The Unheard Warning: When Victims Predict Their Own Deaths
New research from Queensland reveals that a victim's intuition serves as one of the most reliable predictors of domestic and family violence homicide. Studies examining seven years of intimate-partner killings found that more than half of victims had expressed explicit fears about being killed by their partners before their deaths.
Voices That Went Unheeded
Hannah Clarke articulated her terror six weeks before her estranged husband murdered her and their three children. In an affidavit seeking a domestic violence order, she wrote: "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 demonstrated similar foresight, passing a note to staff at a support service begging them to call police. She had sought help from government-funded agencies more than 20 times before Traven Fisher killed her.
Gail Karran took extraordinary measures to document her husband's abuse, recording attacks with asterisks on her calendar and using a hidden audio recorder. On the night she was fatally attacked, she had explicitly told police she felt scared.
Systemic Failures in Police Response
Guardian Australia's two-year investigation, Broken Trust, uncovered multiple domestic violence homicides where victims' fears appeared to be dismissed by police. Studies in Queensland suggest almost half of women murdered by intimate partners had previously been misidentified as perpetrators by police.
Emma Buxton-Namisnyk, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales who has reviewed over 4,000 domestic and family violence-linked deaths, states: "They are not getting the help that they are asking for. They are instead getting met with racist responses and harmful responses that undermine their agency."
When questioned about police misidentification of victims, Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior claimed there was "no hard data" to support these allegations.
Reforms That Haven't Worked
Despite numerous reports and recommendations over the past decade - including Not Now, Not Ever, A Call for Change, and Hear Her Voice - women continue to die at record rates in Queensland.
The Queensland Police Service has proposed walking back officers' involvement in domestic violence matters, suggesting case management is not "core business." Deputy Commissioner Cameron Harsley acknowledged that even perfect police responses cannot stop domestic homicide entirely, calling it a social issue requiring community-wide action.
Former state coroner Michael Barnes, reflecting on a 2012 case where a man killed his partner, their daughter, and a friend before taking his own life, warned against complacency: "There is no reason to believe that this terrible toll will diminish if we simply continue to do what we have been doing."
