“He tells me he believes he will kill me. That that is how it will end.”
She wrote these words on June 31, 2019. Nine months later she was dead.
Her name is Holly Anne Davidson. She was only 38.
She passed away on March 5, 2020 in Royal Darwin Hospital after suffering a traumatic brain injury.
Holly was a police officer for many years. Her abuser remains a member of NT Police.
The police force protected him and threw her to the wolves.
Until recently, it was illegal to tell you her name – the only reason I can tell you her story now is because her mum Peta Davidson fought to have a suppression order lifted.
Help get Holly’s Law by signing the petition
In the week of Holly’s death, something happened. The what, we may never know.
She suffered an injury to her head, most likely at home.
She was bleeding from the brain for three to five days – then, about 12 hours before she passed away, she began hallucinating.
Her partner knew she was extremely unwell but failed to take her to the hospital even though he videoed her clearly hallucinating while laughing at her. In the past he would always take her to the hospital.
An inquest was held into Holly’s death in 2021.
Coroner Greg Cavanagh ruled the injury ‘would not happen spontaneously’ and it was “either due to falling or from another person’.
She also had many other injuries to her body, indicating ongoing physical trauma.
Throughout the coronial process, it was revealed Holly suffered many domestic violence incidents allegedly at the hands of her partner.
There were at least 17 incidents reported to police, but none were properly investigated by the man’s police colleagues.
“They interviewed him and not Holly, giving him the opportunity to fabricate a situation that was not what actually happened,” Peta says.
She says he would often explain the abuse away as Holly being drunk and aggressive.
Holly did have a drinking problem, due to the grief and trauma of losing her daughter at birth.
Peta says Holly was determined to stop drinking and she was never drunk before the abuse.
However, she would at times drink after to cope with the trauma.
The levels of coercive control Holly endured were amongst the worst the coroner had seen.
Mr Cavanagh said there was a ‘five-year’ history of abuse. Friends say it went on for 10 years. Peta – who attended court as a witness – said she saw him punch Holly to the head. “When she fell he kicked her several times while on the ground,” she says.
When she died, police failed to set up a crime scene at her home and so no evidence was captured.
Mr Cavanagh referred her case back to NT Police for investigation as ‘offences may have been committed’ against Holly before her death.
A charge of fail to rescue was dropped and he has returned to active duty with NT Police after a four-year suspension with pay.
It seems charges over Holly’s death are unlikely, with the NT Department of Public Prosecutions saying: “After review of all of the evidence it was determined that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction.”
Holly’s case reveals major issues with how Australian police forces handle allegations of domestic violence within their ranks.
Mr Cavanagh noted victims of domestic violence by fellow officers face additional barriers including fears of reporting, the perpetrator’s knowledge of how to work the system and internal policing culture.
These were very much reflected in Holly’s case – she refused to report to police because she knew how her allegations would be handled and that this could lead to even worse violence.
Peta says she understood Holly’s reservations because “as a mother, I also had difficulty reporting what he was doing – who could I safely go to? There are three police stations in the NT and he could be at any one of them.”
“Holly she knew how she would pay for it (reporting the abuse) when they were behind closed doors and she did pay for it with her life,” Peta says.
After one incident involving her partner, Holly was placed on a 12-month domestic violence order because he said she was intimidating him.
It is believed this lowered Holly’s confidence in reporting further acts of abuse. However, an attempt to place a DVO on him following another bout of abuse failed because Holly did not want the application to proceed.
The coroner found him to be manipulative and controlling, saying he would monitor her activity by tracking her phone, reading her text messages and accessing her social media. He would explain his behaviour away as keeping track of Holly in case she got drunk.
The male would accuse Holly of cheating and often threatened to take her daughter away from her.
The coroner noted the text messages the male sent to Holly were often so foul and abusive they could not be re-printed in his official inquest findings.
He refused to give evidence at the inquest because his answers might incriminate him, a situation Mr Cavanagh said he had not seen in his 35 years in the coroner’s office.
Holly’s partner has never explained what happened to her on the day she was injured.
It was noted during the inquest that Holly’s partner would get angry and abusive at work from time to time, with one superior saying: “In front of me and other managers, he is this calm, very helpful bloke, yet there is this volatility.”
