Domestic violence Qld: Taskforce turns attention to elderly, disabled

The Gold Coast’s domestic violence taskforce has chalked up a fatality-free year, and is now turning its attention to cases of domestic violence beyond the spousal kind.

POLICE are targeting domestic violence against seniors and people with disabilities in a new program being rolled out on the Glitter Strip.

The trial comes as the Gold Coast Domestic and Family Violence Taskforce, which began in 2016 after a spate of DV murders in the tourist capital, last month took out the Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards’ gold award for police-led projects.

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The awards, run by the Australian Institute of Criminology, recognise innovative approaches to preventing violence and other crime in Australia.

The DV Taskforce has been targeting violent men with the potential to kill their partners since its formation shortly after the brutal murder of Tara Brown by her Bandido bikie ex-boyfriend Lionel Patea and the shooting of Karina Lock by her husband at a McDonald’s car park on the Gold Coast two years ago.

Patea was in 2017 sentenced to life behind bars after pleading guilty to the shocking roadside murder of Ms Brown, who he beat to death with a metal plate as she lay trapped in her wrecked car after being run off the road at Ashmore.

He is also serving a second life sentence for the murder of Gold Coast father Greg Dufty.

Ms Lock had left an abusive husband in Maryborough to start a new life with her teenage daughter when she was killed.
Her husband shot himself in the head following the mother’s murder at Helensvale.

Domestic and Family Violence Taskforce chief Detective Inspector Marc Hogan

“Our top-shelf goal is the prevention of homicides and we work hard to identify those who have the most capacity to do that,” DV Taskforce boss Detective Inspector Marc Hogan told The Courier-Mail.

“We identify those who pose the most extreme risk by using a sound intelligence and information network across our community.

“There is a group of men we keep an eye on and many of them are now in custody.

“These are types typical of someone like Lionel Patea, but we also look at high-risk environments and intervene to minimise harm.”

While police officers have been forced to attend harrowing scenes of other shocking intimate partner murders, including the murder-suicide of Shelsea Schilling by her bikie ex-boyfriend Bronson “Lizard Man” Ellery at Southport in 2016, the Gold Coast has now gone 12 months without a domestic violence murder, Det Insp Hogan said.

“That is something we are very proud of, although it isn’t often talked about,” he said.

“It isn’t something we thought we could ever achieve … but it’s a reassuring fact.”

The DV Taskforce is now working with the State Government to target domestic violence against people with disabilities and elder abuse as their next frontier.

A pilot program started in late November.

Shelsea Schilling

Tara Brown

“We are working hard to identify risks in this area,” Det Insp Hogan said.

“The QPS are working with other agencies and it’s really an approach of if you see something, do something.

“What we try and do is intervene high-end environments of harm and treat those with a range of government and non-government organisations and we’ll be doing the same thing with the new trial.”

Det Insp Hogan said those who commit domestic violence are not always bikies or crooks with a history of violence.

“We are often looking for guys that can hold down jobs … but behind closed doors they’re also high-end domestic violence offenders, so that takes a lot of work,” he said.

One of the biggest risk-indicators a woman could be killed by her partner is strangulation, which became a stand-alone criminal offence in Queensland in 2016.

“All strangulations are dealt with by detectives now … it’s a matter that has to go to a higher court and its one of the high-level indicators that a woman is at risk of homicide,” he said.

“Tara Brown and Karina Lock’s murders and the Not Now, Not Ever report were very topical and they remain topical in terms of wholistic approaches for us.

“(The murders were) tragic, they were terrible and those sorts of things make us really focus on what sort of behaviours give potential to do something like that.”