Police Life: The Experts podcast - Season 2 Episode 8: Taking back control

Carol-Anne was a hostage in her own home for 10 years. She was convinced that her family violence ordeal, at the hands of her husband, would end in her death.

But two Victoria Police officers stepped in to help her escape her tormentor and start a new life.

Listen to this episode and other episodes of Victoria Police's official podcast, Police Life: The Experts.

Transcript of Police Life: The Experts podcast, Season 2 Episode 8: Taking back control

Voiceover: You’re listening to Police Life: The Experts, a Victoria Police podcast shining a light on our people and their extraordinary skills.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: You don’t know at what point in a victim-survivor or a family’s journey that you’re actually meeting them. What’s happened before and what subsequently may happen.

So, we get tens of thousands of jobs a year and I think at last count it was, we’re responding every six or seven minutes to a family violence incident.

Voiceover: In this case, the lives of three women – two police officers, one victim – intersect at a critical moment in time. They build a bond of trust to pursue a cruel offender.

[Woman gasping]

Carol-Anne: Oh, did you find it?

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: It was like a broom handle – this old wooden broom handle and there was a rusty nail that had been put through.

Carol-Anne: There was more than one nail in there.

Voiceover: This investigation drew on the hard lessons from the 2015 Royal Commission into Family Violence in Victoria – the first ever in Australia. Too many people, mostly women and children, are dying or living in fear under coercion and control.

Carol-Anne: You can’t even see the front door to escape. It’s just not in your reality because the control is so complete that you cannot see a way out at all. I’m lucky to be here at all. He nearly killed me.

Voiceover: The abuse and violence Carol-Anne had suffered was headed inexorably towards an horrific climax. By June 2018, she had been a hostage in her own life for nearly a decade, living only at the whim of Nick Rizakis, the father of her two young children.

Carol-Anne: My main fear was that he would kill me and that he would end up having to raise my kids. That was my fear. Either that or he would kill them as well. Just to spite me.

I can’t say his name. It actually can’t come out of my mouth – I cannot do it. So, sorry – you can say his name, but I feel physically sick if I mention his name.

Oh, I can’t even begin to explain the dehumanising. I was saying it’s like minute by minute just surviving and the… the mental abuse was just overwhelming. The physical you recover from, but the mental you just never do. It’s ... sorry. I did not want to cry. Yeah, it’s just… it’s destroying, it’s soul destroying.

Voiceover: At the beginning of their relationship, Nick Rizakis had offered Carol-Anne everything, but over time he overwhelmed and dominated her.

Carol-Anne: These people – I don’t know what’s wrong with them – they just have to just… take every little thing away from you. Everything. It doesn’t matter what it is.

You know, you’re just not human in their eyes, you’re just a slave. It’s just complete control. Emotionally, physically… mentally. It’s just ripping you to your core. You just, it’s so hard to get out of that, you know, and I understand why a lot of people don’t find that strength.

Voiceover: The cop who would help Carol-Anne find her strength was biding her time in the watch-house at Moorabbin Police Station. She was a probationary constable with an endearing Scottish accent and a powerful sense of mission.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: My name’s Varri Mills. I’m a detective senior constable at Bayside SOCIT. When I met Carol, I was a PCET at Moorabbin. So, I’d been out of the Academy, when I went to this job, probably three months, two, two and a half, three months.

Voiceover: Probationary constables spend two years in their first station, where they learn customer service over the counter and on-the-road policing. Varri Mills only wanted to get out on the divisional van.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: And I remember I was at Moorabbin and because the watch-house there is always so busy, you never really got van shifts and everybody wanted van shifts because you, like, want to go out and be a cop and do cop stuff. And so you only had the occasional van shift.

So, I remember thinking, “Oh, I’m going to have to do this for two years, being in the watch-house the whole time”. As lame as it sounds, I wanted to make a difference.

Voiceover: The chance to make that difference came on that Sunday in July 2018. It began with a Triple Zero call. A member of the public reported that a neighbour was assaulting his partner.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I think that this was the first family violence job I went to. We were on the van. There was another, a job to say that there was a woman at the hospital, which was Carol.

And there was another unit that was already at the house, but it was going to be in our patch, so we were going to go.

Voiceover: If ever a victim met the right cop at the right time, it was Carol-Anne. However, for most of Carol-Anne’s ordeal, Varri wasn’t even in Australia, having only moved here from Scotland in the early 2010s.

Varri only planned to stay in Australia for seven months, but she made it her home, and, in late 2016 she decided to join Victoria Police. What she learnt about family violence at the Police Academy resonated.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I remember somebody saying “It’s all about building trust, everything’s about trust and this is the worst day of their life. You’re walking into the worst day of their life”.

That’s what I always remember being told. It was just drummed into you: “It’s all about trust”.

Voiceover: On July 1, 2018, Varri and her colleagues went to Carol-Anne’s home. Carol-Anne had taken herself to hospital, but her partner, Nick Rizakis, was at the family’s unit with their two children.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: He was very abrasive. That’s what I got from the get-go. I walked in the house and he, ah, I remember he had this red rug and I stood on it – must have been about an inch of my toes was on this red rug, and he said, he looked at me dead in the eye, he was sitting on the sofa and he said, “Get your feet off my rug, my wife will hate that”.

And I went, “No worries, mate” and I took a step back and just went, in my head, and I was like “There’s something not right here, there’s something not right with you”.

