by Rosie Batty
Thirty minutes later, I was still standing at the driveway, almost mad with panic. I rang triple zero a second time and explained all over again who I was and why I was phoning. My voice by now was shrill, my patience all but drained. Football training would soon be over, and Greg would disappear back into the ether. The whole enterprise would have been a stressful waste of time. All day and most of the previous night I had worked myself into a state anticipating this moment – and now it was not even happening.
‘I just need to know if anyone is coming,’ I pleaded with the triple-zero telephone operator on the end of the line. ‘He is going to leave at any moment.’
The voice at the end of the phone line assured me everything was in hand.
After forty-five minutes, I was distraught. I rang Hastings Police Station directly and spoke to a police officer. He told me if I wanted him to help me, I needed to calm down.
‘I have been stood here waiting for forty-five minutes,’ I screamed down the line. ‘My violent ex-partner who has threatened to kill me on several occasions is just metres away, he’s threatened my son with a knife and you are telling me to calm down?’
‘You just need to calm down, Rosie,’ came the reply. ‘We’ve had police there all night.’
‘You what?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘What do you mean you’ve had police here all night? I haven’t seen a single police car.’
‘They’re undercover police,’ the constable explained. ‘They’re in an unmarked car.’
I was incredulous. ‘You mean to tell me there have been police here all this time, but they haven’t made an attempt to arrest Greg?’
‘Rosie, there’s a problem,’ the constable said. ‘We can’t do anything tonight because the paperwork hasn’t arrived. We haven’t received the warrants to arrest him.’
I thought I must have been hearing things. Nothing made sense. I was at once confused, scared and very, very angry.
‘But I arranged all this with Detective Cocking this morning. He emailed me to tell me everything was in place for an arrest. I don’t understand. Why would he say that? Why would he put me through all of this? Why are the police even here if they can’t arrest Greg? I don’t understand.’ I was becoming hysterical. ‘Why the fuck are they here!?’
There was a moment’s silence, then the officer replied, ‘To make sure you are okay.’
I hung up the phone, tears streaming down my face, and in a blind panic, I jumped into the car and sped down the dirt track back to the oval car park. Parents turned from watching the footy as I skidded to a halt on the gravel.
I leaped out of the car, crying uncontrollably, screaming for the police to reveal themselves. ‘Where are you?’ I yelled between sobs. ‘Where are you?’
Overwhelmed, I collapsed on the grass, sobbing into the ground. I felt defeated, exhausted, beaten down. What did I have to do to get this man arrested? What was it going to take to get Greg out of my life? Why, when I had placed my faith in the police to follow through on a promise, had they let me down in the most spectacularly cruel fashion? My wails echoed out across the empty paddocks.
I must have lain there crying for a good three minutes before a car pulled up alongside me. A window was wound down and a man identified himself as a police officer. As I pulled myself up off the ground, still racking with sobs, the undercover policeman explained they had come with the intention of arresting Greg, but because the paperwork had not been received, they were powerless to do anything.
As they spoke, I watched helplessly – and with a rising sense of panic – as Greg walked calmly down the driveway before being swallowed up by the darkness.
The drive home with Luke that night was a blur. I was emotionally drained. I felt so embarrassed that I had made such a spectacle of myself in front of fellow parents. I was supposed to attend a football social club event that Saturday night, but my friend advised I shouldn’t go. People had apparently been so appalled by my behaviour, it was better if I kept a low profile for a while. From that point on, I was never sure how welcome I was at the club, and so I distanced myself from them all, believing it was probably best if I simply withdrew.
I don’t know how much Luke saw or heard. He knew afterwards that I was really upset with his dad, but I certainly didn’t want him thinking that I was conspiring with police to get his dad arrested.
I rang the police station the following day, disturbed about the night before and keen to get some kind of explanation. It was only at the insistence of DSC Cocking, after all, that I had agreed to take part (and allow Luke to take part) in their scheme to finally arrest Greg. I wanted some explanation as to why it hadn’t happened. I got the same policeman who had answered my call the night before. He wasn’t able to explain what had gone wrong. He did add though – rather unhelpfully – that my getting upset ‘didn’t help matters’.
‘Can I please speak to the person in charge?’ I asked.
He wouldn’t put me through to anyone. Tired of being stonewalled, I eventually hung up the phone.
I called back an hour or so later and got another policeman. He said he was familiar with the circumstances that had led to the previous night’s debacle (my words, not his), and promptly went into an explanation of the delay that sometimes occurred in the reception of warrant papers.
If the trauma of the night itself hadn’t been enough to destroy my faith in the police, their reactions the next day certainly did it. They also set the tone for the remainder of the year, tipping me into a heightened sense of anxiety from which I never really emerged. I lost all confidence in the system that night. It was clear that the people who were supposed to protect me weren’t going to. If Greg was going to be stopped, I was quite clearly going to have to do it alone. The very thought exhausted me.
