NSW police officers convicted of domestic violence have kept their jobs, despite force's claims of 'zero tolerance'

This should be totally unacceptable

At least six senior NSW police officers who recently committed serious domestic violence offences have kept their jobs, shocking victim advocates and raising questions about the force's commitment to addressing the scourge of abuse within police ranks and in the broader community. 

Documents obtained by ABC News under Freedom of Information reveal 27 NSW police officers were charged with domestic violence in 2019 and 2020. Of those, five male officers were convicted of their charges in court, three of whom are still serving — including a senior constable convicted of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, two counts of common assault and breaching his AVO. Three other officers who were found guilty of their assault charges without conviction are also still serving.

A further 15 NSW police officers — 11 men and four women — were last year charged with domestic violence offences including destroying property, assault, stalking/intimidation, choking and using a carriage service to make threats to kill, documents show. The 2021 data is similar to that obtained in previous years, with 16 officers charged with domestic violence in 2020 and 11 in 2019.

Police Commissioner Karen Webb, who was formally sworn in to her role in February, said she had "zero tolerance" for domestic violence but that attempts to sack officers who break the law were subject to appeal, and not always successful.

"Obviously I haven't had to adjudicate on any of these matters — I've been Commissioner for the last 60-odd days," Commissioner Webb told ABC News. "I've got a very strong position on domestic violence generally ... [but] I can't speak for [decisions made by] my predecessors."

When asked whether the public could trust the NSW Police Force to respond well to domestic violence in the community if officers found guilty of such abuse were permitted to continue serving, Commissioner Webb said it was a "reasonable question".

She said she was "sure" the six officers still serving after being found guilty or convicted of domestic violence would have faced disciplinary action and didn't think they'd still be on the frontline, but her office did not provide details by the ABC's deadline.

Still, it's relatively uncommon for police officers in Australia to be charged with domestic violence, let alone be found guilty in court. For context, in the year ending June 2021, 89 per cent of domestic violence defendants in NSW had a guilty outcome. Of the 27 officers charged with domestic violence in 2019 and 2020, however, just a third were found guilty with or without conviction, in line with trends in other states.

Figures undermine confidence in police, advocates say

Advocates say the figures are further evidence the NSW Police Force, like other Australian law enforcement agencies, has been failing to hold abusive officers to account, and contradict claims by senior police that the organisation has "zero tolerance" for criminal behaviour. As an ABC News investigation first revealed in 2020, police forces are too often failing to take action against domestic violence perpetrators in their ranks, deterring victims from reporting abuse and fuelling cultures of impunity.

It comes following a scathing assessment of how NSW police are responding to domestic violence across the board, with the auditor-general's performance audit last week finding numerous flaws and failures in the force's domestic violence operations, including with its handling of investigations into serving officers.

"It's difficult to believe that police officers found guilty of criminal offences are still allowed to serve in the police force," potentially responding to domestic violence incidents in the community, said Kerrie Thompson, chief executive of the Victims of Crime Assistance League (VOCAL). 

"It undermines the good work that the majority of police are doing in responding to domestic violence. The community expects police officers to display a high standard of integrity and uphold the law," Ms Thompson said. "These findings raise questions about how and why officers are allowed to keep their job when they are convicted of criminal offences."

Senior constables in particular are "at the forefront" of domestic violence policing, she added — they frequently respond to domestic violence calls and take victim-survivor reports: "If they are perpetrators of the same abuse, I'm deeply concerned about their ability to provide adequate support to victim-survivors of family and domestic violence."

Sacking police officers in NSW

The NSW Police Commissioner can remove a police officer from the force under section 181D of the Police Act if they lose confidence in their suitability to continue as an officer. Officers who engage in misconduct may also face internal disciplinary action including a reduction in rank or pay or transferral to other duties.

Those found guilty of criminal behaviour are automatically referred for consideration for a Commissioner's loss of confidence, Commissioner Webb said, with each case assessed on its own merits: "But ... I don't have blanket approval for automatic removal and I have to take everything into consideration in making my decisions."

In other words, committing domestic violence is not necessarily considered serious enough misconduct to warrant sacking a police officer.

That's not to say it hasn't featured in matters before the Industrial Relations Commission. In one case heard in 2020, a former police officer appealed the Police Commissioner's decision to sack him for 11 findings of misconduct — including that he threatened and assaulted his partner — claiming his removal would be harsh. The Commissioner (then Mick Fuller) disagreed, arguing the NSW Police Force "has no tolerance for domestic violence behaviour", which he described as "criminal conduct and inimical to our sworn oath of office".

When one of the "key missions" of the force is to "drive out the scourge of domestic violence", the Police Commissioner said, "I can no longer have confidence in you to contribute toward the achievement of such a goal, in view of your misconduct". The industrial relations commissioner John Murphy concluded the officer's removal was neither harsh, unreasonable or unjust and dismissed his application for review.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-14/nsw-police-officers-convicted-domestic-violence-kept-jobs/100982038

Another false rape allegation

Bettina Arndt

Imagine a sexual encounter involving a woman shagging a man, sitting on top of him, bouncing cheerfully. How could she be a rape victim?

That was a key question at the heart of a case settled two years ago involving a Sydney man who achieved a substantial payout as settlement of a $1 million malicious prosecution case against NSW police and prosecutors. The case exposed the disgraceful behaviour of police and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in ignoring clear video evidence revealing his former wife’s rape and assault allegations to be falsehoods, the authorities’ role in encouraging her to concoct new allegations, and their lies told in court to try to keep him in prison. 