And, and the house was immaculate. Which, again, I was like, if there’s been a mad punch on here and some woman is at the hospital, why is, why is this house spotless?

Voiceover: Varri Mills had entered Rizakis’s domain where his rule was absolute.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: So, he was sitting on the sofa and he had his youngest child who’s, she would have been about 11 months. And then the other one was about four – she obviously was excited that it was police, so she wanted to come running up to me and he said to her, “Get back, don’t go near them”.

And he was, he made it quite obvious he didn’t want to speak to me because it was me and three guys. So, yeah, he made it clear he didn’t want to talk to me. And I was like, again, at the Academy you learn it’s not about whether I want to speak to them, it’s about getting the best result.

So, if he wanted to speak to one of the boys to feel better about himself, knock yourself out champ. Like, the result is going to be the same result. So that was it, and then we went outside for discussions.

[Atmospheric music begins in background]

He was being quite belligerent, saying we weren’t taking his kids and all this stuff. Meanwhile, there was another unit at the hospital with Carol, and then the decision was made by the senior member that we were going to take out a safety notice, which, in all honesty, I didn’t really understand any of these things.

I was too junior. And so I said, like, “What does that mean?”. And they said, “Well you get the kids together and then you’re going to take the kids”.

So, I remember taking the four-year-old into the room and I was like, “Show me what things you’re going to need if you’re going to stay the night with Mum”.

And she already had a little bag, and she was putting stuff in for the younger child and everything. And I remember thinking, “Oh, this is a bit strange”.

But she was so sweet, this little kid, and then she just, she didn’t want to let go of me, she kept holding on to my trousers.

And I remember that the ambos rocked up to give us a lift to the hospital and the four-year-old was telling me the directions to the hospital and I thought, “There’s something suss here. Like, she’s four years old. How does she know the way to the hospital? This has happened before – there's something more to this”.

So, we got to the hospital and I remember I had the 11-month-old on one arm and I had my little four-year-old friend on the other hand, and I walked into the ED. It was, again, the first time I’d been at a hospital for a job.

Carol-Anne: That’s how I first met her – when she walked into the hospital room with my two children. After that last and final moment when I escaped with my life.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: She looked like a shell of a human. She looked broken. She looked gaunt and almost grey, and just like she had nothing to give.

There was no sparkle to her at all. They had cleaned her up, but she still had blood. And she just started crying and I was like “It’s okay, I’ve got the kids here, everybody’s fine”.

Carol-Anne: I was absolutely so relieved to see them. And she just said, “It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. You’ve got this, I’ve got you, you can do this”.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: And I just started chatting nonsense to her, to be honest. I was like, “Everything’s going to be great now, you’re safe, you’re with us”. I was like, “Do you need something to eat?”. Like, I didn’t know where I was getting all these resources in my head from, but, like, I think I just wanted her to feel better.

Carol-Anne: Both herself and the other officer just took their time and said, “You cannot go back. We will help you, you can do it”.

It took a lot more than just those words, but that’s the first point where I started to believe there was a way that I could possibly get out and just that someone actually understood what was going on. So she, I made this connection with her and she just put herself completely out there for me.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: She was she was calm I think I even made her laugh at one point. Yeah, just talking, talking nonsense, telling jokes, which probably isn’t the best scenario to be telling jokes.

You know she’s in a hospital with her two kids after being attacked by her husband. But I think it just sort of gave it a bit of normality to the situation, that she was okay.

Carol-Anne: I was just teetering on the edge of a cliff, and they just held me until I could start take steps slowly backwards and get a grip of what was really going on.

If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. The police took out an order on him, I think. And the fact that they did that on my behalf let me breathe for a minute. It was like, “Oh, okay, maybe there’s a way out”.

Voiceover: The way out for Carol-Anne would also be a way in for investigators. There were reports that suggested Rizakis’s family violence against her was part of a potential history of offending.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: When he got brought in for the safety notice and they took his belongings, he had two Victorian driver’s licenses that were legit licenses. Both his photo, both his address, different names.

So, I went to the sergeant and I said to him, “Oh I don’t really know what you do about this” and they were like, “These licenses are legit. This could be a massive fraud situation”.

And I was like, “Okay, cool, I’m going to deal with that later” because I deal with what’s in front of me right now.

So, he got served his safety notice, and what have you, and then I think a day or two later, I spoke to Carol and she wanted to get some stuff from the house.

She needed a mattress for the baby and some clothes. And I said, “Right, well, I’m in on this date, we’ll do a property exchange”. And so I phoned Rizakis and I said to him, “You need to be out of the house during this time, I’m coming to do a property exchange”.

And he kicked off with the whole, “It’s my house, duh, duh, duh". And I was like, “It is what it is, mate, Like, you’re not going to be there”.

It’s like she was scared that he was either hiding in the house or he left something in the house. And he had. He’d left notes around the house, where he obviously knew that she was going to have to get things.

He’d hidden notes in sock drawers and on notepads in the kitchen writing these messages like Bible verses and things that were, it was all manipulation, it was all, it was all to show that he was in control – he was watching her, he was still going to get a message through to her, even though he wasn’t allowed to speak to her.

Voiceover: For the moment, Carol-Anne was safe, staying in a secret location with her kids, but her tormentor was still free. Rizakis was charged over the assault on Carol-Anne and released on bail the same day.

