She was brutally attacked – but what happened next was worse
Jacquie Thomson was brutally attacked at her own father’s memorial service in Sydney – but what happened next will shock Australia.
EXCLUSIVE
When police officers knocked on Jacquie Thomson’s door in January 2024, she had two black eyes and several head injuries.
Hours earlier she had been brutally attacked, repeatedly struck over the head with a full bottle of champagne while attending a memorial service for her beloved dad Malcolm in Breakfast Point, Sydney.
It should have been a day of tender reflection and a celebration of his life.
Instead, during the memorial, the grief stricken Ms Thomson was viciously assaulted.
Her attacker was someone she knew. Someone she had once loved. Someone she had the right to be safe with.
Shocked and traumatised, Ms Thomson was rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed with a brain injury. Hospital reports seen by news.com.au note she was suffering from “head injury following assault,” with bilateral periorbital ecchymosis (two black eyes) due to being “struck with glass bottle”.
Witnesses at the memorial also stated that the “vicious assault” was entirely unprovoked.
Yet when two police arrived at Ms Thomson’s door the next day they were not there to take her statement.
Instead Ms Thomson was arrested over her own assault.
“When you’re a victim of crime you expect to be supported. Not criminalised,” said Ms Thomson in an exclusive interview with news.com.au.
“I was taken to the local police station. I was still shaky, not walking or seeing properly, and barely thinking straight. I needed help to get down my front stairs.
“I felt lucky to be alive. Who hasn’t heard of someone being killed by one heavy blow to the head, let alone many?”
Having never been in trouble with the law before, the grandmother of two gave a voluntary statement to police.
She then tried to make a formal complaint against her attacker.
“The police refused to take a report from me. I was told that since my attacker had already made a complaint, there was now no mechanism for me to make a separate report, since they got in first.
“We tried to contact lawyers but none were available till Monday morning.”
The next day Ms Thomson was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. If found guilty she could have faced five years prison.
Month after anxious month rolled by with that serious charge hanging over her head.
“I couldn’t sleep, I missed work opportunities. It was very stressful and traumatic.”
Finally in December 2024 the charge against Ms Thomson was thrown out after Magistrate Heywood ruled that Ms Thomson’s attacker was the “violent aggressor” who had used a “heavy dangerous object” to commit a “very extreme assault” against Ms Thomson.
“I found the accused [Ms Thomson] to be an honest witness, and a witness who I found to be reliable, a witness who I found to be doing her best to recall traumatic events which culminated in a brain injury … I find that the complainant was the aggressor, that the complainant was significantly larger and more threatening … I accept that Ms Thomson was terrified. I accept that [Ms Thomson] was desperate to get away … In this case, [the complainant] was the aggressor, and in fact a violent aggressor.”
The AVO application against Ms Thomson was also dismissed.
But by then Ms Thomson was more than $30,000 out of pocket and had spent a year living with the trauma, stress and humiliation of a serious criminal charge hanging over her.
“It’s cost me almost $18,000 in legal fees alone, which I scraped together from loans and raiding my superannuation savings.”
Medical costs, court costs and lost income also added to the burden for the 64-year-old grandmother.
A GoFundMe has now been set up to help Ms Thomson get back on her feet and campaign against the problem of police misidentification in domestic and family violence matters.
She is also hoping to fund a legal challenge against NSW Police.
What is misidentification of predominant aggressors?
Alarmingly, what Ms Thomson experienced is far from isolated. The problem is known as police misidentification of predominant aggressors in domestic and family violence matters and it is not unusual in Australia.
In some cases, like Ms Thomson’s, police wrongly identify the victim as the aggressor due to a false or malicious report.
In other instances, they might arrive at a scene and draw false conclusions due to inexperience, racial bias, or a lack of understanding of how trauma presents for different people, especially when adrenalised.
The issue gained international recognition in 2021 when Gabby Petito was murdered by her fiance Brian Laundrie during a road trip.
During a police roadside stop in Utah on August 12, 2021, police misidentified Ms Petito as the predominant aggressor after a witness reported a domestic dispute.
In body-cam footage of the roadside stop, Mr Laundrie appeared calm and charismatic, even bonding with police, while Ms Petito appeared anxious, emotional and at times agitated – traits which are very common for individuals who have experienced prolonged domestic violence.
Yet police failed to correctly interpret these cues and Ms Petito was later murdered after being ordered to spend a single night apart. Brian Laundrie died by suicide.
The case – and the video footage in particular – sparked important conversations about how trauma presents in ways which can be misinterpreted.
Yet the ‘Petito paradox’ is that it took a case involving a white woman to highlight a problem which, according to statistics, disproportionately affects women of colour.
“This goes back to the idea of the perfect victim and who is imagined as a ‘worthy victim,’ ’’ LJ Singh an Indigenous researcher on Wathaurong country (Victoria), who specialises in gender based violence, says.
