Good.
Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty verdicts against all three defendants.
It was absolutely shambles, to tell you the truth, just absolutely really.
Heaalous blood on his clothing the day after the alleged at top on.
A shallow mud bank, and it fits Roy River.
Basically.
I think most of the people are used to me are good people.
I think a really important question we need to ask is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
This is Curtain, a podcast where we pulled back the blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm Amy Maguire and I'm.
Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning, this series contains the names of deceased peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
Hello and welcome to Curtain, the podcast. We're recording this episode today in the midst of some very sad news that's coming out of Western Australia and in the town of Gerlton. This morning, it was announced that an Aboriginal
woman was killed by police. She'd actually been shot by a police officer, and an investigation has already begun, but already, in some of the media reporting has relied very heavily on the police version of events and in some ways has already set them up to absolve them of any
potential wrongdoing. So we're talking today about the way the justice system treats Aboriginal women specifically, and it's a topic that we've broached several times over the course of this podcast because of the way that Linda, the victim in this case, was treated, But we feel we need to go into it in more depth because just this year, there's been a number of cases that really shows just how Aboriginal women are dehumanized in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the media, which so
heavily relies on them for their reporting, in which then represents and which then carries that message to the rest of the public. So our heart goes out to the woman's family over in Wa today, because we've obviously seen through Mardin and my own work, just how it impacts the family, just how these injustices can tear.
Apart even a community.
And I note that this Aboriginal woman who's passed away had a seven year old son as well, So our thoughts going out to not only her family, but the community in Geraldton and all the extended communities across WA and maybe even nationally that she may have been a part of. Today, we're going to begin by taking you back twenty nine years to another case that is close to both of our hearts, and it's in relation to
an Aboriginal girl named Colleen Walker. Colleen was last seen in nineteen ninety one year before Linda death, down in the mid North Coast community of Barraval and specifically on the Mission. She was the first of the three Bowerville children to have gone missing around that time. Over the next few months, Evelyn Greenups would go missing and later be found dead she was only three years old, and then Clinton Speedy Dureau was later found murdered as well.
And all of these cases have been tied together. But we're going to talk specifically about Colleen today because just earlier this month it was the twenty ninth anniversary of her disappearance, and Colleen has never been found, and I know that that has been a cause of real grief and distress to her family who have never been able to lay her to rest Martin. When we read about the Barraval case, it becomes very obvious that the police perspective on Colleen as an Aboriginal woman had very much
colored the way they conducted their instigation. To begin with, they basically claim that she'd gone walk about, and they even questioned her mother, Muriel, about whether she was even her daughter because Colin was fair skinned. This is quite a common thing to happen to Aboriginal women, and I think so. I think it really shows the police conduct
towards Colleen's family at that time. It shows how often the issue of aboriginality and gender really combined to prejudice the way the police approached these cases.
Can you tell me a little bit about that. How does.
I mean back at that time? Was that a very common common thing to happen In your opinion?
I think it was incredibly common then, and unfortunately it's still common now. When Colin's family in the past week have been discussing the fact that it's been twenty nine years, one thing I've gone and done is just have a look at the way the police report missing persons, but
particularly young women. We have to remember that Colleen was a child she was just sixteen years old at the time, and so normally the police reaction is very swift when a child goes missing, and a lot of people will say, well, if Colleen was on the North Shore or somewhere like that.
And there's a number of cases. I won't name them because it's unfair to the children, but there was obviously a very high profile case a few years ago on the North Shore where a young woman went missing for less than twenty four hours that gained enormous media attention. But just in the past few weeks there's been cases in both Queensland and New South Wales of children fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. Young girls the same age as Colleen
was when she went missing. They'refrom a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.
One young woman was from an.
Asian background, another from an African background, and the police immediately was supportive of the family, have covered social media with missing persons information, have called for the public to provide information that would lead to their whereabouts. So there's been no questioning in any of those cases about the family and their involvement, or whether the child is really theirs, whether the child is really missing. In fact, or just
gone walk about, as the police claimed with Colleen. So it's something that still goes on to this day and is very specific to.
