Journal Archive
Tanya Hunter was left physically scarred after falling victim to a
vicious assault on duty four years ago. But much deeper
have been the soul-destroying emotional scars which have
wrecked the police career she had hoped to enjoy
for the rest of her working life.
By Brett Williams
Blood gushed from a gaping wound on Tanya Hunter's head after a violent escaped prisoner struck her in a frenzied attack with a metal bin. So powerful was the force of the blow that muscles in her left temple were sliced right through to her skull.
All she could see was the red of her own blood which streamed down her face and filled her eyes. She believed her attacker was "definitely trying to kill me".
But the raging prisoner's callous attack had begun several minutes earlier. And, believing that he was "just not going to stop", Hunter decided that faking her death was her only chance of staying alive.
Trying desperately not to flinch, she lay motionless, praying that her ploy would work - it didn't.
Shockingly beaten, bleeding and semi-conscious, she heard a "dull banging sound": the prisoner was now repeatedly striking the back of her head with the bin, despite her false display of lifelessness.
The bashing, to that point, had caused her senses to become substantially less acute. Only after the first few blows did she even recognize that the banging sound was the metal bin striking her skull.
It suddenly dawned on her that he was "trying to cave the back of my head in as well". Her fate, it seemed, was to be slaughtered on the floor of a country police station.
Ironically, the attack began when Hunter responded to what she believed was a personal need of the prisoner.
She was the only police officer on duty in Port Pirie police station that Sunday morning in October 1994. Three male prisoners detained in the cell complex were only part of her responsibilities.
One had decided to further flout the law by escaping - and seemingly at any cost. He had buzzed Hunter via an intercom and asked her for toilet paper, but that was only a ruse.
As a result of the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody findings, the cell bars had been covered by wire mesh preventing anything from being passed between them. So Hunter was forced to open the door slightly to pass the toilet paper into the cell area.
At that moment, the prisoner kicked the door fully open, burst from the cells and lashed out with over 20 "decent king hits" to her head.
With all her might, she tried to force him back into the cell area. But Hunter couldn't match his fury. She remembers him "thumping madly" and "going as crazy as possible".
"I began to feel a bit dizzy," she says. "I was yelling out for help, knowing that there was no one in the building. After screaming out, I started to go all woozy on my feet."
But as unsteady as she was, Hunter knew instinctively that, to summon help, she would have to make a dash for the only available lifeline: the police radio.
"I gave him a decent shove and took off toward the communications area," she says. "At that point, he could have just run passed me, jumped the counter and gone, but he chased me through.
"It was like a really awful thriller (movie) - I just got to touch the radio, but he forced me against the desk, picked me up and threw me. I did a huge backflip over some chairs. Before I knew it, I was seeing the roof, and then the carpet.
"I was laying face-down and he stepped into the middle of my back and began kicking the side of my head while I was on the ground. I was just trying to shield myself from the blows."
And those blows continued until Hunter's head had been savagely kicked about 10 times, with as much force, she estimates, as one would kick a football.
She felt her body lapsing into shock and began to think that, "this is not happening to me - this is a really horrible nightmare".
But no matter how her shocked, confused mind perceived it, the horror was by no means over. The brutal assault went on, as Hunter's attacker gripped her hair and started slamming her head, face-first, onto the floor.
"At that point," she says, "I actually thought: 'This is the way I'm going to die.' I was 100 per cent sure this was it."
Visions of her family flashed through her mind. She cried out for a god, and exclaimed: "this is just too much".
But it was then that the prisoner armed himself with the bin. Still lying face-down on the floor, Hunter raised her upper torso after hearing a "metal" sound. She saw the bin being swung with full force toward her head.
By now, however, she had neither the strength nor the speed to avoid the imminent blow. Its impact forced her torso back to the ground.
After the subsequent succession of blows to Hunter's head, the prisoner dragged her to her feet and demanded money. "He screamed it (the demand)," she remembers. "He'd gone totally berserk."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a $10 note which she handed him - and then collapsed. As she lay on the floor, she harboured a "little ounce of hope" that he would leave and she would survive.
But her attacker's next words chilled Hunter with fear. He told her: "You're coming with me". He dragged her to the station's front door and bellowed: "How do I get out of here?"
She told him the door was open, and that all he had to do was walk out. "He hesitated, let me go and then just took off," she says. "As I watched that door shut, I just ran through to the radio and contacted patrols."
Blood seeped from between her fingers and into her jumper sleeve as she held her battered head and transmitted her desperate call for help. As she summoned her rescuers, she watched an ever-increasing pool of her blood form on a table in front of her.