But to lock him away for a good stretch, police would need Carol-Anne’s evidence in court.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: She was so petrified of what he might do because he’d obviously done it before. Yeah, so I had a bit of a crack at him. And then spoke to Carol over the coming days and I asked her straight out, I said, “Has he done this before?” and there was a bit of a silence and she said, “Oh… I don’t want to go into it” and I went, “No worries”.

I was, like, “Well, if you ever change your mind, you can just tell me. It doesn’t need to be now, it doesn't need to be five weeks, five years, whatever”. I was, like, “If you ever want to talk to me about it, then I’m here”.

And then, I got moved to Prahran and so I think I had maybe a couple more conversations with Carol, and then I’d said to her, I was like, “Oh it’s a bit difficult now because I’m not in the same division, so I’m not allowed to respond to things that happen there”.

I was like, “So you’re going to have to go through Moorabbin, unfortunately”. I was like, “But if you get any sort of pushback, just tell me and then I can speak to them for you”.

But that was, yeah, that was pretty much it. And then the next I heard was when I got an email from Elise.

Voiceover: Six months after Carol-Anne met Varri, another police officer was about to enter her life.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: My name is Elise Douglas. I am a detective sergeant attached to the Sexual Offence and Family Violence Unit with Professional Standards Command.

However, at the moment, I am doing a temporary assignment in the family violence training officer in Eastern Division Two. I’ve been a police officer for 18 and a half years.

Voiceover: Elise’s path to Carol-Anne actually began in 2015, when Victoria held Australia’s first Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Audio from YouTube clip from the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Commissioner Marsha Neave: I would like to ask all those present to stand for one minute’s silence to acknowledge all those in Victorian community who have been subjected to the terrible harm of family violence.

Voiceover: Victoria Police faced harsh criticism from witnesses about its handling of family violence.

[Atmospheric music begins in background]

Audio from YouTube clip from the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Commissioner Marsha Neave: We had no trust of Victoria Police and women didn’t trust Victoria Police. Change cannot be achieved over-night. Our goal is to set strategic directions so future generations will be able to say this commission was a turning point in the struggle against family violence.

Voiceover: It was a turning point for Victoria Police and Elise Douglas. She was a detective senior constable in the Armed Crime Squad. After five years there, she felt in need of a change. Family violence policing had always been an interest.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: As a very junior constable, three months out of the Academy, I responded to a family violence incident of strangulation that I know at the time was done poorly.

Our response was poor. And you know, I didn’t know better at that time and I leaned on, you know, those around me to show me the way. And unfortunately, the way that that crime scene was managed and the way that the police response - it was insufficient.

But it was indicative of where we were at the time.

Voiceover: The Royal Commission was harsh medicine for Victoria Police but led to necessary changes.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Subsequent to the Royal Commission, we now have specialist family violence investigation units. We have specialised training at every rank to fully understand the nuances of family violence.

We are training on coercive control, we are training on non-fatal strangulation, we are training on mis-identification, we are training on predominant aggressors.

There is so much training that we now do, and we are so much better at responding to family violence, and understanding family violence than, you know, perhaps when I first joined the organisation 18 and a half years ago.

Voiceover: In March 2017, Elise asked for a transfer to the Family Violence Command Taskforce, which had been set up even before the Royal Commission released its findings. These findings included a call for Victoria Police to target repeat offenders.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: The intel team assessed and found Nick Rizakis to be somebody who may, there may be scope for investigation for the detectives of the Family Violence Taskforce.

There was a history of recorded incidences of family violence with multiple former previous intimate partners, so that captured our investigative charter. He was nominated as a proactive investigation.

So, on the 1st of January of 2019, on a baking hot day, I knocked on Carol-Anne’s door with one of my colleagues, David McCann, and she didn’t answer the door.

Carol-Anne: I just saw the police and I was afraid.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: We had to ring her – we rang her from the doorstep and she did answer. She was out the back with her children, so it was a really delicate situation to be in and she wasn’t coming to the door.

So, I had a conversation with her on the phone hoping that, maybe, you know, she would at least be open to hearing why it was that we were there.

Carol-Anne: I’m thinking, “What are you doing here?”. I think, from memory, she said that it was all around some possible historical violence, or history of something that they needed to discuss with me. So, I was quite confused about it all at that point. So, I think I told you to go away.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Mmhmm, you absolutely told us to go away. And in fact, I think what you said was, “I need to talk to Varri Mills about this and maybe I’ll get back to you”.

Carol-Anne: That’s right. I’d put a lot of stake in Varri explaining to me why are these people here?

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I got this email, and so I phoned Elise and she said, “We want to speak to this victim, we’ve gone to her house, and she won’t open the door to us”. She asked “What’s your relationship like?”.

And I said, “Oh she’s great. Like, me and Carol get on brilliant” and I said, “I’ll phone her for you, no worries”. So, I phoned Carol and I said, “These detectives are wanting to speak to you”, and she went, “Yeah, I don’t think I want to do that, like, I don’t know who they are”.

Carol-Anne: She said, “I think you should speak to them”.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I was like, “I don’t know what they want either”, I went, “but they’re from the city and they deal with all the big stuff and so, and they’re detectives, like, I’m just in uniform”. I was like, “You should, you should probably speak to them” and so she agreed to talk to them.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Carol opened the door and allowed us to have an options talk and a disclosure conversation around what this might look like. You know, what this is, who are we?

And I was with my detective senior sergeant at the time, Brett Meadows, and he said something to Carol that I think made a profound difference.

