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Statistically, there’s a reliable way to predict a domestic violence homicide like Hannah Clarke’s

Queensland researchers studying intimate-partner killings found one thing common to more than half the cases

When researchers in Queensland catalogued data from seven years of intimate-partner killings, they found one thing common to more than half of those cases – a victim’s own sense of fear about their impending death.

Statistically, the most reliable way to predict a domestic violence homicide is to believe the victim.

Hannah Clarke had that same intuition six weeks before she was murdered.

“I have been unhappy and wanting to leave the relationship but I have been terrified of his reaction and what that would mean to our children,” she wrote in an affidavit seeking a domestic violence order.

“I believe that Rowan is totally capable of killing himself and killing our children to get back at me. This scares me beyond words.”

Kardell Lomas was so frightened of Traven Fisher that she passed a note to staff at a support service, asking them to call police. She sought help from government-funded agencies more than 20 times before Fisher killed her.

Gail Karran began to document her husband Bill’s abuse on a hidden audio recorder. She marked the assaults with an asterisk on her calendar. On the night she was fatally attacked, she had told police she was scared.

Broken trust, a two-year investigation by Guardian Australia, has uncovered several domestic violence homicides in which victims’ fears do not appear to have been taken seriously by police.

“People, women particularly, are experiencing domestic and family violence every day, and they are seeking help every day,” says Emma Buxton-Namisnyk, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, who has reviewed more than 4,000 domestic and family violence-linked deaths.

“They are not getting the help that they are asking for. They are instead getting met with racist responses and harmful responses and responses that undermine their agency.”

Police failures ‘extremely common’

Studies in Queensland suggest almost half the women murdered by an intimate partner had previously been labelled a perpetrator of domestic violence by police.

In September, Queensland passed new laws that allow police to issue year-long domestic and family violence protection notices, which women’s advocates say could amplify the problem of the “misidentification” of victims as offenders.

The head of the police union, Shane Prior, wrote to officer members saying “predictably, voices in the DFV sector have lined up against the use of [year-long orders] because they think you can’t be trusted to get it right”. He claimed there was “no hard data” to back up claims police misidentify victims.

Buxton-Namisnyk says it is “extremely common” to identify problems in policing responses when reviewing a DFV death.

“I remember very distinctly having one of my papers peer reviewed about domestic and family violence policing, and one of the peer reviewers said: ‘Isn’t there anything positive to say? Were there instances of good police conduct preceding domestic and family violence deaths?’

“And I had a long, hard look at my materials and, quite honestly, there was not. It was the same story again and again … it would be harmful when women would call police and police wouldn’t respond … or they would respond and not do anything and they would leave.”

The 100-day review of the Queensland police service (QPS) proposes walking back officers’ involvement in domestic and family violence matters. It says case management – essentially the process of helping to protect women who are going through the process of getting a domestic violence order – is not “core business”.

“The perceived primacy of the QPS in dealing with the socially complex issue of DFV has compounded internal demand through more specialised training, administrative burden, compliance mechanisms and specialist functions,” the review said.

“All the while, the treatment of underlying causes – something definitively out of the control of the QPS – remains a vexing issue for government and other agencies.”

The same sentiment was repeated by a deputy commissioner, Cameron Harsley, who told Guardian Australia the QPS takes domestic violence “very seriously”.

But he said: “Even if you have a perfect police response, you’re never going to stop … domestic homicide.”

“The behaviour in domestic and family violence and coercive control that we’ve talked about is a social issue in the community that requires everyone in the community to call out domestic and family violence.”

‘Nothing more could have been done’

In the past 10 years Queensland has produced the Not Now, Not Ever report, the A Call for Change report and the Hear Her Voice report.

Each of these has recommended reforms to the policing of domestic and family violence. Few of these reforms have worked. Women continue to die at record rates.

Several families who spoke to Guardian Australia for Broken trust were told by coroners that, because reforms had been enacted, there was no need for an inquest into their loved one’s death.

Others are told nothing more could have been done.

In 2012 the former state coroner Michael Barnes delivered his findings about the deaths of Paul Rogers, Tania Simpson, their five-year-old daughter Kyla and Simpson’s friend Antony Way. Rogers fatally stabbed Simpson and Way after breaking into his estranged partner’s home. He then killed Kyla and himself.

The inquest detailed how a police officer did not consider the killer’s prior controlling behaviour to be domestic violence.

“It is tempting to say that nothing could have been done,” Barnes said at the time.

“But in my view that is not good enough. This was not an isolated case. On average, over the last six years, 24 people have died in Queensland every year as a result of domestic and family violence. Nearly half of all homicides committed during that period involve domestic or family violence.

“There is no reason to believe that this terrible toll will diminish if we simply continue to do what we have been doing. More families will suffer the agonising loss of children, grandchildren, parents and siblings dying at the hands of those who should be their fiercest protectors.”

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