Body-cam footage shows police coaching a father who murdered his family. As a psychologist, I’m enraged

We’ve recently seen some disturbing footage released of Queensland police talking to the Rowan Baxter two months before he murdered his former partner Hannah Clarke and their three children.

In this video, Baxter’s daughter clutches him after he took her interstate during a scheduled access visit, while he protests his innocence to police officers who are serving him a domestic violence intervention order. They proceed to suggest that he find someone to provide a character reference for him, suggesting “you are a good dad and … don’t need any conditions” so he can challenge the intervention order.

One of the police members appears to be agreeing with Baxter’s allegation that women will falsely allege domestic violence (“they can do a DV on you”), saying “yeah, you’re right”.

The police then switched the camera off, and a few weeks later, in February 2020, Baxter set a car containing Hannah and the children on fire, including the little girl who was seen clutching him in the video. He then took his own life at the scene.

This case rocked Queensland and drew attention to many ways policing and the law fail victim-survivors of domestic and family violence and stalking.

While this footage, published by the Guardian Australia, is shocking, a version of this probably plays out daily in the community across Australia. I work as a clinical and forensic psychologist with both victims and perpetrators of violence, and in a previous role, I worked in frontline domestic violence services as a case manager.

The stories I have heard and directly witnessed of policing and legal failures number in the hundreds – from a female magistrate smiling and calling a repeat perpetrator a “good man” in front of a client, to the police sending a terrified woman home and telling her to apply for a domestic violence order at court herself, to police refusing to act on a breach because it was “just a phone call”, or suggesting that a victim’s injuries might be self-inflicted.

I’ve also seen the opposite, where conscientious and caring policing and legal work has helped alleviate significant trauma and has possibly saved lives. These cases never make the news because in any forensic field, a successful outcome is only defined by the absence of a crime and a victim, and this is not deemed newsworthy.

The police and courts have a position of huge power and holding them to account for failure is important. This is an arduous task for victims and their families as police are usually investigated by their own members, and there is a strong culture of protecting one’s own.

However, for victims, policing failure may be the difference between life and death.

For men like Baxter, very few things act as a deterrent. They are usually entitled, full of anger and vengeance, fixated entirely on their views of themselves as the victim and determined to right what they perceive as a wrong (ie, the victim escaping). Children are often used as pawns in these negotiations, and actions such as taking a child interstate without maternal consent (perhaps more correctly described as kidnapping) can occur. This is under-recognised as a mechanism of control and violence.

Similarly, the family courts see thousands of cases daily where proceedings are used to further contact and abuse, aided and abetted by professionals who fail to recognise coercion and violence. While it’s hard to say if police action on that day would have averted the outcome in the case of Clarke and her children, we usually recommend firmness when working with a perpetrator and approaching and explaining obligations under legislation, rather than giving someone advice on how to get out of an order that a court has deemed fit to issue.

Policing tasks are complex and determining matters like a primary perpetrator or whether emotional abuse has occurred requires skill, sensitivity and training. But above all, these tasks also require keen interest and a desire to understand the needs and vulnerabilities of victims.

The police who have shown kindness and care toward my clients have usually excelled in two key areas: empathy, and a desire to protect those in need. In contrast, some officers are driven by other motives — the collection and use of power, and the need to uphold the status quo and norms based around masculinity and the patriarchy, allowing attitudes such as “women will pull a DV to get what they want” to percolate and spread unchecked.

In this, we see a parallel process, where the views and rationalisations of perpetrators are implicitly endorsed by those who are meant to protect others from these perpetrators. This is a problem unique to domestic violence and, to some extent, sexual violence. There is no other form of offence where we see police and the public blaming victims or questioning whether they fabricated the crime.

While many actions and failures typically coalesce to result in an offence as horrific as what was inflicted on Hannah and her children, it is a travesty to imagine that one of these actions was disbelief by the very people meant to be protecting her.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Dr Ahona Guha is a clinical and forensic psychologist, trauma expert and author based in Melbourne.