[Atmospheric music begins in background]

Carol-Anne: He said, “I’m sorry this happened to you”. I do remember that conversation and that broke down so many walls. For someone to recognise this is what happened. You know – they could see they, they saw what happened, they understood. So, it was important to me.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: The statement process with Carol was quite extensive. It went over several months. There was, from memory, there were 15 sessions to compile that statement because we were talking about such an extended period of time. It was unreasonable to ask Carol to dive into all of that stuff, all of that really heavy offending, in one sitting.

Carol-Anne: It was gruelling initially. There was – it was really, really mentally and emotionally hard, but I just had complete faith in the way that it was going to be presented. And I just kept thinking that it had to be done, you know, he needs to go to prison.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: So, it was important through the statement process with Carol-Anne that we were able to particularise as many incidences of violence as we could and why, and how one black eye might have been different from another black eye. Because ultimately those two circumstances could feel very similar.

So how do we differentiate the actual incidences that allow us to then identify a charged act. But also, that coercive control and that history, the whole story of how we got to that physical violence, is also important because it’s contextual offending, it’s relationship, you know, it’s conduct within the relationships, but you can’t do anything unless your victim survivors have the courage, have the bravery, to be able to participate as much as they are able in the criminal justice process.

I am irrelevant unless I have a victim-survivor who, who takes that, you know, it’s a leap of faith and it’s a leap of courage to be able to say, “This happened to me, this is my lived experience of harm”.

Once you have seen one or two of these instances play out and you hear the stories of survivors, it absolutely seems as though all of these type of perpetrators have been given, at some point in time, this playbook to operate from. And, of course, that’s not the reality.

There’s only so many ways a human being can be coerced and controlled so, you know, which is why it begins to look like they’re all operating with the same set of rules.

Carol-Anne: I definitely took a little while to let her in. I then told her my whole life story and then it just went, phew, blew up. I don’t think you had any idea what you were in for.

[Carol-Anne laughs]

You had no idea what the story truly was.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: No, I certainly didn’t understand the depth, the depth of your, of your lived experience. I didn’t have any concept but I certainly do now.

[Audio of sounds from a bar]

Voiceover: Melbourne, 2007.

[Moody, atmospheric music begins]

Carol-Anne: I was out with a friend who had just recently broken up with his wife, and we were just sitting there talking. So, he was there with a group of people at a bar, spotted me, and apparently he just bee-lined for me.

I was in a deep conversation. I don’t really remember seeing him apart from just coming in and just bombarding the conversation I was having with someone else.

And he just started to pursue me with phone calls and, you know, we met, I had a drink and just like a normal relationship. And then he just started giving me gifts and, you know, just being overly nice. I was in a fragile state at that point and he just roped me in.

He presented himself as a producer at Channel Ten of Big Brother. He was in a suit, he would take business lunches.

He presented himself as a middle-class businessman who had his whole life under control and, you know, he sort of had done a bit of investigating, obviously – where I worked, knew I worked near Channel Ten, knew that could pique my interest, and to give me a sense of someone who was trustworthy, genuine, you know, educated, confident, reliable.

None of it was true.

[Background music intensifies]

It was just a big facade; was just, he was going on a fishing expedition trying to hook me. He had a long-term relationship with someone for 10 years and that she had just decided to leave him.

And then after that, he had a couple of year relationship with another girl, you know, he was very down and depressed because she left and he’s like, “Woe is me. I’m by myself, I’ve had these amazing women and they’ve left me”.

Voiceover: The first red flag came a few months into their relationship.

Carol-Anne: He gave me a very expensive gold bracelet and I was out with a friend having lunch, and he called and was like, “Why are you out with him having lunch?” and then all of a sudden, he just appeared across the street and called me and said, “I’m over here, come over”. So, I had to cross the road and went over there and he ripped the jewellery off me and said, “You don’t deserve this”.

And by the way, it was a gay male friend that I was with, so it wasn’t a threat to him, it was just a friend, someone who wasn’t him. I was completely taken aback and then he said, “You said you were coming to my house”.

I thought, “Well, I will”, he said, “Well, I want you there now”. So, I had to wrap up the lunch and then drive over there and I was completely baffled, like, why did this happen? What happened? “You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve to, to have me because you should be putting me first”. That’s one incident.

Voiceover: 2008

Carol-Anne: It was very slow to start with. My lease ran out and he pretty much manipulated me into moving in with him. As soon as I moved in with him, it was pretty quick after that. Pretty quick.

The classic example would be cooking a meal. So, he was very particular about his meals, and I would make them exactly the way that he would want them. I would check, “What would you like? Do you want it this way? Do you want it that way?”. “This is what I’d like”, “Great”. Then you make it and then it’d be, “No, that’s not what I asked for” and it’d end up on the wall.

Voiceover: On these occasions Rizakis would make Carol-Anne immediately go out, shop for the ingredients again and re-cook the exact same meal.

And then in 2010 ...

Carol-Anne: It escalated around a situation when we went out. He got jealous about something he thought he saw and in the car on the way home he broke my nose. So, and then when we went into the house, he threw me into the corner of the concrete wall.

So, I don’t even know where to go from that. I’ve got no home, I can’t tell someone this is what’s happened to me. I just… lucky I had a week or two off at that time, it was my first day of a break on holidays and that whole period of time I stayed inside trying to recover and not let anyone see what he’d done to me.

So, you know, that was, and then it just progressed after that – that was his ‘Welcome to my house’ message.

