Into the Darkness

by Robin Bowles

  O’Neill sat down, and Moglia had another go. ‘Mr Galbally suggested to you that since 2 December, you were crafting a concern about Mr Hampel. You recall those questions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you trying to pursue any hypothesis that might explain Phoebe’s death?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And did you use every bit of information available to you at the time to assess those hypotheses by a process of elimination? For example, you have expressed concerns about who had the phone at the time the “tomato soup” message was sent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was your concern specifically that it was or was not at the phone repair shop, or rather were you concerned about whether or not Phoebe had the phone at that time?’

  ‘As to whether Phoebe had it at that time.’

  ‘So it doesn’t really matter whether or not it had been booked in for service on the Wednesday or the Thursday but rather who possessed it at the time of 10.30 message?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Moglia was asking about Len’s call to Phoebe’s iPhone on the evening of 2 December and Ant’s call to him a minute later when the Coroner interrupted. He said Moglia should have broached these matters earlier, and added, ‘Are you suggesting that there was something sinister in the ordering of those phone calls?’

  ‘It’s been put quite frankly to this witness that he’s set his sights and constructed and crafted a case,’ Moglia said.

  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s being suggested that he crafted a case in a sense that he was trying to fit Mr Hampel up with a crime that he didn’t commit,’ said the Coroner. ‘It was suggested that he felt that there were unexplained circumstances surrounding the death of Phoebe, which could not have occurred without the involvement of a third party. Those issues drove him to make further enquiries and he quite properly responded in the affirmative.’

  ‘A little more than that, Your Honour. It was suggested, quite forcefully, that the basis for his concerns was faulty,’ Moglia responded.

  Mr Galbally popped up. ‘Could I just add one thing too? I never suggested to Mr Campbell that he’s crafted a case.’

  ‘No. I’ve just said that,’ His Honour replied.

  ‘Crafted a scenario or a concern, but never crafted a case.’

  ‘You suggested that he undertook enquiries because of underpinning facts which were unexplained.’

  ‘Precisely. And I haven’t used the word “fit up” — that was never behind my questions,’ Galbally protested.

  The Coroner admitted, ‘No, well, perhaps I was being a little overly dramatic with that use. But, I mean, the point was that wasn’t what was being suggested.’

  Moglia chipped in, ‘Minds might differ, with respect, Your Honour, as to what setting sights on and constructing a criticism and crafting a concern might imply. I’m grateful for my learned friend to disavow any such suggestion from this witness.’

  Semantics, semantics! Where would the law be without them? My hand was hurting from trying to keep up.

  Lorne half-stood to leave the witness box. Oh good, I needed a break!

  But then he sat again.

  ‘Your Honour,’ he said, ‘could I go back to a question from Mr Galbally? I think I might have misunderstood the ambit of it. It was a question relating to Mr Hampel’s absence at the time that Phoebe had died. We don’t know when she died. I think I answered in the affirmative that he was absent, but we’ve got no idea when she died.’

  ‘And are you also saying we don’t know when she went into the chute?’

  ‘Correct, Your Honour.’

  ‘Thank you. You may stand down.’

  Lorne looked pretty whacked when he got down. I reminded myself he isn’t a young man, and the ordeal of giving technical and dispassionate evidence about his beloved granddaughter’s death and having had some of his pet theories about the circumstances of her death unpicked by Galbally hadn’t left him in a good place.

  I suggested we meet for lunch at the Chinese dumpling place across the road. I hardly know anyone who doesn’t like dumplings, and it was cheap and cheerful, with big serves delivered quickly. Ideal when you only have an hour.

  Over lunch, Lorne and Natalie and I got to know each other a bit. I don’t like to push myself on relatives, especially during a stressful inquest, but it can be helpful if they’ve had a chance to meet me and ask about the way I work. Managing a bowl of slippery dumplings is a pleasant distraction, too, after a tough session in the witness box.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE PSYCHOLOGIST

  The witness after lunch was Judith Walker, Phoebe’s psychologist, who was called to outline her dealings with Phoebe, especially in the day or two leading up to her death. Ms Walker had been seeing Phoebe for almost ten months. She said Phoebe suffered from ‘chronic depression, episodically since her teenage years, problematic alcohol and drug use, poor self concept, self doubt, difficulty discovering direction and in creating a satisfying life’. She’d also noted there were ‘relational problems’ with her partner. Ms Walker saw her professional role as being to offer Phoebe coping strategies during whatever negative phase she might be in. She believed some of Phoebe’s problems were moderate, but others were quite serious.

  She was read notes that Phoebe’s GP made during a visit in March 2010, observing that Phoebe was on Lexapro, a selective serotonin uptake inhibitor used to treat anxiety in adults. The GP’s notes went on: ‘Binge drinking until a few weeks ago. Cocaine last week. Used ecstasy a few months ago. Still pretty flat currently and a little agitated.’

  That sounded quite serious to me. I wondered where she got the cocaine. Could it have been from Krissy Hampel? Perhaps that’s why Ant didn’t want her to see his sister.

