The family violence system is broken in Victoria. Legal practitioners in our circle are exhausted from the heavy handed approach to the way police and prosecutors handle family violence complaints.
Typically a matter runs as follows:
- a partner calls police to de-escalate a situation;
- police attend and make immediate value judgements on who is the “victim”;
- police mislead complainants by not telling them that a statement will be used to charge their partner;
- once a statement is made, families are thrown into disarray. Family Violence Safety Notices are issued and police make an application for an Intervention Order often based on hearsay evidence.
- the alleged perpetrator is told they cannot return to their home and are rendered homeless in many cases – no support services are offered;
- police then disregard the wishes of the complainant and persist with the unwanted Intervention Order Application, or continue a criminal prosecution where the complainant never wanted their partner charged.
- Despite complainants being a party to Intervention Order proceedings, magistrates will often refuse their request to have the application struck out where police refuse to withdraw the application. This is the nanny state operating at its worst.
Case study Werribee / Wyndham Prosecutions.
We had a matter concerning Werribee / Wyndham prosecutions whereby our client, who was a victim of stalking, made a complaint.
The alleged perpetrator had admitted to police that he went “nuts” and said he wasn’t innocent.
The issue arose that our client did not disclose to police a particular issue at the time.
Police called our client in for an interview to be questioned about making a false police report.
The investigating police officer was in contact with the alleged perpetrator and told him when our client was to be interviewed.
Call charge records we obtained showed that the alleged perpetrator called our client after being notified by police when she would be interviewed and then told her he will take her to the police interview. The alleged perpetrator then made a threat to our client and told her to admit to making up the allegation.
Our client made admissions fearing that the alleged perpetrator would make good on his threat and she was charged with making a false police report.
We obtained mobile phone tower records to show that the alleged perpetrator was in the location near the police station at the time our client was being interviewed to corroborate what our client alleged. We sought the police station recordings but were told that they were wiped over.
No investigation was made into our client’s allegation of perverting the course of justice and threats by the alleged perpetrator.
We brought this to the attention of Wyndham prosecutions who maintained a prosecution against our client despite their supposed experience with family violence matters. They refused to withdraw the charge and sided with the alleged perpetrator. They then threatened to charge our client with Perjury if we were successful in having the charge struck out because of a technical filing error that we identified.
This is despite the Victoria Police Code of Practice For Family Violence Investigations stating that perpetrators can be manipulative and that there is a policy to encourage reporting of family violence.
We often have charges withdrawn for clients charged with family violence offences when they provide contrary evidence to the statement of the complainant. In none of those cases was the complainant charged with making a false statement.
Conclusion.
Legal practitioners are often lectured by courts that victims of family do not behave in any pre-conceived ways and there are many factors at play as to how people deal with family violence. Police and Wyndham prosecutions have failed our client in this case by making value judgements that they are supposed to be wary of.
Our client should have never prosecuted and the conduct by prosecutors was disappointing, disgraceful and against all the tenets of dealing with victims of family violence.
The net result of this case is that victims of family violence who want to maintain the family unit should be think twice before reporting family violence. There is a high risk that they can be charged with making a false police report and the experience with our client is that they will be charged and treated with contempt by the prosecution.