At that stage it was just about trying to not get him upset. If I did this, then he might pull my hair out, he might punch me, he might kick me, you know. This is really where that was, but like what Elise was saying, it’s the slow progression of, like, completely isolating me, like from my friend group.

I was very social and just bit by bit, “Oh that friend’s not good enough”, or “This girlfriend cracked on to me”, which, complete load of rubbish, but he would put doubts in my head, “Oh, maybe I need to distance myself from this person” you know, and then slowly, by slowly, by slowly, every single person would just disappear.

My Mum, I spoke to her every day – hers and I relationship was very close. I didn’t ever tell her what was going on… a couple of times I tried to, but she was quite convinced by him that everything was fine, so she was on board with the whole relationship, and I didn’t want to worry her.

Voiceover: 2011

Carol-Anne: The day I found out I was pregnant was the day my mum died. So, it was a lot going on. It was almost like it was a trap. I wanted my daughter desperately because my Mum had died and I wanted, you know, my mum always wanted me to have children and I hadn’t been able to.

Yeah, he told me to get rid of it – to have an abortion. He was not going to stand by me. And I told him, “That’s fine, I want this child anyway”.

And then when he realised that I was not going to do what he wanted, then he calmed down and he actually backed off me for a period of time there while I was pregnant. I think because I was in such a delicate position, mentally and emotionally, because obviously dealing with my brother dying the year before that and then my mother dying that day, I think he saw me on the edge.

And the minute that I started to get a bit of control of myself emotionally and mentally, he crept back in and started it all off again.

[Atmospheric music begins in background]

Voiceover: 2012

Carol-Anne: When I had my oldest daughter at the hospital, he was terrible. It was just a possession to him, it was another being to control and to hold onto, you know. He even stopped people coming in to see me in the hospital, family members. Trying to call security so that they weren’t allowed to come in and see me and my daughter.

I was… petrified at the time of going home – I didn’t want to – but I had no other options. But I was very lucky in the sense that they kept me in hospital for four weeks to recover from the birth, and my daughter had an infection.

And in that period of time, he was in this pure panic mode of coming in and out, trying to control me when he couldn’t because I was in the hospital system and they, the nurses and doctors, were sort of really keeping an eye on what was going on.

[Background music intensifies]

The minute I left the hospital, it was dreadful. I came home and it was dreadful. The mental abuse started. It was really, really bad – not so much the physical, but the mental. And then he progressed into the physical as soon as I had recovered fully from the birth.

Voiceover: In 2012, Rizakis took issue with some minor thing Carol-Anne had done and directed her to write 100 lines saying, “I am an idiot and I need to behave correctly and do what I am told”.

Carol-Anne: He completely put fear into me that the child would be taken away from me. He constantly told me that, “If you do anything, I’ll make sure that you never see that child again. I’ll get her taken away from you”.

That’s most mothers’ fears, and that’s what a lot of these arsehole men do, they scare the living shit out of the woman, because the women don’t come forward and try to get help when they desperately need it. It was just constant standing on eggshells, constantly panicking every minute, looking around.

I was, I didn’t know what hypervigilant meant until I met Elise and fully understood what it was. But I was a nervous mess, absolute nervous mess. Sick, stomach in knots, you know, I was petrified of stepping this way or that way because it’d be the wrong way.

Voiceover: One night at Easter 2014, Telstra reported to police that a distressed and crying female had called Triple Zero from Carol-Anne’s home address but hung up when the operator answered.

Carol-Anne: It was just pure panic. I was in a state of desperation and the minute that I did connect to the police, I realised, “Oh my God, what is he going to do to me again?”, so I hung up, but I didn’t know they were going to call back.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: By generating a call to Triple Zero – the call takers are actually trained to hear what is going on, even if there’s nothing being said necessarily, to listen to what is being conveyed through the phone, be that hysteria or a real point of crisis that’s just not being verbalised.

They have the phone number, and if the phone number is connected to addresses then a welfare check will be generated because someone is in crisis and someone needs help.

Carol-Anne: I got a knock on the door; it was the police, they came in. They wanted to see if we were all OK, and then the big facade started with how he portrayed himself. But I was secretly, like, so happy to see that.

I felt even for a few minutes that I was safe. But that then, I think it eventuated in a restraining order from the police at that point, or an intervention order, they were put in. So that they kicked him out of the house for the weekend.

Voiceover: Rizakis ignored the orders. Instead, he counterattacked, applying for an intervention order against Carol-Anne, alleging she was violent and alcohol-affected.

Carol-Anne: The first initial contact with police was very much like I did not feel as supported as I would have hoped. Only because he manipulated the situation and they tended to go, “Oh OK, she’s the hysterical one. He’s nice and calm and it’s just a fabricated thing” and that I’m crazy or whatever it ended up looking like that he painted the picture to be.

[Moody, atmospheric music begins]

Voiceover: The physical violence continued into 2015, and the psychological abuse was intense, with Rizakis exploiting Carol-Anne’s love for her daughter, now three, by driving off with her on occasions.

He would also kick Carol-Anne out of the house. One time, Rizakis even forced her to lick a concrete step at their front door before he would let her back in.

In 2016, when Carol-Anne was three months pregnant with their second child, Rizakis became enraged, saying he did not want the child. He smothered Carol-Anne with a pillow and punched her in the abdomen.

She took herself to hospital fearing for the baby’s life because she had lost so much blood. The doctor told her she had come close to losing the child.

