by Mel Jacob
One day, we waited in the corridor with Patrick’s best mate, Simon. It had been two months since the initial arrest and the strain was taking its toll. My face was ravaged from all the worry and dark circles had become permanent fixtures under my eyes. Simon, who is from a good middle-class family, was shocked to see so many colourful and obviously underprivileged people in one place.
‘Look on the bright side, Mel,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a full set of teeth. You own a pair of shoes! They might not be the latest Nike Air Mags, but they’re not bad.’ And I laughed despite myself; we all did.
‘Come on, guys, cheer up,’ Simon said, during another long day in court. ‘There’re huge business opportunities staring you in the face.’
‘Here?’ Patrick asked.
‘Shoe and suit hire, ten bucks a pop. Or, if you want to make serious money set up a dentist in one of those rooms. That’s the third person I’ve seen today with no teeth!’
Simon’s comments amplified the tragedy of the courthouse. It didn’t feel like a place of justice. It felt like a home for the destitute. A circuitous route for those trapped in a cycle of crime and poverty. Or was it poverty and crime? Some of those faces will be etched in my mind forever. Toddlers running down the courthouse corridor, trying to get even a smidgen of attention from their drug-addicted parents. A battered and bruised woman trying to find the courage to testify in court, afraid that her mere presence would cost her life.
Of all the tragic things we witnessed at the courthouse the most heartbreaking was a boy who only looked fourteen, though he must have been older, appearing at court wearing only a pair of old shorts and a singlet. His court-appointed lawyer requested that the magistrate wait until his mother presented before hearing the matter. The magistrate obliged, and we all waited and waited until well after lunch but his mother never showed.
And it wasn’t just the days in court that wore us down; it was the ongoing dealings with the police. The first time Patrick reported for bail, he was told to come back because the systems were down. Under normal circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it, only the junkie he’d been locked up with had advised him to be wary of the police: ‘Watch out for the cops, mate. They make shit up, like saying the printer’s broken, or the system’s down, so you don’t make bail.’
As a result of his arrest, all of Patrick’s registered firearms were confiscated, except for one that was stored at a friend’s farm near Tamworth. In order to retrieve the gun, the detectives came to see Patrick at our home in Blaxland, in the Blue Mountains. They served the documents and then, for no reason we could fathom, stood on our balcony for roughly twenty minutes and then sat outside in their car for close to an hour.
‘Why are they still here?’ Nick kept asking. And then later, ‘Have you done the right paperwork, Dad? Are you sure, because they’re still out there.’
Patrick had broken the law and we both knew there had to be consequences but, as far as I could see, he was reporting for bail, they’d served the documents and they had no reason to be out the front of our house.
In April 2011, three months after the arrest, things reached breaking point. Patrick applied for a bail variation in order for us to take the eight-night holiday in Coffs Harbour we had already booked and paid for. A procedure that, incidentally, cost more than the holiday itself, but we figured it was money well spent. We needed a break. The bail variation was granted, and Patrick was instructed to report to Coffs Harbour police station instead of Penrith.
It rained for most of the time we were away, so we didn’t get to go to the beach. Patrick was preoccupied and unhappy. At the end of the first week, I found him digging through our recently dried laundry.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
I wasn’t buying it. ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been moping around like it’s the end of the world.’
‘I’ve got three “Failed to reports”,’ he said.
This was serious. It meant that he could be taken into custody on remand, awaiting his trial.
‘What? Aren’t you meant to go to the police station?’
‘I did, I have and they said they don’t know anything about it. They told me to piss off.’
‘Did you ask to speak to the . . . the person in charge?’
‘Yeah. He told me to eff off.’
‘No way.’
‘I asked them to give me a receipt to say I was there, which they did, but it’s not a bail receipt, and now it’s been through the wash and you can’t even read it.’
The stress of the situation was making us miserable. It was Easter Sunday. We still had another night left but we decided to head home early via Coffs Harbour police station. A phone call to Penrith station confirmed Patrick’s ‘Failed to report’ status so, in desperation, all four of us went inside.
‘And what can we do for this lovely family?’ the officer on duty asked, offering Nick and Lexie Easter eggs. We explained the bail-variation situation and he promptly sorted it out.
In the months following Patrick’s arrest, I could see that he was not himself. He was withdrawn, anxious and uncommunicative. I knew he was burdened by the financial and emotional consequences of his actions. Whenever I woke in the middle of the night, I would find him hunched over his computer, buried in spreadsheets. I told myself that it was his way of coping, of trying to maintain some semblance of control, when everything else in our lives wavered in uncertainty.
I felt the burden too. The legal costs were snowballing. Patrick was barely speaking to me. Though most of the time the kids seemed happy and well adjusted, their behavior was deteriorating; Nick was very anxious about Patrick’s bail requirements and often worried about money. And Lexie was even more fiery than usual.
At times I felt worried, and even resentful, about the way our life had become unhinged, but mostly I felt an enormous amount of pressure to stay in control. ‘Just a little longer,’ I kept telling myself. And in the rare moments when I felt a phantom pain of sadness or anger, I pushed it further and further down inside of me.