Aboriginal people and Aboriginal families.
No other community is treated in this way, and I think we have to be very clear about that. There is a reason why when we talk about debts in custody, the unsolved murders of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander women, why the numbers are so stark compared to any other group in society, and it is because of the way Aboriginal women are treated exclusively compared to anyone else.
Madam, could you imagine, I mean, this seemed to be quite It's been said quite a few times, both from the police who actually reinvestigated the original investigation, but also it's been said in the media by supportive politicians that this was quite an open and shutcase. So I can imagine that if the police had taken Colleen's case seriously at the time, you know, she may have been found already.
Right now, the passage of time has not only compounded the family's grief, but it has also really prohibited another getting this case back in court. And as I understand that Colleen's case has never actually been taken to court because her body has never been found. Do you think things could have been different if Colleen had been treated in the right way or her case had been taken seriously?
Absolutely.
I think if the family had been being believed from the outset, I think, unfortunately, Colleen's body would have been found. I say unfortunately because I think she would have already been killed by the time the family were aware she was missing, as was the case with the other children. But it would have given the police a much greater chance of solving the crime and catching the.
Person who.
Clearly has committed the other murders, and it would have prevented those other murders that took place a period of time after. What we know about Colleen's case is, even though her body was never found, her clothes were found in the nanbucka river weighted down. Now, that is a deliberate act. This is not an accident. Someone has taken considerable measure to do this. This is someone who knows what they're doing, and I think it's obvious given the
follow up murders as well. Now, there's a TV show that most people probably know called First forty eight about the first forty eight hours after a murder's taken place.
Many TV shows, and I would.
Say the fast majority bear no resemblance to how police investigations work in the real world, but that one does because it follows real police and those first forty eight hours are crucial. In that time, the police did nothing
for Colleen. They did nothing for days, weeks, months, years, and it is absolutely their responsibility and their fail those initial investigating officers that this has not been solved, and that they could have prevented the murder of Clinton and Evelyn, and that the real killer, who's never been brought to justice, could have long been serving a life sentence. In fact,
as you mentioned earlier, it's been twenty nine years. That person should have been in prison for that twenty nine years and still be there today.
But because.
Colleen was Aboriginal and her family were, that person remains free.
And it's only because she was Aboriginal.
And you mentioned about the fact that no other group in Australia is ever treated like this. We have a lot of international listeners and I think it's important to note to them that you know.
This is not just the police who thinks this.
This is a society that has been largely set up on the dehumanization of Aboriginal women.
And so this is a really long.
There's been a really long history of Aboriginal women through the generations basically being treated as disposable, and I think that's what led into the way the police treated Colleen's family that day.
There's this.
Belief and assumption that's never really challenged that Aboriginal women are worthless, almost and I think that's why we see so many cases and we're going to talk a bit today where Aboriginal women are the victim of violence, not only violence interpersonal violence, but also state sanctioned violence, and
it's never be met by outrage at all. And if Colleen, Colleen's case had been taken seriously by the police, but also the media at the time, because straight away the Barable families were out protesting Innbearable and Bearable at the time was a racist place. I mean, it's still a racist place, had a long history of segregation. But they were protesting from the very get go because they knew
straight away that something had happened to their kids. It's instead the police were investigating them for child abuse when the families actually knew that something really dodgy and horrendous had gone on, but even then, the media and the
rest of Australia didn't rise up for these kids. And I think that goes back to the value that's so often placed on Aboriginal women by society, and over in Canada particularly, they've had a national inquiry into missing a murdered Aboriginal women because it's been a huge issue over that there and it's gone on for so long. Whether there's been so many cases of missing a murdered Aboriginal women that have never been properly looked into, and in fact the police have been been involved in some of
those cases. But the reason that that has been opened up as an issue is because of the long history of advocacy from Aboriginal women and the families of these women.
I think in Australia, I think we have potentially a similar a similar case over here, only we have lower numbers of Aboriginal women, like we have a lot or population, and there's never been proper statistics into it at all, or there's not appropriate homicide statistics even currently, and a lot of discourses around family violence, so we don't have that same situation where we're actually looking into it properly as in Canada.