What the police could never begin to understand was how much fear and anxiety goes into having someone arrested. They didn’t consider the impact it might have on Luke to see his father arrested. They didn’t think of the sense of shame Luke would feel in front of his peers and I would feel in front of other parents. Not to mention the absolute fear I felt at having Greg arrested in public and provoking him in this way. I felt like the police were dismissing me as just another melodramatic victim of domestic violence. They had no idea of my history, no idea of the years of abuse. Because they dealt with so many people and so much drama on a daily basis, I was just another one to be appeased and humoured.
Three days later, I was summonsed back to Frankston Magistrates Court for yet another hearing on the variation of the IVO. Driving there, I felt increasingly anxious. My heart was racing, my emotions were swinging wildly between feeling desperately upset and extremely angry. When I arrived, police prosecutor Darren Cathie greeted me and apologised immediately, explaining that I didn’t need to be in court after all. There had been a mistake: Greg still had not been served, so he was not present and therefore I wasn’t required.
I lost it with him. ‘What is the fucking point of all this? I mean, I jump through all these hoops and do everything the police and courts advise, and it doesn’t make a scrap of fucking difference. I don’t know why I even bother.’
Darren apologised as I stormed out to my car.
Here we all were again: me, Luke, the police and courts all being controlled and manipulated by a madman who knew how to play the system. I had finally decided to take the stand that friends, counsellors and authorities had been urging me to take for years – and this was the result. I’d attended court four times regarding varying the IVO and Greg hadn’t attended once. I felt more vulnerable and exposed than ever. But it’s not like there was any turning back. Once the process is in play, you are committed – the lines are drawn.
My decision to participate in Greg’s arrest had set in train a course of events from which it was now impossible to withdraw. I emailed DSC Cocking late in the evening of 21 May – thirteen days after the previous failed arrest attempt.
‘I received a telephone message
from Greg this evening to say he will be at Tyabb football ground tomorrow (Wednesday) evening to watch Luke training. He usually arrives around 4.30 pm and training concludes by 6 pm.’
The following morning, DSC Cocking emailed me back. ‘I have emailed a request to Sergeant Ellams of Hastings Police Station to assign some members to attend the club tonight.’
And so I braced myself for round two. Arriving at the football oval, I noticed Greg straight away. I scanned the car park for any signs of a police car – marked or otherwise – but saw nothing to reassure me. I parked and watched nervously as Greg greeted Luke. In the time it took me to locate my phone in my handbag and pull it out to dial triple zero, Greg had disappeared. No doubt aware that the dragnet was closing around him, he opted to skip out. But he had made his point, flouting court orders, thumbing his nose at the police who had failed to arrest him to date. It was a typical act of bravado and arrogance from a man who thought he was above the law.
That evening, I emailed DSC Cocking.
‘I arrived at footy at 4.39pm. Greg greeted his son for only a few minutes and then apparently left. He arrived on foot and was returning to St Kilda by public transport, I believe, from what Luke told me. I did not notice any police present and I’m not aware that they apprehended him unfortunately.’
The following morning, DSC Cocking replied.
‘I was off yesterday so I arrived at work this morning and received an email reply from Sergeant Ellams that he was not able to attend to my request because his patrol units were tied up with an urgent matter elsewhere. Please contact Mornington Police with any further information as to Greg attending the footy and CC me in the future.’
I read his email at the end of my working day. I’d had enough of this tedious process. My frustration was palpable and I fired back a reply. ‘Sure,’ I wrote. ‘I contacted them during the afternoon too but he’d disappeared before I called 000.
‘He appears to be aware that they are likely to arrive so I don’t have much faith next time. They have other priorities and my experience so far hasn’t been great.
‘He is not pressuring me to see his son or making unreasonable demands so until he does I shall accept the situation and hope that the next time I have to call them isn’t because I am being threatened again with violent behaviour. Such is life.’
DSC Cocking responded, asking me if I might know places that Greg might frequent. To the best of my knowledge, the sum total of the investigation that had gone on to locate Greg between football training sessions was to ask me if had any leads and do a cursory check of the White Pages. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would have been laughable.
And so, the following week at footy training, with a wearying predictability, Greg appeared again at the oval. Almost on autopilot, and this time with very little faith in there being a satisfactory outcome, I retreated to the main road as I had once before and called the police. Parents turning in to the oval who knew me were stopping to check if I was okay. I kept assuring them I was fine and urged them to drive on.
And then a police officer appeared. As he pulled into the driveway, I flagged him down and told him what Greg was wearing.
‘Can you hop in the back and point him out to me?’ the officer asked.
‘No, I’m not really comfortable with that,’ I replied, envisaging Greg’s anger when he saw me colluding with the police. Just then, one of the mothers at training in whom I had confided the extent of my Greg troubles, called my mobile to tell me Greg was heading my way.
I leaped away from the police car, terrified, and hid in bushes near the tennis club. From behind the bushes, I watched as the police waited for and intercepted Greg. In what seemed like a very short amount of time – with what appeared to be an atypically small amount of fuss – Greg was handcuffed and put into the back of the van.
