The mother of murdered schoolboy Luke Batty believes her son would still be alive had his killer father been treated for the mental illness that had been plaguing him for 20 years.
Rosie Batty told Guardian Australia that it was this realisation, that Greg Anderson could have been treated for his condition, that saddened her most.
She spoke as the inquest into 11-year-old Luke’s death came to an end.
Luke was killed by Anderson in February with a cricket bat and a knife on an oval in Tyabb, Victoria. There were four warrants out for his arrest and he was facing 11 charges at the time.
Anderson died too, from self-inflicted stab wounds and a bullet wound, after a police officer shot him.
On the final day of the inquest Melbourne’s County Court heard from a panel of expert witnesses, largely from the family violence sector, the first time an expert panel has been formed for the coroner’s for a family-violence related death.
They said it was likely Anderson, Batty’s ex-partner, was mentally ill, and that health professionals had wrongly deemed him healthy while he was alive. He had avoided diagnosis because of an arrogant disregard for health professionals, the inquest heard, and an ability to control his behaviour around others.
“What was really upsetting to me today was to hear that his condition was treatable,” Batty told Guardian Australia.
“But when you have delusional paranoia you’re not going to seek help, and none of us were able to help him. That, to me, has been the saddest thing.”
“I always knew Greg was ill, but no one could help.”
Batty called for a “huge overhaul” of mental health intervention and support services, calling it “as huge a crisis as family violence”. She believes a full psychological assessment should be carried out on perpetrators of family violence while they are held in custody.
But she said it was important to stress that mental illness could not be blamed as a cause of family violence on its own. She was concerned about mental illness being used by perpetrators to shirk personal accountability.
“Violence is a choice,” Batty said.
“But it is exacerbated by these conditions, and with better support and an opportunity for getting a life back on track, there is a possibility for [learning] healthier options for dealing with things.”
Anderson’s mental health issues were also the reason he was in poverty, homeless and could not hold down a job, Batty said, worsening his mental state and his ability to get professional psychiatric help.
“That’s where I think there was never, ever going to be a solution,” Batty said. “I can see that now through the inquest. [But] if you could have treated the mental health issues I do not believe he would have killed Luke.
“I’m not saying he would have responded. But it brought me to tears today to hear Greg could have been treated.
“That’s why, I suppose, I have always been compassionate about Greg. To me, he was never bad. He was mentally ill.”
She described the inquest as at times harrowing, tedious, and confronting. But it had also been therapeutic, Batty said, adding that she was glad she went through it. But she could not have done so without the pro-bono support offered to her by her legal team, and the hardest part had been listening to witnesses while sitting on the sidelines, she said.
“But that’s the legal process,” Batty said.
“I’ve learned a lot throughout the process I would never have known otherwise, and would never have arrived at the comfortable position of how I sit with the decisions I had made if I hadn’t of understood them fully through this process.
“I just feel that there is no one to blame. Just continued ways to improve our processes and systems.”
Coroner Gray will now put together his recommendations about what, if anything, the police, child protection, the family violence support sector and the judicial system could have done to prevent Luke’s death so that other deaths can be avoided.
On Wednesday, the coronial inquest into Anderson’s death will begin, and is expected to conclude the same day. Deaths in custody, or those that occur while police are trying to take someone into custody, are compulsory.