In another incident, Rizakis strangled and threatened to kill Carol-Anne. She lost consciousness, felt her legs weaken and thought she was going to die. In that period, death seemed near. She imagined her children living with her killer.

Carol-Anne: My main fear was that he would kill me and that he would end up having to raise my kids. That was my fear. Either that or he would kill them as well. Just to spite me.

And I just tried a little bit, a little bit, and that was by maybe slipping something out to someone at work or, you know, maybe I just lied a little about how I’d got a bruise or something, and that lie would seem a little bit over the top and that’d make them question, “Well, maybe really is it a basketball in the eye?”.

You know, just, just little things. I think Salvation Army did a check in on me at one point. Somehow, they got wind of it and that just, just little bits of support here and there, yeah, made me start to feel that I could maybe reach out one day.

Voiceover: That day finally came on July 1, 2018. Staff at Monash Medical Centre called Triple Zero to say a woman had walked into the emergency department after being assaulted by her husband.

Carol-Anne: I don’t know where to start. It was an absolutely chaotic day. His head was all over the place, he was moving furniture around the house. I just thought, “There’s something different about this day, I don’t know what’s going on”. He was very, very much more on edge than normal. I tried to leave. The minute I left he was — phone call after phone call.

There must have been 60 phone calls. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang – hang up. “Where are you? What are you doing?”. Bang, bang, bang and swearing and disgusting cursing.

Anyway, came back and I was very much concerned about his mindset. So, I had put a phone where I could film him and he must have got wind of what was going on and grabbed the phone and started using that phone to, to beat me and crack my head open. And then I — don’t know how I escaped. I just —something came over me.

I felt, I actually feel it was my Mum and my brother were pushing me out the door, it was the only way to get out.

And that’s when the pure panic takes over. That’s when I knew I was going to be killed. And I nearly was. Because that’s their desperate attempt to hang on to you.

And for some reason, he had the lock off and I had the keys in my pocket and I just happened to, you know, take myself to the hospital and was purely panicking that, what he was going to do to them while I was gone. But luckily, Varri came to the rescue and grabbed the kids.

Voiceover: Fast forward to that baking hot day in January 2019. Elise Douglas and David McCann were on Carol’s doorstep. Nick Rizakis would soon realise he could no longer control his battered wife.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: So, we had done a search warrant at Nick Rizakis’s home – a search for evidence. So, a search for weapons and for the evidence of family violence that had come through Carol-Anne’s statement.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: This must have been like a year after I’d gone to the initial job and they said, “We’re going to do a search warrant, do you want to come?” and I was like, “Yeah man, I’ve never been to a search warrant before, this’ll be great”.

It was the first time I’d been in an unmarked car and I was wearing civvies and I was, like, yeah, undercover cop. Not the case at all, but that’s what was going on in my brain.

And then we went to this search warrant. We went in and, in Carol’s statement she’d said, like, “This is where he hides these weapons”, she’d described them, and they were all there, they were all still there. Crazy.

And they had the forensics guys come out and they did the luminol. My mind was blown. It was like what you see in the films and whatever with the, you know, the blood on the walls and on the carpets and stuff.

This was the karma moment for me. When we went and did all this stuff, he was, Rizakis is there, and he’s furious the whole time because his house is getting messed up and his house is immaculate.

And then, they’d found blood on one of the rugs and they said, “We can take the whole rug or we can just cut the circle out” and they said, “No, no, just cut the circle out”.

So, this rug that he had told me not to stand on when I first went there, we left and it had little holes cut out of it and I was like, “That my friend is the karma bus, it has just come and knocked you out”.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: As part of that process, a computer was seized. And ultimately, Detective David McCann, who is now a sergeant, he took it upon himself to analyse that computer and that revealed post-relationship stalking behaviours that we had no concept of.

And David was able to take that element of the investigation and bring it to a brief of evidence product. And then I was, then I came in and I conducted the interview in relation to it. It was a very lengthy interview; we’re talking about 10 years of, you know, serious family violence.

And, you know, there was conversations around how that might look – you know, was I the best person as a female detective? Was I the best person to engage with someone who had, you know, committed years of abuse against women? But ultimately, I wanted to conduct the interview. Ultimately, I had the most information in my brain.

But I needed David and I needed one of our other detectives, Michael Smith, who was able to sub-in and out as corroborators and kind of keep me on track in a lot of ways.

But it was a difficult interview because I needed him to think that I was on his side, which was challenging, because I needed his version of events in that first instance to be able to, you know, later in the interview, challenge perhaps what he was saying. But I needed a version.

Voiceover: Rizakis told Elise that his marriage was a happy one. But as Elise continued to ask him questions, Rizakis conceded he and Carol-Anne did have occasional issues, like any married couple. Elise let him think that he was charming her into believing his version of events, one in which he was the victim.

He claimed that if there was any tension in the marriage, Carol-Anne’s drinking was the cause. This was clearly false.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: He blamed everything that had happened, the police had it wrong. We were misinformed, and that it was, in fact, Carol, who had either been aggressive, been abusive, been an alcoholic.

He really absolutely minimised the severity and significance of family violence and blamed Carol as either being clumsy, being, you know, responsible for the violence in her own right.

He was really trying to make himself out to have been the victim in an abusive relationship and really minimising any challenges of violence and, you know, that Carol just fell over or she walked into a door and “that’s just how she was, Carol-Anne, she was a clumsy individual”.

