An advocate has labelled police actions during the search for a missing transgender woman a “terrible miscarriage of justice,” while grieving family members have provided devastating accounts of the impact of their loved one’s deaths during a coronial inquest.
Today was the third and final day of hearings as part of a coronial investigation into the deaths of five transgender women, Bridget Flack, Heather Pierard, Matt Byrne, Natalie Wilson and AS, who took their lives in Melbourne in 2020 and 2021.
The inquest, led by Victorian Coroner Ingrid Giles, has heard from police, health experts and LGBT advocates, discussing the high rates of distress and difficulties in access to health and mental health care for the trans and gender diverse community.
Switchboard Victoria’s Joe Ball told today’s hearing the failure of police to support or intervene in LGBTQIA+ community efforts to find Bridget Flack when she went missing in 2020, exposed a large number of people to the distressing news of her death by suicide.
“I think we still feel it today,” said Mr Ball.
The trans CEO leads Switchboard Victoria, a not-for-profit organisation led by LGBTQIA+ people that runs queer support services including helplines and a suicide prevention program, which tried its best to support a large number of people impacted by Bridget’s death.
“Some of the things that trans and gender diverse people are left with, are the feeling of, can we trust the police?”
Thousands of members of Melbourne’s LGBTQIA+ community banded together to find Bridget, with hundreds of community members physically looking for her and 6,000 people joining a Facebook page dedicated to the search.
She was found by two community members 11 days later. She had taken her own life.
Earlier this week, the inquest heard the search for Bridget that was co-ordinated by members of the LGBT community was not supported by Victoria Police in any formal capacity, and that Bridget’s sister Angela Pucci Love had struggled to communicate with police early in their investigation.
An internal review into the Victoria Police response Bridget’s case found no evidence of bias, the court heard.
Deputy Commissioner Neil Paterson agreed that the lack of police involvement in the community-led search may have contributed to the perception the community was left to search for one of their own.
“I think that there are ways that the ground search for Ms Flack could have been managed a lot better that should not have led to members of community finding her deceased,” he said on Monday.
The coroners court also heard discrepancies in police evidence over whether police had accessed accurate “phone triangulation” data from Bridget’s phone, which would have provided her location, if it had been accessed before her phone ran out of battery.
“They either didn’t do it, or didn’t use it,” Joe Ball said.
“I think there’s a terrible miscarriage of justice there.”
Police failures left community members unnecessarily traumatised
Bridget’s sister Angela Pucci Love said she did not believe there was bias in the police response but a failure to appreciate how vulnerable her sister was.
The court heard police systems assessed her as a “medium risk,” which Joe Ball said was not good enough.
“The police should have supported the search and she should have been listed as a high risk,” he said.
He said the people who found her “live with that to this day and that shouldn’t have happened.”
Families devastated by suicides
Today, the court heard also heard statements from the Kedra Pierard, the mother of Heather, Rachel Byrne, the mother of Matt, and Angela Pucci Love, the older sister of Bridget Flack.
Through tears, Kedra Pierard told the court how her daughter Heather, who took her own life at the age of 20 in 2021, “made people feel important and loved.”
“Her transgender community made her happier… she had a wonderful group of friends and aspirations in life,” she said.
Angela Pucci Love said her sister Bridget Flack, who struggled to access suitable mental health supports before she died, was “failed by many.”
“I want them to see her as a sister, an aunty, an activist, a unionist, and above all, someone who was special and loved,” she said.
Rachel Byrne told the court how she struggled to support her daughter Matt, and described her grief as “unforgiving, permanent and relentless,” during her statement which brought the counsel assisting the coroner to tears.
“We supported her and adored her,” Ms Byrne said.
“I desperately spoke to her about the high rates of suicide, and begged her not to take her life.”
She described her devastation when the police failed to notify her of 25-year-old Matt’s death by suicide in March 2021, so she found out via a phone call.
“I am left full of rage, confusion and pain, knowing Matt couldn’t talk to her struggles.”
