Police probably could not stop a man killing family members if he had “murder in his heart”, a Victorian assistant police commissioner has told the Luke Batty inquest.
Eleven-year-old Luke was murdered by his father, Greg Anderson, on a cricket oval in Tyabb in February.
Giving evidence at the state’s coroner’s court on Thursday morning, Luke Cornelius told the coroner, Ian Gray: “I went to bed the night Luke died asking, ‘How many other Lukes are out there? How would I know?’ ”
“That night, I didn’t know the answer to that question and that deeply troubled me. There was no one that could tell me, ‘Here’s the list.’ ”
Cornelius told the court he had challenged himself and his colleagues about what they might have done differently to have prevented Luke’s death. He had concluded that no matter how effective and accountable those charged with responding to family violence were, nothing could have been done to stop a perpetrator like Anderson.
“If a man has murder in his heart – if he intends for a reason unknown to us to cause harm to a victim or more explicitly, his children – we are not going to be able to prevent those deaths,” Cornelius said.
“They are such a small number of incidences within the context of all the incidences we contend with, and there are so many unknown factors that remain only in the mind of an offender.”
Since the inquest began in October, the court has heard that no one, including Luke’s mother and Anderson’s ex-partner, Rosie Batty, believed Anderson would ever harm Luke. Anderson also died at the scene of Luke’s death, after stabbing himself and being shot by a police officer.
But Cornelius said many improvements could be made to the way police and the judicial system handled family violence cases.
In the middle of giving his evidence, he stood up from the witness table and turned to face Batty, who was sitting in the front row of the public gallery.
“Rosie, if I may,” he said. “I spoke to [Victorian police commissioner] Ken [Lay] as late as last night, and he asked me to personally convey our deepest condolences and sorrow at your tragic loss.
“Speaking as the regional commander that sought to provide you with a service and support you so clearly needed, it has been a source of deep reflection and pain for me and my colleagues about this tragic loss and what would I do to make it better, and how we might challenge ourselves to make the community safer from this terrible behaviour we see being inflicted by men on people they profess to love.”
At the time of Luke’s death, there were four warrants out for Anderson’s arrest. Throughout the inquest, the court has examined whether opportunities to arrest Anderson, or prevent him from being released on bail, were missed.
Questions have also been asked about whether child protection officers, police and the courts underestimated the risk posed to the Battys by Anderson, who was also facing charges relating to the possession of child abuse images.
Cornelius said it was “very clear” Victoria police needed significant change to the way they approached family violence. For too long, he said, police had devalued the voice of victims.
“We’re [now] trying to drive a victim-centric approach and take the time to develop relationships with victims and creating a context where victims can tell their story and where we can understand how a perpetrator may have conditioned a victim to respond in a certain way. We want to understand what the victim has had to contend with.”
He said the court system was being manipulated and “gamed” by family violence perpetrators to further abuse victims. “The multiple missed attendances at a court,” he said. “The failure to progress matters as a result. The misfires around bail.
“These are opportunities that can be used by the accused to manipulate the system and continually drag a victim through court. We need to take a long hard look at how we maximise accountability and stop the court being used as a system to re-victimise victims.”
The inquest had previously heard Anderson was clever and “calculated” in the way he manipulated the court system to avoid arrest.
Since being appointed police commissioner in 2011, Lay has consistently spoken about family violence and the need to hold abusers to account, including through ridding the police force of sexist and predatory men.
Batty was expected to address the court on Thursday afternoon. The inquest continues.