Police looking into domestic violence allegations against their own colleagues – who may also often be their mates – is deeply problematic. After suffering a range of injuries during further incidents, Holly would ask police not to investigate or charge.
A point made by Mr Cavanagh, who says NT Police ‘appears to struggle with investigating their own members’.
He recommended all NT domestic-violence complaints involving police be overseen by an assistant commissioner; and for officers to receive training in identifying coercive control and other indicators of abuse.
NT Police says these recommendations are now in place, but the fact Holly’s abuser remains on the payroll shows the force’s response does not go far enough.
Peta is now lobbying for the Federal Government to roll-out Holly’s Law – it would see an independent national taskforce charged with investigating domestic violence allegations within Australian police forces.
She is also pushing for a federal inquiry to examine how widespread domestic violence is among Australian police.
There’s no comprehensive national data-set around rates of domestic and family violence perpetrated by – or involving – police.
However, Holly’s inquest heard: “Reports from other jurisdictions suggest that the rate of domestic violence involving police officers is higher than the population at large and the rate at which action is taken (in the form of a DVO or prosecution) is lower than that of the population at large.”
The International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy published a scoping review of 54 academic papers on police-perpetrated abuse, revealing the rates, prevalence and nature of this crime remain ‘under-researched and uneven across jurisdictions’.
We know 10 officers were charged with 62 domestic violence offences in 2024 in NSW and since 2017, 120 officers have been charged by NSW Police.
Especially when you consider that around 27 per cent of Australian women report being abused. In America, it’s been shown up to 40% of police have perpetrated abuse.
We cannot respond to – or erase – violence by police members if we do not understand the extent of it.
It is deeply problematic for serving members who abuse their partners to also investigate allegations of violence involving civilians.
We already know there are major flaws in how police respond to allegations of violence by civilians.
Police routinely leak information like addresses and phone numbers of victims to their mates who are facing domestic violence allegations.
Women are told to come back when they have evidence of violence, they’re disbelieved when the abuser presents as calm and quiet and they are emotional, they’re even disbelieved when they have injuries and they are often misidentified as the aggressor.
In Queensland, a woman went to police earlier this year because she feared her partner would kill her. She was told: ‘Come back when you have evidence of physical injuries’.
Her alleged abuser is now on remand awaiting trial on a murder charge.
In the NT, Kumanjayi Emitja died as a direct result of her abuser’s actions on May 24, 2022. When the 24-year-old called police to report his abuse she was stone-walled and demeaned.
The last time police attended, Kumanjayi, who had a black eye and a swollen foot from days of abuse, was locked in the paddy wagon and she was the one who was interrogated. Cops did not take him into custody or charge him.
Kumanjayi feared a repeat, so she never contacted police again. She was killed a short time after.
The Guardian has just published a damning expose into the actions of police before the murders of Hannah Clarke and her children in Queensland.
The failures were extensive and included two officers telling Hannah’s killer Rowan Baxter how to challenge a police protection order in court.
If this happens to women who are not partnered to police, imagine what happen when police are charged with investigating allegations of abuse involving their own colleagues.
It is very clear NT Police protected Holly’s abuser but gave her nothing. Indeed, she was kicked out of the NT Police for drink-driving but her alleged abuser remains employed despite the fail to rescue charge, despite the many allegations of abuse and despite the fact that he is the key suspect in Holly’s death.
Holly just wanted to be the best mum to her daughter, continue her career in the police force and start a new life free of violence and coercive control.
“She knew she had to get out to survive,” Peta says.
“Holly had been planning to leave during the previous 12 months to her death,” Peta says.
“She had worked herself into a position where she felt she could support herself and her daughter.
“She had brought everything needed to set up her new home with her daughter.
“We laughed together about the new pictures she had purchased to set up her imagined office.
“We spent Saturdays shopping for the things she would need for herself and her daughter.
“We spent Sundays planning and looking at rental properties – dreaming of the future together, the three of us.
“She was so excited about leaving and so looking forward to getting out.”
Holly’s daughter remains living with her father – Peta is unable to spend time with her and this has added an extra level of trauma and grief to an already unbearable situation.
“It just rips my heart out,” Peta says.
HOLLY ANNE DAVIDSON MATTERS!❤️
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