Teenage girl dead, another arrested after stabbing in Edgeworth
New South Wales Police said emergency services were called to an address at Edgeworth about 10:20pm on Monday after reports of a stabbing.
Emergency crews found a girl with an injury to her torso and she was treated by paramedics at the scene before being taken to hospital in a critical condition.
She died from her injuries and is yet to be formally identified.
Police said a second teenage girl was arrested at the scene and was assisting police with inquiries.
Police have set up a crime scene and will investigate with assistance from specialist officers and the state's homicide unit.
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'You could be a victim so easily': The dating apps being targeted by criminals
When Jamaica Hanley first used a LGBTIQ+ dating app, Grindr, several years ago - it served as a safe space that helped her feel a sense of belonging with the trans community. "I was majorly impacted by Grindr to discover my identity growing up," Jamaica, 24, told The Feed. "So many people in the community have met each other through apps like Grindr and been able to use it to explore themselves and affirm their own identities and their sexualities." But now, LGBTIQ+ dating apps are being used by criminals to target the queer community. NSW Police told The Feed it recorded 44 incidents linked to LGBTIQ+ dating apps from June last year, with crimes including aggravated robbery, assault, and extortion. It's similar in other states and territories. Last year, a man in Canberra was assaulted by two men who used Grindr to plan to meet up. Many of these crimes include perpetrators under 18 targeting gay people, including several incidents in Perth last September, where five teenage boys aged between 15 and 17 used Grindr to arrange to meet and assault men. The teenagers were jailed in June. And in Victoria, police have arrested more than 30 people since October last year, all linked to attacks on men using LGTBIQ+ dating apps. "Police allege several groups of offenders — primarily young males aged between 13 and 20 — have been posing as legitimate users of the platforms to lure men into meeting them," a spokesperson for Victoria Police told The Feed. "The victims are then allegedly assaulted, robbed, threatened and subjected to homophobic comments." They say other attackers' motivations include generalised prejudice and financial gain, especially against men who may not have their sexuality identified to family or friends. From a safe space to a criminal hotspot Jamaica said LGBTIQ+ dating apps are swarmed with fake accounts. On Grindr, which is based in the US, users can be messaged by anyone without "matching", and accounts can be easily created using fake names or ages. "It's extremely easy for people to get on there with ulterior motives. They don't verify age, identity — anything," Jamaica said. The Feed contacted Grindr multiple times for comment. Grindr allows users to message any account, without needing to "match" prior. Source: Supplied Grindr may step in and suspend an account until it verify users' ID if they suspect they're underage. "We always take reports [of underage users] seriously, as issues with fake accounts are a major complaint from our users," Grindr says on its website. Jamaica said when she opens the app, she is greeted by a barrage of messages from users offering illicit drugs and the occasional outright threat. "You can message anybody without matching with them first, so there's no buffer. I get messages from blank profiles hundreds of times a day, offering me money, offering me drugs." She's also found herself in several dangerous situations. On one occasion, Jamaica agreed to meet a man from Grindr at his house in the middle of the night. "He picked me up, and when I got there, there were two other men in the room and they were all smoking ice," she said. "I had no phone charge … no way of getting out. I was drunk. I tell as many people as I can [because] so many bad things could've happened to me. I could've been raped, murdered, kidnapped. I'm very lucky." Police say dating apps such as Grindr are being used by criminals to target the LGBTIQ+ community. Source: Getty / Robert Way She said her experiences have made her "paranoid and suspicious" on the app and has had to devise her own method of verifying users. "It makes me scared to be on dating apps and to meet people because you could be targeted … you could be a victim so easily". While Stuart showered, he was being robbed For Stuart (not his real name), the danger wasn't a violent ambush. It was quieter. He told The Feed he agreed to meet a man he'd spoken to from Grindr at a hotel, and immediately realised he was being catfished: the man didn't match his photos. "The question people have asked is, 'why did you go up with him?' … I thought 'whatever', even though I had red flags, I had alarm bells going off in my mind," Stuart said. What followed was a rushed hookup and an insistence that Stuart showered. And when Stuart got out, he realised his watch wasn't where he left it. "I said [to the man], 'where's my watch?' … He immediately bolts into the bathroom and brings me my watch." "And then I left. I felt very uncomfortable. I was so glad when the hotel door closed, I just wanted to get back," Stuart said. Despite his watch being returned, two days later, Stuart's bank