Coroner & Legal
Failed police investigation ‘went very wrong, very early’
A Hobart lawyer says something appears to have gone wrong very early with the police investigation into a woman accused of stealing from her employer.
Five charges against Karen Donnet-Jones, the former head of the Hobart-based Sexual Assault Support Service, were dropped recently.
One of the charges was that the former SASS boss stole a $5 packet of painkillers from the organisation.
Police have now agreed to pay her costs, and have also promised to further review how they handled the case, to identify shortcomings.
Ms Donnet-Jones’ lawyer Roland Browne has told Stateline his client agreed very early on to a police interview, without legal representation, to clear things up.
“She explained her circumstances in relation to each of the five charges at that point,” Mr Browne said.
“Ordinarily you’d expect the police to then go away and check out the explanation that’s been given. But it appeared to us that nothing was done at all after that interview.”
Mr Browne is highly critical of the police investigation.
“I don’t think the investigation scratched the surface – I really don’t.
“It ended up that Karen and I were doing the investigation. The police hadn’t done the investigation.
“We were the ones that issued the summons to the complainant, SASS, to get a whole lot of minutes, records, financial records, workers compensation records, everything relating to this case.”
Karen Donnet-Jones says SASS board members pushed their accusations against her.
“I really felt like that police officer had months and months and months of people – and he told me he had months and months of people – lobbying him, essentially,” she said.
A senior police officer says it is too early to jump to conclusions about what might have gone wrong.
Final vindication
Source: Stateline Tasmania
Published: Friday, November 5, 2010 7:30 AEDT
Expires: Thursday, February 3, 2011 7:30 AEDT
Vindication for Karen Donnet Jones has a bittersweet taste.
AIRLIE WARD, PRESENTER: Welcome to the program. Hello, I’m Airlie Ward.
In September, Karen Donnet-Jones told Stateline she was the victim of workplace bullying which she believed led to criminal charges being laid against her.
This week, the former chief executive of the Southern Sexual Assault Support Service was vindicated.
Charges against her have been dismissed, her legal bills will be paid, police are reviewing how the case was conducted and a government minister will question her former employer.
But she’s still angry the State Government did nothing to answer her concerns about the organisation’s board when she was sacked.
And says the whole saga could have been avoided if her calls for help to a government minister were listened to.
Lucy Shannon reports the former CEO believed the investigating police officer was told to push ahead, despite his strong reservations.
LUCY SHANNON, REPORTER: Proving her innocence has been a long road for Karen Donnet Jones and this week’s final vindication has a bittersweet taste.
KAREN DONNET-JONES, FORMER SASS CEO: I think that it’s a travesty it’s got this far and we as a family have had to go through this and its implications for my health and my family.
LUCY SHANNON: More than two years after being charged with stealing from her employer, police have admitted she should never have been charged. They will now pay her legal costs and review the case.
COMMANDER PETER EDWARDS, TASMANIA POLICE: What we do know is errors have been identified. Some failures have been identified that have caused us to consent to costs.
Now, the detail of where we’ve not got it right, I don’t know exactly what those details are yet.
LUCY SHANNON: Karen Donnet-Jones and her lawyer Roland Browne are eager to explain just where police got it wrong.
ROLAND BROWNE, LAWYER: It ended up that Karen and I were doing the investigation. The police hadn’t done the investigation. We were the ones that issued a summons to the complainant SASS to get a whole lot of their minutes, records, financial records, workers compensation records, everything relating to this case.
LUCY SHANNON: The events that led up to Ms Donnet-Jones being charged at first glance might seem like every day office politics.
Conflict between the CEO of a non-government organisation and its board is not that unusual but Ms Donnet-Jones told Stateline in September it was a much more sinister situation.
KAREN DONNET-JONES: I didn’t just get up at the AGM and try and throw a bucket of cold water over the board. I had been suffering a fair degree of bullying for that six months prior to that; bullying like I have never experienced in my life.
LUCY SHANNON: Her advocate, Dino Ottavi, a specialist in cases of workplace harassment and bullying said he was shocked at her treatment.
