Opinion
Giving domestic violence the hindsight treatment is one reason women are still getting murdered
Gary Adshead
JournalistThe word “threshold” has already been thrown around a lot during the conversation over whether more could have been done to prevent Mark Bombara’s double-murder in Floreat last Friday.
He also killed himself, but there’s no need to analyse that. He was gutless. What is important in this latest domestic violence-related tragedy is that we don’t allow arguments of hindsight to be used as an excuse for what eventuated.
Ariel Bombara has spoken out after her father killed two Perth women.Credit: ABC Perth
Currently, WA Police and the Police Minister Paul Papalia are saying the threshold for officers to intervene in an acrimonious family break-up might need to be lowered.
That if the threshold was lowered, 63-year-old Bombara may have had his 13 firearms seized, therefore diluting his opportunity to take one of those weapons – as he did – and shoot his estranged wife’s best friend and her daughter.
But that is a hindsight proposition.
If the jarring account of Ariel Bombara, the daughter of the dead killer, is correct, then it’s the real-time decisions that deserve a laser focus right now.
Plenty of domestic violence cases have been given the hindsight treatment in the past and that’s one of the reasons more women are still being murdered.
In her written statement and television interview this week, Ariel clearly had a message she wanted heard and it was simple.
She and her mother had raised red flags about Bombara to police. They had gone to police, including a very early morning trip to a police station, to say they were scared of him.
Ariel’s statement said she “alerted officers to my father’s guns and told them my mother and I felt there was a real and imminent threat to our lives”.
She said she spoke to police between March 30 and April 2 on three occasions and even mentioned a Glock hand gun she believed was missing from her father’s arsenal.
It turned out to be the weapon Bombara used to kill Jennifer Petelczyc and her daughter Gretl in the Floreat home when he went hunting for his wife.
At the time Ariel and her mother were hiding from Bombara.
They had even asked for, and received, a police escort to the family home when wanting to collect their belongings.
But we have been told by Police Commissioner Col Blanch and Minister Papalia that despite all of that, the concerns did not meet the threshold for what’s known as a 72-hour police order.
If Ariel’s complaints had met the threshold, police would have served Bombara with the order and could have assessed fears over his access to licensed firearms, requested a warrant and seized them for three days.
During that period, a more robust family violence restraining order could have been sought and the weapons confiscated for much longer.
When it works that’s the system. The orders are there to at least try to protect vulnerable people, mostly women, dealing with potentially violent men in their lives.
With so much emphasis placed on the threshold argument I decided to see what was required to get a police order.
“Where there is insufficient evidence to arrest and charge a person for family violence, but police hold concerns for the safety and welfare of any person, police may issue a police order,” the WA Police website reads under the headline What is a police order?
“Police may issue a police order without the requirement to obtain consent from any person for up to a period of 72 hours, as deemed necessary having considered all the circumstances.
“A police order provides temporary but instant protection for a person who is being threatened, harassed or intimidated. It provides temporary relief to allow the opportunity for a person to attend court to obtain a restraining order.”
Under the state government’s website there are four pages dealing with various types of restraining orders.
“A restraining order is designed to prevent acts of family and personal violence,” the information reads.
Surely, a mother and daughter secretly living somewhere in fear of what their husband and father might do to them, given the guns at his disposal, would meet the threshold for a 72-hour police order.
On 6PR on Wednesday, the police commissioner told me 25,000 of these orders were issued each year.
But when Ariel and her mother approached police officers with their real-time concerns about Bombara, they were told their request fell short of the legal threshold.
Dealing with domestic abuse situations is delicate and tricky for police. No officer wants to imagine the sort of fatal outcome witnessed in Floreat and the more mechanisms they have to stop violence the better.
Ariel’s argument is that seven weeks before Bombara did what he did, she warned police and asked for help.
Maybe an application for a full-blown family violence restraining order would have been Ariel’s best bet.
But having already been rejected for a 72-hour order, she might have thought, why bother?
Now, it’s up to an internal police investigation to determine, in hindsight, if the Bombara case was handled effectively.
If you or someone you know is at risk, contact Safe Steps 1800 015 188; National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732); or Lifeline 131 114.
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