WHEN Far North District Acting Chief Superintendent Rhys Newton began his policing career almost 40 years ago, domestic violence was a matter of “what happened at home, stayed at home”.
“It was very much shrouded in silence and suffered behind closed doors,” he said.
But with the introduction of domestic violence legislation in the 90s, there’s been a steady shift in community and policing awareness of the nature of domestic violence.
From an unspoken problem all those years ago, Acting Chief Superintendent Newton said nowadays 40 per cent of the force’s calls for service were disturbance-related.
“And up to 60 per cent of our time in frontline troops is in responding to and investigating DV incidents and bringing perpetrators to the justice system, and certainly supporting the victims of families and children in those relationships,” he said.
“It’s a large amount of our resources … but there’s no better time to be spent because in this day and age in Queensland, we should be involved in making sure people and children are safe in their own homes. It’s a number one priority for the state and also a number one priority for the Far North District.”
According to the Queensland Courts website as at October 31, Cairns has had a 25.8 per cent increase in domestic violence order initiating applications compared to the same time last financial year.
Charges for contravening a domestic violence order are up 77.9 per cent for the same time period, other domestic violence offences lodged with the Cairns Magistrates Court are up 113.9 per cent, and strangulation offences are up 117.6 per cent.
Queensland Police said those large increases should be read in the context of a change in the recording of criminal offences associated with domestic and family violence investigations across the state.
“This means that police districts will likely see a statistical increase in a number of DFV related offence categories – for example DFV related assault, strangulation or wilful damage,” police said in a statement.
“This enhanced recording of DFV offences practice will provide a more accurate picture of the true prevalence and harm of DFV occurring within our communities.”
Across the city at Ruth’s Women’s Shelter, manager Shelly Purvis feels there is an increasing demand for her organisation’s services.
But she also noted the demand for crisis accommodation in Cairns has always outstripped supply, meaning Ruth’s Women’s Shelter is always full.
“Domestic and family violence is a huge issue in our community. We know this from the number of women we work with,” Ms Purvis said.
“There are many women who don’t report it, so the real figures are unknown.”
Attempting to bridge that silence, Ruth’s Women’s Shelter recently teamed up with Cairns Regional Council and the Red Rose Foundation to install two Red Benches in Spence Street.
“We want to bring the conversations about domestic and family violence into the community,” Ms Purvis said.
“For all too long, it has not really been spoken about and it has been dealt with behind closed doors. We hope that people seeing the red benches will be reminded that we have a major problem in Cairns and we all need to do more.”
Ms Purvis said there were some amazing services in Cairns – Ruth’s Hub at Raintrees Shopping Centre, Women’s Centre FNQ, Cairns Regional Domestic Violence Service, Women’s Legal Service FNQ and many more.
Anyone who needs to get out of a domestic or family violence situation urgently could call DV Connect on 1800 811 811 for advice on crisis accommodation options, Ms Purvis said.
“Feedback from the women that we work with seems to indicate that it is becoming easier to get assistance from the police, which is great news,” she said.
Ms Purvis said the one thing Cairns needed right now was more affordable, accessible housing for women and children who are in shelters.
“The lack of access to rentals means that families have to stay longer in crisis accommodation creating a log jamming situation and making it more difficult to access shelters.”
Acting Chief Superintendent Newton said the majority of domestic violence was male perpetrators on female victims, and the police force’s challenge continued to be around affecting cultural change as well as early intervention.
He said that early intervention in a violent relationship and providing support to the victim, as well as helping the perpetrator break the cycle of violence, was a part of the answer.
“We’re trying to become victim-centric in that space. We’re pretty good at intervening and breaking that cycle for the perpetrator, Acting Chief Superintendent Newton said.
“We are becoming more sensitive and victim-centric in that space and becoming more mindful about the levels of harm that are involved.”
He said acting early was key to avoiding fatal outcomes.
So why do people – overwhelmingly men – abuse, assault, and in the most tragic circumstances, kill their partners?
In its simplest form, Acting Chief Superintendent Newton said unhealthy relationships had a range of “pressure points” that could manifest in violence, and sometimes led to the most horrific outcomes.
He encouraged any Queenslanders who witnessed or overheard DV situations to report it to police.
“We all have a responsibility to say no and to stop domestic violence,” he said.
Here are some of Far North Queensland’s worst domestic violence offenders, whose crimes shocked the region.
