Help me punch harder

Help me punch harder
This is relating to the case of the officer who released the DV victim’s details who I have been closely supporting. This is my personal plea for you to help me help her.
I have been pushing this case forward since 2016. I wanted to share a bit of what has gone on.
I will never forget this woman’s face when I sat with her and she told me about her address being leaked by officer Punchard to her former partner whom which she was hiding from because of the violence.

She looked at me and asked, so where do I go? I need to keep my family alive, so can you tell me where I need to go to report this? I took a minute, knowing full well there was nowhere effective for her to go, and was contemplating on how to tell her the truth without sending her into a panic.
I knew that feeling well, I had experienced it myself when I had an officer stalk me many years ago and had to self-represent and bring civil action against him to get justice. Police oversight is dismal at best in this State, but at least I already knew that.

She was expecting to get an email address, or a phone number for where you complain to about police that commit acts like this, instead I started talking about the locks on her doors, shutting her social media down and different ways to drive her kids to school each day. Pure survival speak. I could see the penny dropping on her face as I revealed what to prioritise. I knew all too well my close friend and whistle-blower Rick Flori had spoken up about the unimaginable that went on inside the service for as long as Ive known him, and nothing resulted, so I knew she had little hope of anyone listening to her.

We want to believe that if a police officer does something like this, that there is some oversight agency that will sound an alarm upon learning of such a thing, and all hands will be on deck to sort it out as a matter of urgency, but the reality is there is nowhere to go. The sooner you can accept this harsh reality and you start watching your back, the better it will be I told her. Yes, it shouldn’t be that way, yes it wrong, yes, its unfair and its absolutely absurd too. I know all of that inside out, in fact better than most, but then my friend, there is reality. It goes against everything you learn as a kid that police are the ones that you can trust, I get that.

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By rights you should be able to go a number of places like State Ministers, the Crime and Corruption Commission or the Attorney General. But I know that hasn’t worked for anyone I have ever met, including myself. I suggested we do it anyway so that when we get passed around in circles through departments that go nowhere, we can at least show a list of where we went to, and who passed it around in a circle when it landed nowhere, that left both her and her family feeling under constant threat.

So we started at the CCC, they referred it the QPS. QPS were stonewalling us, so we went to the Minister for Women, the Police Minister, the Shadow Police Minister, The Premier, the Police Commissioner. Still nothing.

There was no option left but to stir a hornets nest up, and go to the media. It wasn’t what we wanted to do, we wanted to resolve the matter and for her to be able to breathe a little, but she was completely out of options.

Courier Mail ran the vile text exchange from the officer to the ex on the front page. People were quite rightly outraged.
Ethical Standards Command came and interviewed her and decided not to charge the officer. I knew 10 minutes into the interview there was no hope with them, and I was just shaking my head in disappointment. But I knew this lady had what it was going to take to keep going. She refused to give up. This was a fierce Mumma Bear protecting her cubs.
I then showed up to a press conference and asked the then Police Commissioner myself what the hell was going on. This was all very clear in my eyes, and asking these simple questions shone a light on what he thought was acceptable. Yes, I got called a DV crusader and a gate crasher too, but the only regrets I had was that I wore a white bra under a black top in a video that went viral of me questioning him. I am otherwise happy I did what I did that day. It was a step forward in this horrific predicament for her. I put him on notice and right to his face, that if he was not going to do something I would.

A breach of privacy case was then lodged in QCAT where this lady wanted to be compensated for having to move her entire family twice and the extra costs of protecting her family.
QCAT is supposed to be the peoples court. A simple effective way to resolve disputes in a way that is cost effective and fair. She desperately tried to settle that case, the QPS would not offer a thing.
She was up against a team of solicitor’s, barristers, and a Queens Counsel. She remained self represented the entire time.

The written submissions were complicated, lengthy, and a display of the apparent never-ending public purse that was available to fight her.
On one of the occasions, we showed up for a hearing and a member announced he had ‘vacated the matter’ – ‘vacated’. With no notice. No reason. This was familiar to me, because the same member had pulled the exact same thing on me. What are the chances of that? Same guy pulling the same stunt. He had already sent the other sides lawyer away, but I carried on so badly about him doing this again, now to this victim, that he then decided to hear the matter, yet without the other side’s lawyer present. I could not believe what I was seeing.

This went on and on, for another 2 years until we reached a final hearing. Again, QPS sent in a big legal team against this woman, who had lodged folders and folders of material. She requested when it came to asking Punchard questions, that one of her support persons be allowed to address him for her. She was denied. She begged. I pleaded. She was made to question him herself. The officer, still in a job, sat there, with her having to engage directly with him. My disbelief grew over this entire situation, I was sickened.

The Police Commissioner after public pressure mounted, pulled someone in to review the matter. That officer also failed to make the decision to criminally charge Punchard, and wouldn’t explain why to this victim. There was no choice other than to keep pushing. We knew what had happened was a massive breach of trust, was criminal, and put plainly- dead wrong. Yet still, it was uphill every step of the way, in fact I would describe the process as nothing short of gruelling.
The decision then got handed down that she had in fact won her privacy case and the QPS were to compensate her. They didn’t. They had 28 days to appeal, it lapsed.

The QPS then lodged an appeal after the due date to appeal. She has now phoned QCAT dozens of times for over 7 months, to ask if they have accepted the QPS appeal, they will not tell her. She asks to be paid the compensation they will not pay it. No one will give her any indication of what is going on, or why this nightmare is not ending.

Meanwhile a random officer that had never spoken to the victim, and who works at the photo graphic unit, randomly called up one day after 2 years of us pushing, to say he has charged Punchard. Im not complaining about that part, just that it seemed odd. Nothing had changed from the day we made first complaint back in 2016.

Instead of pleading guilty right away, this got dragged out for even longer, with Punchard’s union lawyer arguing QPS had botched the entire thing from the beginning. That’s about the only thing we can agree on. In fact, botched is an understatement. They were pressured to be accountable for once and it was so foreign to them, it seemed they didn’t know what to do, or how to do it. Its not how they operate.

When the matter eventually came before the court he pleaded guilty. He did it. The worst possible thing you could do to a DV victim. What he did is only one leg of this problem it is how the QPS responded.
As it stands he is still a serving police officer, and the victim has not been paid a cent in compensation for what this mess has cost her, and is now in the exact same vulnerable position she was to start with when this began.
If you are in disbelief, are disgusted, and want change. I ask that you stand behind me to support this woman, by sharing what I have written, in the hope that we can collectively say NO MORE.