See What You Made Me Do

by Jess Hill

  In the case of the woman whose house he slept outside, ‘the stepson is sixteen and has some outstanding fines. So the mum is very scared of going to the police, because as has happened in the past, if she rings the police for help they’ll do nothing for her and they’ll drag her son away.’ The stepson’s fines are for ‘the most petty stuff imaginable – shoplifting’s the worst of it’. It’s even worse for this particular woman, explains Hodgson; police now see her as a ‘troublemaker’, because after she reports, she can’t follow through with taking him to court ‘for her own reasons’. The man abusing her is an ice user, and ‘when the ice hits town, she’s at risk, and she can’t call the police’. This woman is in a terrible bind: she’s a mother to several children, she’s illiterate, and she’s quite financially dependent on him. ‘And of course because he has a job and he’s not Indigenous, the police take his side and become de facto abusers, as far as I’m concerned,’ says Hodgson. The reason Hodgson spent the night in his car is because this woman did call the police, and they told her they wouldn’t come if she was going to kick up a fuss about them taking her son away. ‘So she’s in a no-win situation,’ explains Hodgson. ‘Technically, she can’t house someone who’s wanted, which is a complete abusive, manipulative thing on the police’s behalf. Go and catch him if you’re any good at your job, he’s not home most of the day.’ Hodgson slept in his car outside her house as a warning to police: it would be easier for them to drive past than to come in and hassle her. ‘I like the fact the cops know I won’t back down, because half the time it’s the only thing that stops them doing what they really want to do. If they see my car parked out the front of someone’s place, it’s better to just keep driving. That’s why me sleeping in the car out the front works.’

  Hodgson has known domestic abuse his whole life: his mother is a legendary figure in the sector down south. In their very small town, ‘as crazy as this is, she used to do appointments where she would go to people’s houses. It was not uncommon for the abuser to come home mid-appointment, and we’re in a rural area, so she’s had guns pulled on her countless times.’ The town having few law enforcement resources, Martin had to muck in and help. ‘When I was eleven or twelve, sometimes Mum would come and pick me up, and I would go with her to an appointment and sit in the car with a cricket bat in case the bloke came home. The principal would let me out of school to do it, because in a small town, everyone kind of knew that if Mum’s going to so-and-so’s place, he’s a violent prick, so …’ Hodgson says his mum is his hero. ‘But all her friends are, because that’s what they all do. I don’t think anyone really understands how much these women on the frontlines go through. Every one of Mum’s colleagues has been threatened with a firearm, has had to sleep nights at other people’s places, and they’ve all got kids, too.’

  These days, though, Hodgson says he spends half the time protecting his clients from perpetrators, and half the time protecting them from police. It’s hard to imagine a worse response from the state than what he describes. When a woman underground reports her abuse, she not only needs protection and support, but also someone to challenge her abuser’s worldview. She needs someone to tell her it’s not her fault, that she is not a bad person – that, in fact, asking for help is an act of courage. When she gets none of this, and instead gets arrested for something as petty as an unpaid fine, her shame is supercharged by the humiliation of her arrest and the degradation of being incarcerated. After this, it’s much less likely she’ll ever reach out to the system again for help.

  Such cases have been particularly common in Western Australia. In 2017, for example, a 35-year-old Nyungar woman from Perth was arrested for outstanding fines after police came to her house on a family violence callout. When they arrived, they did a background check on the mother of five and discovered that she had $3900 in unpaid fines, relating back to an old dispute over – again – an unregistered dog. Even though the mother was struggling to raise her children on meagre Centrelink benefits, she offered to enter a payment plan. But police refused. Instead, they took her to Melaleuca prison, where she was told that unless she could pay the entire fine she would have to stay in jail for fourteen days, where she could ‘pay off’ the fine at $250 per day. The fact that she was still breastfeeding her youngest child didn’t seem to bother police. While she was in jail, the electricity in the house where an aunt was caring for her five children was cut off.11§

  ‘The fines are stuff like traffic offences, social security stuff, fines for petty disorderly behaviour,’ says Noongar human rights lawyer and academic Hannah McGlade, who has campaigned against these laws in her home state of Western Australia. ‘This is where you see over-policing come into account … A lot of Aboriginal women and girls will swear at cops because they feel harassed by police, and looked down on, so that’s their response – well, fuck you. And unregistered animals – a lot of Aboriginal people have dogs or pets they can’t afford to register. It’s just outrageous stuff. People can’t pay these fines, because they’re living under the poverty line, on social security. And then the fine doubles and triples when it’s not paid.’