But I just wanted to provide that.
Context, particularly not only for our international listeners but also our Australian listeners who can't get their head around how this being a woman, but being an Aboriginal woman could lead to such a devaluation of life in the eyes of the law.
I think, just briefly to touch on and add to what you've said, is that we've seen in the last few years a number of murders of non Indigenous women where media coverage rightfully has been blanket coverage. We've seen a lot large amount of interest from politicians, from the community sector, the health sector, and right across society, but particularly the media has covered these cases with great sympathy, empathy and compassion, as they should.
But as Amy and I are aware, just in.
The course of investigating what happened to Linda, we know of a number of cases of Aboriginal women being murdered that are still unsolved to this day. There was another case in Rockhampton before Linda was murdered, where the body was placed in the river. There was an Aboriginal woman murdered on the Queensland New South Wales border that remains unsolved, and Australia dotted with these cases to receive none of the media attention, none of the public support, no politician
ever comes out to support the families. And what you end up with these decades of suffering and trauma for the families and never any justice whatsoever. And it's strictly because the women who were the victims of these horrific crimes were Aboriginal and their killers go free, and there seems to be no concern whatsoever to amend the way we think about these cases in the first place, and that begins with how we value the humanity of aberigem and women.
And I just also wanted to add on to that, Martin. I mean talking about Linda's case, but also Colleen's case, which occurred only the year before, only probably a few months.
Before Linda died.
So this was a time when there was a Royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and the commission was very much focused. I mean there was nine to nine cases, about eleven of them were Aboriginal women who died in custody, but the commission was very much focused on Aboriginal men, and they didn't really look into the role of gender or the very specific or the very specific forms of violence that were perpetrated against Aboriginal women because of gender and race colliding.
But around that time, a lot of.
Aboriginal women, like Judy Atkinson and Body Robertson were actually talking about the fact that there was a problem around violence against Aberagin women.
A lot of Aboriginal women were.
Dying and there was no justice and there was no protection to prevent it.
And yet we never heard about these cases.
And I think that was very true of Linda and Colleen, because we didn't hear about Linda or Colleen in nine ninety or nine ninety one. I mean Linda's Linda's Linda's picture was on the front page the day after she was found, but then it slowly retreated to the back pages. And as we know, the murder was apparently solved in a week and they got the wrong person, and so
the police hadn't even cared enough to investigate it. Meanwhile, there was a national wide focus on destin custody, which I'm not I'm not putting the two isshes, I'm not comparing the two isshes in any way or or saying that they shouldn't have been that focus, but the fact that there wasn't a specific focus, particularly on the unique experiences of Aboriginal women, not just in relation to interpersonal violence, the violence perpetrated against them, but also violence in the
state system and the way the police approaches victims of homicide who are Aboriginal. I think it just speaks volumes about how Aboriginal women are continually disregarded in so many nationwide debates which have which have really led to this situation where we don't really know the full scale of the situation other than anecdotes that we know from our own experiences in communities all across the country.
And I think that that leads into the fact that we are talking about a number of cases that occurred nearly thirty years ago, but back when that Layal Commission was taking place. But one of the truly shocking things is that not only was it a missed opportunity at the time, as you say, to look at the very specific types of violence and injustice average and the women faced.
But people have to get it out of their minds that this is something that stopped, as we know with Miss du her death wasn't just a result of police action, it was also the health department, and she'd.
Been the victim of domestic violence.
In the case of Miss Maher in New South Wales, I think there's been a great deal of bad reporting on exactly what happened and why she died, And one of the reasons that led to her death in custody was the fact that she was wrongly.
Reported to be HIV positive.