called. "Almost $2,000 had been taken," Stuart said. Stuart believes the man had taken photos of his credit cards while he showered. And when he went to police, he said he discovered about 20 other men had been victims. "He'd been defrauding people [for years] … using Grindr for at least five or six years," Stuart said. NSW Local Court media told The Feed that a man was convicted in his absence earlier this year over the incident for dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and possessing identity information to commit an indictable offence. Why many victims stay silent Despite the growing list of victims, many incidents are never reported. Both NSW and Victoria Police said that crimes like these are "largely underreported" because of stigma, fear of outing, and distrust in police. "Many individuals decline to make statements or pursue charges because their families may be unaware of their sexual orientation," NSW Police told The Feed in a statement. "There is also a reluctance for victims to go to police because the sensitive nature of the crime." Police in NSW and Victoria told The Feed in the last year, there's been an increase in crimes against LGBTIQ+ people through the apps designed for them. Source: Getty When Stuart started discussing the experience in the community, he realised he wasn't alone. "So many people messaged me saying it happened to them too — but they didn't want to go to police … many feel too embarrassed … or may be in what on the surface are monogamous relationship … others may be in the closet," Stuart said. "I understand distrust of the police. I understand being in the closet feeling ashamed. And I did - I felt ashamed. I felt embarrassed. But I'm somebody who will speak out when I think something is wrong." Are dating apps doing enough? Jamaica believes the app companies themselves need to step up. "I definitely think verification of identity would be extremely beneficial," Jamaica said. Grindr offers resources such as a scam awareness guide to help users have a safer experience on the app and identify and avoid scams. "It's crazy that in the 21st century there's a level of this even happening at all." The Feed has approached Grindr for comment. The bigger picture Fortunately, Stuart got his money back, but the incident has left lasting consequences. "Since that meeting, I've barely met anybody, and I would be very concerned about meeting anybody … I'm very sceptical." Police are working with groups such as the LGBTIQ+ health organisation ACON to share safety messages on dating apps in locations of "concern", ACON told The Feed in a statement. "ACON and NSW Police are also working to raise awareness and suggest ways people can protect their own safety such as meeting in public, verifying identities, and sharing your location with trusted friends when meeting up with people from dating apps."
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For too many victims of family violence, police harm more than help, new research finds
When we think of family violence almost instinctively we think of police: they are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system and have become key first responders in Victoria — and around Australia — to the extent that Victoria Police last year responded to 104,786 family incidents, the highest number on record. But rather than helping victims, new research has found that in too many cases police responses to family violence are harming them, replicating the power and control dynamics that underpin abuse and increasing risk, trauma and feelings of powerlessness. If you need help immediately call emergency services on triple-0 The report, Harm in the Name of Safety: Victorian Family Violence Workers' Experiences of Family Violence Policing, is brimming with disturbing accounts from the frontline: of police misjudging victims as perpetrators, downplaying and dismissing violence, deliberately targeting Aboriginal women and other minority groups (queer people, disabled people, sex workers), colluding with abusers, and even using family violence themselves. The report's authors say the evidence they've gathered is so damning — and the harm to victims so serious and widespread — that the problems cannot be fixed with more police training and education. Instead, they argue, community-based responses to family violence that don't involve police at all must urgently be expanded, including violence prevention and crisis response programs, early intervention and behaviour change programs, and accountability and restorative justice schemes. "This evidence … makes it very clear that we need to take urgent action to constrain police harms and to build and strengthen alternative survivor-led and community-based family violence responses," said report co-author Lauren Caulfield, coordinator of the Beyond Survival Project, which supports victims who have been harmed by police responses to family violence. "It's evidence that demands a fundamental rethink of the way police are positioned as a solution to family violence when for so many people, police responses actually increase risk and harm." The report's recommendations are likely to reignite debate about abolition feminism, whose proponents argue that criminal legal or "carceral" responses to domestic violence — including policing, prosecution and imprisonment — ultimately exacerbate violence and further