By Emily Woods
A gangland-hit scare, police threats to remove her children and a goat being shot while she was living on a mice-infested farm are among Nicola Gobbo’s recollections of her time in hiding.
The gangland barrister-turned-informer became tearful as she detailed her life since 2019.
Former lawyer and police informer Nicola Gobbo.Credit: ABC
“I’m tired and I’m broken,” she told the Supreme Court from a secret location on Thursday.
“I’ve just had enough.”
The 51-year-old, known as Lawyer X or Informer 3838, is suing the state of Victoria for damages over allegations police acted negligently after they “groomed” her to become a source. The state is fighting all the claims.
Gobbo testified for a second day on Thursday, four days into her judge-alone civil trial, with her barrister Tim Tobin, SC, asking about her experiences since the High Court lifted an order protecting her identity.
Days before that was publicly revealed in March 2019, Gobbo said, she and her children were flown to an overseas location for nine days, escorted by police.
“There was no certainty or plan to what Victoria Police intended,” she told the court.
Gobbo said officers told her she would be in a “holding pattern” as they stayed in a hotel room in a secret location outside Australia.
She and her children returned to Australia but were not allowed to be seen in public, and police moved them several times until they went overseas again, she said.
“Victoria Police were paying for accommodation and some medical bills, but ultimately we parted ways ... after about three months,” she said.
Gobbo said this was because police could not provide her with “actual answers” in response to her questions about the future, including her desire to enrol her children in schooling.
They returned to Australia at the end of 2019, due to her deteriorating health, visa issues, the upcoming royal commission into her being used as a police informer, and so her children could see their father.
They moved to secret housing where the family was monitored by officers “24 hours a day, seven days a week”.
There, Gobbo said, she “literally could not leave the house” unless it was for her to give evidence to the royal commission, or if she obtained special permission to go to a park with her children.
She could not take them to school or engage in social activities.
“I just regard 2020 and 2021 as a period of imprisonment,” Gobbo said. “I could not leave the premises. I couldn’t even step out at the front of the property without being told to get back in.”
Gobbo said the family was evacuated one morning at 4am in March 2021, after police noticed a “highly suspicious” man in a bomber jacket.
“They told me, in their words, ‘it was a military-style operation’ ... and subsequently they had foiled a ‘Hodson-style gangland hit’,” she said, referring to the 2004 murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife, Christine.
“What it turned out was a neighbour who lived in the vicinity ... was interested in the house.”
Gobbo said police gave her no option and threatened to remove her children if she did not leave.
The family then moved again to a “mice-infested” farm house, which came with a pet goat.
“The goat got quite attached to me for the time because I wasn’t allowed to leave the property,” she said. “But eventually we had a difficulty with the goat because he had become very threatening towards my youngest child.”
Gobbo said the goat became ill and police contacted the owner, who attended the property with a firearm to shoot it.
Asked how the previous five to six years had left her feeling, she said it had broken her and she just wanted to live a normal life.
Gobbo’s image is being hidden from public view in the trial, with only the judge and lawyers able to see her as she gives evidence.
The trial before Justice Melinda Richards continues on Friday.
AAP
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