Until one cold July afternoon when I received a call on my mobile phone. I was in Nick’s room, putting his clothes away.
‘Mrs Jacob, it’s Naomi . . . Patrick’s psychologist.’
‘Oh, yes, hi,’ I said, holding the phone to my ear as I tried to make some space in Nick’s unruly drawers. ‘He’s not here at the moment. Did he miss an appointment?’
‘No,’ and she paused for an extended period of time. ‘It’s not usual protocol for a psychologist to break client confidentiality, unless there are concerns about self-harm.’
‘Self-harm?’
‘I don’t want to alarm you,’ she said but it was a little late for that. ‘This is hard for you, I understand, but I need to disclose to you that Patrick made a noose and tied it to a secure anchor point . . . with the intention of . . . taking his life.’
It felt like I had been winded. I was beside myself with worry for the kids but mostly I was angry with myself. My maternal grandfather and my uncle had committed suicide. I should have known. How could I not have seen the signs? Patrick had been so withdrawn. So lifeless. He didn’t talk to me. He didn’t touch me. I couldn’t remember the last time he reached across in bed at night to rest the palm of his hand on my lower back like he normally did.
I slid down to the floor, cradling Nick’s clothes, and I cried. But almost as quickly as I started crying, I stopped. I couldn’t fall apart now. I had to be stoic. I had to be strong. I had to put on a brave face.
It felt like an entire year passed as I waited for Patrick to arrive home that afternoon. When he did, we talked, really talked, for the first time in months. Tearfully, he confessed to me that he had been thinking that if he removed himself from the situation, everything would be resolved. He also figured that his life insurance—a staggering seven-figure sum I had had no idea about—would be more than enough to provide for the family in his absence. I was distraught.
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Patrick assured me that the psychologist had spent hours explaining the flaws in his thinking. Suicide would create a multitude of problems, almost guaranteeing that each of our children would spend their adulthood on a therapist’s couch, trying to deal with the irrevocable loss. Paddy promised that he no longer felt that way and that if any feelings like that returned, he would reach out for help. His assurances made me feel a little better but I still felt the crushing responsibility of having to hold the family together.
Weeks turned into months until, finally, it was November 2011 and time for the committal hearing we had been anticipating for so long. The hearing was tedious, because of the wordy and technical arguments. Essentially, the case rested on whether a crossbow is considered a crossbow if unassembled, and whether or not the metallic items were considered to be crossbows.
Patrick had managed to track down the director of the independent film the metallic items were used for. The director admitted that they were made for the film but was not willing to become involved in the case, for fear of being prosecuted. Amar and Susan were confident this didn’t matter. The law was clear about unassembled crossbows, and the metallic items didn’t technically fit the definition of a crossbow because the bow was not fitted transversely to the stock.
Our legal team was right. The magistrate dismissed the charges of ongoing sales of prohibited weapons, and the charges relating to the possession and sale of the crossbows. Of course, there was still the sentencing for the charges relating to the slingshot and the firearm, but they did not carry the weight of the charge relating to the sale of prohibited weapons.
Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel. I could almost taste our unshackled future. We could make plans, travel. And I could finally sink my teeth into writing the novel that had been put on hold so many times.
And then, like some cruel joke, we received the news that the Director of Public Prosecutions had lodged an appeal and Patrick would have to stand trial in the District Court.
SIX
‘It’s Pommery,’ Amar said to Susan, with a dark look. Panic flickered across her face.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, standing up from my seat in the central corridor of the courthouse.
Susan immediately regained her composure, assuring us that when it came to drawing a judge, we could have done a lot worse. But when the proceedings in the District Court began, it was obvious why Amar and Susan were so alarmed.
As Pommery is a judge, I will make my description as delicate as possible. To say that his demeanour was cantankerous or surly does not paint the picture vividly enough. He looked like a man who had discovered his wife cheating, crashed his car, and arrived at work to sit on his haemorrhoids all day.
That day was a formality and the first of many more. It wasn’t until September 2012, six months later and twenty months after the initial arrest, that the trial was held. And when that day finally came, it was clear that things were not going well.
We gathered in one of the small meeting rooms to regroup. Dealing with a lawyer is not dissimilar to seeing a doctor. There’s a fair amount of prestige associated with their profession and they have spent years studying their respective fields. You go to see a doctor or a lawyer because you need their expertise. But it’s more than that—it’s a relationship. Similar to a doctor’s bedside manner, a lawyer’s disposition can impact on the nature of this relationship. In meetings at their respective office and chambers, Amar and Susan had assured both of us that they were more than happy to answer questions, but sometimes their tone and body language suggested otherwise. At times, they seemed so inert and uninterested that I wanted to reach across the desk and check for a pulse. But what really irked me were the eye rolls, the long sighs, the alternating abrupt and condescending tones that seemed so endemic to the profession. I began to suspect that undergraduates were required to complete a hubris module on how to appropriately belittle clients.