  For any readers bristling with ‘personal responsibility’ – ‘they’re only in trouble because they broke the law’ – consider this: for most non-Indigenous Australians, these very same behaviours would attract little more than a warning or a stern word. ‘Being drunk and disorderly in a public place’ is practically the ethos for the Spring Racing Carnival, but in all my years living near Kings Cross in Sydney I did not once see or hear of an intoxicated young woman – cursing and staggering barefoot through the Cross, heels in hand and fascinator askew – being fined by police. Indigenous people are not fined for these misdemeanours because they’ve broken the law: it’s because they are kept under closer surveillance, and punished for infractions most of us would get away with. Associate Professor John Williams-Mozley, a chief investigator for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, says the likelihood of an Indigenous person being arrested is twenty times greater than for a non-Indigenous person, and police are often swayed by their own racist beliefs to target Aboriginal people for offences like public disorder.12

  One woman’s story makes Hannah McGlade particularly furious. ‘Did I show you the Tamica Mullaley case in Broome?’ she asks. ‘So many people don’t know her story.’ I interrupt – many people have told me there was a terrible story in Broome a few years back, but nobody has been able to tell me the woman’s name. ‘Yes,’ replies McGlade, ‘we all know about Rosie Batty, but we don’t know about Tamica Mullaley, little Charlie, and what they did to Mum. There was no mercy for her.’

  *

  I’d never heard the name Tamica Mullaley, but I should have. We all should have. Her story should have been a national scandal – when police pursued charges against her in 2015, Rosie Batty was Australian of the Year, and journalists were chasing every conceivable angle on domestic abuse. But aside from cursory wire reports, the story of Tamica and Charlie Mullaley was scarcely covered outside Western Australia.

  Over the past five years, I’ve examined some of the most shocking cases imaginable. I’ve wept and raged over them more times than I care to count. But nothing has come close to the anger I felt when I read about what happened to Tamica and her baby Charlie.

  A warning to readers: this is a harrowing story. I’ve done my best to write it as sensitively as possible, including only the necessary details. If you can, please stick with it.

  The story begins on the night of 19 March 2013, at a birthday gathering for Tamica’s father, Ted. ‘We had a little cake that night,’ says Ted Mullaley, ‘and then Tamica was going out.’ Ted speaks clearly, deliberately. He looks like a bush poet or an ageing rock’n’roller, with his long moustache, goatee, and wavy grey hair falling to his shoulders. Ted runs a successful trucking business in Broome and – like many Indigenous grandparents – spends most of his free time looking after his beloved grandchildren. As Tamica was getting ready, she ask
ed Ted if she could leave Charlie, her ten-month-old son, at home with him. ‘This really upsets me a lot, because I said no,’ says Ted, ‘hoping that would make her behave herself, and come home at a reasonable time.’

  Unbeknown to Ted, there was already trouble brewing. Tamica had just come back from Perth, and there were yarns going around town that her new boyfriend, Mervyn Bell, had cheated on her while she was away. He’d already been acting weird that afternoon, when they’d been out drinking with friends. Tamica was building herself up to confront him.

  When Tamica arrived at the house, she put Charlie down in the living room to sleep and went outside to hang out with Mervyn and their friends. On the phone from Broome, she tells me what happened next. ‘I mentioned [the rumours], and he just started being a real arsehole.’ It was getting late, so Tamica decided to walk to a friend’s place to pick up a stroller so she could take Charlie home.

  Mervyn followed behind by car and attacked her. ‘He just went right off, punching me – I tried to get away but he just came up behind me and bashed me more. That’s when he really hurt me, and stripped me naked.’ A nurse from the local hospital was at home when she heard screaming in the street and saw Mervyn bashing Tamica. She ran outside and shouted at Mervyn to leave, and then called the police.