Voiceover: Rizakis portrayed himself as an incredibly patient husband who had remained calm and submissive, even meek, in the face of what he claimed was Carol-Anne’s violent outbursts. It’s a well-worn tactic used by family violence offenders. So well-worn that police even have an acronym for it.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: It’s DARVO, D-A-R-V-O. Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. So, an abuser or a perpetrator will deny. So that is denying what is being alleged, denying what a victim-survivor is saying has occurred, completely and utterly, just completely denying any truth, behaviour, accountability.

The next one is to attack. So, attacking either the victim-survivor or just kind of getting onto the front foot and trying to get that power and control back.

And then reverse victim and offender. So, using language, communicating a story, proposing a set of circumstances that flips the narrative, or flips what’s being purported, on its head.

So the perpetrator, the abuser, wants police, DFFH, those within the system, to believe that it’s the victim-survivor that is the one that is perpetrating harm against the offender and not the other way around, not as it is being described by the victim-survivor or by family members or by, potentially by, even by the children.

Voiceover: But this was not just Carol-Anne’s word against his, it wasn’t a ‘he said, she said’ matter. Elise had evidence to corroborate Carol-Anne’s story, including a heinous weapon Rizakis had used on her. Carol-Anne: Did you find it?

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Yes.

[Carol-Anne gasping]

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: So much Carol doesn’t know.

Carol-Anne: Bloody hell, you never told me that. So much justification, because it wasn’t shit, it actually happened. That bastard.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Sorry.

Carol-Anne: I thought you didn’t find it.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: No, I can’t tell you everything.

[Carol-Anne exhaling heavily]

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: OK.

So, I haven’t ever spoken to Carol about every piece of evidence that we found because it would have jeopardised the investigation, it would have jeopardised the court results. So, it’s not something that we’ve ever really sat down and worked through, “what did you find in the home?”.

Carol-Anne: I got the impression that you couldn’t find it.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: No, we did.

Carol-Anne: I feel I told you exactly where it was…

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Yeah, we did find it.

Carol-Anne: Was it there?

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: No, it was in the, I think, I think it was in the hallway, like you know that…

Carol-Anne: Oh, it wasn’t in the garage?

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: No.

Carol-Anne: It was like in the hallway, in the house?

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Yeah like, so where that linen cupboard was in that doorway.

Carol-Anne: Yeah, yeah.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: It was like there, leaning against that fence. The best way that I can kind of describe seeing it as we found it – and it was quite a significant piece of evidence to find at the time – I remember David McCann and I having some, you know, really meaningful conversations around, you know, “Oh my, there it is”.

Carol-Anne: It’s a horrible hand-made weapon.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: It was like a broom handle, this old wooden broom handle. And this hole, potentially a drilled hole, at the top, at the kind of rounded end as opposed to where the broom might go. And there was a rusty nail that had been put through and that was sticking out the other end. And yeah, when we found it…

Carol-Anne: There was more than one nail in there.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: What?

Carol-Anne: The other ones must have fallen out.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: That might explain why there was a bigger hole.

Carol-Anne: When he was using it on me.

Voiceover: Elise Douglas had tied Rizakis to a story, even if it was false, self-serving, and full of holes. The interview was finally over. Eleven years of family violence covered in five hours. But now it was time to bring the offender before the courts.

Carol-Anne: It was really difficult, but I was committed. I wanted to go all the way and make sure that he was found guilty of all these things that he did to me. So, I think I was, at that point, totally all in. I really wanted to see each and every charge forced down his throat.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: The Office of Public Prosecutions have a witness support unit that, you know, that also engages and enables victim-survivors to move through that process. Because ultimately, you know, as an investigator, I simply become a witness in the process. I simply become, you know - the matter is prosecuted by the Office of Public Prosecutions, and I’m another witness.

From having spent those 15 sessions with Carol and hearing her tell her story and taking that evidentiary product from her, I was quite confident that she was going to be able to do that, even though it was, you know, likely to be one of the most uncomfortable things that she had gone through.

Carol-Anne: Look, I was really lucky that police were very aware of my fragility and put me in a position where I didn’t have to stand in front of him. I was going to be beamed in via Skype or whatever it was, so I didn’t have to be present in that courtroom and be in front of him and look at him. But I did want him to see me as strong, moving forward, able to retake our lives back and survive all this and make him accountable.

It wasn’t out of spite. It was out of justice. And showing my children the right way to do things and I want them to know that their mother went through all this, and I want them to be proud of me.

Voiceover: As his trial date loomed, Rizakis realised Elise had overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Rather than fight the inevitable, he chose self-preservation.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: Ultimately, Nick Rizakis pled guilty to several common law assault matters and a threat to kill, which he did so in the week before we were due to go to trial. We had set aside four weeks for the trial to run, so in that time, we, you know, the Office of Public Prosecutions were preparing for trial and Carol-Anne was preparing to give evidence in that trial.

Carol-Anne: It doesn’t surprise me that he tried to get away with as little as he could. So, you know, but I’m just glad that he did do some sufficient jail time.

Voiceover: The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the final moment of Carol-Anne’s liberation – the sentencing of a brutal tyrant. Varri made sure she was there, along with Elise, to support this brave survivor in court. And to see her tormentor locked up.

[Uplifting music begins to play in background]

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I remember she walked up to meet me, and she looked like a glamazon. She was, oh! You talk about glow-ups and stuff? Wow! She’d gone from this, as I say, this shell of a human being, this broken woman when I first saw her in that hospital, to like, she was just full of confidence, she looked great.

