Family Court perpetuating domestic violence in Australia

It seems unfathomable that someone with a DVO be given access to the most personal details of the person leaving them. Yet this is the system we force victims to try and survive in, writes Lucy Carne.

Every night she goes to bed with triple-0 pre-dialled into her phone and car keys within reach.

Every night she lies awake wondering when the man she once loved will finally follow through his threats and kill her.

This woman, who has asked not to be named, shared her story in response to the brutal murder of Hannah Clarke and her three small children, who were burned to death by Rowan Baxter.

Her story, like so many others, mirrors Hannah’s.

Just like Hannah, she finally found the courage to flee a controlling husband who threatened to destroy her.

Police and a magistrate issued an intervention order. It did nothing. The man moved two minutes down the road from her.

Just like Baxter, he repeatedly breached his order, stalking his estranged wife through shopping centres, sports fields, supermarkets and cafes.

He was charged with criminal offences, but in that same dangerous time lapse as Baxter, he was yet to face court.

24-year-old Tara Brown was murdered by her former partner after he repeatedly breached his DVOs. Picture: supplied

You would think a person has the right to feel safe, that they’re protected by our guardians of society. But they’re not.

The stomach-churning reality is that the Family Court ordered that this man have access to their children, despite his unheard criminal charges.

The Family Court also ordered that she provide him with all her bank, child care and Centrelink statements, work details and property documents. “They show all of my everyday movements,” she said. “Where I shop, eat, get petrol, where I go out, where I holiday, where I spend every dollar.”

He stalked her relentlessly. And now, thanks to the Family Court, he knows it all. What little protection she felt she had gained by fleeing an abusive partner has gone.

Every day our clearly broken legal system AIDS and abets this toxic family violence. The Family Court ignores protection orders and treats abusers as equals.

When magistrate-issued protection orders are breached they are met with pathetic convictions.

Of the 31,274 Domestic Violence Order breaches in Queensland in the past year, only 15 per cent (4788) were imprisoned, just over 11 per cent (3671) were fined, and just 9 per cent (2985) received a community-based order. The rest? Ignored.

Hannah Clarke had taken all appropriate legal avenues to try and keep herself and her children safe before they were all murdered. Picture: supplied

And no, it is not just men. In a North Queensland Magistrate’s Court earlier this month, one woman in her 30s pleaded guilty to breaching a DVO by striking a man in the head with a phone and kicking him in the groin. She got a six-month probation with no conviction.

Another woman also pleaded guilty to contravening a DVO when she threatened to stab a man in front of their children. She was fined $500. Again, no conviction.

On the flip side is the alleged malicious use of DVOs as weapons to hinder the legal process.

A survey of Queensland magistrates found 74 per cent believed restraining ­orders were “often” used for tactical purposes. In NSW, a staggering 90 per cent of magistrates believed this.

How is it that this system has been so wrongly corroded that women and men at risk of true violence cannot be kept safe?

A DVO exists in one-third of domestic and family violence murders in Queensland. Hannah Clarke had one, as did Fabiana Palhares, 34, who along with her unborn baby was killed in 2015 on the Gold Coast in an attack the sentencing judge described as “the stuff of nightmares”.

Tara Brown, 24, was run off the road and bludgeoned to death by an ex-partner who had repeatedly breached his DVOs.

Fabiana Palhares was pregnant when she was brutally murdered by her former partner. Picture: Facebook

Karina Lock, shot in the head by her ex-husband in a McDonalds in 2015, had a DVO put in place, as did 20-year-old Shelsea Schilling, who was murdered by her former boyfriend in 2016.

Teresa Bradford was killed as she slept by her violent ex-husband who had just been released from custody on bail. The police had opposed the bail.

When do we stop and accept that this chaotic system does not work?

When do we stop treating violence in the home as a civil issue?

Whether it is outside a nightclub or inside a bedroom, whether they are strangers or spouses, violence is a criminal act and should be treated as such.

DVOs should not be watered down and contradicted by the Family Court, just as breaches should not be toothlessly overlooked by magistrates.

It is time our legal systems stopped supporting and perpetuating family violence.

And it is time society stopped treating domestic violence as a “private” problem and faced it in the open with the condemnation and punishment a vile criminal act deserves.

It has to change so those people lying awake terrified each night feel a little safer.

Lucy Carne is editor of Rendezview.com.au