The partner of a prominent Central Australian anti-domestic violence campaigner has pleaded guilty to murdering her, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died.
R Rubuntja died after being repeatedly hit with a car driven by Malcolm Abbott, 50, outside Alice Springs Hospital in January last year.
He today pleaded guilty to murder in the Northern Territory Supreme Court, with dozens of his own family members, and Ms Rubuntja's family and supporters, watching.
Abbott was then sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole.
Ms Rubuntja was a founding member and key leader of the Tangentyere Women's Family Safety Group.
In 2018, she travelled to Canberra to speak to federal politicians about the prevalence of domestic violence in Central Australia.
She spent years campaigning in capital cities and remote parts of the Northern Territory, where domestic violence rates are the highest in the country.
Ms Rubuntja had known Abbott since childhood and they had been in a relationship for two years.
The court heard, on the day of her murder, Abbott was overheard threatening Ms Rubuntja at a club in Alice Springs.
After being asked to leave the club, he stayed outside the entrance of the venue, waiting for Ms Rubuntja.
When Ms Rubuntja left the venue at around eight o'clock, she was overheard saying that she felt scared.
Then about 20 minutes later she told her daughter over the phone that she was at a house known to her, and Abbott was "half killing her".
Her daughter continued to call until Ms Rubuntja answered the phone again and said she couldn't say where she was because "Malcolm (was) going to hit (her) in the car."
She hung up the phone again and her daughter continued to try to call her without success.
The court heard Abbott repeatedly drove over Ms Rubuntja, dragging her underneath the vehicle, in the Alice Springs Hospital carpark at around 9.30pm in a horrific attack that was captured by CCTV cameras.
Abbott returned to Abbott's town camp in Alice Springs, and when asked about damage to his vehicle, the court heard he said, "I just bumped the gate".
A post-mortem examination revealed Ms Rubuntja had suffered all her limbs being broken, broken ribs, head injuries, fractures to her spine, punctured lungs and abrasions to 40 per cent of her body.
'She was the most important person to us'
In a victim impact statement read out to the court, Ms Rubuntja's family described her as a "happy, loving" and "strong" person.
They said she was heavily involved in the lives of her children, her nine grandchildren, her nieces and nephews.
"She wanted something different for them; that they would be good people, but she also used to spoil them," the statement said.
"She was the most important person to us.
The family said in their statement that Ms Rubuntja's youngest son, who was 10 years old, seemed to be "lost without her".
"We feel very angry about what's happened to her … he had no right to do that. She was an innocent person and he was cold-blooded," the statement said.
"It is really sad that she died this way, at the hand of her partner when she was working so hard to make that stop for other women."
Ms Rubuntja's family said they wanted Abbott to suffer in jail for the rest of his life, just as they were suffering.
A history of domestic violence
The court heard Abbott had an extensive history of violent behaviour towards women.
In 1997 he was convicted of manslaughter for stabbing a woman in the chest, killing her, and also stabbing a second woman.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In 2009, Abbott was sentenced to another five years in prison for stabbing his then-partner three times.
Abbott was sentenced to 15 months' prison for hitting his sister-in-law, who was also his partner at the time, in 2014.
Four years later, Abbott was handed a twelve-month prison sentence for stabbing his partner and punching her in the lip while holding a sharp piece of metal.
“There are disturbing similarities with the earlier matters of serious domestic violence,” Justice Trevor Riley said during sentencing on Friday.
“Her (Ms Rubuntja) death is a tragedy for her family and friends, but also for the wider community,” he said.
“It arose out of the domestic violence that she was working so hard to remove from our society.”
Abbott also pleaded guilty to separate charges of driving while intoxicated, driving without a licence, driving an uninsured and unregistered vehicle and he was handed a $790 fine on top of his sentence.