  They’d discussed the idea of suicide, but Phoebe never got to the point of saying, ‘This is how I intend to do it’, or ‘I’ve thought about doing it in this particular way.’ She used alcohol a lot to manage her social anxiety.

  Ms Walker also told the court that during one of Phoebe’s visits in August, she had observed ‘that the depression was much worse, that she’d been drinking every day, had rowed with her partner, felt unsupported by him.’ Ms Walker found the passage she was looking for in her notes. ‘“She also took a lot of sleepers on Friday to escape in sleep but denies that it was a suicide attempt.” And I noted that she had been cutting her fingers.’

  Ms Walker had observed Phoebe’s short-lived attempts to leave Ant. ‘On 8 November her mood seemed OK. She had left Ant but come back. Something that happened in the relationship. Her paternal grandmother had died. She was longing for a stable relationship. She was not terribly unhappy that day.’

  But only a week later, on 15 November, things had deteriorated. ‘Her mood was low and she was teary at times. She didn’t know what to do about her relationship. She drank. Her partner got upset. She felt she had to atone and that it’s her fault. She was low and tearful.’ Ms Walker said Phoebe had told her, ‘When I try to be me it’s not right for him.’

  Ms Walker went on, at times reading from her notes: ‘She felt that he put her down and behaved rudely to her in public, making her feel wrong or stupid and that things are her fault. When she says anything, which she rarely does, he becomes defensive and aggressive. She feels she can’t assert herself and feels taken for granted and that she is unhappy in the relationship, that Ant’s attitude is making her miserable.’

  Ms Walker said later that Phoebe was always the one who left. She didn’t wait for relationships to end. ‘She is a pleaser in order to be loved. She feels a burden to people.’

  Their last formal session was on 29 November, but she had a very emotional 37-minute phone call from Phoebe on Tuesday 30 November, two days before she died. Ms Walker said Phoebe had told her that Ant ‘always accuses’, and she felt very alone and hopeless. She also said she felt ‘unsafe’, wh
ich Ms Walker interpreted as meaning that she was suicidal. For the first time, the psychologist felt Phoebe was ‘actively considering killing herself’.

  In spite of this, Ms Walker said she didn’t consider calling the Crisis Assessment Team (CAT) when she herself was unable to see Phoebe on that day. She suggested she contact the Alfred hospital, but in retrospect she thought it ‘would have been appropriate to call the CAT’. Phoebe said she’d take some pills and sleep her pain away. At the time, Ms Walker said she wasn’t worried that Phoebe would overdose on the pills; she just wanted to sleep through the day.

  The Coroner asked if there would have been ethical difficulties in calling the CAT, or a family member if she was worried.

  ‘Calling the CAT would have been fine, but not a family member, as that would violate Phoebe’s confidentiality,’ Ms Walker said. ‘She didn’t have a next-of-kin number anyway. There was no sense she wanted anyone called.’

  The Coroner got a bit upset about this. ‘She wasn’t herself, not thinking rationally and she was at risk. So whether or not she wanted anyone else called didn’t amount to a hill of beans.’

  Ms Siemensma picked up the same thread and asked, ‘The last time you spoke to Phoebe she was, in your view, actively suicidal. Did you follow her up later that day or the next day?’

  ‘No. I regret that I didn’t.’

  ‘Is there any reason why?’

  ‘I had been busy, I guess.’

  Ms Walker had only been a registered psychologist for 15 months when she started seeing Phoebe. I got the sense that her relative inexperience was weighing upon her. She didn’t look very young. I wondered if she’d done her training later in life.

  There was some discussion about whether Phoebe was also suffering from a borderline personality disorder and about her ability to ‘bounce back’ from periods of binge drinking or bouts of depression.

  Ms Walker said, ‘I would not call her resilient, but she could recover enough to carry on her daily life.’

  She was asked what she thought when she found out Phoebe was dead. She said she was surprised. She thought it might have been an accidental overdose of pills and alcohol. ‘I didn’t think that she would have killed herself.’

  The Coroner was interested in how Phoebe saw herself fitting into the whirl of dinners, functions, concerts, and so on she attended as part of Ant’s work. Could the fact that she was stretched financially have contributed to a feeling of worthlessness?

  Ms Walker thought it was possible. ‘She wasn’t happy not being an equal partner in that relationship. Phoebe felt quite dependent on her partner. She was also highly anxious at a lot of the functions and events that they attended. But I’m not sure that her financial situation had a lot to do with the drinking and the drug use.’

  Ms Walker felt the main obstacle to Phoebe in trying to leave Ant wasn’t that she lacked anywhere else to go, but rather that she lacked the ‘capacity to go out and forge a life for herself by herself’.

  As Len didn’t have counsel representing him, he had the right to ask Ms Walker questions about his daughter, but initially he opted to have Mr Moglia ask questions on his and Natalie’s behalf. There were a lot of questions about borderline personality disorder, and it was obvious Ms Walker was becoming quite uncomfortable when Moglia put her on the spot about her expertise in that area.

  At one point, she said she was very nervous. The Coroner offered to adjourn early, as it was about 3.30 p.m., but she elected to soldier on.