“Because of stereotypes and unconscious bias, many police still expect victims of domestic violence to appear compliant, docile and grateful for police involvement, but this fails to account for trauma and a person’s life story.
“Women who have experienced years of abuse do not often fit the stereotype.
“She might be loud, or mouthy. She might be a bigger woman.
“She might pace with adrenaline or appear agitated or yell. She might be reactive, untrusting, irritated, or incoherent.
“She might be confused, or aggressive or noncooperative, or neurotic or affected by drugs or alcohol.”
According to Ms Singh who has worked as a counsellor in women’s jails, people with PTSD or acute trauma often go into “fight, flight, freeze or fawn” mode.
“If you’re in fight mode, it’s not just ‘fight against the perpetrator’, it’s fight against anyone,” Ms Singh says.
“Yet the stereotype of the perfect victim is passive, petite, meek, and compliant. Even something like a person’s weight and body size and stature can deem them less likely to be believed.
“Economic class also enters into it, because you might have a woman who is assertive, but if she is well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-educated then she is more likely to be considered an ‘acceptable victim’ compared to a woman who presents as poor or mentally unwell or not put together.”
“The media also play a role in perpetuating victim stereotypes,” says Ms Singh, and there is an inherent tension and irony in the fact that in some ways Gabby Petito did conform to the ‘perfect victim’ stereotype of the “small, petite, thin white woman”.
“Yet even she was still not believed when pitted against a conventionally handsome, calm man.”
So how common is misidentification in domestic violence matters in Australia?
When victims of domestic violence are wrongly accused the impacts can be deadly as victims lose trust in services.
So how common is it in Australia?
In Victoria, police estimate that of female respondents on Family Violence Reports relating to intimate partner violence, misidentification occurs approximately 12 per cent of the time.
But services such as The Orange Door say the rates are much higher, and that misidentification occurs in 30 to 50 per cent of cases where a woman is listed as the respondent.
That number goes up to 80 per cent if the woman is Aboriginal.
We also know that in NSW last year, 54 per cent of all women who were identified as the primary aggressor in a domestic or family violence matter, had previously been identified as the victim.
That study echoes another concerning study from Queensland that found that almost half (44.4 per cent) of all women who were killed in a domestic or family violence homicide in 20I7 had previously been branded by authorities as the offender.
Insufficient evidence to prosecute real aggressor, say NSW police
For women who are falsely accused and labelled as the primary aggressor, there is often little recourse, or police accountability for any error.
Ms Thomson, for example, has not been able to recoup her legal costs and was advised that it may cost her more to try to recoup them than the court may award.
Nor has she seen any justice for the original assault.
Earlier this year Ms Thomson filed a NSW police report against her attacker.
But despite Magistrate Heywood already having ruled that her attacker was the “violent aggressor”, and despite there being an independent eye witness who corroborated Ms Thomson’s account and other contemporaneous evidence including medical reports and photographs of injuries, NSW Police have refused to lay charges.
A spokesperson for NSW Police told news.com.au that “Police investigated the matter and sought legal advice; however, there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.”
News.com.au understands that police never applied for the CCTV footage from the venue.
“Why is it that the police think they know better than the courts?” asked Ms Thomson.
“The worst part for me is that I will never trust police again.
“The worst part for us all is that my story is just one tiny example of what happens to many, many women.
“It’s no wonder women so rarely report family and domestic violence assaults.”
Ms Thomson who is a former journalist, public servant and political adviser is now campaigning for change.
“I want reform so that no other victims or survivors of domestic and family violence are ever wrongly charged,” she said.
“Most people don’t have the advantages I had: a fantastically supportive partner; friends and family who loaned me money and gave me huge emotional and other support; access to my superannuation; and a fantastic criminal lawyer.
“Even with all of the support, it was hard to keep going. It’s easy to see why so many people give up.”
Ms Thomson hopes that more jurisdictions will implement alternative models for responding to domestic and family violence, such as the ‘co-responder model’ where police are accompanied by experts in domestic and family violence.
“I also want to bring a legal case against NSW Police for the wrongful charge.
“Otherwise, police will keep repeating misidentification over and over again, to more and more vulnerable women.”
She says that until there is accountability, police mistakes will continue.
“The NSW Government must stop protecting police from having to face the consequences of their wrongful actions against victims of family and domestic violence.
“I am campaigning to help ensure that vulnerable women and other victim-survivors never have to go through what happened to me”.
To donate to Ms Thomson’s GoFundMe, click here.
Continue the conversation: Contact ninafunnell@gmail.com
Nina Funnell is a Walkley Award winning freelance journalist who specialises in reporting sexual violence.
Originally published as She was brutally attacked – but what happened next was worse
