A mother's tale of murder reduces police to tears
Ingrid Poulson is fighting for changes to how police approach domestic violence, after her family was murdered.
Photo: Peter Morris
SENIOR police were reduced to tears and stunned silence by the time Ingrid Poulson had delivered her last slide.
"Your statistics," she said, "equals my family. And I want you to meet them."
And there was her smiling family on the big screen in the darkened room at the Australian Police College in Manly, Sydney: her father, Peter Poulson 72; her daughter Marilyn Kongsom, 4, and her son Sebastian Kongsom, 20 months.
They were all murdered on September 15, 2003, when her estranged husband, Phithak Kongsom, knifed them and then killed himself.
The night before, she told the officers, her husband had tied her up and raped her.
It was a shattering end to Ms Poulson's address yesterday to the Australasian Police Conference on Family and Domestic Violence.
The NSW and Victorian police forces are hosting the three-day conference to develop a consistent national approach to family violence.
Ms Poulson said her father was her mentor and inspiration. Her daughter "loved to describe her days in giggling detail"; and her boy was, "well, … I would cry with my love for him while he slept".
She told the 27 officers, including five assistant police commissioners, from Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong that only consistent, rigid application of the law against perpetrators would make domestic violence as unacceptable as drink-driving had become.
"It wasn't accidents that reduced drink-driving, it was the law …," she said.
Ms Poulson said that in the murders' aftermath the media "wanted photos of a distraught and shattered woman … . tears, hysteria, accusation".
But she would not oblige. She would not condemn Apprehended Violence Orders when urged to do so. They had failed her but worked for most women.
She would not act like a "victim of domestic violence", a term she despised for its suggestion of passivity and complicity.
She saw herself as a fighter.
She had fought to keep her marriage together, and then fought to part.
She had fought to keep her children safe, and even fought for her husband's well-being.
Now she is fighting for change.
"I stand amongst the souls of the dead," she said, "and ask you for help in protecting those that are yet to die."
She said an attitude prevailed in the police force that domestic violence was an annoyance that got in the way of "real" work.
It was, in the words of a police officer, "a bunch of crap paperwork".
She was astonished to learn how little training police received and dismayed at police unwillingness to examine the failures of the system.
Victoria's Chief Commissioner, Christine Nixon, has made domestic violence a greater priority for police working in Victoria.
Last year she brought in a code of practice that requires officers to report cases of domestic violence, rather than merely act as arbitrators.
The change in police practice has led to an increase in the number of reported cases of family violence, with an 8.5 per cent rise in the statistics of crimes against people in Victoria in 2004-2005.
Ms Poulson said she was not bitter. But she was growing impatient for change.
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