An Indigenous mother whose son was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by her former partner says her baby could still be alive if police had done their job properly and believes officers failed her family in “every way”.
In testimony on Thursday, Tamica Mullaley says she described how she was left bleeding after being attacked by her abusive partner Mervyn Bell in Broome in 2013 – but when police arrived after being called to assist her, they arrested her, claiming she was abusive to officers.
Bell returned to the house, took the boy and murdered him. Bell was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering and sexually assaulting Charlie. Bell killed himself in prison in 2015.
Mullaley says she told the inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children on Thursday how her father, Ted, had repeatedly tried to raise the alarm. Ted told police Bell had made threats towards the baby and that they needed to immediately search for him.
But authorities took hours to act on the information, before issuing incorrect licence plate details for the car Bell was driving when he took the baby, Mullaley said.
When asked if she felt police failed her and Charlie, Mullaley replied: “Bloody oath they did, in every way.”
“He would still be here if they did their job right, there’s only one road out of Broome and if they had of done their job they would have been able to get him along that road,” Mullaley told Guardian Australia.
After they found out Charlie was dead, she alleged police came to her house and “were abusing and being racist towards my dad”.
“If my family were white, there would have been more care, more help,” she said.
Mullaley was charged with resisting arrest, while Ted Mullaley was charged with obstructing arrest.
The WA government apologised in 2022 over the police treatment of the family, and both Mullaley and her father were officially pardoned by the WA attorney general, John Quigley. Quigley said both had been charged while enduring “the unthinkable”.
Mullaley said she told the inquiry police officers needed cultural competency training specific to the regions in which they worked.
After traveling from Broome to Perth for this week’s hearing, Mullaley met with senators who form part of the inquiry committee on Friday. She said she was grateful for the opportunity to share her family’s anguish, in the hope that it could bring change and accountability.
“We’ve all come in and been invited here. It shows they’re aware of it. They’re aware that there is something wrong and it needs to be changed,” the Yamatji mother said.
The Mullaley family has fought for years for an inquest into baby Charlie’s death in the hopes that no family would have to endure a similar pain. Mullaley said she told the committee inquests into missing or murdered Aboriginal women and children need to be mandatory.
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Chair of the inquiry, Queensland senator Paul Scarr, said the inquiry was critical to improving responses to missing and murdered Indigenous women and children and preventing violence.
“As a Senate committee, we need to shine a bright light on this issue and grab the attention of lawmakers, stakeholders and the Australian public. We have people in our community who have been absolutely traumatised,” he said.
“We have to focus on doing whatever we can, in a practical sense to come up with recommendations to try and constructively address this.”
Dr Hannah McGlade, a member of the UN permanent forum on Indigenous issues and women’s safety advocate, is supporting families of those who have been murdered.
She said reforms are needed to ensure Indigenous families are treated appropriately in all circumstances.
“We see a pattern of under-policing when it comes to Aboriginal women and children as victims and over-policing of Aboriginal people as offenders or perceived offenders,” she said.
“It’s a serious violation of our international human rights obligations and there has to be appropriate responses by the Australian government.”
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Those interviewed say the best-selling author and spiritual adviser subjected her employees to unpredictable, explosive episodes of anger. They said Williamson could be cruel and demeaning to her staff and that her behavior went far beyond the typical stress of a grueling presidential cycle.
“It would be foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage,” said a former staffer, who, like most people that spoke with POLITICO, was granted anonymity because of their concern about being sued for breaking non-disclosure agreements. “It was traumatic. And the experience, in the end, was terrifying.”
Williamson would throw her phone at staffers, according to three of those former staffers. Her outbursts could be so loud that two former aides recounted at least four occasions when hotel staff knocked on her door to check on the situation. In one instance, Williamson got so angry about the logistics of a campaign trip to South Carolina that she felt was poorly planned that she pounded a car door until her hand started to swell, according to four former staffers. Ultimately, she had to go to an urgent care facility, they said. All 12 former staffers interviewed recalled instances where Williamson would scream at people until they started to cry.
When presented with details of POLITICO’s reporting, Paul Hodes, a former U.S. congressman who served as Williamson’s 2020 New Hampshire state director, said such descriptions mirrored his own experience working with her.
“Those reports of Ms. Williamson’s behavior are consistent with my observations, consistent with contemporaneous discussions I had about her conduct with staff members, and entirely consistent with my own personal experience with her behavior on multiple occasions,” he said.
