The shocking details of the death of Kelly Wilkinson were not new to us. In 2021 they horrified us all after her estranged husband, Brian Earl Johnston, was charged with the 27-year-old’s murder and the facts became known.
While out on bail for domestic violence offences, he went with a jerry can of petrol to her home in Arundel near the Gold Coast, tied her to a clothes line and, while her three children, then aged between two and nine, played nearby, he set her alight and she burned to death.
The sights, the sounds, the sensory trauma now irrevocably lodged deep inside those children is unthinkable.
Likewise, it’s appalling to imagine the fear Wilkinson felt in the weeks leading up to her death. According to her family she called or visited police every day. She knew she was not safe, she knew her children were not safe.
Yet on Sunday, more enragement. In her “frantic” last days, according to Guardian Australia’s Ben Smee, she went to one police station on the Gold Coast, received no help, and then drove to another one and again received no help.
And as she sought protection from the very officers we pay to protect us, she was described as “cop shopping”.
What does this even mean? It’s worth dwelling on for a moment so we can think about what this particular iceberg tip says about the danger lurking underneath for women in abusive relationships.
Cop shopping. What do we think was going on in the head of the officer who said that’s what Wilkinson was doing? Did they have too much paperwork to do? Did they dismiss her because they didn’t believe her? Because they thought she was being vexatious?
How often does this enduring myth – that women make up lies about abuse because they have got it in for men – turn out to be true? We know the answer to that. Just about never.
How often do we hear of women desperately trying to get help, of being known to the system as victims of violent abuse, of then turning up as the next statistic? All too often.
Cop shopping. Cop shopping for what? Cop shopping for someone to take her seriously? To help her, to protect her? To believe her?
Well then it’s true, isn’t it? Wilkinson was cop shopping. She was looking for a Queensland cop who cared.
This is not just about one officer though, and yes, yes, of course there are Queensland cops who care, maybe even the ones who didn’t do anything to help Wilkinson. Please, we’re smart enough to know the difference between individual culpability and rotten systems. As in, yes sir, I know, you personally are not a misogynist, but you work in a system that reeks of it.
There is absolutely nothing anyone in the Queensland police force can say now to make this OK. You can’t mollify this disgraceful scenario by saying the words “wouldn’t you love to turn back the clock?” and “this case represents a failure”.
You think?
Enough words now. The Queensland force must do something about its rotten misogynistic core, and then do something concretely and manifestly helpful to the abused women of Queensland. Conduct the review Wilkinson’s family is calling for? Definitely. Consider women-only police stations? Why not charge women with the protection of women?
For how many women will not come forward and report abuse to police now? One next week, one the week after? One more each and every week until we reach our annual national average of women killed by an intimate partner?
Reporting to police is already terrifying and dangerous for abused women; knowing they may be ruthlessly dismissed by those charged with their protection may be the final nail in their coffin. And police will again have blood on their hands, having failed to prevent something that was so very predictable, and so very preventable.
Lucy Clark is features and membership editor of Guardian Australia
In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.
