The shameful issue too important for the Herald to ignore

Michael Slater, once an opening batsman for Australia and national hero, has now achieved darker fame as a domestic abuser.

Since 2016, five NSW women have taken out protection orders against Slater. In Victoria, there has been at least one interaction with police, and more than one victim. In Queensland, Slater, 55, was sentenced in Maroochydore district court in April after pleading guilty to seven charges, including two counts of choking a woman.

Chief reporter Jordan Baker’s clear-eyed report on Slater’s lamentable history is a salutary exposition of domestic violence, its long-term impact on its victims – and the system’s inability to protect women from repeat offenders. It importantly considers some of the ways repeat offenders might be dealt with.

Three women who survived Slater’s abuse spoke to us and expressed fear for their own safety and, perhaps even more disturbingly, for the women he has yet to meet. They don’t know where he is. They don’t know if he’ll turn up in their lives again. They fear he will try to punish them. They don’t think he has changed.

The Herald takes absolutely no pleasure in publishing this sordid tale – but this issue is too important to pretend it’s business as usual and allow everyday norms to apply.

The federal government unveiled a 10-year National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children in 2022, but despite moves to raise awareness of the unequal burden women carry in this crisis and the multibillion-dollar annual cost, DV continues to be both a national blight and a growing problem.

Between 1989 and 2024, 1710 women have been killed by a partner or former partner and, according to the federal government’s Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one woman was killed every eight days by an intimate partner on average in 2023-24; after falling for nearly 15 years, the intimate partner homicide victimisation rate increased for the second consecutive year in 2023-24. Across Australia, there were 88,377 offenders proceeded against by police for at least one family and domestic violence-related offence in 2022–23, up 6504 offenders from 2021-22.

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data shows that between 2020 and 2023, 23 per cent of DV offenders reoffended within 12 months of their charges being finalised.

Clearly, existing strategies are not achieving the desired effect. Governments and society need to urgently change current approaches to stop these attacks. As things exist, there are too many loopholes, let-outs, different jurisdictions and justice systems that often focus on a single victim rather than address the patterns of behaviour that surface with perennial perpetrators like Slater in reoffending.

The Herald gave Slater every opportunity to respond to the serious claims we levelled against him, to apologise to his traumatised victims and to demonstrate that he has actually reformed his ways and is making a meaningful effort not to reoffend, as opposed to just going through the motions.

Instead, his lawyer sent us a warning letter saying their client was offended by our questions, which appeared to be designed to inflict maximum damage on him.

This was not our intention. The real victims here are the women he has attacked and terrorised, who deserve to be heard – and who are brave enough to speak out to raise the alarm for other women who men like Slater are likely to target. This reign of violence has to stop.

Bevan Shields sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.