oppress marginalised victim-survivors, especially First Nations women. In Australia, those conversations have largely been led by Aboriginal scholars and advocates and are firmly at odds with calls in the mainstream to strengthen criminal legal responses to gender-based violence. But while many baulk at the idea of abolishing police and even the laws they're supposed to enforce, academics, frontline workers and survivors are increasingly willing to consider alternative visions of justice as more of them are exposed to the flaws and dangers of the current system. For Tania Farha, chief executive of Safe and Equal, the peak body for specialist family violence services in Victoria, the report is an opportunity to do both: to improve the way police are responding to family violence and to build and strengthen alternative supports for victim-survivors who don't want to engage with police. "What it really highlights is that police and justice system responses to family violence are not for everybody, nor have they ever been," Ms Farha said. "But police are an important component of the system, particularly for those who want to engage with the justice system, and sometimes they're the only appropriate response in high-risk situations." As part of their research the Beyond Survival Project and RMIT university surveyed 225 family violence workers in Victoria about their observations and concerns about how police were responding to family violence. The workers' answers, collected in 2020 and 2021, revealed that "harmful" police responses were "routinely occurring" in interactions between officers and victims. The most common issue to emerge was victim misidentification, where police incorrectly name a victim of family violence as a perpetrator on an intervention order or charge them with criminal offences. When asked directly, 83 per cent of survey participants said they had encountered misidentification, with two-thirds (64 per cent) saying they had seen it happen five or more times over the last five years. Experts have long been reporting that female victims — First Nations and migrant women in particular — are misidentified often because they have fought back or tried to defend themself against their partner's violence, or because they've presented as angry, "hysterical" or drunk when police arrive, challenging officers' assumptions about how victims behave. Police may also fail to identify patterns of coercive control in the relationship or a perpetrator's calculated attempts to weaponise legal systems, perhaps because they have not taken statements from both parties or called in an interpreter to translate. Crucially, it can have life-altering consequences, as one survey respondent explained: "Misidentification [has] led to women losing their children, their jobs, property and assets, affected their mental health, lead to suicidal thoughts and attempts, drugs and alcohol use … and losing all their legal rights, friend and families and community." But misidentification tends to be characterised by police as a mistake — something that occurs because family violence is complex, said report co-author Peta Malins, senior lecturer in criminology and justice studies at RMIT. What the frontline workers' accounts show, she said, is that it's a product of police cultural and institutional bias. "Misidentification is not a mistake," Dr Malins said. "It's actually a targeted practice" that has serious repercussions for First Nations and migrant communities, queer and disabled people and women generally. Associate Professor Bridget Harris, director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, said family violence workers who have had negative experiences with police may have been more likely to respond to the survey, potentially shaping the results. But the report is full of valuable insights from people we don't often hear from, she said: "I think we're behind in terms of Australian research on this topic … it's an issue that needs more attention and what I would hope is that police take this as an opportunity to address things." Progress has also been made since the survey was taken in 2021, Dr Harris said — for instance, more police attention to and training on the issue of victim misidentification in Victoria, several domestic violence inquiries and, through her own team's work with the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department, a new training and education package for police around the country. But frontline services are still waiting for change. Djirra, which supports Aboriginal women experiencing family violence, recently assisted five women who they say were "racially targeted and misidentified" by police to have intervention order applications struck out in court. "We have not seen any reduction in misidentification," said Djirra chief executive Antoinette Braybrook. "Rather, we have seen an increase." Another significant issue to emerge in the survey was perpetrators of family violence in police ranks. More than half the frontline workers (51 per cent) said they had encountered cases of family violence involving a serving police officer, with many describing the violence as more coercive and more covert because of the officer's authority, training and access to weapons and systems. Many workers also raised concerns that the lack of independent oversight of police complaints in Victoria was deterring