each negotiation and no time to read the whole brief but instead a reliance on the cover sheet. He considered the fact that Anderson had been in custody for some time and now had an address, and believed that there were no strong evidence-based objections to bail.

Sgt Neville therefore directed LSC Martin not to oppose bail on 11 June.

Operationally, the onus seems to be on diligent prosecutors and police officers to make sometimes considerable efforts to join the various dots in an overloaded system.

But perhaps more significant is the question of whether the bail process sufficiently incorporates family violence risk assessment and management throughout the process. Would it work differently for perpetrator accountability if all personnel involved viewed the process through a family violence lens, not only with regard to whether bail should be opposed or granted, but even if bail was granted, what conditions should be attached in order to effectively monitor the perpetrator and keep victims safe?

Related media

Luke batty inquest: Police lawyers ‘deeply troubled’ by hearing timeline, ABC News Online

Sergeant says it was appropriate for Luke Batty’s father to be out on bail, Guardian Australia

Luke batty inquest: on the need for a systems approach to protect women and children, Croakey

To arrange an interview with Dr Chris Atmore, please contact Darren Lewin-Hill on 0488 773 535.