‘Gross incompetence’: How Northern Territory police botched an alleged domestic violence case against one of its own detectives

Billie O’Keefe had little choice but to trust Northern Territory police when she made a complaint alleging domestic violence.

Even when the complaint was against one of its own, a detective with whom she had been in a three-year relationship.

But NT police ultimately botched the case, which was marred by failures and internal breaches during both the investigation and prosecution of the detective.

It exposes cracks in the system at a time police were running a high-profile campaign and a new taskforce to address mishandling of domestic violence complaints.

Ms O’Keefe fled the NT with her child in the fallout of unwelcome public attention, after a court officer unlawfully leaked their details to journalists.

The media spotlight made Ms O’Keefe a target: she reported receiving an anonymous death threat the day that she and her child were named in stories by the Australian newspaper.

Ms O’Keefe, who was living in Alice Springs, is better equipped than most to navigate the system.

She’s a community development manager who now works in family violence prevention.

But her complaint to police went nowhere for almost two years.

That was until the intervention of a senior detective leading the new domestic violence taskforce, which put the investigation back on track.

However, charges against her former partner were never tested in court.

The detective has always maintained her innocence but she never got to enter a plea.

The case was dismissed in June because of procedural bungles by police prosecutors.

Ms O’Keefe says her allegations should have been properly investigated in the beginning and tested in court but police and the justice system let her down.

“So many let-downs and so many mistakes and so many ‘We are sorry’,” Ms O’Keefe says.

“To have ‘sorry’ in four, five, six different types of internal investigations, it’s not a mistake.

An NT Police spokeswoman says its Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Command “had been and remains steadfastly committed to enhancing our response to domestic violence across the Territory”.

“We take all allegations of domestic violence very seriously,” she said.

Failure to investigate, officers avoid disciplinary action 

Ms O’Keefe made her first formal police statement accusing her former partner of domestic violence in March 2020, after the relationship had ended.

NT police then “fail[ed] to investigate” her complaint from May 2020 to March 2022, an internal probe by the Professional Standards Command (PSC) later found.

Two senior officers who had direct contact with Ms O’Keefe and “in-depth knowledge” of her complaint let the investigation stall before moving onto new roles, according to the PSC.

“It is unknown why they did not make arrangements to progress the matter or delegate the investigation to an experienced detective,” the PSC commander told her last year.

“It has also been found that neither of these officers completed a hand-over to the in-coming crime manager. 

“The non-compliance with internal policy is a significant reason for why your complaint was not progressed.”

The senior officers were not subject to formal disciplinary action because it fell outside of legal time limits.

Instead, they would be given “remedial advice about the deficiencies identified during this review”, the PSC commander said.

“On behalf of the Northern Territory Police Force, I sincerely apologise for the delayed investigative response to your earlier complaint(s), and hope that your confidence in the police is somewhat restored as your matter is now before the court.”

Ms O’Keefe also complained to police about the disappearance of a USB stick she’d handed to an investigator, which contained sensitive photos and other material she said supported her complaint.

Police see ‘merit in relocating interstate’ 

The investigation was resumed at the direction of a senior detective, Kirsten Engels, who went on to publicly acknowledge a record of failures by NT police in alleged domestic violence cases.

Ms O’Keefe says she was happy with Detective Engels and how she progressed the case.

A new lead detective took a fresh statement from Ms O’Keefe, pressing her for more details and hand-drawn sketches of each alleged incident.

In March last year, her ex-partner was charged with six counts of aggravated assault.

This included allegedly putting pepper spray on a piece of paper under the nose of Ms O’Keefe’s daughter, then six years old, so she could see what it smelled like.

She was also charged with allegedly harassing Ms O’Keefe via text message and an allegation she unlawfully accessed the police database to look up her new partner.

Weeks before charges were due to be heard in Alice Springs Local Court, Ms O’Keefe was shocked to read a story about the case on The Australian website.

The story named Ms O’Keefe and her daughter as the “women” in the case who were allegedly assaulted.

A senior NT police commander confided to an associate that he was “very concerned” about the leak and “we do not know where it has come from but we are investigating”.

Ms O’Keefe called the reporter, who said she hadn’t known that her daughter was a child.

Neither the reporter nor the newspaper broke any laws but they removed the names from the online story.

The same day, Ms O’Keefe reported receiving a death threat from an anonymous caller who allegedly said: “Welcome to the morgue. We look forward to seeing you.”

Ms O’Keefe has no idea who made the call but she took the threat seriously given how widely her name had been published.

The lead detective in the case wrote to her employer about the “unwarranted media attention [which] has already occurred on a local and national level, understandably causing Ms O’Keefe substantial anxiety”.

“I would go as far as to suggest that there may be merit in Ms O’Keefe relocating interstate, to offset concerns for her privacy and that of her 12-year-old daughter.”

Ms O’Keefe wrote to the police hierarchy about her concerns about a “lack of understanding of the real threat to my family’s safety”.

She asked police for financial assistance for “immediate relocation out of the Northern Territory for my family”.

Police declined.

An NT Police spokeswoman told the ABC that “in situations of extreme risk, relocation may be considered as one of several options”.

“However, financial assistance for relocation is typically handled by other government agencies or specialist support services, not by NT Police,” she said.