victims from reporting violence and abuse. "I have represented several women whose partners have been police officers and all have threatened their partner with their status as a police officer to gaslight … and convince them that no one would believe [them] and if she did report it, he would ensure the police would retaliate against her," one survey respondent said. "One client had her house raided with six police officers, all friends of her partner." Victoria Police in 2021 set up a dedicated unit to investigate such complaints, but an ABC News investigation recently revealed women have continued to face insensitive treatment, stressful delays and even criminal charges themselves after reporting family violence allegations against police, some of whom still seem to be evading accountability. In response, experts and advocates have been calling on the government to overhaul police oversight by ensuring all complaints about police are investigated by a properly resourced independent body. The new report makes a similar recommendation, finding that the extent and impact of the police-perpetrated family violence described by workers "directly challenges the notion of police representing safety" and "demands an urgent reconsideration of the powers, resources and social license" police are afforded as first responders. It also makes several other recommendations for expanding community-based family violence programs that do not rely on police or the criminal legal system, as well as investing in affordable housing and strengthening prevention and accountability initiatives. Notably, more than half of the frontline workers surveyed (54 per cent) made specific suggestions to improve police responses to family violence, including improving police feedback and complaint processes (21 per cent), enhanced training (16 per cent) and finding ways to ensure officers collaborate better with family violence workers (12 per cent). Ultimately, though, the research team warned against further investing in police. Often when policing harms are exposed there are calls for more training for officers, Ms Caulfield said, and more resources for police forces generally. "But these reforms inevitably function to entrench … the role of police in family violence responses rather than actually addressing or constraining the harm." The report flags that there are already several programs in Australia and overseas that aim to help victims without relying on police that could be embraced in Victoria. For example, Aboriginal-led healing centres such as Waminda on the NSW south coast. Or the White Bird Clinic's CAHOOTS program in Oregon in the United States, where teams of medics and mental health specialists respond to 911 calls about mental health crises to achieve non-violent resolutions — and especially to avoid the fatalities which have occurred as a result of police involvement. In Victoria, Djirra has long advocated against investing in policing as a solution to family violence. "Our advocacy comes from many years of witnessing the poor, unsafe and often non-existent responses from police for Aboriginal women's and children's safety," Ms Braybrook said. "Women are not believed, they are punished, criminalised and incarcerated." The answer, she added, is to invest in specialist organisations like Djirra, which runs early intervention and prevention programs that ensure women understand their rights and can navigate systems that are often "racist and violent". Safe and Equal has also developed a resource to help family violence practitioners support victims who don't want to engage with police and who may become isolated from services as a result. "I think it's really important that alternative options are [available]," Ms Farha said. "This is the very reason why we need a properly and sustainably funded specialist family violence sector, because … they are the emergency response for survivors who don't want to call the police." Dr Harris agrees. Some people want assistance from police and the criminal justice process they initiate, she said; others want support only from community based services; while others want something in between — for example, police who work closely with social workers or specialist domestic violence workers in a so-called "co-responder" model. "For some people, the justice system protects and empowers them — they see it positively," Dr Harris said. "For others, it replicates the violence they've experienced — it replicates trauma — and it is not a positive experience. So we need to be really conscious of that when we're looking at different ways forward." In a statement, a Victoria Police spokesperson said the force works closely with family violence professionals and support groups to "hear their insights and strengthen our response". "The safety of victims is at the forefront of everything we do," the spokesperson said. "All police receive extensive family violence training which includes how to accurately identify predominant aggressors", while "more than 90 per cent of police have undergone Aboriginal cultural awareness training". They added: "We know it's especially difficult for victim-survivors to come forward when their perpetrator is a police officer. That's why we created a team specifically tasked with tackling this issue, skilled in supporting victims and understanding the tactics police perpetrators use."
