Ella Kathy Preece pushes for aggravated assault charges to be dropped due to ‘DV misidentification’
A Darwin woman who was left with ‘strangulation marks’ around her neck maintains she was misidentified by police after being charged with assault. Read the latest here.
A woman who was left with bruises around her neck after allegedly being choked by her partner was misidentified and charged by Territory police, a court has heard.
On Tuesday, Ella Kathy Preece appeared before Darwin Local Court judge Giles O’Brien-Hartcher charged with breaching a domestic violence order.
It comes four months after the 36-year-old was initially charged with aggravated assault, which her lawyer maintained was a clear case of domestic violence misidentification.
Ms Preece’s defence lawyer Lily Jones said the charges against her client were a “somewhat controversial matter”.
“It has been our position since the very beginning that the wrong client has been arrested,” Ms Jones said.
She presented the Darwin judge with photos from the June incident, and alleged police failed to notice the “serious bruises” on the 36-year-old’s body.
“(They) look like finger marks — strangulation marks — around her neck,” Ms Jones said.
The NT Domestic and Family Violence Risk Assessment and Management Framework, which is used by the sector, highlights non-lethal strangulation, choking or suffocating as a high-risk factor for victims.
“Strangulation is one of the most lethal forms of DFV,” it said.
“The seriousness of choking, strangulation or suffocation as an indicator of future lethality is often misidentified, or not responded to proportionately, as a consequence of the often minimal visibility of physical injury.”
In court, Ms Jones said the injuries to Ms Preece’s neck were not explained by the alleged victim’s version of events, and said he made inconsistent comments at the scene.
Ms Jones said police had also not obtained a statement from the alleged victim in the four months since the charge was laid.
“He gave three different versions of how it might have happened, and when he was asked to clarify he wouldn’t comment,” she said.
Ms Jones said for months she had been asking the Director of Public Prosecutions to review the case, and withdraw all charges.
“I spoke to management today and they said they’re not even sure whether or not anyone has been consulted yet,” she said.
“That’s no stakeholders — police or the victims unit.”
Ms Jones said the latest breach which resulted in her client being in the cells, was because she had gone to their home, which they owned together.
She said the 36-year-old gave the protected person and NT Police two-weeks notice to arrange her entry onto the property — only to find the locks changed.
Ms Jones said she called police and was told that “it wouldn’t be a problem, and they understood she would have to break in as he had changed the locks, but it was her property and she had the right to do so”.
“Even immediately before entering the property, she contacted her lawyer,” she said.
The prosecutors said it was also alleged that Ms Preece sent texts to her ex-partner in breach of her initial domestic violence order, which police claimed showed signs of “emotional abuse, intimidation and coercive control”.
But Ms Jones told the court: “There is no evidence of those text messages on this file whatsoever”.
She said currently the prosecution did not provide the alleged texts, with Mr O’Brien-Hartcher saying he could not keep her in custody based on a “speculative” assessment of texts by the police officer.
Mr O’Brien-Hartcher approved Ms Preece’s bail, and adjourned her matter to the directions hearing list on December 8.
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Originally published as Ella Kathy Preece pushes for aggravated assault charges to be dropped due to ‘DV misidentification’
