The Mason Lee case was not an anomaly. Queensland’s police and coronial systems work as designed – and that’s the core of the current crisis.
Nine months before the death of toddler Mason Jet Lee, a woman called police to warn them about the boy’s killer, William Andrew O’Sullivan. They placed a flag on his file labelling the woman’s claims “vexatious”, but that’s not the most shocking part of this story.
Police already had evidence O’Sullivan was suicidal and homicidal. Months earlier they’d gone with him to a hospital, seeking mental health treatment, and while there he threatened to “skin” the woman and kill children, but that’s also not the most alarming thing.
The coroner’s court was aware of these policing failures, but decided to withhold the evidence from an inquest. That such information could be buried from the many reviews and investigations into Mason’s death has caused serious concern, but is still not the most significant revelation from the Guardian’s latest Broken Trust investigation.
What our reporting on this case shows is clear: this is not a breakdown of the system that is supposed to protect children, investigate deaths and correct failures. This is the system working as designed.
The officer who labelled the woman’s concerns about O’Sullivan as “vexatious” was following approved Queensland police service policy.
Systemic Issues in Policing
The QPS operational manual instructs officers, when deciding whether to undertake a welfare check on a child, to assess four criteria. One of those is “any motive or advantage that a notifier may receive” from police involvement.
This process invites police officers to invoke the largely false and damaging notion that women make false allegations of violence and harm.
This is particularly problematic when overlaid by documented instances of sexism, racism and misogyny within the Queensland police.
A 2022 inquiry made damning findings about “dismissive” police responses when women seek help, especially when they don’t present as the “perfect victim”.
“This includes the perception that false or frivolous complaints are often made to gain advantage during family court proceedings, despite there being no evidence of this occurring to the extent necessary to support a belief by some QPS members that it is a significant problem,” the inquiry said.
Yet screening child harm concerns in this way remains QPS policy – more than a decade after police ignored reports about William Andrew O’Sullivan.
The QPS has continually responded to concerns about its actions in historical cases by stating that it has addressed cultural issues, but there is little evidence that this has occurred. In fact, it has begun to walk back responses to the 2022 inquiry.
Earlier this year, Guardian Australia revealed the QPS would scrap its specialist command for DFV responses. The inquiry had recommended the command be expanded.
A key recommendation – the establishment of a civilian-led police integrity unit – has also not progressed.
Those who make internal complaints within the QPS report that little has changed. Last month, the Crime and Corruption Commission chair, Bruce Barbour, told a public hearing that police complaints handling had worsened in recent years.
“What we have seen is a continuing reduction, in our view, in the quality of the way in which police handled significant matters,” Barbour said.
“We have seen continuing problems in relation to how police assess complaints. We continue to have an extraordinary number of police complaints made to us.”
No System to Scrutinise Coroners
The other extraordinary part of this story is the way the coroner’s court withheld the information it received about policing failures prior to Mason’s death.
Guardian Australia has obtained clear evidence that shows a unit within the court – set up to review domestic violence deaths – obtained the evidence. The information it had collected was then excluded from the inquest.
Coroners are subject to extraordinarily little oversight. The Coroner’s Act allows a coroner to investigate a death however they want, and to decide what is relevant, and what isn’t. Queensland has no judicial conduct commission.
As the court points out, coronial decisions can be appealed. But there are clear arguments for much greater scrutiny of coroners in these sorts of cases.
One is that relying on appeals to scrutinise coroners places the onus on families of victims, or other interested parties, to take the expensive step of appealing a formal finding. It is the nature of domestic and family violence deaths – but particularly filicides like the Mason Lee case – that victims often lack an enduring advocate. In cases like baby Justin, whose parents were investigated as suspects, the coroner’s finding has never been released, and it appears no one has ever pushed for an inquest to be held. Insiders say the entire coronial process relies heavily on families pushing for better outcomes and in many cases the Guardian has examined, even families don’t get told the full story.
You can’t appeal a coroner’s decision to exclude information if you don’t know that information exists. In Mason’s case, lawyers involved in the inquest – and others connected to the case – did not know information about policing failures until they were approached by Guardian Australia in recent months.
Systemic Failures in Domestic Violence Death Reviews
Government reviews and the inquest put individual child safety workers – each working in an overwhelmed and failing system – under relentless scrutiny.
Without seeking to excuse or reinterpret those failures, there are serious questions about why police were protected from the same level of scrutiny.
Our Broken Trust investigation has revealed how work to expose systemic failures contributing to domestic and family violence deaths has been hampered by those same systems.
We revealed, for instance, allegations police covered up their own failures in some cases by withholding information from coroners. We also revealed that the domestic and family violence death review board had stopped reviewing all relevant deaths.
The information we’ve revealed about the Mason Jet Lee case was discovered by the DFV death review unit, which compiles case analyses for the board, but the board has stopped publishing case studies.
This, it seems, is how Queensland is really addressing policing failures in domestic and family violence homicide cases. Not by real cultural reform. Not by reviewing procedures for child welfare referrals.
Instead, by gutting and silencing the mechanism for exposing those failures.
