Police knew for years of risk of handing DV victims’ details to offenders

Queensland Police unlawfully gave victims’ addresses to domestic and family violence offenders in seven cases, despite being aware of the risks for years, a report has found.

Information Commissioner Joanne Kummrow launched a review of the matter last December after the issue was reported by Nine News.

Victims who were in hiding and being harassed or threatened by phone or email had their home recorded as the offence location – a detail that was then included on court paperwork given to offenders.

At the time, senior police told Nine and parliamentary hearings that the issue was due to an autofilling element of their data systems that officers needed to manually redact.

Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said then that police were unsure about the scale of the issue and only knew what was reported.

Kummrow’s report, published on Wednesday, found police were aware of the risks since at least 2017 but were slow to address them.

“A privacy breach of this nature is unquestionably serious as it risks further physical and psychological harm to victim survivors from perpetrators of domestic and family violence,” Kummrow said in a statement.

“While the disclosure of victims’ addresses to offenders by the QPS was unintentional, prioritising privacy is paramount in keeping victims safe from further harm.”

Kummrow found police policies, procedures and systems failed at both a technical and administrative level, and breached state privacy law.