As the paddy wagon pulled out of the drive and onto the main road, I emerged from the bushes and watched it disappear from sight. Was that it? After all this time, could it really have unfolded in such an undramatic fashion? I had come so far and navigated such disappointment, I didn’t dare to let myself believe it could all end so easily. Surely there was more drama to come.
Greg was taken to Hastings Police Station and transferred to an interview room. Whatever stores of composure he had called upon during the arrest had clearly dissipated during the short car trip to the police station. By the time he arrived, he was his usual belligerent self. He abused the arresting officers, calling them every name under the sun and telling them, ‘God will get you!’ He continually pressed the duress button and let rip with a torrent of obscenities every time a police officer attended to him. The arrest warrants were served, bail was opposed and it was deemed that he would be remanded in custody until his next court appearance, some ten days later.
A flurry of communication ensued between Darren Cathie, DSC Cocking, and Constables Anderson and Topham, sharing information and preparing for Greg’s next day in court. The contention among them was unanimous: under no circumstances should bail be granted. Given the warrants already out for his arrest, his priors and his failure to attend any of the previous court appearances to which he had been party, it seemed impossible for there to be any other outcome.
But when Greg’s lawyer (paid for by the Legal Aid that I was unable to access) applied for bail, the police prosecutor did not oppose it and Magistrate Franz Holzer granted it.
21
Supervision
On the night of 3 July 2013, there was a knock on the door. I almost jumped out of my skin – Luke had gone to bed and Lee had gone out, so it was just me and the dogs pottering about the house.
Heart racing, I crept to the door, planning in my head how, if it was Greg, I would run to Luke’s bedroom with the phone and call the police.
There was no need. It was the police.
I flung open the door, incensed.
‘Are you Rosemary Batty?’ came the enquiry from one of the officers.
I was momentarily thrown. ‘Yes,’ I replied angrily. ‘Why?’
‘We’re here to serve a court summons,’ the officer explained.
I was confused. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, taking the envelope from the officer’s outstretched hand and opening it.
Greg had been to court and made an application to have the IVO changed – requesting to have Luke’s name removed from the order so that he could resume contact with him.
Before I had time to process the fact Greg had now started to try and use the courts against me, I rounded on the policemen standing on my doorstep. ‘And you had to serve this now? Of all the times during the day, you thought this time of night was the best time to come and serve papers on a woman you know lives in fear of her life?’
The officers looked at me wide-eyed. Clearly, they either knew nothing of my situation, or if they did, it had never occurred to them that knocking on my door at night might not be the most appropriate thing to do.
And so Greg was taking me to court. On top of everything else I had to deal with, I now had to go into a courtroom and defend my attempts to protect my son. It was yet another burden that my already trembling shoulders would struggle to bear.
When I walked into the courthouse two weeks later, there was Greg, already waiting in the foyer, smiling at me, clearly very pleased with himself. I couldn’t make eye contact – I was seething with anger. The fact that Magistrate Goldsborough was presiding that day made me feel marginally less furious. At least there was a chance Greg’s idiocy would be seen for what it was. Greg had legal representation, but again, I couldn’t afford it.
As we waited in the foyer for our case to be called, the police prosecutor who had been assigned to the case, Ross Treverton, approached me to go through proceedings. Noting that SC Kate Anderson opposed any variation to the IVO, he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that I didn’t want Luke removed as a protected person on the IVO, but nor was I opposed to Greg seeing Luke. I still wanted to foster a relationship betwe
en them – I knew Luke still wanted to see his dad. And the threat that Greg would kill me if I ever prevented him from seeing his son still echoed in my mind. We discussed the out-of-school activities at which I thought it appropriate for Greg to attend. Football, cricket and Little Athletics would be fine, I reasoned, because they took place in daylight and there were always lots of people around. But Scouts was not okay: it happened at night, the Scout Hall was in a dark grove, and the car park where kids were dropped off and picked up was not, to my mind, safe.
I was visibly distressed at having to be there at all – shaking and teary. I had so much pent-up frustration and anger. So much fear. All mixed in with an overwhelming exhaustion at still being involved in this two-person war of attrition. Finally our case was called and we entered the courtroom. If Magistrate Goldsborough remembered me or my case, she made no initial show of it. I took my place in the courtroom and sat quietly as the proceedings got going.
Greg’s lawyer, a suited, middle-aged man from a local private law firm, went through his client’s desire to have the IVO varied, and Prosecutor Treverton noted the opposition to it. Magistrate Goldsborough started querying Greg’s lawyer about his client’s long history of previous charges, including an outstanding matter that appeared not yet to have been heard by a court of law.
‘Those would be the child pornography charges, Your Honour,’ Greg’s lawyer volunteered.
I gasped out loud – my head was suddenly spinning. I let out a whimper. My stomach lurched as once again my world was upended. The child pornography charges? What was he talking about? I looked across at Greg, who was unmoved, staring straight ahead. The magistrate and lawyer kept speaking, but I could only make out the odd word, the rest a blur. Prosecutor Treverton looked to me imploringly, but I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, indicating I had no idea what they were talking about. I had broken into a cold sweat and felt the anxiety rise in me like a wave.