In an email to POLITICO, Williamson said such accusations of her behavior were “slanderous” and “categorically untrue.”
“Former staffers trying to score points with the political establishment by smearing me might be good for their careers, but the intention is to deflect attention from the important issues facing the American people,” she said. “This Presidential Campaign expects concerted efforts to dismiss and denigrate us. But the amplification of outright lies should not occur.”
In the same email, Williamson denied ever throwing a phone at staffers. But she did acknowledge that she went to urgent care after getting upset and hitting her hand on a car door, but said a “car door is not a person. I would never be physically hurtful to a person.” She also acknowledged that there was an occasion when she raised her voice in a hotel room and someone came to see what was happening. “I find it hard to believe that people in politics have never raised their voice before,” she said.
Former staffers interviewed noted that tough boss criticisms tend to unfairly be lobbed at female leaders. But they also stressed that Williamson’s behavior was beyond the boundaries of acceptable regardless of her gender. Although Williamson has little shot at defeating President Joe Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, they said they were motivated to come forward now to warn people who were considering working on her campaign about her treatment of staff.
Those former aides said Williamson’s behavior was hard to predict. She berated staffers for seemingly inconsequential things, like if they booked a hotel room that had a walk-in shower and not a bathtub, they said. She would tell her staff to cancel an event, only to change her mind a day later and accuse them of trying to undermine her campaign. She obsessed over the physical appearance of others and ridiculed staffers for being overweight, according to four former aides. Williamson said she never “mocked anyone for their weight.”
“She would get caught in these vicious emotional loops where she would yell and scream hysterically,” said a second former staffer. “This was day after day after day. It wasn’t that she was having a bad day or moment. It was just boom, boom, boom — and often for no legitimate reason.”
In her year-long candidacy, Williamson burned through two campaign managers, multiple state directors, field organizers and volunteers. Some were let go, but others said they quit because of the campaign’s culture.
In a resignation email sent to Williamson on Aug. 14, 2019, Robert Becker, the campaign’s then-Iowa state director, wrote that Williamson’s treatment of staff was “belittling, abusive, dehumanizing and unacceptable,” according to a copy of the email exchange with Williamson obtained by POLITICO. Becker, who was a controversial hire due to a prior allegation that he forcibly kissed a subordinate while working on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic presidential campaign, added: “I cannot in good faith subject any future campaign hires to this kind of vitriol. For 30 years I have had zero-tolerance for bullying in the workplace, and that has to include the principle.”
Williamson emailed back: “I did go out on a limb for you, but more importantly I had no idea that you would’ve seen me that way… Hopefully I will learn from what you have said, and hopefully you will not say such things to others.”
Becker did not respond to POLITICO’s multiple requests for comment. POLITICO authenticated the emails with a former Williamson staffer.
Williamson feared that her staff would go behind her back and talk to reporters about her behavior, according to six former staffers, who said she required campaign employees to sign nondisclosure agreements and made clear that they would be strictly enforced. At one point in 2019, she suggested monitoring staffers’ phones, according to one of them, but never followed through with the idea. Williamson denied that she ever suggested doing such a thing.
“The message was: ‘dont fuck with me because I will make your life a living hell.’ So no one fucked with her,” said a third former aide.
Campaigns often use NDAs to protect proprietary information from spilling out into the public. But former aides say Williamson’s use of NDAs went beyond just her full-time campaign staff. Those aides said that Williamson’s personal assistant traveled with NDAs readily available and would ask taxi drivers and other service industry workers to sign them if Williamson lost her temper in front of them. Williamson denied this charge too. However, two former staffers said they witnessed this happen on separate occasions after Williamson started berating staff in cabs to and from fundraising and media events in New York.
“There was a period after the campaign ended where there was intense trauma bonding,” said a fourth former campaign aide. “It was like, ‘What the fuck did we just go through?’”
Campaign staff had conversations among themselves about how to approach Williamson about seeking help for her behavior. But most said they thought it would be an uphill battle given Williamson’s track record of skepticism surrounding mental health and antidepressants. Many said they felt like there was no way to talk to Williamson about such sensitive topics without opening themselves up to her verbal attacks.
“Her perspective on the pharmaceutical industry, those points of views informed her personal actions and not getting medication and help that she needed,” said the second former aide.
While Williamson’s behavior during the 2020 campaign has not previously been reported, it mirrors reporting from 30 years ago when Williamson’s popularity as a spiritual guru was taking off among major Hollywood celebrities following the publication of her first book, “A Return to Love.”