The settlement came at the end of a five-year ordeal for the man – I’ll call him ‘Peter’ – after his former wife, a medical specialist, told police he had raped her a few weeks after the couple had split up in 2015. The marriage fell apart when Peter discovered she was having an affair, but the couple then had a brief reconciliation which culminated in consensual sex on the day in question. 

Two months later Peter was arrested and charged with sexual assault and violence when he returned from a work trip to Europe. He spent a month in prison and over $350,000 in legal costs before the allegations were thrown out after a 10-day jury trial. The judge described the wife’s evidence as ‘demonstrably false’ and said that the prosecutors had failed to take into account ‘clear and consistent, objective evidence’ backing up Peter’s claim that he was being wrongly accused. 

Peter had installed video cameras that recorded the whole encounter, giving a lie to the wife’s allegation that he had jumped her immediately following her arrival at the former marital home. The cameras showed them fully dressed for almost an hour prior to the consensual sex which featured the woman in flagrante delicto, sitting riding him on the couch. 

And… wait for it…. During their lively encounter, the video evidence showed she actually stopped to ask if he was okay! 

The doctor has suffered no adverse consequences for her malicious lies. Peter’s efforts to have her charged with perjury have received persistent knock-backs from police, the DPP, and other relevant complaints bodies. 

That’s our justice system. Women accusing men of rape or violence have absolute license to perjure themselves in our courts and concoct elaborate mistruths which, even if proved false, will very rarely bear any adverse consequences. 

The official policy of our police and prosecutors is that women can lie with impunity. This week I canvased police officers across the country who all reported they are told never to take action against a woman caught out making false violence or rape allegations, lest punishment of false accusers deters genuine victims from coming forward. 

That’s the mantra making a mockery of our rule of law. Undermining our justice system. Encouraging women to play fast and loose with the truth.

Look what happened in our family court system, where false allegations have long been rampant. The Howard Government made a noble effort to impose penalties aimed at reining them in, only to have their reforms rolled back by Labor’s mean girls as soon as they gained power. 

In 2006, Howard’s path-breaking new family law legislation included advice to courts to make cost orders against persons who knowingly made false allegations in family law proceedings – a measure stated to address concerns about widespread false allegations in The Family Court. 

A year later, the Howard government was gone and suddenly all the talk was about risks to children from violent dads. A Chisholm Review into violence and family law dutifully concluded that the cost orders provision might deter vulnerable parents from disclosing family violence and by 2011 Julia Gillard’s team had changed the legislation to ensure there were no longer any consequences for perjury.

That’s been the case ever since. At hearings for the recent parliamentary inquiry into the family law system, a Deputy Secretary from the Attorney General’s Department showed that between 2014 and 2019 not a single family law-related perjury matter was investigated by Commonwealth prosecutors.

I wrote last year about research showing family court judges determined that only 12 per cent of the child sexual abuse allegations involved in contested cases were found to be true. Accusations of abuse that were deliberately misleading were found to be twice as common as true allegations, according to the study by Webb, Moloney, Smyth, and Murphy, which reviewed family court cases from 2012 to 2019.

Think about all those wrongly accused fathers, deliberately alienated from their children by such horrendous lies, children forced to suffer through embarrassing, damaging interviews from experts attempting to weed out the truth. Not one of these mothers faced legal consequences for what she did. 

The same unwritten rule applies in magistrates’ courts dealing with the weekly flood of false domestic violence allegations and the criminal courts handling sexual assault. Everyone knows that police and prosecutors will accept the most preposterous allegations and even if they ultimately get thrown out in court, the instigator gets off scot-free. 

In Peter’s case, his ex-wife is still out there, despite her allegations having cost taxpayers a fortune – well over $200,000 for the trial alone, plus Peter’s settlement, let alone the years of police and prosecutors’ time. 

The good doctor continues to practice medicine, even though court proceedings revealed she was addicted to Tramadol and had frequently written prescriptions for herself in her husband’s name. Peter reported her to the Health Care Complaints Commission, which decided not to investigate because it was ‘a private matter’. Go figure… can you imagine they’d ever take that decision if a wife provided similar evidence about her doctor husband? 

The argument about perjury charges deterring proper victims is spurious nonsense. Perjury charges would never be applied in cases where the allegations simply failed to be proved in court. Actual victims, or women who mistakenly believe they are victims have nothing to fear.

It’s a high bar proving someone has intentionally lied or falsified evidence, a big job to find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt of such malicious behaviour. But in cases like this, where police and prosecutors are forced to pay out for ignoring irrefutable evidence that the allegations were false, that bar would likely be reached. Surely proper justice demands Peter’s former wife pay some price for what she did. 

The constant silencing of public discussion about the proliferation of false allegations prevents examination of the benefits of introducing measures to deter perjury in our courts, including massively reducing demands on our justice system and increasing the resources available to real victims.

Trust in our law depends on an assumption of fair treatment. We need to know that police and prosecutors aren’t there just to act for one side, but to ensure consequences for wrongdoing – wrongdoing that includes maliciously using false allegations to weaponize the legal system against the object of their grievance. 

What a blight on our society that so many are discovering that trust in our legal system is misplaced. Our faith in this vital institution is surely being undermined by widespread knowledge that there’s no requirement for women to tell the truth in our courts. 

The final twist of the screw is the fact that the low rates of prosecution for false allegations are then used by feminists to claim we should believe all victims – because women so rarely lie. Further proof of the evil genius of the feminist enterprise.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/04/evil-genius-at-work/