Two police officers telling a domestic violence victim to "stop calling us" five days before she was killed was a "dereliction of duty", a Northern Territory court has heard.
A coronial inquest into the death of Roberta, whose family have requested be referred to by her first name, has revealed the "terrible and horrific" story of the months leading up to her death.
Warning: the following story contains descriptions of a graphic nature.
The 28-year-old mother of three suffered fatal internal bleeding in June 2019 when she was assaulted by her ex-partner Lorenzo Deegan, who was on a suspended sentence after two years behind bars for a separate violent assault.
"This is a story of a woman who was taken by force from one city, taken to another town, assaulted, effectively kept prisoner part of the time, and eventually belted sufficiently hard that she died," counsel assisting Kelvin Currie said in his closing submissions on Wednesday.
"That terrible and horrific story, however, is added to by what can only be seen as the complete dereliction of duty by the police in their interactions with her when she seeks assistance."
Two police officers, Constables Andrew Schwede and Maverick Carver, faced disciplinary action after failing to properly assist Roberta when she called authorities five days before her death.
Body worn vision of the officers' second visit to the house was played to the court, showing a man – who was not Deegan – answering the door.
"If you don't want us to come back, stop calling us," Constable Andrew Schwede could be heard saying.
"I didn't call," the man responded.
"She is," the officer said, pointing inside the house.
"If you're getting angry at us coming, stop calling, easy as that."
"I'm going to go now, stop calling, you obviously don't want us here."
Roberta had made multiple calls to triple-0 that night while staying with family in an attempt to escape Deegan, who had already assaulted her multiple times.
In court on Wednesday, the two officers agreed their actions were "incredibly poor" and "not worthy" of the standards of the police force.
"The longer you spend there, the more you deal with these kinds of matters, you definitely start to see patterns that kind of thing, have less tolerance and that probably changes the way you react to it," Constable Maverick Carver said.
Both officers are still serving with the force but are no longer in Katherine.
Assistant Commissioner Martin Dole said changes within the force were already underway.
"We certainly have some identified failings that I believe towards addressing in the hopes that we prevent mistakes like this occurring in the future," he told the court.
Failures extend beyond police
The coronial inquest also examined why "red flags" weren't raised in the months before Roberta was killed.
Mr Currie said the failures of police were "aided and abetted by the very light touch of Corrections in supervising offenders once they are formally released from institutional care".
He questioned why parole officers were not aware Deegan had been attempting to track down Roberta while he was undertaking rehabilitation and why she was not identified as potentially at risk at any point before her death.
In closing submissions, Mr Currie called for the coroner to make recommendations that Corrections workers increase the supervision of recently released offenders and improve communication before Corrections and police, especially around electronic tracking of released offenders.
Acting Coroner Elisabeth Armitage is expected to hand down her findings later this year.
"We don't know that anything that we've talked about might have made a difference, but I think it's pretty clear that there are certain areas where our institutions could have served her better," she told the court.