  Moglia asked, ‘Did you obtain any previous mental-health diagnoses of Phoebe?’

  ‘No, I’m not able to access previous diagnoses.’

  ‘And so were there any other sources of information you relied on during your treatment?’

  ‘No. Only Phoebe’s. Only our sessions.’

  ‘And she had regular sessions with you, weekly or fortnightly?’

  ‘It was generally weekly, although there were periods where she was away or failed to attend sometimes because she was hung over from the weekend, but she didn’t fail to attend from mid-July onwards.’

  Moglia tried a different tack. ‘Looking back at the fact that Phoebe was found dead on 2 December, it would be hard, wouldn’t you agree, to not interpret what you heard on the 30th in terms of a trajectory towards suicide?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I would agree.’

  Moglia had more questions and the Coroner had an appointment. He asked Ms Walker to return in the morning. She told the Coroner it would be very difficult, but he basically said words to the effect of ‘Too bad, make arrangements.’ The longer I go on attending courts, the more I realise the Coroner’s powers are almost absolute.

  *

  Next morning, it was obvious that Moglia had been busy overnight. He’d obtained the practising guidelines from the psychologists’ peak body, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and found the rules on confidentiality in regard to fear of harm. Ms Walker also had a copy, which he must have provided.

  Moglia said, ‘Having refreshed your memory from this principle or guideline, that in fact you are permitted to breach confidence to the minimum necessary in order to avoid imminent risk?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She went on to agree with him that confidentiality didn’t apply under three sets of circumstances: ‘if the file is subpoenaed by a court, if the person is at risk of harming themself, and if there is risk to somebody else in information they disclose’.

  He then took her through the way she assessed the possibility that Phoebe might be at risk of harming herself during the phone call on 30 November. She said that five checkpoints were set out by the Crisis Support Services. Does the person have the ideation — in other words, thoughts of killing themselves? Do they have the intention to try and kill themselves? Do they have a method or a plan for killing themselves? Do they have access to the means of carrying it out? And is there immediacy — are they planning to kill themselves right now?

  Ms Walker said, ‘I have written in my notes that I assessed her risk as high. She had ideation, intention, or desire at least. She had a method, or there was an inferred method — that is, pills and alcohol. She had access to means. She did not actually say, “I’m going to take pills and kill myself now”.’

  Moglia continued with a lot of questions probing Ms Walker’s skills and the degree of supervision she received during her probational registration. He seemed to be trying to get the Coroner to see that Ms Walker could have made other decisions about Phoebe if she’d had more experience, more supervision, or both.

  She was under a lot of stress during this questioning. She defended her skills and training, and the supervision she’d been under. She told the court that she was only entitled to associate membership of the APS. She’d need to go back and do a master’s degree to become a full member, or to qualify as a clinical psychologist.

  The Coroner asked her to explain what she thought Phoebe meant when she said during her phone call that she felt ‘unsafe’.

  ‘My understanding was that she was referring to alcohol and perhaps pill use.’

  ‘Not self-harm? How could you be confident about that?’

  ‘Her incidents of self-harm were infrequent and superficial. Cutting herself and so on.’

  Moglia asked if Phoebe could have meant she felt she was at risk of harm because of alcohol and pill use. She said that was fair.

  The Coroner wasn’t satisfied. The question, he told her, was trying to establish what Phoebe meant when she said she didn’t feel safe.

  ‘Do you want to add anything to your answer?’

  ‘I thought she might continue drinking and taking pills, which could have led to her taking her life.’

  ‘Was she contemplating using these means to end her life? Or that you thought it might be dangerous, she might unknowingly overdose and unintentionally cause her death?’

 
Ms Walker couldn’t answer that question.

  Moglia then took another tack. ‘Can you exclude any outside factors that could have contributed to her feeling unsafe? For example, the aggression in her relationship?’

  ‘I understood it to mean that feeling unsafe was that she felt suicidal. Not that she felt unsafe because she may be subject to aggression from anyone.’

  ‘But you couldn’t exclude that because you didn’t explore it in detail?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Galbally left no time for that reply to sink in. He told Ms Walker he was representing Ant, and fired off a series of questions about whether depressed people sometimes exhibited atypical behaviour such as wanting to sleep for long periods during the day. She agreed that depressed people often slept a lot, and alcohol aggravated that.

  Galbally then asked, ‘Is it typical that they have an ability to misinterpret things going on around them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So for the purpose of discussion, if someone was abusing alcohol and suffering from chronic depression and arguing with their partner about the drinking, possibly in a social setting, would it be possible that the depressed person might think they were being picked on?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ she agreed.

  ‘So a caring, supportive partner, who might be trying to limit the amount of alcohol consumed at a dinner party, could be misinterpreted by a person with depression?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘So Phoebe might have been in a caring, supportive relationship, but just misread signals, had a different perspective on the reality about the relationship, the drinking, or whatever?’

  ‘She may have.’

  ‘If Phoebe said she’d had four small glasses of wine at a dinner party, couldn’t there be a tendency, from someone addicted to alcohol, to minimise the amount they drink?’