Victoria Police has made a confidential payout of more than $500,000 to former officer Yvonne Berry.Credit:Joe Armao
Victoria Police have made a confidential payout of more than $500,000 to settle a case involving an ex-policewoman who was handcuffed,stripped of her underwear,stomped on and kicked by fellow officers in a police station.
The confidential payment was made more than two years after police initially and wrongly declared that there was insufficient evidence to charge police who allegedly assaulted Yvonne Berry.
The payment is one the highest made in Victoria to settle a brutality case,lawyers said,and comes after a policeman was convicted late last year for assaulting Ms Berry.
Since the initial incorrect finding that police had no case to answer was issued in early 2016 by a senior internal affairs officer,Ms Berry's ordeal has served as a case study for those calling for reform of Victoria’s police complaint system.
The system faced fresh scrutiny last week afterThe Age exposed several other brutality cases,which included complaints from alleged victims about the difficulty of making a complaint—and the fear of being improperly charged-- and concern that the complaint system is biased.
Ms Berry endured these same fears even though she had spent several years working as an internal affairs officer inside the police complaints system.
Video grab of Ms Berry in the Ballarat holding cells.
In aprevious interview withThe Age,she described the trauma of being charged with resisting arrest after her brutality complaint was dismissed.
Her charges were quietly withdrawn and her police brutality complaint revived after the intervention of Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission in 2016.