A 1992 People Magazine story profiling Williamson said she had a “temper and unchecked ego, as well as a cruelly abrasive management style” and quoted a former associate who called Williamson “a tyrant.” A Los Angeles Times story published that same year reported that people who had worked with Williamson described her as having “an explosive temper that erupts indiscriminately.”
Still, her behavior came as a shock to most of her 2020 campaign staff, the majority of whom had backgrounds working in politics and only knew of Williamson through her best-selling books and public speaking events encouraging people to harness the power of love and learn to forgive.
Some people said they joined the campaign simply because they needed a job and Williamson was offering them one. Others said they thought that there was room in the race for a dark horse candidate to push people, including Biden, on topics such as reparations. And some said that Williamson’s books on compassion and forgiveness had helped them through their own struggles of divorce, addiction and loss of family members.
Instead, they walked away feeling emotionally tormented.
“It’s cliché, but all I can say is: don’t meet your heroes,” said a fifth former staffer.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the police if it has taken any action against a Twitter user who had allegedly abused fact-checker and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair on the platform.
A single-judge bench of Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani was hearing a plea by Zubair challenging an FIR registered against him for a tweet by him in response to an abusive message with username Jagdish Singh.
The police had booked the petitioner and to quash the case, the latter moved the High Court.
The judge noted that the police has not named the petitioner in the charge sheet because it did not find any criminality against him, and asked if they have taken the case to a logical end.
“What did you do about this gentleman called Jagdish Singh. My question is if you found nothing against this man (Zubair), what did you do about the person who put out those offensive tweets,” he asked.
The case stems from an incident which took place in 2020, wherein the petitioner had called out Singh through his tweet for being a troll.
Zubair had retweeted his display picture, which featured his daughter but after pixelating/ blurring her image.
The tweet read: “Hello Jagdish Singh. Does your cute grand daughter know about your part time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you to change your profile pic.”
This was followed by two FIRs against Zubair a month later in Delhi and Raipur.
They were filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) for allegedly “threatening and torturing” a minor girl on Twitter.
The court said: “Somebody (Jagdish Singh) starts a storm and you (Delhi Police) just say this person’s (Zubair’s) name is not in charge sheet therefore… I want to see if things are coming to a logical closure.”
It listed the matter for the next hearing on March 13 due to unavailability of advocate Nandita Rao who was appearing for the Delhi Police.
The court also asked Zubair’s counsel to inform the court about the status in the FIR registered against him in Chhattisgarh.
Vijayapura: Following the abusive post on historical figure Shivaji, Karnataka town has become tense as Hindu organizations have called for a protest condemning the post on Tuesday in the Vijayapura district of the state.
According to locals, the abusive post on Shivaji Maharaj was posted on social media on Monday late at night and it became viral in no time. The post was condemned by one and all.
According to police, the miscreant is identified as Amin Bandarakavate, a resident of Devaranimbaragi village in Chadachana taluk. The locals have decided to stage a protest in Chadachana town condemning the incident.
The Hindu activists have also urged the police to arrest the accused person immediately. The police have beefed up security in the wake of the protest call to maintain law and order.
The police said that they have not received any complaint regarding the incident so far and are waiting for directions in this regard by the senior officers.
Hyderabad: A legislator of Telangana’s ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) kicked up a storm on Thursday by using abusive language while targeting Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan for sitting on the Bills passed by the legislature.
The video clip of P. Kaushik Reddy, a member of the state Legislative Council, using the abusive word in Telugu went viral on social media, evoking condemnation.
It was immediately not clear where and when Kaushik Reddy was speaking. The use of unparliamentary word by the MLC surfaced on Republic Day when the Governor indirectly attacked Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao during her speech.
The differences between the BRS government and the Governor had first cropped up in 2021 when she did not approve the Cabinet’s recommendation to nominate Kaushik Reddy to the Legislative Council under the Governor’s quota in social service category.
When the Governor delayed clearing the file, the BRS government sent Kaushik Reddy to the upper house under the Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) quota.
Meanwhile, the BJP has reacted strongly to the use of abusive word by Kaushik Reddy against the Governor. BJP national Vice President D. K. Aruna demanded that the Chief Minister immediately suspend him from the party.
Aruna said if the Chief Minister failed to act on the insult to a woman Governor, the BJP would stage state-wide protests.
