Out of tragedy, hopefully some good may come
Perhaps the only thing worse than having your family killed is being told their deaths could have been prevented. I lost my four-year-old daughter, my 23-month-old son and my father to a domestic homicide. That was painful enough but to hear their deaths could have been avoided is almost unbearable.
This claim is made by proponents of domestic homicide review teams, who see domestic violence-related deaths as a predictable pattern of behaviour, and therefore preventable.
Given the sometimes dramatic falls in homicide-related deaths where the review teams have been set up, their claim appears to be substantiated.
The role of the teams is to comprehensively investigate domestic homicides and use the findings to inform training, systems, policies and procedures. Although coronial inquiries play this role to some degree, the reach of the review teams is more extensive because it draws information from all of the agencies involved in domestic violence investigations.
I remember sitting through the inquest into the death of my family, thinking, "No one is going to admit to anything here because we all have so much to lose." Even though I was trying my best to be fair, I was clearly too emotionally entangled in the process to be unbiased.
As the police talked about their role in the lead-up to the murders, each had their professional expertise, and possibly their careers, on the line. The lawyers, Department of Community Services representatives, the policy makers, everyone who was present had some stake in not being "to blame". It was all too personal. The aim of review teams, though, is not to hold individuals accountable or blame singular events but to detect gaps and systemic flaws in order to recommend improvements. At this level, the teams can reach a clarity beyond emotional arguments, biases, defences and even political stands.
The teams aim to improve collaboration and communication between agencies. Hopefully, in doing this, they can address one of the realities of the present system: the obvious friction between the police and women's support services. It has always saddened me that these two groups, though both ostensibly united in aim - the protection and safety of people (usually women and children) - are often covertly, or even overtly, feuding. It's been said that if you want to create unity, find a common enemy. Unfortunately, at the moment, the enemy for these two groups appears to be each other.
The real enemy, though, is domestic violence; that poorly understood, ugly phenomenon that arouses our fear, our pity, and our disgust because it shows us the dark potentialities in the human heart. To fight our enemy, we must understand it. And for me, this is really the most important role for the review teams; using the painful lessons of our past to improve our knowledge and understanding, to shed light into the corners of our ignorance where women and children live in fear, where women and children die.
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