“Our primary responsibility is to ensure safety and investigate criminal activities, while the provision of financial support falls outside our scope.”

Ms O’Keefe ended up moving interstate with her daughter at her own cost, which she estimates at $60,000.

Officers gain unauthorised access but leak came from court 

After Ms O’Keefe complained about the leak, an internal investigation found three officers had gained “unauthorised access to information”.

The investigator told Ms O’Keefe that he was “not able to disclose what the disciplinary outcomes were”.

An NT police spokeswoman told the ABC that “we do not disclose information regarding internal disciplinary actions unless they result in dismissal or criminal charges [which] helps safeguard the integrity of investigations and ensures a fair process for all involved”.

However, the investigator was able to tell Ms O’Keefe that “the information provided to The Australian did not come from unauthorised access and disclosure by police”.

Instead, this failure belonged to the courts.

In January, a court media officer, Cynthia Thompson, pleaded guilty in the Darwin Local Court to recklessly disclosing confidential information from the case to journalists.

No conviction was recorded, with the judge finding that the “seriousness of the offence is hard to gauge … it’s down the low end, possibly approaching trivial”.

Ms O’Keefe complained to police about not being given the chance to provide a victim impact statement to the court.

Police told her no statement was requested because “it appears the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] considered that the Crown was the victim”.

“Irrespective of this it is acknowledged that police could have technically provided you with a [victim impact statement] and I apologise that this did not occur and was not brought to the attention of the DPP prior to the matter proceeding to court.”

Last week, the NT Department of Attorney-General and Justice offered Ms O’Keefe $10,000 as compensation, noting maximum award payments of $60,000 were “likely to be reserved for serious breaches”.

It cited the judge’s “criminal trial comments [as] a basis for determining an appropriate compensation amount commensurate with the distress and harm caused from the release of information to journalists identifying you and your daughter”.

Ms O’Keefe rejected the offer, telling the department she would be able to prove to a tribunal that “this offending and breach has caused serious harm and damages to myself and my daughter”.

“For my child to be named and her information breached, your offer is an insult,” she said.

Mental health concerns about teenage daughter

In May, the case against her former partner started piling the pressure on Ms O’Keefe, who was worried about the mental health of her daughter.

The DPP told Ms O’Keefe that if her daughter did not return to Alice Springs to take the witness stand, the assault charge involving the child would have to be dropped.

And if the detective’s lawyers called the child for cross-examination, “we cannot rule out the possibility that [she] needs to give evidence” for other charges, the DPP said.

A week later, Ms O’Keefe told the Crown Prosecutor that she was “prepared to fight” but not for her daughter to face a grilling in court.

“If this means that all the charges are dropped that involve me, then the system is broken and this whole process has been for nothing,” she said.

The prosecutor said he had “raised with the defence the prospect of [your daughter] not being involved in the prosecution [and] whether they would still require [her] to give evidence (as is their right) in the event that the charge that relates to [her] was withdrawn”.

But he came back with the news that the detective’s lawyers planned to call the child for cross-examination unless the assault charges involving her mother were also dropped.

“If you do not want [your daughter] to give evidence, the only way we can guarantee that is if we withdraw the aggravated assaults [charges],” the prosecutor said.

That left three charges: two counts of using a carriage service to harass, and one of unlawfully accessing data with intent to cause harm to a person.

The DPP, with the agreement of police, then decided to drop the latter charge because of “insufficient evidence”.

That left the harassment charges, which were Commonwealth offences.

The detective’s lawyers knew that this meant police needed approval from the Commonwealth DPP before laying the charges.

This technicality proved to be the prosecution’s Achilles Heel, leading to the missteps that sank the case.

An ‘oversight’ by prosecutors

Before the court hearing on June 3, the detective’s lawyers asked the DPP to show proof the CDPP had given approval before the charges were laid.

The DPP had no record on its file and neither police prosecutors nor the CDPP could find any documentation.

So the DPP urgently obtained CDPP approval to re-lay the harassment charges.

But in what the crown prosecutor labelled an “oversight”, police prosecutors then re-laid all nine original charges — including the aggravated assaults that had been dropped — and added two new harassment charges.

The judge deemed the charging document “defective” and dismissed the case.

The crown prosecutor told Ms O’Keefe it was a “regrettable and unfortunate” situation that was “unable to be rectified despite our efforts”.

“I understand this is terrible news,” he said.

“We cannot say one way or the other whether approval was in fact sought by police before laying the charge, but it is rare that a situation arises where there is no record of such authority being granted.”

He said the DPP was considering whether to re-lay the harassment charges.

The detective remains an employee of NT police.

She declined to give an interview or respond to written questions but the ABC understands she denies all allegations.

The NT Police spokeswoman says the matter is “ongoing, and as such, we cannot provide further details at this time”.

‘Extreme frustration’

After the case was dismissed, Ms O’Keefe wrote to the lead detective and the DV taskforce commander to thank them for “all of your hard work and support which at times hasn’t been easy as the systems have also let you down”.

In return, they acknowledged the “extreme frustration you have faced during this matter, emerging from various sources”.

But overall, Ms O’Keefe says the mishandling of her complaint is a “perfect example that no matter who you are, there is no systemic assurance that [complainants] are going to be looked after”.

“I think my biggest worry is that there are many, many, many women who don’t report [alleged] violence against them,” she says.