She was smiling, like - it was just, it just showed you, like, what a difference getting rid him out of her life. And she wasn’t scared anymore either.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: We were finally able to get to a sentencing at the end of 2023. And with the charges that Nick Rizakis had pled guilty to and the summary of the evidence that was provided to the judge, Nick Rizakis was sentenced to five years and two months, in terms of the top end, the highest amount of imprisonment that he could serve. And the judge ordered a non-parole period of two years and 10 months.

Carol-Anne: Bittersweet, I suppose. I was hoping for a higher sentence, but I think everybody was. But relative to what he pled guilty to, I’m satisfied. He has now got a record. There’s a lot more now that will be out there, so any other potential victim will be able to see. So that’s really where it sits with me.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: It’s a lot to ask a survivor to trust the process and to trust the police and to tell their story because it ultimately, the jail or the community corrections order or whatever is at the end of that process, is not necessarily — that’s not where it begins. It begins with trying to articulate what your lived experience is. It begins with articulating what harm and crime you have survived.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: I remember when we came out the court when he got sentenced, and walked out and Carol’s cuddling me, and Dave and Elise are cuddling and they’re crying. And I was like, “Carol, we did it”, like, “We made it”, and she was just going, “You’ve changed my life, you’ve changed my life”, I was like, “No way”. She did it.

The minute that she ran out that door and went to the hospital, she did it there. She decided herself that enough was enough and all she needed was us to back her up. That was it – she just needed us to be like, you know, “We’ve got you, you’ll be all right”.

Voiceover: So where are they now? Nick Rizakis is still behind bars. Varri Mills’ career has flourished and she’s achieved her dream job, working with victims in the Bayside Sexual Offences and Child-abuse Investigation Team. And she’s stayed in touch with Carol-Anne.

Detective Senior Constable Varri Mills: Carol has a florist business, so I said to her, “Can you do the flowers for my wedding?” and on my way to the Academy to get married, I stopped in to pick up the flower that you put on your jacket and I said to Carol, like, “What happens with this? Do I just clip this thing on? How’s it work? I’m a bit stressed here Carol”. And she’s like, “Go and get your jacket” and I put my jacket on and we stood outside — I’ve got my wedding jacket on — and she’s putting it on me and we just sort of looked at each other and we’re like, “What a full circle moment this is”. And I was like, “You say, I changed your life, I’m literally about to change my life and you’re the person that’s like pinning my flower on me”, and she was like, “It’s just crazy”.

It was just, yeah, full circle moment, it was nice. It was, yeah, real nice.

Voiceover: Elise Douglas has found her mission in family violence.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: My substantive position is at the Sexual Offence and Family Violence Unit at Professional Standards Command. So, investigating allegations against Victoria Police employees who commit family violence or perpetrate sexual violence or sexual misconduct.

I’ve just recently transitioned over to a temporary assignment in a family violence training officer role, coming at family violence from a slightly different lens in the education space.

Voiceover: And Carol-Anne is finally free and living a life devoted to her daughters.

Carol-Anne: It’s not been an easy journey, but it’s been very satisfying, I think, and

ompletely changed who I am.

Detective Sergeant Elise Douglas: For the better.

Carol-Anne: I think I’m doing really well. There is still struggles, which will continue on throughout my life, but I am strong. I think I’m really mentally strong as a person and I think that my life now is completely opened up to me and I’m looking forward to how that’s, you know, changed my children and what their life now has the opportunity to be, opposed to how it would have been.

Voiceover: Carol-Anne says that she now considers Varri and Elise to be family. She is full of praise for Varri.

Carol-Anne: She’s an amazing, strong woman. She’s quite funny, but she’s very - well, she’s Scottish!

[Carol-Anne laughs]

She’s hard to understand, but she’s very passionate about what her beliefs are. She is like a tyrant. She won’t let go of something. If she sees something being done that’s wrong, she’s, you know, will go for gold.

Voiceover: And she’s forever grateful for how Elise made her feel.

Carol-Anne: Empowered. I’m so thankful. I’m so grateful. And, you know, Elise has been there every step of the way for me and even into the future. But she’s amazing and, you know, my rock.

Voiceover: Carol-Anne has told her story to help other women suffering in relationships marked by family violence and to encourage them through the court process.

Carol-Anne: Each situation is very different, but I would suggest that, if you’re able to, to go for it. The amount of hand-holding and support that I’ve received from the police has been absolutely amazing and it made this possible.

So, I would say, do it. Don’t hesitate, just do it. And then if you find that you can’t go all the way, that’s OK, too. But just put your hand out and ask for help.

Or if they come to you, just reach out because it’s so important, you know, you don’t want to continue to have this happen to you or your children, you know. You can have a life without this going on. You deserve it.

Voiceover: That was the final episode of season 2. Make sure you stay tuned in the future for more episodes of Police Life: The Experts.

Voiceover: Police Life: The Experts is a Victoria Police production.

Your host is Belinda Batty.

This episode was written by Adam Shand.

Additional writing and research by Jesse Wray-McCann.

It was produced by Adam Shand and Jesse Wray-McCann.

The senior producer was Ros Jaguar.

Audio production and original music by Mat Dwyer.

Theme song by Veaceslav Draganov.

Executive producer was Beck Angel.

This podcast was created by the Media, Communications and Engagement Department at Victoria Police.

To learn more about the work of Victoria Police, go to police.vic.gov.au.