She in fact had had a test that had returned HIV negative, but was reported to the police who were detaining her for being intoxicated in public, which is something that should never occur. And so this misinformation about an Aboriginal woman must have come from a health department and then was relayed and simply assumed even though it was
inaccurate by the police. Now, not only does that suggest that the police handle Aboriginal women very differently, but so too does the health department, and all her humanity was stripped aside. If she had been indeed HIV positive, which she wasn't, then it should which is what the police assumed. Then her health should have been placed at an even
greater importance. This is a serious health condition, but instead it was used as a way to reduce her humanity even further to the point that they simply let her die in one of their cells and did nothing to ever get help for her at any point. I think what we see is that nothing's changed in this thirty years.
It's thirty years since the.
Royal Commission, twenty nine years since Colleen went missing, and nothing's changed. So where the Royal Commission, I think we have to accept failed was in any understanding of the way society as well as the justice system.
Has failed Aboriginal women.
And as you rightly pointed out, there was Aboriginal women at the time and long before that were pointing this out. And I think if we're going to get to the bottom of this, we don't need a Royal Commission. We need a truth and justice commission that is led by Aboriginal women who have the experiences to get to the bottom of this, because truthfully, they already know the answers.
I just wanted to come back to Rebecca Mar's case. So Rebecca Mar had actually been picked up off the street in cessnock Down near Newcastle, and she passed away in the police watchhouse and it took a while for the actual details of her death to come out in the media. I actually don't think it would have come out without press releases from the Aboriginal Legal Service down there. But at the time there was a very specific narrative
that preempted any investigation into her death. And it's why we're only hearing really now what actually went on, and that was because of an inquest. But there was a narrative about the fact that the Custody and Notification Service should have been called, even though at the time, because she hadn't been charged with anything, they probably wouldn't have called it anyway, even if they had called the CNS.
In your South Wales, how did that narrative actually dominate and I guess overpower the really other crucial issues that led to Rebecca's Mars death.
In your opinion, well, I think what we saw the most well known aspect of Miss Marr's death was an editorial given on the project by Wali Dai, and it largely revolved around things like the CNS and how that.
Could have prevented Miss Marr's death.
The Custody Notification Service could not have prevented Miss Marr's death, and unfortunately that editorial on the project was allowed to dictate the way the case was analyzed without any information. It was done largely based on information that was in our accurate and.
Wrong provided by the police.
There's also been some misreporting recent Aboriginal people in New South Wales cannot be arrested for being intoxicated. Well, the recent coronial inquest set that straight and this is what the coroner had to say on that matter. Rebecca was detained to the Maitland Police station as an intoxicated person persuayant to Section two six y four of the LPRA.
We need to stop having reporters in major media outlets reporting that people can't be taken into police custody because of intoxication in New South Wales.
That's exactly what happened to Miss.
Marr Now, the other issue that we need to know here is that Miss Marl was not intoxicated with alcohol, which is the reason that she was kicked up in the first place by police. Intoxication does not trigger a custody notification call, so it wouldn't have prevented her death. But let's say even if the law was updated to include the fact that a person taken into police cassidy because of intoxication triggered that call. By the time anyone got to that police station, miss marr was already on
the way to die. She was already dying, and that has been proven by the inquest. A phone call to a lawyer does not save a person who is in immediate danger. In our cells, the narrative we should be pushing is not for an expansion of calling telephone numbers. It should be for police to leave Aboriginal people alone. Miss maher was either so unwell that she needed to be in a hospital, or she'd committed no crime at all and should be left to do what she wanted
to do. She was a free person who had not committed a crime. Now, one of the issues was that police assumed she failed to report to police, which was mandatory at the time, based on some conditions Miss Marl was under she'd gone out of her way to report to police at another police station so that she didn't
miss the reporting time. So this is someone who has not broken a law, who's gone out of their way to conform with some absurd rules about reporting to police, who was sick at the time, who wasn't intoxicated on alcohol, and yet the solution is somehow given to us that the way to prevent her death is to call a telephone number.
This is a lethal solution to propose, and it was.
Found by the coroner that it would not have prevented her death, and it's not a solution that should be cooked forward by anyone. The police if they're going to intervene. If they're going to intervene, should either be required to call an ambulance if the person is so unwell that intervention is required, or the person should simply be left alone. That is the state for every other person in Australia or not Indigenous people.