  Ted was in bed when his phone rang. It was the nurse – Tamica was sheltering in a carport, naked and badly beaten, wrapped only in a sheet the nurse had given her. Police were on their way. Ted jumped straight out of bed and into his car, desperate to get there before the police.

  As Ted turned onto the street where Tamica was waiting, his heart sank. ‘I could see the flashing lights coming down to where the house was.’

  Tamica was in a terrible state, crying and covered in blood. ‘She was yelling at police, “Go away, nobody wants you here,” but the police kept pushing themselves onto her,’ says Ted. Police notes say Tamica was calling them ‘cunts’ and telling them to ‘fuck off’. She didn’t want police involved: ‘I know that police aren’t that great in Broome,’ she explains. ‘I just wanted to go with Dad, because it was really embarrassing, you know, being naked with blood everywhere. We know a lot of people in Broome, and this was right on one of the main streets.’

  The police refused to leave. ‘We were tasked to attend a disturbance,’ one officer said, ‘for a woman who had been kicked out of a car and was naked.’ They needed to know exactly what happened.

  But why did they need to interview Tamica then and there? She was a victim of assault, seriously injured, in need of urgent medical attention and desperate for police to leave her alone. As one officer noted, ‘Tamica had blood surrounding her right eye’13 – a clear sign she had suffered significant head trauma. This alone would have made her behaviour erratic and her memory faulty. Police had a duty of care to attend to her as a victim first, and a witness second.

  Furthermore, police already had a witness: the nurse had given them her account as soon as they arrived. Then, when Ted arrived, he told them who did it – Mervyn Bell. With all this information, why did police need to harass a clearly traumatised victim of violence for her account?

  In Tamica’s words: ‘I was completely battered and bruised, he hit me all over my head and everything. So yeah, I didn’t want to talk to police. I just wanted him charged, and for me to get in the car and go home.’

  But police insisted Tamica explain what happened. Feeling distraught and trapped, she spat at one of the officers, Constable Paul Moore. Ted heard Moore say, ‘That’s it,’ and then he lunged towards Tamica. ‘Tamica had the baby,’ says Ted, ‘and I grabbed the baby off her, gave him to this girl beside me and tried to protect my daughter.’ It was chaos: Tamica bolted away from police, who chased her around her father’s ute, and as she tripped over, Moore pinned her to the ground with his knee in her back. ‘She’s screaming out, “Dad, help me, help me!”’ says Ted. ‘I said to him, “Let her up – let the woman policeman deal with her.”’ When Moore lifted his knee, Tamica jumped up, scrambled into her father’s ute and locked all the doors. Police surrounded the ute and started belting the windows with their batons. ‘When they eventually smashed the passenger-side window,’ says Ted, ‘she jumped out the driver-side door, and then they grabbed her and held her down again, and threw her in the paddy wagon.’ When Ted asked them what they were doing, police told him they were taking his daughter to jail. ‘I said, “You can’t, she needs help! Call the ambulance!” And they said, “Oh, the ambulance won’t come.” And I said, “Well, why not?” And they said, “Well, it won’t.” And I said, “Well, you’ve gotta take her to the hospital.”’

  The police – who were busy arresting Tamica – didn’t take the child into their care. Instead, they told two girls to take the ten-month-old away from the scene. Ted was torn. ‘I couldn’t take Baby with us,’ he says, ‘because I had to help Tamica.’

  When they got to the hospital, Tamica was hysterical and the doctor refused to see her. To Tamica, distressed and disoriented, anyone in authority was now a threat. Ted begged her to calm down. As she settled, the doctor said, ‘I’ll give her one last chance.’ ‘And lucky he did,’ says Ted. Tamica had life-threatening injuries: she had a lacerated kidney, her spleen was badly bruised and she was bleeding internally. ‘The doctor said if she hadn’t gone to hospital, she would’ve died in her cell.’