In the meeting room, Susan spoke in long, Latin-infused sentences and I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. ‘Would you mind rephrasing that?’ I asked in one of our meetings, craning my neck up to look at her. Amar looked at me with all the disdain he could muster, and Susan just looked disappointed. I had studied Latin at school, but the finer points of the state’s prohibited weapons schedule was not covered in the life and times of Caecilius. And, given that I had not studied law and was not a lawyer, I wouldn’t have thought it would come as a great surprise. How much did they know about seventeenth-century Restoration comedy? Once again, I felt small and stupid.
Susan rephrased her wordy Latin speech into terms we could understand, explaining that although the atmosphere in the courtroom may have seemed hostile, it wasn’t necessarily indicative of the judgement. She was still confident that Patrick would not be found guilty in regard to the metallic items, given they did not meet the definition of a crossbow because the bow was not fitted transversely to the stock. And that as one of the crossbows remained unassembled, he could not be not be found guilty because the weapons schedule stated that crossbows needed to be assembled.
But we were all blindsided. In a verdict that floored our legal team, Patrick was found guilty of all the charges.
‘It’s not over,’ Susan said, as we gathered once again in the central corridor. She explained that the sentence wouldn’t be decided until the end of January 2013. Three months away. ‘There are still the character references and the sentencing report from parole.’
So we set to work, requesting as many character references as we could from friends and colleagues, and charities Patrick had been involved with. It’s a humbling thing having to ask for a character reference for court. Not only does it need to outline the person’s positive characteristics, it needs to demonstrate an understanding of the charges and the accused’s attitude towards them.
Months passed slowly as we waited to find out what the punishment would be. Would he be fined, required to serve community service, or be on home detention? Or would our worst fears be realised and Patrick be sent to prison?
At the end of December Patrick and I waited in the foyer of the local community corrections office. I was wearing a black woollen suit and black high heels, like a mourning widow. It was a sweltering summer day and the office air conditioning had not been switched on. Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead and ran down the inside of my camisole. The wool felt thick and scratchy, but I had worn the suit because I wanted to make a good impression.
Finally, the door next to the reception counter opened, and a man wearing a singlet, no shoes, and a bold tattoo stating ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ emerged. I had spent hours applying concealer to the dark shadows under my eyes and straightening my wavy hair, and was wearing what felt like a hairshirt, and here was this man. It was all I could do not to follow him to the street and offer him my scarf. But seeing that man, part of me relaxed. I mean, if that’s who we were up against, we had to be in with a good chance. Right?
‘Patrick was the first person to wear a suit to this office and you are the second,’ said Karlene by way of introduction. She seemed nervous, and covered her mouth with her left palm when she spoke.
She led Patrick and me to another office off the hall that adjoined the waiting room.
‘I’m sure Patrick has told you about his meetings,’ Karlene said after she sat down, and I looked at Patrick, who was seated in the office chair next to me. ‘We are required to write a presentencing report that the judge will read and take into consideration before handing down a sentence.’ I nodded, noticing the poster on the wall near Karlene’s head. It depicted a small cartoon sheep climbing a hill a distance away from the crowd of other sheep. ‘Don’t follow the crowd,’ cautioned the bold letters. Patrick put his hand on mine, reassuringly.
‘Talking to a spouse, when that’s possible,’ Karlene said, and then emitted a laugh so brief and so out of place it resembled a sound effect, ‘can create a fuller picture and assist us in writing the rep
ort.’ When she finished speaking, she moved her hand from her mouth to the desk. Karlene’s mannerisms were making me even more nervous than I already was.
‘Do you understand the nature of his charges?’ she asked, once again moving her hand to her mouth, and I proceeded to explain the charges as I had done so many times before.
‘You’d be surprised how many partners don’t know the full story,’ she said when I’d finished.
Karlene asked Patrick to leave the room for the next part of the interview. ‘The following questions are the types of questions we ask anyone in this situation,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘Now, Melissa,’ she began, ‘has Patrick ever abused you in a physical, emotional or sexual way?’
‘No,’ I replied, thinking of him sitting out in the waiting room.
‘Have you ever known him to use violence to respond to a situation?’
‘No, never,’ I said.
‘Did he threaten or intimidate you in relation to today’s interview or the responses you might give?’
‘No,’ I said, unnerved by the questions. I knew Karlene was just doing her job, and it was a positive thing that victims of domestic violence could get support from the department, but it felt surreal suddenly to be asked those questions about Patrick. For all his faults, domestic violence was not one of them. In fact, it frustrated me no end that he wasn’t more assertive or confrontational. ‘Tell them, say something,’ I would tell him, frustrated at his passivity in many situations.
‘Does he have any addictions?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Alcohol, marijuana, gambling?’
‘No.’
‘Shame,’ Karlene said, shaking her head from side to side. And I recall thinking what a crazy, upside-down system it had to be for an addiction to be considered an advantage. ‘Sometimes problems with addiction can lead to more lenient or flexible sentences.’ Karlene scribbled some notes and flicked through the stapled booklet she had been writing in. ‘Would Patrick be prepared to do community service?’