DINO OTTAVI, ADVOCATE: There was a plan and the plan was to ensure that in every way Karen was not to survive this. For me, Karen is the worst case I’ve dealt with and I’ve seen.
LUCY SHANNON: She shook up the Southern Sexual Assault Support Service when she took over in 2003. For the first time, the doors were open to male victims and her hard lobbying saw government funding doubled to a million dollars.
But she says it all came tumbling down after she decided to speak out about the board’s conduct at the SASS AGM in 2008. Not long after, she was told bullying allegations had been made by staff against her. She was eventually sacked by the board.
A few months later, again instigated by the board, the police arrived to question her.
KAREN DONNET-JONES: Initially I just thought I will go in and explain I knew I was innocent of anything, you know wrong doing. And I thought if I go in and just tell them in an interview that then they will realise and follow up that and investigate and then nothing more will happen.
And then a week later I was absolutely shocked when I got a call saying they were proceedings with five charges.
ROLAND BROWNE: I don’t think the investigation scratched the surface. I really don’t. She explained her circumstances in relation to each of the five charges.
At that point, ordinarily you would expect the police to then go away and check out the explanation that’s given but it appeared to us that nothing was done at all after that interview.
LUCY SHANNON: The police alleged she had used the work credit card to pay for personal items. Such as a $25 parking ticket issued in work time.
Ms Donnet Jones told police in an interview it was SASS policy for the organisation to pay but the investigating officer never sought the policy, nor was it provided by SASS.
In the costs submission tended in court this week, Roland Browne said the investigating police officer would have been made aware of these facts if he had made these simple inquiries.
Another charge related to the use of the work credit card for immunisations. Again, Mr Browne said, “Astonishingly the investigating office had no knowledge that the money had been repaid until he learnt of that in the witness box. It had been paid almost three years prior.’
Two other charges related to the purchase of a packet of pain killers and adhesive bandages. Ms Donnet Jones said she made a successful workers compensation claim for a broken leg.
The costs submission says:
“… a reasonable process of investigation after the 3rd of August ought to have demonstrated to a reasonably proficient investigator that there was absolutely no basis for these two criminal charges to have been laid.”
Roland Browne is at loss to explain why the case wasn’t properly investigated:
ROLAND BROWNE: From where I stand and with the experience that I’ve got, something went very wrong at a very early time with this case.
LUCY SHANNON: Months before the case came to court and the charges were eventually dismissed, the lawyer wrote to police, telling them that the paperwork he had summonsed undermined the charge and he encouraged them to drop the case.
ROLAND BROWNE: I was told they had a meeting with the board of SAS and the outcome of that meeting was they decided to press ahead.
LUCY SHANNON: Karen Donnet-Jones is angry at the level of access board members seem to have to police.
KAREN DONNET JONES: I really felt that that police officer had months and months and months of people, and he told me he had months and months of people lobbying him essentially.
LUCY SHANNON: They spent many hours on the phone to the police, even I understand when police officer was on holiday in Queensland. Does it concern you that they did seem to have such easy access to police while can Karen Donnet-Jones feels her explanations weren’t even investigated?
COMMANDER PETER EDWARDS: Look I only heard that said today about the degree of access and what was or wasn’t said. I don’t know whether that is right or not but suffice to say that when people make complaints, serious criminal complaints, we often spend, have to spend a lot of time with them to sift through evidence.
LUCY SHANNON: Are you willing to consider the possibility that perhaps the officer was persuaded quite heavily by these people?
COMMANDER PETER EDWARDS: I’ve really got to keep an open mind. I have heard that said. I am not dismissing that but I just can’t be jumping to conclusions.
LUCY SHANNON: Commander Peter Edwards will review the case. He says the officer who conducted the investigation is no novice.
COMMANDER PETER EDWARDS: The officer who was responsible for this investigation is an extremely experienced highly qualified detective with many, many years of experience and particularly in fraud related matters.
LUCY SHANNON: Ms Donnet-Jones wants an opportunity to talk to Commander Edwards. She believes the investigating officer had reservations about the case but he was pushed to continue.
KAREN DONNET JONES: He even said to me I am not really sure about this case. He said he had gone to a senior police officer and he’d been told that he had to continue with the case.