Faces of some of FNQ’s worst domestic violence offenders
BALWINDER SINGH GHUMAN
It was a horrific example of domestic violence that shocked a residential Gordonvale street.
And while he claimed not to be mentally fit at the time, that didn’t wash with Justice Jim Henry, who found that Balwinder Singh Ghuman’s fatal stabbing of his wife Manjinderjit Kaur Ghuman and her mother Sukhwinder Kaur Johal in 2016 was simply a “drunken response to rejection”.
During his trial, the court heard the arranged marriage of Balwinder and Manjinderjit had been troubled by his heavy drinking, paranoid delusions and resentment towards her family.
At 3.30pm on March 14, 2016, after a demand from Manjinderjit that he leave the family home, he unleashed in a prolonged attack that spilled out into the street and saw Manjinderjit and Sukhwinder stabbed more than 20 times each.
A jury spent three and a half hours deliberating before finding Ghuman guilty of two counts of murder, one of attempted murder and one of unlawful wounding in May 2019.
“This was the reaction of a drunken male not accepting a break-up, not accepting the blame for it and instead attacking those who in some form of distorted thought are perceived as the cause of (his) woes,” Justice Henry said.
Ghuman will be 73 years old before he has a chance to breathe free air again, after being jailed for life, to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison.
GRAEME COLIN EVANS
Graeme Colin Evans’ partner Leeann Lapham was 30 when she disappeared from Innisfail in April 2019.
Evans told police he’d had an argument with Ms Lapham after she had returned from the shops and that she grabbed her handbag and walked out of the room of the Riverside Motel where the on-again-off-again couple were living.
But all along, he was concealing a terrible secret.
Police reopened the cold case in 2016 and reached a “pivotal point” in February 2017 where they knew they had a strong enough case to charge Evans.
In February 2019 he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and interfering with a corpse and then led police to the location of Leeann’s remains.
He was the first person to be sentenced under the no body, no parole laws passed by Queensland parliament in August 2018.
According to the version of events Evans told police, Leeann’s death was the result of a fight over a bacon packet and knife he’d left in the sink.
During the altercation, Evans elbowed and punched Leeann repeatedly in the head.
After she slid off the bed, appearing dazed and motionless on the floor, Evans left the room for 20 minutes to have a smoke before returning and realising Leeann was dead.
He panicked, placing her body in a sleeping bag and driving out of town. He dumped her clothes and the sleeping bag in one location and her naked body in another spot on the sheltered side of a mountain at Cowley Beach.
There her body lay until February 28, 2019, when Evans led police to the spot he had left her.
A victim impact statement by Kerry Johnson tendered in court and read out by Crown Prosecutor Nigel Rees spoke of Ms Lapham as a “bright and bubbly girl”.
“We were mother and daughter but also best friends who could speak about anything and everything,” she wrote.
“There is a hole in my heart and in my life.
“I think of her every day.”
Evans received nine years imprisonment.
LENFRED LEIGHWAYNE TOMMY
In October 2021, Lenfred Leighwayne Tommy was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for the manslaughter of his long-term partner Juanita Paul.
In the early hours of June 27, 2019, Ms Paul was laying down on a mattress in Tommy’s grandmother’s bedroom in her Kowanyama home when she refused to join Tommy for a drink and he attacked her.
Defence barrister Michael Dalton submitted that Tommy had a brain impairment and was intoxicated at the time, which led to “a momentary explosion” rather than a “direct and focused goal orientated attack”.
The most significant knife wound perforated her left brachial vein and left brachial artery.
She later died at the Kowanyama Primary Health Care Clinic from cardiac arrest as a result of blood loss.
The court also heard another of the wounds inflicted by Tommy involved a slice across the front of her throat, following the curvature of her neck.
Tommy had previously been convicted of assaulting Ms Paul in 2018 and in 2016 where he stabbed her in the neck.
KLAUS JULIUS ANDRES
With “an element of clinical detachment and control”, Klaus Julius Andres placed his wife Li Ping Cao’s body in a wheelie bin and dissolved it in hydrochloric acid at his suburban Brinsmead home in October 2011.
He had pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Cao, but at the conclusion of his trial on December 12, 2013, the jury found otherwise and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Justice Jim Henry said just how Klaus killed his wife remained unknown, because he destroyed the evidence of what he did.
