Violent offenders should be put behind bars and kept there
Rowan Baxter, like the thousands of other cowards who think it’s OK to physically, emotionally or financially abuse women and terrify their children, should have been in jail, writes Kylie Lang.
Opinion
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THE evil monster who killed his babies and their brave and beautiful mother had breached a domestic violence order.
What a surprise. The bastard should have been in jail.
But like the thousands of other cowards who think it’s OK to physically, emotionally or financially abuse women and terrify their children, Rowan Baxter was told he was a naughty boy for disobeying the rules.
Or words to that effect.
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What were the consequences of him breaching the DVO that Hannah Clarke had demanded after years of torment?
None at all.
Like the 25,000 other grubs in Queensland who breached DVOs last year, he was given a proverbial slap on the wrist and, in so doing, tacit approval to go on offending.
In the most horrific crime imaginable, Baxter set alight his three little children and his 31-year-old estranged wife on Wednesday morning in Brisbane’s Camp Hill.
And in a final dog act, he fatally wounded himself instead of facing the aftermath of what will forever be marked as one of Australia’s most heinous incidences of domestic and family violence.
Baxter had been receiving counselling, and I have to wonder what kind of professionalism was applied there too.
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Was it the counselling that says, “Man up, you are totally out of line, and here are ways you can reprogram your behaviour”, or was it the fluffy nonsense that says, “There, there, it will all be OK”?
The way I see it, vile humans like Baxter and the countless others responsible for the dreadful statistic – that one to two Australian women a week die at the hands of a current or previous partner – do not respond to requests to “play nice”.
When they overstep the boundaries, they should be immediately and decisively reined in.
Our legal system needs to be brought into line with community expectations.
Violent offenders should be put behind bars and kept there so they can’t murder and maim again.
And if the jails are full, build a new one, especially for them.
As a taxpayer, I’d be happy to pay a levy to get these cretins off our streets and provide at least some attempt at meaningful rehabilitation. Wouldn’t you?
Civil libertarians will ark up, but where were Hannah Clarke’s rights? Where were the rights of her children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4, and Trey, 3, who wholly deserved to live a full and fruitful life?
Queensland Courts can crow about the law that allows DVOs issued after November 25, 2017, to be enforceable anywhere in Australia, but the law is useless when the DVOs themselves are not enforced.
Toothless tiger laws will not save any woman or child living in fear just as they wouldn’t have saved those who perished before them.
Teresa Bradford was murdered by her estranged husband in January 2017 after he was paroled after a brief stint in jail for serious domestic violence offences.
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DVOs were meaningless slips of paper to him, just as they were to the killer of Shelsea Schilling in November 2016.
He strangled her, bashed her head against the tiles and suffocated her with a pillow.
Both perpetrators took their own lives, like Baxter, escaping any consequences.
I understand why Natalie Hinton and Jonny Gardner want a Royal Commission into domestic violence.
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Like every other decent Australian, they are sick of the pussy footing around this national epidemic.
They lost their daughter Tara Brown in 2015 after her ex ran her off the road and beat her to death with a fire hydrant cover.
Clearly, there are serious defects in the way some people are raising their children when violence is their default as adults. But changing what happens in private homes will never be an overnight fix.
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Meanwhile, innocents are dying.
I stand with my friend Kay McGrath, co-chair of the Domestic and Family Violence Implementation Council, when she says we need a community response.
We need individuals to step up and report suspected cases, reach out to those who are suffering, and see themselves as part of the solution.
But we also, and desperately, need those in positions of power – law makers and law enforcers in particular – to do their jobs.
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