The family of Indigenous woman Ms Dhu has written to the director of public prosecutions in Western Australia requesting that her ex-partner and three police officers responsible for her care on the day she died face criminal charges.
Dhu, a 22-year-old Yamatji woman, died in police custody in Port Hedland on 4 August 2014, less than 48 hours after being locked up for unpaid fines.
A coronial investigation found she had died from septicemia originating from a rib that had allegedly been broken during in a domestic violence incident by her former partner, Dion Ruffin.
She was taken to hospital twice in two days before succumbing to septic shock, but the infection and cause of her pain was not discovered.
In a report handed down in December, coroner Ros Fogliani found that opportunities to correctly diagnose Dhu had been lost because medical staff who saw Dhu in the days before she died had succumbed to premature diagnostic closure, assuming she was faking or exaggerating her symptoms, or that they were drug-related.
Fogliani also found that three police officers who had custody of Dhu, namely Sergeant Rick Bond, Senior Constable Shelly Burgess, and First Class Constable Chris Matier, had acted in an “unprofessional” and “inhumane” manner in the hours leading up to her death.
On 26 May, the Aboriginal Legal Service, which acts for Dhu’s mother, Della Roe, and grandmother, Carol Roe, wrote to the director of public prosecutions, Amanda Forrester, requesting she consider criminal charges against Ruffin, Bond, Burgess, and Matier, based on evidence and allegations contained in the coroner’s report.
The ALS also wrote to the attorney-general, John Quigley, requesting Carol and Della Roe receive an ex gratia payment “for pain and suffering suffered by them as a direct consequence of the circumstances under which Ms Dhu died.”
“The impact of this incident on Ms Carol and Ms Della Roe, as well as Ms Dhu’s extended family, especially Ms Dhu’s five siblings and in particular, her 13-year-old sister … has been profound,” director of legal services Peter Collins wrote.
“They have had to deal with the incalculable trauma and grief associated with the premature death of Ms Dhu. Their grief and trauma has been compounded by the fact that they were not able to be with Ms Dhu in her final hours, and the knowledge that she was treated inhumanely and without respect for her dignity in her final days. As noted in the coroner’s findings, Ms Dhu’s death traumatised her family and unleashed a wave of grief that has reverberated through the Aboriginal community.”
Collins said both Carol and Della Roe had been diagnosed with depression since Dhu’s death.
Paraphrasing a comment made by former coroner Alistair Hope in his findings on the death in custody of Mr Ward, an elderly Aboriginal man who had effectively been “cooked to death” in an unheated prison van, Collins said: “The question which is being raised by this case is how a society which would like to think of itself of being civilised, could allow a human being to die in the circumstances in which Ms Dhu died.”
Dhu was arrested about 5pm on 2 August, 2014, for $3,622 in unpaid fines. She complained of severe pain and was taken to hospital that night and again the next night. By the morning of Monday 4 August she could not stand. When she requested to go to hospital again, about 12pm, she was yanked into a sitting position by Burgess, fell back and hit her head, and was later dragged and then carried by Matier and Burgess into a waiting police van for the two-minute drive to hospital.
When they arrived at hospital, the inquest heard, Matier told the nurse Dhu was “faking it.” The nurse said she had gone into cardiac arrest.
An autopsy report found no indication of a head injury contributing to her death.
Under instructions from Carol and Della Roe, Collins also wrote to police minister Michelle Roberts, requesting another review into the conduct of all police officers who had custody of Dhu in her 45 hours in custody; and to health minister Robert Cook, lodging a formal complaint against the Western Australian Country Health Service for the care Dhu received at Hedland Health Campus on 2 and 3 August, 2014, which the coroner found was below the standard expected of a public hospital.
The letter to Cook was also sent to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which manages the registration of health workers.
The letter to Roberts requested a “properly conducted review” of Burgess and Matier, both of whom have already received managerial notices, along with nine of their colleagues, as a result of WA Police’s internal investigation completed before the coronial inquest.
Bond, who was the senior officer over two shifts at South Hedland police station while Dhu was in the cells, retired from the force and now works as a private contractor in Queensland.
In separate responses, Cook and Roberts expressed “heartfelt sympathy” to Dhu’s family but indicated they could or would not act on their requests.
“The minister appreciates the concerns of the ALS but under the Police Act, the Police Commissioner is the only one who can commence loss of confidence or initiate other disciplinary proceedings against the officers,” a spokesman for Roberts said.
In response to the corner’s findings, police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan said in December 2016 that he accepted police had “failed” Dhu and breached their own procedures, “but there’s been no criminality identified.”
Cook said that the WA Country Health Service conducted an “extensive review into Ms Dhu’s death” prior to the inquest, “and made systemic changes and improvements to its service as a result.”
He said it had responded to the coronial findings by imposing “formal sanctions, where appropriate, to staff involved.”
The McGowan government has promised to end the practice of jailing people for unpaid fines and is investigating the possibility of introducing a custody notification system, in line with coroner Ros Fogliani’s recommendations.
