Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty, has praised the coroner who led the inquest into her son’s death, Ian Gray, for recommending changes to the judicial, child protection and police systems that – if implemented – will hold perpetrators of family violence more stringently to account.
On Monday morning, Gray handed down his landmark findings into the death of 11-year-old Luke Batty, who was killed by his father, Greg Anderson, on a cricket field in February last year. Anderson, Batty’s ex-partner, died in hospital after being shot by police at the scene.
Anderson’s family chose not to give evidence to the inquest.
“Greg was never made accountable, not once,” Batty told reporters in Victoria once the inquest had been brought to a close.
“This is unacceptable. The biggest change we need to see is to more effectively intervene with perpetrators, and work to stop their violence. I’m really pleased with Judge Gray’s findings.”
There was a failure to engage Anderson with the family violence system and to hold him accountable for his actions, Gray found. There were delays by police in charging him with the 11 family violence-related criminal offences against him, and despite four warrants being issued for his arrest, police had failed to apprehend him.
There was a pattern of abuse towards Batty that occurred over a period of almost a decade, yet little was known about Anderson, Gray found. Opportunities to conduct risk assessments about the likelihood of him harming Luke were missed by multiple agencies, he said, and when this information was gathered, it was not shared.
Batty said information that Anderson was facing charges for possessing child abuse material was not immediately shared with her, despite it being something “any parent would want to know,” especially given she had suffered ongoing violence.
“I find it incredulous that information-sharing depended on a particularly proactive and conscientious policeman or police prosecutor to go over and above what they would normally do,” Batty said.
“That should be standard policing. We place blame on police, but let’s face it. They haven’t got support and assistance to help them work to do their job more efficiently.”
Batty told reporters that some of the most difficult moments during the inquest came when frontline workers, including police, gave evidence which demonstrated they had “no idea” how to identify risk factors for family violence.
“There has to be increased training for people coming into contact with victims and perpetrators,” she said.
“It is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous that this specialisation is somehow not recognised.”
To place responsibility more firmly with perpetrators, Gray recommended that the Bail Act be changed so that if a perpetrator failed to appear at a court hearing, they could not be granted bail. The inquest heard last year that Anderson knew how to manipulate the court system, frequently challenging intervention orders taken out against him, and then not showing up to court.
The inquest also heard that when Anderson learned that a bench warrant had been issued against him for being in contempt of court, he exploited a “glitch” in the legal system that meant he no longer had to report to police for bail, enabling him to avoid arrest. This must change, Gray said.
Gray also recommended courts be given the power to compel perpetrators to undergo psychiatric assessment and take part in behaviour change programs. The Privacy Act needed to be changed so that information about perpetrators could be shared with victims and the systems trying to protect them, he added.
“I think [Gray] has done is what I always set out to do, which is to highlight systemic failings, but not apportion personal blame to people,” Batty said.
“This is a big day. It’s a monumental day.”
However, while Gray did not blame individuals within the legal, police and child protection systems for Luke’s death, he did blame Anderson for committing a “premeditated act of filicide,” the act of a parent purposefully killing their child.
Batty said it was important to challenge the idea that an unstable and violent parent should always have access to their child just because they loved them. Anderson loved Luke, Batty said, but that love did not prevent him from killing his son.
A professor of social work at University of Melbourne, Catherine Humphreys, was among a group of experts who joined Batty at the press conference to respond to Gray’s findings.
She said it was wrong to believe that someone could be an abusive and violent partner, while also being a great parent, because children who witnessed verbal and physical abuse were always affected by it.
“[Gray] was very clear that the safety to children and the risk to children can not be segregated from the violence and abuse experienced by their mothers,” Humphreys said.
On Monday afternoon the police minister, Wade Noonan, thanked Gray for his findings, which he described as “important”. But he stopped short of committing to adopting them all, saying he was confident the government’s royal commission into family violence would instead incorporate Gray’s findings into their work.
The Victorian government has promised to adopt all recommendations made by the royal commission, which is expected to make its recommendations in February.
“The coroner was looking at the death of Luke Batty, whereas the commission is looking at a range of ways the system is working or not working,” Noonan said.
“It is incumbent on us as a government and a community to accept those findings.”
The government has three months to respond to Gray’s report.
The landmark inquest saw Gray’s recommendations span 111 pages, making his recommendations the most comprehensive to ever come from a family violence inquest in Victoria.
The chief executive of Domestic Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack, said Gray’s recommendations were justice for Batty as well as for “thousands and thousands of Victorian women and children currently grappling with not just the terror of family violence, but also with a complex and fragmented system”.
“Of course, these recommendations will only be effective if they’re implemented,” McCormack said.
- This article was amended on 29 September 2015 to reflect the fact that the royal commission is expected to hand down its findings in February, not December.