It should be the same for Aboriginal people.
And Martin, I think we've seen exactly how dangerous the police can be to Aboriginal women with the fact that today we've had another black death in custody, so I think it's very It shows the way Aboriginal women are treated almost as criminals, even for just walking down the street minding your own business.
Rebecca mar was criminalized.
I think that really brings us to the other case we're going to talk about today, and it's another case of an Aboriginal woman being treated as a criminal when she was really defending herself. And that's the case of Jody Gore. And not many people know about this case.
In fact, it wasn't well known at all until the West Australian newspaper actually have put it on its front page over the past month and they've been running a long series of features to their credit on the front page calling for justice for Jodi.
And Jody Gore is.
An Aboriginal woman from Kuninara and she was in a long term relationship, an abusive relationship with another man. She actually had left him, but she was still involved with him because he had mental health issues and so she would occasionally help him, but she didn't want to be with him anymore because of this history of DV And in twenty fifteen, she found herself at a party in
Cuninara and the deceased was there as well well. There was an both of them were drinking and there was an altercation and Jody obviously felt very fearful of what was going to happen because he had actually punched her. So this was actually witnessed by people at the party that he assaulted her right in front of them. Jody actually went and got a knife to defend herself and
it resulted in the man's death. Now when she actually she was actually charged for this by the DPP, even though there's a long, long research into battered women's syndrome that was never put into court. So first of all, she's been charged by the DPP, even though you know we've seen in the case of Colleen and other cases, particularly in w A, where perpetrators of murders against aberige and women aren't even charged and when they do, they
might go to the court for manslaughter. So first she's charged, but then she goes to court and she's convicted. And not only is she convicted, she's given a life sentence with a twelve year non parole period. And the really horrendous thing about this case is that Jodie Gore is currently a sick woman. She's on dialysis. She was also caring for her three nieces, so she was a kinship carer.
So not only was she taken away from those kids who needed her, but she's put in jail when she's very sick and she currently does a dialysis three.
Times a week. She's down in Perth.
She's a long way from her country in Kanninara, and not only that the judge even acknowledged that because she has a twelve year non parole period, it's effectively a death sentence. She'll effectively die in prison for defending herself against violence which they had been a long history of.
This brings up comparisons with the Robin Kina case in Queensland which happened in nineteen eighty eight, in which Robin Keina was convicted and sentenced for defending herself against an abusive non Indigenous partner, and it's shown she had a huge pattern of abuse against her, really really horrendous abuse she was defending herself against, and the juries hadn't even heard it. In fact, her als lawyer hadn't heard it. Her non indigenous als.
Lawyer hadn't brought it up in court.
In this case, Jodiger actually was able to go on the defense witness stand. She was only one of two witnesses who were there to defend herself. There was actually a psychiatrist report that showed that she was a victim and had post traumatic stress and had been victim to this long history of abuse.
It was never brought up in.
Court and the psychiatrist was never called to act as a defense witness, but particularly the fact that she got a life sentence with a non parole period of twelve years, which is effectively a death sentence. She was given the death penalty shows just how excessive the sentence was and shows just how Aboriginal women as victims of violence are treated in this society. And she's currently over in jail right now. There's an appeal that Stuer to be lodged.
She had an appeal in twenty seventeen which was dismissed straight away, even though if you read the appeal it's actually absolutely disgusting.
But it really.
Shows how men get away with violence against Aboriginal women. And yet when an Aboriginal woman is up to showing how she defended herself, she is not interpreted as defending herself. She's interpreted as being an angry black woman who acted out of anger in a drunken brawl, and that's how the media reported it.
So I'm.
I'm just very angry the fact that this case is only coming out really now.
I'm happy that.
The West Australian government have actually West Australian newspaper have actually pushed this so hard.
It's actually a very rare.
Example of brilliant campaigning journalism from a mainstream media outlet for an Aboriginal woman. But I'm really just flabbergasted that it hasn't created the shockwaves that it should.
Around the country.