“I find it difficult to think of anything more despicable than the behaviour in which you behaved after the event, towards your deceased wife’s body.”
All that was left behind was a small number of her porcelain false teeth, found in a drain in the street.
Damning CCTV footage caught him purchasing the huge quantities of acid from Bunnings, then callously using his wife’s bank card to withdraw cash from an ATM in the Cairns CBD after killing her.
He fought his conviction and sentence in both the Court of Appeal and High Court but ultimately lost both.
In May this year, Andres made a bid for parole citing his declining health in Lotus Glen Correctional Centre, though the outcome of that bid will never be known.
ISAACE NATHANIEL LLOYDE BARLOW
Many people saw Isaace Barlow’s attack on his 20-year-old de facto partner Christine Fourmile on December 14, 2014 in Yarrabah, but only two took action to flag down an ambulance for help.
In February 2017, he was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years jail for manslaughter after it was argued he was “blind drunk” at the time of the “prolonged” attack on the mother of his child.
Ms Fourmile died in hospital a day after the attack.
His insidious domestic violence history emerged in the Cairns Supreme Court as he was sentenced by Justice Jim Henry, who labelled him a “dangerous man” who committed an “act of savagery”.
“Your criminal history is appalling,” Justice Henry said.
“There is unfortunately a vein running through it … you’re a person who’s prepared to be violent and violent to loved ones.
“You’re a dangerous man because you fail to control yourself.
“(It was a) drunken, self indulgent rage.”
MAREE ANNE BLACKWELL
Maree Blackwell was a diagnosed schizophrenic off her medication and self-medicating with cannabis when she killed her mother 71-year-old mother Lesley at their 17 hectare property between Cooktown and Hope Vale in early 2017.
She pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Cairns Supreme Court in March 2020 and was sentenced by Justice Jim Henry to nine years imprisonment.
“You took your mother’s life,” he said.
“The finality of that carries a gravity for her that cannot be stated, or understated.
“There is no sentence the court can impose to quantify the value or worth of your mother’s life.”
He said the exact circumstances of Lesley’s death were unknown as no one else was there at the time but there was an inference it was a “sustained and violent attack”.
Lesley’s body was found with a serious head wound along with multiple bruises caused by “blunt force trauma” to various parts of her body, with a disassembled and damaged shotgun and clumps of hair found nearby.
The Parole Board will now be responsible for deciding her release from custody.
AMON JED WADDELL
It was an alcohol-fuelled brawl in the family home with tragic consequences.
Amon Jed Waddell, then 25, beat and strangled his father Phillip Waddell in March 2018 after his father grabbed him by the throat at their Maadi home near El Arish.
The Cairns Supreme Court heard both Phillip and Amon Waddell suffered trauma before the incident.
The younger man suffered an enclosed head injury during a motorcycle accident in 2017 and his father had grown embittered after a workplace shoulder injury.
“He was left in constant agony. His family was left helpless … a stranger appeared,” Justice Henry said, reading a statement by his mum Jane Waddell.
Amon Waddell would tell a psychologist his father had “become a physically abusive individual”.
“He wasn’t the man who raised me, but he was still my dad,” Wadell said.
Waddell pleaded guilty to manslaughter in September 2019.
He was sentenced to seven years in jail but was eligible for parole in July 2021.
JIMMY SERGIS PASCOE
Jimmy Sergis Pascoe, a former army reserve private and father-of-three, had a history of criminal convictions for assaulting women.
During a violent two-year relationship with Cairns mother Frede Brown, the couple had domestic violence orders imposed on each other over a series of violent and drunken assaults.
On the night of April 19, 2014, the pair were staying at Pascoe’s uncle’s Toogood Rd unit when he called police and told them Ms Brown had become “jealous” and was “stalking” him.
The court heard she then bashed Pascoe with a mop, threw a door handle at him and threatened to stab him, the Cairns Supreme Court heard.
Ms Brown was found dead on the ground of a Woree unit complex early on Easter Sunday 2014 with six stab wounds to her heart, lung, back and hip.
Justice Jim Henry acknowledged Pascoe had been “provoked” but said his history of domestic violence was “appalling, and the violent killing should have been avoided”.
Pascoe was sentenced to nine years imprisonment after pleading guilty to Ms Brown’s manslaughter.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is at hand:
DV Connect – 1800 811 811
1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732
Lifeline – 13 11 14
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