A former woman police constable who reported her fellow officer and partner for domestic violence has won a malicious prosecution lawsuit against the state after the court found she was wrongfully charged for wasting the police’s time.

In a ruling on May 23, Justice Carol Gobin held that the police officers who investigated their colleague’s report “ignored stark aspects” of evidence supporting her allegations against her former partner.

“The approach of the police confirmed the abuser’s disdainful view of the domestic violence order, that it was just a piece of paper, it meant nothing.

“This is hardly the message the police are expected to endorse. Egregiously, the abuser was not held to account while the victim who had made a report of his abuse was charged with an offence when there was no jurisdiction for doing so and when, as I have found, it was actuated by malice,” Gobin said as she awarded the claimant $205,000 in damages, which included $130,000 in general and aggravated damages and $75,000 in exemplary damages.

According to the evidence, the claimant and her partner, both police officers, shared a home in Malabar, Arima, until she left in December 2015 after reporting several threats and assaults. She claimed her partner, who is also the father of their son, threatened to “wipe out” her family and made threats to shoot her. A “keep in view” notice was issued for her partner so that he would not be issued a firearm, and the judge noted this could only have been done after an investigation and assessment.

In December 2015, he allegedly choked and dragged her to the ground. She fled home with her son and applied for a protection order in early 2016, which was granted in May 2017.

She chose to return to her home since she was close to retirement and could no longer afford to rent, and the evidence said her ex-partner called a superior officer, threatening to kill her and himself as the relationship could not be reconciled. A month later, she met padlocked gates and called the Malabar police for intervention, but they “refused to get involved.” With legal advice and assistance from a relative, the locks to the gate and the bedroom where she and her son stayed were cut.

The next day, she was told by Sgt Lyndon Mascall to go to the Malabar police station for an interview. She did and again in July, but the judge pointed out that at no time did Mascall tell her she was a suspect or that he was considering a charge.

In December 2017, she was served with a summons on Mascall’s complaint laid in October. Between January 2018 to May 2019, she attended court until the matter was discontinued by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Although the state sought to defend the prosecution, the judge held that the charge was based on a complaint so defective it was “a nullity,” and that the prosecution lacked both reasonable and probable cause, core requirements for laying criminal charges.

“The specific factors identified by Sgt Mascall to support his claim of reasonable and probable cause did not justi