And I don't really know why why that has happened that there aren't shockwaves. Can I ask what your thoughts are on Jody Gore's case, and I guess what really has to happen? Do you think in order? Because I think, I mean, I think she was an innocent woman. I think she's another case of a wrongful conviction, just like Kevin.
Really, I think to best understand Jodie Gore's case and the situation she found herself in, anytime we talk about what's happened to Jody, we need to have in the back of our mind everything we've just spoken about and the way.
Average and women have been treated.
By society, by the law, by the health departments, by government, and that all would have been in JODI's mind throughout her life, this understanding that her life wasn't valued, so who was going to protect her unless she protected herself. Now, the other thing we have to understand is the way the police presented this case.
To the core.
Was as if this was some random violent stabbing at a party by people who were intoxicated. Twenty years earlier, this same man had slashed Jodie with a knife.
A few years later.
After that, he'd attacked her with scissors, and she still bears the mark on her chest from that.
She'd been to hospital a number of times, but even.
Emergency staff understood that she had mostly treated her own wounds. This man had also attacked her with a broomstick in years earlier. He'd beaten her so badly in another attack that she still has a dent in her cheek from the beating he gave her with his fists. This man was so psychotic and dangerous that he chased her with a hammer while screaming and reading passages from the Bible. On another occasion, he used a rod to beat her an iron rod.
The other issue we have to raise here is that the police claimed Jodie went and got a knife or she did. It was a small vegetable knife that you would commonly see any mother.
Use to chop up an apple or an orange or something similar for children, and as Amy mentioned, she had three of her nieces in her care, so This is a woman who has undergone twenty years of abuse, never with the police intervening, no one protecting her at all. Her body is riddled with the scars of the abuse. Would anyone in their right mind not be fearful of a person who chases them down the street with a hammer,
reading and screaming verses from the Bible? And yet no one intervened, not the police, not health authorities to take this man into custody to address his sy cases. She underwent considerable and endless beatings for twenty years. She didn't murder this man. She protected herself after twenty years because no one else would. The reason this man was still in her life is that Jodie was such a good person. She was still caring for this man in the sense that she.
Was providing him with some level.
Of financial and emotional support as well as support because he had serious mental illness.
Where was the health system? Again?
Like Linda, like Colleen, like many of the victims, this case takes place in a regional, rural, or remote setting where Aboriginal women are clearly most vulnerable, because not only are the police getting away but doing nothing, the government, the health services, every intervention that she that have taken place for Jodi twenty years ago was absent, and so I think the only just solution is that Jodie is
released tomorrow. Now we add into the fact as Amy mentioned that she is seriously unwell and the court acknowledged that she would almost certainly die in prison. How is this acceptable that a person who has been so failed by society that they have to defend themselves with a knife. Do people really believe a woman who has been abused for twenty years actually wants to kill anyone? She was doing the last and only thing that was left to her.
It's not her fault, it's the Australian society's fault. It's the police's fault, it's the media's fault, it's the health service's fault. And every single person, non Indigenous person who has ignored what has happened to Aboriginal women in their lives time is culpable in this case. And so anything short of people not doing as much as they can to help her is simply unacceptable. And I would say that the only just thing if we want to talk
about justice, is that she is released tomorrow. Now we know that won't take place so to facilitate her release, people are going to have to finally do what they never did for Linda, what they never did for Colleen, what they failed to do for Miss Due, what they certainly failed to do for Miss Mahr even when it was brought to the public attention, which is to demand that those in power, who, with a stroke of their pen can change the course of Jody's life, do so,
and do so immediately. Anything less is the murder of an Aboriginal woman, another death in custody that is absolutely preventable. Jody is alive today, but for how much.
Longer we don't know.
Whether she's released really comes down to how much the Australian community cares, and we will soon find out whether people simply talk a good game or are willing to actually do something to prevent a very preventable death in custody and.
In something up.
I just want to let our listeners know that we'll be bringing you regular installments of kurd In the Podcast over and over the coming months, every fortnight, so please tune in. That was the latest episode of curd In the Podcast.