Greg Anderson displayed ‘red flag’ behaviour that could have indicated he was likely to kill his son, Luke Batty, a magistrate who was involved in the case has told the inquest into his death.
Of the multiple police officers, counsellors, child protection officers, lawyers, judges and prosecutors that came into the lives of Luke Batty and his mother, Rosie, Anne Goldsbrough was the only one to recognise that Luke was at serious risk of death at the hands of his father, the court heard.
In Frankston magistrates court last April, Goldsbrough heard an application by Rosie Batty to have the conditions on an intervention order further tightened to prevent Anderson, her ex-partner, from seeing Luke.
When Goldsbrough heard Anderson had held up a knife to Luke while they were in a car together, she told Batty she was “alarmed” and that it was a “red flag” that predicted future risk.
Luke, 11, was killed by Anderson in February with a cricket bat and a knife on a cricket field in Tyabb, Victoria. There were four warrants out for Anderson’s arrest and he was facing 11 charges at the time.
On Friday, the final day of the inquest into Luke’s death before coroner Ian Gray, Goldsbrough was part of a panel of 11 expert witnesses from the family violence sector questioned about how such murders may be prevented.
When she was asked how she came to the conclusion Anderson may harm or even kill Luke, Goldsbrough told the court that she had listened to Batty, and not just the police.
“I’m one of the people in the community that when a perpetrator is brought to a court, makes a risk assessment,” Goldsbrough said.
“It may be on a bail application, it may be on a criminal matter, and often the information a magistrate gets in making a risk assessment is funneled through the police.
“[In this case] I formed the view that information from the process itself was scant. [So] I asked [Rosie Batty] a question and got an answer and became more and more concerned by the answers I received.”
On Thursday Batty told the court that Goldsbrough was the only person she felt really understood the challenges she faced in managing Anderson’s escalating behaviour and thought to ask how she was feeling.
On Friday, the court also heard from Dr Lesley Laing, a senior lecturer in the department of social work and policy at the University of Sydney, about how vulnerable women were being disbelieved by the police and judicial systems.
The focus was too often on the responsibility of victims to act rather than on the perpetrators to stop their behaviour and be held to account for it, Laing sad.
“At the moment women are left pretty much on their own,” Laing said. “There is no support in the system and it’s a very frightening and distressing situation to be in.
“Because women fear, not without good reason, that if they make allegations of violence that can’t be proved, they might risk a violent ex-partner having even more contact with a child.”
A key question asked of the witnesses was whether family violence experts could predict when a parent may be likely to kill their child, in an act known as filicide.
The retrospective nature of filicide research and the small sample size of cases exacerbated difficulties in carrying out such research, the inquest heard.
While a history of depression, psychotic illness, substance abuse, violent and abusive behaviour and unemployment were factors in between 30-50% of filicide cases, identifying those “red flags” was useful for putting measures in place to prevent ongoing violence rather than predicting filicide, the court heard.
Professor Paul Mullen, from the centre for forensic behavioural science at Melbourne’s Monash University, also told the inquest about the complicated yet untreated mental illness Anderson was likely suffering from.
He put together a “psychiatric autopsy report” of Anderson, who died in hospital several hours after Luke. He had stabbed himself and been shot by a police officer.
Mullen told the court he believed health professionals and police who assessed Anderson as being mentally sound were wrong.
“Police have a very high threshold for mental illness,” Mullen said. “They think ‘bad’ for a long time before they think ‘mad’.” But he said Anderson’s mental illness was complicated and rare.
“It’s a rare form of psychosis in which people can be grossly deluded, but present in many situation as normal individuals,” he said. “They can pull themselves together and present themselves … as amiable.
“I don’t think anyone who knew him on the outside would view him as amiable.”
But because Anderson was often homeless and did not have close interaction with family, few people witnessed the times where Anderson did show symptoms of being mentally ill through making bizarre statements, displaying an obsession with religion and behaving erratically, Mullen said.
“The recognition of these disorders is not easy, but once recognised they are eminently treatable,” Mullen said. “That’s the tragedy.”
But even if Anderson had been assessed as mentally ill, the best treatment for him – up to three months of inpatient hospital treatment – would never have happened because of a lack of resources, Mullen said.
The inquest continues.
