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Judges are not implementing Western Australia’s family and domestic violence laws mandating the monitoring of repeat offenders, as the state government walks back its declaration that courts would be compelled to impose them.
Michael Robert Reynold Radomiljac, who is charged with rape and strangulation, had his bail conditions amended last week to live in Perth without GPS tracking despite previous domestic violence convictions.
The WA government has walked back its promise that the courts would be forced to impose GPS monitoring on high-risk or repeat domestic violence offenders.
He had been released on bail in August with conditions including a $25,000 surety, but without GPS tracking, to live in the Wheatbelt town of Katanning – despite the WA government previously promising electronic monitoring of repeat family and domestic violence offenders would be mandatory.
During that hearing, the court was told Radomiljac’s mother and son once had violence restraining orders against him, and he is now accused of leaving WA woman Kelly North “half-dead” from an alleged attack during their months-long relationship.
In granting him bail, District Court Judge Seamus Rafferty said Radomiljac’s reoffending had “slowed down in the last six years.”
“Electronic tracking is not mandatory because he doesn’t fall within the relevant provisions of the bail act,” Rafferty told the court.
“He’s got a record for violence, which shows to me in the right circumstances, that he’s prepared to act aggressively and to hurt people … [and] he’s not particularly enamoured with complying with court-ordered conditions.
“My job is not to eradicate risk, it’s to ameliorate it. That means to reduce it to a point where I am satisfied that a grant of bail is appropriate.”
The court was told Radomiljac had previously repeatedly breached a suspended imprisonment sentence, protective bail conditions and violence restraining orders, and was convicted of common assault in 2017 and of threatening to injure the same woman months later.
“You’ve slowed down and started turning things around, so that is to your credit… I do take some heart from the fact that he’ll be living in Katanning, so he’ll be a long way from [the complainant’s location],” Rafferty told the court.
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The WA government previously proclaimed electronic monitoring of family and domestic violence “thugs” would be mandatory when the act was brought in last December.
“Courts will now be compelled to impose electronic monitoring on repeat and high-risk family violence perpetrators who are on bail or otherwise supervised in the community,” WA Premier Roger Cook said in a statement last year.
“The legislation makes it mandatory.”
However, the government walked back that ironclad commitment less than a year after its introduction, saying in response to questions that the decision to electronically monitor a repeat offender is one for a judge or magistrate.
“It’s the courts’ responsibility to assess whether someone should be released on bail,” a state government spokesperson said.
“If the courts decide bail is suitable, electronic monitoring is one of many tools that can be used to monitor serial FDV offenders.”
The state is likely to fall short of its self-imposed target of 550 offenders being tracked in the first year of the new laws – in their first 10 months, 409 “thugs” had been monitored.
The laws’ effectiveness in regional areas have dogged the state government since their introduction last December.
“I’m not going to do it, because if they can’t do electronic monitoring in Bunbury, then they’re not going to be able to do electronic monitoring in Katanning.”
In the bail amendment hearing in Perth’s District Court last week, Radomiljac was allowed to move from regional WA to the state’s capital for work. While he must now report to police daily, electronic monitoring was still not imposed.
Prosecutors opposed him residing in Perth, fearing it would give him greater access to his alleged victim, and he would be better monitored in the small country town “effectively in the middle of nowhere” where he was originally bailed.
Radomiljac was approached outside District Court last week but declined to comment.
Chief executive of Women’s Legal Service WA Jennie Gray said there was no point requiring a tracking device if the resources weren’t available, as it may give victim-survivors a false sense of security.
“Perpetrators who present a known risk should not be released without these safeguards in place,” she said.
Libby Mettam, the opposition’s spokeswoman for the prevention of family and domestic violence, said it was clear courts were not obliged to impose tracking, despite what the government said.
“This is an extraordinary backdown by the Cook Labor government on the mandatory monitoring of violent repeat offenders,” Mettam said.
“This represents a complete failure to keep women safe.”
Melissa Callanan, chief executive of Waratah, a sexual assault centre for women in regional WA, was damning of the court’s approach.
“Sexual violence is being reported at record high levels, yet remains among the most challenging crimes to prosecute,” she said.
“Victims routinely describe the legal process as retraumatising, with many saying the experience of navigating the justice system was worse than the assault itself.”
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