‘Better, safer ways’: Woman’s plea after being charged over her own assault

Jacquie was charged by police after being attacked and chased. The expensive, year-long ordeal that followed made her realise what needs to change.

WARNING: Distressing content

When I was bashed over the head and face with a full champagne bottle at my dad’s memorial service in January 2024 by a person I’d once loved, I was too shocked and injured to make sensible decisions about my next moves.

I’d been taken to a hospital casualty department and found to have brain trauma.

I wanted to make a domestic and family violence police report, but because of my foggy head and grief, I needed to take a little time to decide when.

But the next night I was arrested at my home and taken to the local police station. One of the police officers who arrested me gasped audibly on first seeing my injured face. They were kind but had a job to do.

The station felt scary, stressful and degrading, with interruptions from loud, angry detainees.

I volunteered to make a videoed police statement but police refused to take a separate report from me of my assault, saying there was no mechanism for me to do that since my attacker got in first.

I was released to go home.

Having been badly injured wasn’t seen by police as relevant. The officer who later charged me said to me words to the effect that “it’s not a competition about who has the worst injuries”. Rather, it seemed to be a competition about who reported first.

Jacquie was bashed over the head and face with a full champagne bottle.

I had done nothing wrong. I had been repeatedly hit over the head with a bottle. I had run. My attacker chased me, grabbing my arm and handbag. I couldn’t escape so I bit them to make them let go. My legal defence was clear that I had acted in self-defence.

Almost a year went by.

When the matter was finally in court in December last year, the magistrate appeared to immediately understand that I was the victim, not the perpetrator and ruled accordingly.

But the police decision to continue to prosecute me cost me almost $18,000 in legal fees alone. It was a huge waste of the court’s time, as well as all of the witnesses’ time. It was a huge waste of police time – they could have been investigating and bringing to justice the perpetrator.

But it wasn’t just a waste of time.

It was also extremely stressful and traumatic, taking a toll on family and relationships.

I ended up spending twice what I had earned the previous year just to continue with court and with medical and trauma care. I missed work and several work opportunities. I paid a small fortune to cover the Medicare gap for psychological care and insomnia drugs, among many, many other expenses.

It’s also a year of my life that I’ll never get back.

Pictured on the day she was arrested, Jacquie was lucky to be able to take the matter through to a judicial conclusion.

Jacquie pictured with her dad, who she lost before the attack.

The police barely put up an argument in court. The officer who charged me even gave me a thumbs up from the witness booth. The police prosecutor stumbled and repeated himself.

The magistrate ruled that my attacker was the “violent aggressor”. She dismissed the charge and application for an AVO against me, the court ruling coming within five minutes of the defence case concluding.

While the magistrate delivered her ruling in my favour and outlined the many failings of the police case, the police prosecutor appeared to scroll through his mobile phone and didn’t once look up at the bench.

I know how lucky I was to be able to take the matter through to a judicial conclusion. If found guilty, I could have faced up to five years in jail.

I had a great lawyer, hugely supportive partner, friends and family who loaned me money and gave me enormous emotional and other support. I’m a former journalist and public servant.

What about people who don’t have my advantages?

Every week a thousand women are turned away in Australia from legal support after being victims of domestic and family violence. One thousand! Imagine that.

Jacquie Thomson said there’s an epidemic of police mismanagement and failure in Australia.

A Victorian study from 2021 also found that of family violence incidents in 2020 where police identified a female respondent, 58.7 per cent of the women had been identified as a victim of family violence in the past five years.

NSW crime data from 2025 also shows that more than half (54 per cent) of the women charged in 2024 in a family or domestic violence matter, had previously been identified by NSW Police as the victims of family or domestic violence.

Some women who are falsely accused end up in jail or have their kids taken away. They carry stigma and disadvantage, including employment disadvantage, of a conviction or having an AVO in place. Their nerves are shattered and their trust reserves and resilience depleted.

On top of the sheer scale of family and domestic violence in Australia, there’s a further epidemic of police mismanagement and failure, and this can affect women for the rest of their lives.

There has to be a better way for the right person to be identified. The police don’t seem to want to learn from their mistakes.

In 2021, only a third of NSW Police Prosecutors had received any training whatsoever in F&DV policing, let alone on identifying primary aggressors and victims.

I initially thought that more training for serving police was the answer to most misidentified victims.

I now know that many frontline responders from expert Domestic and Family Violence services have given up on police ever being able to accurately identify primary aggressors from victim/survivors. They believe that police just don’t have the right culture, experience or expertise.

She’s calling for a ‘co-responder model’.

There are better, safer ways to respond to family and domestic violence calls in many circumstances. Early studies indicate that having trauma-informed, highly skilled and experienced experts attend alongside police, or instead of police where possible, has far better outcomes for victim/survivors and our legal system, particularly in reducing police misidentification.

The model is known as the “co-responder model” or the “alternative first responder model” and pilot programs in Queensland and the Northern Territory, as well as overseas, indicate positive outcomes for women, families, communities and the wider justice system.

We are evolved enough as a community to discuss and implement responses that are tailored to individual incidents and locations. People need safer ways to report abuse.

We must ensure that government funding for response to domestic and family violence is targeted to where it’s most effective. The default model we’ve used for so long has that funding going mainly to police. It’s time to think outside the box. It’s time we explore alternatives for responding to domestic and family violence, and fund what the evidence shows works best.

Jacquie Thomson is campaigning to curb rates of police misidentification in domestic and family violence matters. You can support her on GoFundMe.

Originally published as ‘Better, safer ways’: Woman’s plea after being charged over her own assault