After alerting other police to her plight, she was assured by their wailing sirens that, at last, help was on its way. She tried to call the ambulance service but, suffering deep shock, she simply couldn't think how to speed-dial its telephone number.
"I stood there trying to work out how to call," she says. "I thought to myself: 'Hang on, you're losing it - you've got to ring the ambulance.' Finally, it just came to me."
So both police and ambulance officers were on their way. Within a few moments, they found Hunter at the station's back door which she'd wedged open so as to be found if she passed out.
"They carried me back in," she says. "Once everyone was there, I absolutely lost it - I just totally crumbled. They stuck me on oxygen and I started to black out as they were wrapping my head.
"I remember being on a seat one minute and on my back going along the hospital corridor the next minute. By then, my head had started to really throb."
Her injuries shocked all who saw them - including hospital staff. Her doctor remarked: "You should be dead".
"He (my doctor) said: 'You're going to have to have a fractured skull, at least.' He was just astounded that my head, considering how pulverized it had been, didn't have a fracture of some sort," she says.
"They put me through something like 25 different x-rays, and I was getting very stiff and sore by the time they sewed me up.
"In my muscles, everything was seizing. I had a lot of pressure behind my eyes and they thought they might have to bring me through to town to have it drilled.
"The first 24 hours were really bad. I was teary one minute, and in denial the next."
So, while Hunter tried to convince herself that her condition was something very minor, her colleagues' demeanour told a completely different story. "Periodically," she says, "they would just stand at the end of my bed with these white-sheet faces and shocked, frowning looks."
Even police psychologist, the late Ian Wells, who was soon by her bedside, was shocked into a period of silence.
She suffered extreme swelling to her forehead. It was fluid which caused the pressure behind her eyes. Closing deep lacerations to her temple and the crown of her head required a total of 30 sutures.
Hunter was disappointed to have received only a telephone call from SAPOL (South Australia Police) senior management. It came from a senior-executive-group member.
She remained in hospital for three days. Wells suggested that, on the day of her release, she return directly to the place in which she was nearly killed - she followed his advice.
"I went back into the station, walked around and got hot sweats and felt nauseous," she says. "(But) I wanted to 'get back on the horse', so to speak."
The blood-stained carpet had been scrubbed, but cleaning fluid had left permanent bleach marks which, to Hunter, became "a constant reminder of what happened".
After a month's convalescence she returned to work but performed only light duties without public contact. Within only weeks, however, she switched back to a public-contact role in what was for her a place of nightmarish memories - the police station. For a time, it became Hunter's personal chamber of horrors.
She experienced relapses, flashbacks and became acutely aware of noises while working alone on night shifts. To relieve her anguish, she sometimes called her on-road colleagues by radio, simply to hear their reassuring voices over the air.
Extraordinarily, one day shift, she was confronted by an eerie replication of the circumstances which preceded the attack.
"I had a prisoner in the cells and all of the patrols had gone," she says. "I remember thinking: 'This is happening all over again.' I picked up the phone and rang upstairs to the detectives' area and said: 'Is anyone up there?' "
This time, she wasn't alone. Another reassuring voice announced: "Yes, I'm up here, Tan. Are you okay?"
But, in reality, she was very far from okay. Her flashbacks were intensifying and she became plagued with horrific nightmares. Eventually, she plunged into depression.
"I remember ringing Ian Wells one day," she says, "only two or three months after the incident. I said: 'I feel like I'm going crazy here. I'm just crying at the drop of a hat - what's going on?' "
Wells referred her to a Port Augusta psychiatrist. After a few consultations with him, however, she lost confidence in the psychiatric process.
But of equal sadness to her at that time, was a superior's order not to use either police time or vehicles to attend those consultations.
And the same superior berated her on another occasion for attending a local doctor's appointment, related to her injuries, during work hours. She fled the station in tears and drove to an isolated area of salt flats.
"I remember sitting over there in the car crying," she says. "And I remember feeling my gun against my hip and thinking: 'I could just stick this barrel in my mouth and blow the back of my head out.' "
But she didn't. She went home and rang Wells again, and explained that she had "just contemplated 'topping' myself". She pleaded with him to "do something for me".
A local doctor prescribed anti-depressant medication for her, but she strained for three months to adjust to dosages.
Hunter's health had plummeted dramatically by June 1995. She suffered:
* Headaches.
* Colds.
* Influenza.
* Inner-ear infections.
* Neck complaints.
* Back complaints.
* Difficulty balancing medication.
