Justice too often elusive in cases of violent abuse

Amid the excesses of the #MeToo movement, false complaints of assault must be discouraged. But in the interests of justice, so must the opposite problem of victims, under duress, some with black eyes and other injuries, retracting claims against their abusers. Hundreds of Indigenous women in western NSW who are victims of violent domestic clashes, legal affairs correspondent Ellie Dudley reports, are being punished and even jailed for retracting allegations. As a result, their violent partners, some with long records of assault charges, are being let off.

Barrister Felicity Graham, who spent more than five years with the Aboriginal Legal Service in western NSW, said women retracted their complaints for many reasons. They included “fear of future violence, wanting to forget and move on after a relationship has ended, a couple reconciling, financial pressures forcing a relationship to continue, and so on”. But police often failed to take such factors into ­account, she said.

The lack of police resources to investigate individual cases thoroughly, understandable frustration of police over complainants retracting and the inertia of following established practice appear to be entrenching the problem. It is not new.

Indigenous woman Allyson Sullivan, from western NSW, who was sentenced to 18 months in jail after retracting allegations of assault against her partner, first told her story to The Australian in 2013. Ms Sullivan says her partner tortured her by duct-taping her, throwing her into a river, dragging her behind a car, forcibly ­injecting her with ice, and beating her. She was terrified of reporting him because he had threatened to kill her children and her mother, but she finally did so in late 2007. He was charged with common assault and related offences. Ms Sullivan retracted her complaint in January 2008 after he promised he would leave town and leave her alone if she did so. She was charged with making a false statement to police, tried and found guilty. While waiting for an urgent District Court appeal hearing, she spent three days in Wellington prison. This week, she said she feared that what happened to her could happen to her daughter.

Since January 2019, 247 public mischief matters and 51 false accusation cases have been finalised to sentence in local courts. Authorities refuse to disclose how many cases relate to domestic violence retraction. But lawyers familiar with the matter say hundreds of women have been charged.

The job of the police in such matters is hard. A NSW police spokesperson said if police wanted to charge an alleged domestic violence victim for making a false accusation they were expected to first escalate it to a senior officer for evaluation. And repairing the dysfunctional, violent culture driving cases of violence like those reported on Friday will be a long-term, complex exercise.

In terms of practical responses, Stephen Lawrence, the Dubbo-based Labor member of the NSW Legislative Council and a former mayor of the region, is on the right track. Mr Lawrence, a barrister and solicitor who worked with the Aboriginal Legal Service, has called on the Minns government, of which he is a member, to reduce the power of police prosecutors. Only the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Lawrence argues, which has a regional office in Dubbo, should handle complainants in domestic violence or sexual assault matters. “It is often the case that such allegations are retracted out of fear or out of concern to keep a family together,’’ Mr Lawrence told parliament in June. “I am talking about circumstances where the police rely on the retraction itself as the only evidence that the original allegation was in fact a false allegation.” False accusations should be discouraged and, where appropriate, dealt with under the law. But justice must be provided for victims. Achieving that balance will require legal skill and good policy.