Survivor recounts chilling story

A keynote speaker at last month’s Police Family Violence Conference had the courage to tell the chilling story of how her estranged husband raped her, then later killed their 20-month-old son, four-year-old daughter, her 60-year-old father and then himself.

Australian, Ingrid Poulson, held the room spellbound by her devastating account of the 15 September 2003 ordeal which saw her loved ones taken from her in a knife attack by her husband.

She was joined in the presentation by New South Wales police officer, Chief Inspector Malcolm Lanyon, who recounted events leading up to the murders, the subsequent homicide investigation, and some of the decisions made by Police and Ingrid.

Ingrid’s story sheeted home the perilous outcome of what was essentially an escalating case of family violence from a man who increasingly threatened self harm and behaved as though Ingrid and their children were his possessions.

Her presentation outlined how the outcome may have been different had her husband’s behaviour and actions been recognised and dealt with by police and other agencies as an issue of family violence, rather than focusing on self-harm.

Ingrid shared how her husband’s breaches of the Australian AVO system – similar to New Zealand’s system of domestic protection orders – could have been better handled.

She also made the point that she was asked on several occasions what she wanted to do about the increasing problems when, in reality, she would far rather have had the responsibility taken off her and been told what to do by police.

Her focus throughout centred on preventing her husband from self-harming, while working at two jobs, going through the relationship break up and trying to keep her children in a routine as normal as possible – such as attending day-care.

“I was making decisions in a fog of confusion and doubt,” she says.

Her personal feelings, she believes, were getting in the way of the fact that her husband was breaking the law.

“My worst case scenario was that (he) would suicide. But that is now my best case scenario. It would be far better that he took his life and that I could tell the kids that their daddy took his own life, than to be faced everyday with the fact that he took theirs.”

However, Ingrid made it clear that her presence at the conference was not about apportioning blame.

Instead, she is advocating for simplifying family violence systems and processes, increasing training and the need for all police to recognise FV as a significant crime with many tell-tale signs that have the potential for tragic consequences.

She made the analogy that rigorous enforcement of drink driving laws has brought about behavioural and attitudinal change, and the same should be done for family violence.

“I give my story in the spirit of hope that something might change,” she says.

“Your statistics are my family.”