LUCY SHANNON: Lin Thorp was the Human Services Minister at the time Karen Donnet-Jones was sacked. As SASS was funded by her department, Ms Donnet Jones wrote a six page letter to the Minister, requesting a meeting about the board’s conduct.
She says she was initially told the Minister was too busy.
She believes Ms Thorp was influenced by her close friendship with SASS board member Kerry Degrassi.
KAREN DONNET-JONES: She should have showed some more impartially given her friends was the main person persecuting me, I felt.
LUCY SHANNON: She says that your friendship with Kerry Degrassi clouded your judgment seriously in this case?
LIN THORP, FORMER HUMAN RESOURCES MINISTER: I have already made it very clear when Karen wrote to me, or rang me at my office and asked for an interview, asked for a meeting with me, we were undertaking an independent investigation of the service.
I responded in writing and said it would be inappropriate for me to meet with her and that was the sum of it.
LUCY SHANNON: Has your friendship clouded your judgment in this case?
LIN THORP: No, it did not.
LUCY SHANNON: In light of the concerns the department did carry out on audit investigation of SASS.
The Government says the report concluded that the organisation had good governance arrangements, but that report has never been released
KAREN DONNET-JONES: I was the only person in that review that wasn’t included. So the staff all got interviewed, the board members got interviewed and I was excluded from that process.
LUCY SHANNON: Lin Thorp says it was not her role as Minister to interfere in the board’s operations. That’s despite her department issuing standards of practice obligations to SASS which covered governance arrangements.
So you don’t have any regrets about your role in this whole saga with relation to Karen Donnet-Jones?
LIN THORP: Absolutely not. I am just very sorry that Ms Jones has gone through what what is clearly an unpleasant ordeal.
LUCY SHANNON: Karen Donnet-Jones says if the Minister had looked deeper into the matter, it mightn’t have gotten this far.
KAREN DONNET-JONES: When I rang up they said it’s only a tick the box review, it is very minor.
So I don’t think there was any intention to really look into it. If he’d taken what I’d written down seriously it should have been a thorough review at that point.
And I think a thorough review might have said they’ve brought these charges against this person and this is a concern and that would have been another opportunity to have this thrown out.
LUCY SHANNON: Greens member Cassy O’Connor now has responsibility for the area.
She said in September she would meet with the board to discuss concerns about government funding being used to pursue the former CEO.
That meeting has now been pushed back again.
CASSY O’CONNOR, CABINET SECRETARY: The more precise questions about how the board has conducted itself and what monies have been spent, I will be putting to the board when I meet them in early December.
LUCY SHANNON: Craig Green a lawyer representing SASS told Stateline yesterday that was not his understanding of the purpose for the meeting. He confirmed SASS funds were used to hire a private investigator to look into the bullying allegations against Ms Donnet-Jones and that the appropriate documentation had been with the government for months.
KAREN DONNET-JONES: The money that goes to sexual assault services being used to get ammunition to launch this whole investigation I think that’s just disgraceful.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/11/05/3058800.htm
Sunday Tasmanian:
A WOMAN cleared of allegations that she stole money from Tasmania’s Sexual Assault Support Service says she received death threats and that her children were harassed during the saga.
Karen Donnet-Jones, who was chief executive of the the government-funded organisation, said she had been told that she would end up at the bottom of the River Derwent if she did not stop making claims about the support service’s operations.
People had driven past her house and yelled abuse, she said.
Earlier …
Donnet-Jones: Roland Browne on Stateline tonight
Thanks for all of the supportive comments.
There is a great deal more behind this story and it takes time for the facts to emerge.
One comment I would make is that the investigator in this case was a friend of a Board member’s brother.
Despite the investigator writing two reports about me, I have never spoken or met this person! During the trial retired Judge Michael Hannon’s letter of resignation from the SASS Board was submitted as evidence. This letter outlined serious conflicts of interest, lack of natural justice and any procedural fairness afforded to me by the SASS Board.
My Lawyer Roland Browne and I have been interviewed by ABC’s Stateline which will go to air this Friday night.
This comment appears on this article, HERE, COMMENT on this article … or BELOW …
First published: 2010-11-05 07:35 AM