She was handling the pressure of recovery poorly and was poised to resign. She felt that her police career was "going down the tube".
Meanwhile, in that same month, her attacker had effected another escape - this time from the Elizabeth police cells. Hunter had been on leave and was, at the time of the escape, heading back to Port Pirie.
"That was really bad for me," she says. "I thought he was escaping to come and get me so I couldn't say anything towards his court case.
"I went through a rough stage then. I felt from that moment on that my 'nine lives' were up, and that if anything ever happened again I'd be dead. It just left me feeling really negative about life and survival."
Two months later, Hunter reluctantly returned to Adelaide where she began a new job at SAPOL's communications centre. "Making that step," she says, "was signing my resignation anyway, because it was saying: 'You're no longer going to be on the road.' "
Neither Hunter's depression nor her physical ill-health was relieved by working at the communications centre. She experienced extreme anxiety and irrational thoughts as she travelled to and from work by public transport.
"I began to feel like a walking target," she says. "I just felt that somebody would recognize me. And I found that some noises would literally go through my whole body - it felt like the closest thing to a heart attack."
Her headaches increased, and after consulting a trauma surgeon, MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans revealed permanent damage to her cervical spine.
The surgeon diagnozed a 10-per-cent disability in her neck and suggested that it may become arthritic. Later, however, another doctor diagnozed 20 per cent disability.
Her health continued its downward spiral through 1996. She became obsessed with security, and her nightmare-filled sleep was now entirely erratic.
In desperation, she pleaded with SAPOL for some unpaid time away from work to try and "get it together". Because she loved her job, its resurrection was her priority. But SAPOL rejected her plea.
So, left with few choices, she opted to alter her hours, work only part-time and engage in study outside SAPOL. But after six months, she found that this regime wasn't helping. Her debilitating condition - later diagnozed as chronic post-traumatic stress disorder - worsened.
On simply seeing or hearing police cars, her heart would "start racing as if I'd done something wrong". Her disposition became one of total nervousness and, in addition to her existing ills, she developed rashes.
Totally unable to cope, Hunter began a period of leave under WorkCover in November '96. A psychiatric report later confirmed that her disorder was a direct result of the attack. It also suggested that her successful return to employment within SAPOL wasn't possible. Her career was effectively over.
In the meantime, issues of compensation and redeployment were yet to be finalized.
Dissatisfied with an offer from SAPOL's rehabilitation section to find her a job outside the police department, Hunter decided to resign. As far as finding a new job was concerned, she preferred to make her own way in the world.
She was initially offered a lump-sum payout by SAPOL of just $24,000. Assisted by her solicitor, she rejected this offer. A distasteful bargaining process now loomed.
Disagreements emerged about whether her payout should be calculated on the basis of her full-time or part-time employment. Moreover, she was forced to consult three different psychiatrists to satisfy SAPOL that the attack had rendered her unable to work.
Time dragged until a meeting was held with WorkCover, in whose hands the matter had been placed. Hunter attended with her solicitor and was further traumatized by proceedings. In her presence, she was spoken of in the third person.
"It was like I was some mental, diseased patient who didn't understand," she says. "I couldn't believe such a process goes on. I left at the end of it totally numb.
"People let the process go on, and it affected me mentally and psychologically for so long.
"It was almost like they were saying I was trying to rip them off, and all I was trying to say was: 'Can't you see that my career is totally stuffed? I didn't join the department just to be a statistic in the end.' The process was just so ugly."
Nonetheless, further bargaining resulted in a revised offer, which Hunter considered in consultation with her solicitor.
"I'm so sick of this," she told him. "I'm going to take it - I just want to get out of this so much."
Included in the deal was a paltry $500 for her future medical expenses.
She was also awarded compensation, but that amounted to less than $17,000, nearly all of which she's had to outlay on legal costs.
Throughout the entire saga, Hunter felt completely let down by SAPOL. She says it lacked genuine care. "There was absolutely no support," she says. "No one seemed to sympathize or understand what I'd gone through.
"I was trying to be positive in communications, but I always felt like I was some sort of damaged departmental problem that they'd shoved in there - that I was never really going to make it anyway."
Hunter, now 26, expected to feel elated and relieved when she signed her resignation on 13 May this year. But perhaps even she underestimated just how much she had loved police work, and that deep inside her burned a desire to continue being a police officer.
Signing on the dotted line in her solicitor's office proved to be one more trauma to endure. "I could barely write," she says, "and I left the office in tears, saddened that my career had been crushed and my life affected so incredibly.
"I just couldn't believe that it had come to what it did, in a job to which I'd given my life."[End]