  Once Ted knew Tamica was being looked after, he raced back to pick up Charlie. But when he reached the house, he discovered that Bell had returned and taken off with the child. Ted was beside himself. Racing back to the hospital, he found Constable Eoin Carberry, sitting outside the hospital in a patrol car. ‘I said, “I need help, he’s taken the baby!”’ Ted was in a panic – Bell was not Charlie’s father, he told Carberry, and he had grave fears that he was going to kill the child. Carberry was unmoved. ‘He said, “Well, we haven’t got any resources,”’ Ted remembers. ‘I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, we’re here looking after your daughter, because she’s under arrest.”’ When Ted implored him to get somebody else to look for Charlie, the officer replied, ‘How many cars do you think we got?’ ‘And I’ll always remember this,’ says Ted. ‘He said, “We’ve only got two: one’s here looking after your daughter, and the other one’s back at the station doing business.” Now, I didn’t realise then,’ says Ted, ‘but I worked out later that the other police back at the station were writing up charges against Tamica for assaulting them, and me, for hindering police. That’s all they were doing.’

  Ted raced down to Broome police station and reported Charlie’s abduction, told them Bell was driving one of Ted’s cars, and asked police to look for him. Acting Sergeant Darren Connor, on the front desk that night, said Ted came in smelling of alcohol ‘and who knows what else’, that he was aggressive and irrational, and seemed more concerned about his vehicle than his grandchild. There is no evidence to support Connor’s claim, as a later inquiry confirmed.14 ‘I hadn’t had a drink for thirty years!’ Ted exclaims. ‘So that was totally wrong. It was just a way he looked at it: I was just another blackfella drunk.’

  Ted then rang Triple Zero to report the abduction, hoping they might push police to act. ‘I want someone to take me serious that this guy is going to kill my grandson,’ he told the operator. The operator said she would contact the sergeant in Broome, and Ted replied, ‘Will you tell him how important it is? Please.’

  The operator called Broome police station and talked to Constable Joel Wright. When she relayed that Mr Mullaley was ‘extremely concerned for his grandson’, Wright told her that he knew all about Ted – he’d ‘basically obstructed police all night’. When the operator asked if Wright would call Ted, he said he’d talk to his supervisor but he didn’t know if anyone would contact Ted: he’d already taken up two hours of police time.15

  After calling Triple Zero, Ted drove into the bush, thinking Bell might have parked somewhere to hide out for a while. Just as he was getting going, though, he got a flat tyre, and had to r
ing a mate to pick him up. Minutes before 3am, he received a chilling, garbled text message from Bell: ‘talk to us I’m putn welfare on da both of use can’t Evan look after ur owne gran child … ???????????? Wat now popo [police] cumn for use…… Haha’.16

  Ted went straight back to Broome police station: maybe this text could help them locate Bell. When Ted asked Constable Wright, who was still on the front desk, if they could check where the message had been sent from, Wright told him it would be too expensive – $800 – to run a check like that. Ted said he was happy to pay. Wright refused, insisting it would take too long. Ted asked if he could read the text to him, but Wright brushed him off. When Ted said he wasn’t happy, Wright said he would have to come back in the morning and see the Aboriginal liaison officer.

  Ted’s interaction with Constable Wright was recorded on CCTV that night. The state’s Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) inquiry would find that Ted ‘appeared animated at times and calm at other times’ and report the footage ‘also shows Wright shaking hands with Mr Mullaley, who then waved at Wright in a friendly manner as he walked away’.17 But that’s not how Wright recorded it. In a report for the Internal Affairs Unit, he said he had found it ‘challenging to gain information due to E. Mullaley’s aggressive and agitated demeanour’.18 The CCC inquiry found no evidence to support this: CCTV showed that Ted would ‘have sat and provided detailed information for a police statement if asked’.19

  Given how late it was, Ted felt he had no choice but to go home and sleep so he could resume the search for Charlie at first light. As he walked the 100 metres from the police station to his house, he heard a car driving slowly behind him. He turned around to see Constable Wright following him in a patrol car and shining a spotlight on him. ‘I swore at him and said, “Don’t shine that effing light on me anymore,” or something, and he said, “And you stop ringing Triple Zero, too.” They told me not to ring Triple Zero anymore. That’s written in all my statements. It’s something I’ll never forget.’