Kerre Woodham: Should convictions for violence be public record?

Now, surely, it should be a straightforward exercise. You're about to embark on a relationship with someone, and you want to do a police check. Does this person have previous convictions for violence? Seems charming, seems a lovely, but you hear horror stories. So, why wouldn't you want to check on somebody before you invite them into your life? Why can't you know? Surely, once you have a conviction for an offence, it becomes a matter of public record. 

And there might be people who say, "Well, what about the privacy? What about the privacy concerns of offenders who have done their time?" I think we need to stop being concerned about the privacy of offenders and start being concerned about the safety of individuals, especially women and children who are generally the ones who end up most damaged. 

A man who harassed and stalked a woman, hid behind a tree waiting for her to get home with her children before fatally stabbing her 55 times. 

In 2012, Nathan Bolter was jailed for eight years and six months for kidnapping and assaulting his ex-girlfriend over a 38-hour ordeal on Great Barrier Island. In November of this month, he pleaded guilty in the High Court at Christchurch to murdering another woman. Had she known about his previous convictions, you'd have to wonder about whether she would have entered into a relationship. He was recalled to prison. Presumably that's when she found out about it because she terminated the relationship and that's when he went ballistic. 

I have another one for you. Colombian national, Juliana Bonilla-Herrera, was attacked and stabbed to death in her Addington flat by Joseph James Brider in January 22, after he was paroled to the flat next door. She knew nothing of his criminal history of sexual violence. She wasn't warned. 

I have another one. I could go on and on. This is particularly vile. An Australian deportee who murdered two women in Oz in the 80s was jailed a few years ago for 16 years for sexual assault. Johnny Harding received the prison term for 19 charges including sexual violation and assault. The offences were mostly against two young sisters. He had entered a relationship with the children's mother, then offended against the children. To ensure the children didn't tell, he used violence and threatened to harm their mother if she knew. I could go on and on, but I won't. You get the picture. There are so many examples. 

Google can only tell you so much about a person. If you're an employer, you can do a police check, and that's relatively simple. You get the signed consent of the employee; you then fill out a form online. You have to be registered as an agency authorised to request police vetting. You submit the request online, you get the results back - clean as a whistle, absolutely nothing wrong with this person, go for it. 

If you want to check the background of someone you're bringing into your life, your home, your children's home, and your bed, it's a lot more difficult. 

The then-National Government put a scheme in place in 2015, the FVIDS, and that was designed to allow people concerned for their own or their family's safety to be made aware of a person's history of family violence. Police officers could also instigate disclosure to a person of concern using the scheme. So say if they had concerns about Juliana in Christchurch, the fact that she had a dangerous sexual offender moving in next door, might have been nice to tell her. 

The scheme, the FVIDS, followed similar initiatives overseas. However, in this country, when victims and family violence support workers attempt to apply for the information, they're being turned away by police who don't seem to know that the scheme exists. They don't know that it's there. And even when they do know, there's no online portal to help people to apply for the scheme. It can take up to three visits in person to a police station. 

How much do you need to know and how much do you want to know? We had a caller whose daughter was being very in a relationship with a man who was being very coercive. And he knew something was up. This was only a couple of weeks ago, you might remember him. And he said, "No, this isn't good. You've got to come home." And he owned the house that his daughter and the chap were living in. 

And when he started making inquiries about this guy, whose behaviour was suspect, he found out that he had form. Done it before to other women. And he wanted her out of there now, and he wanted the guy out of the house. And how did he best go about doing that? How much do you need to know? How much do you want to know, and how easy is it to get that information? Might not be you. You might have sparkly eyes, and you've just met the girl or the boy of your dreams, and you think they're absolutely amazing. Parents or friends might think, "Really?" When something's too good to be true, it generally is. I don't know about this one. 

How much should you be entitled to know? I would say that the death list would indicate that the concern for the safety of families, men, women, and children, should absolutely override the privacy of convicted offenders. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.