BROKE NOT BOWED BY JUSTICE BATTLE
10.06.1995

By TONY KOCH.
STATE MP Peter Pyke has had to sell his Corinda home to pay $100,000 in legal bills for defending himself against assault charges and protecting his wife and step-
daughter.
Mr Pyke is involved in continuing custody litigation in the Family Court.
The outspoken Labor backbencher has attacked the Queensland justice system, saying many people could not afford the cost of proving themselves innocent.
He said that the justice system worked against citizens in the middle-income bracket because they were denied access
to legal aid.
There was also a great need for a more thorough "screening'' of the charges against people before they were put before a court and then made to prove their innocence.
Mr Pyke, a police sergeant before he won the seat of Mt Ommaney for Labor, has no fixed abode _ or none he tells people about. Fear of further harassment has forced him into a life of anonymity with wife Maryanne and baby Tahlia.
The couple have been granted an exemption from disclosing their address on the electoral roll, they have a silent home telephone number and every few months they leave their rented premises for a new location.
Aspects of their plight are familiar to thousands of Australians the violence, threats and constant legal harassment involved in bitter custody battles that are punctuated by domestic violence.
But battered wives and children who seek help at Mr Pyke's
electoral office will be understood and believed. Maryanne heads the domestic violence support group in the electorate.
Through four years of a disastrous marriage she suffered at the hands of a violent and sadistic husband, a convicted drug dealer who kept her and their daughter in a secluded mountain home near Murwillumbah.
The luckiest day of her life came in June 1993 when she plucked up the courage to seek help at the electorate office
of her local MP.
Peter Pyke listened to the young mother's sorry tale.
A Queensland policeman for 18 years, a Fitzgerald inquiry
whistleblower who had himself been through a broken marriage, he considered himself hardened to how cruel life could be. But he said he had never encountered a case so tragic and violent as told to him by Maryanne.
She showed him photographs taken by her parents and a friend the day after she finally fled her marital home and brutal husband.
She then outlined how a court case found that her husband, Grant Whittaker, did not have a case to answer.
Peter Pyke took up her case.
The couple were married on March 27, 1994.
Three-year-old Tahlia at last has a stable and loving home but it has been at great financial and emotional cost to her mother and Mr Pyke.
This year, Mr Pyke faced the District Court charged with assaulting Mr Whittaker and deprivation of liberty. The charges arose from an incident when Mr Whittaker had an authorised access visit to Tahlia and allegedly tried to abduct her. He was restrained by Mr Pyke and two security guards he had hired.
At that trial Mr Whittaker, when shown the photographs seen by Mr Pyke, said his former wife sustained the injuries when she fell over a coffee table and then crashed her car.
Mr Whittaker said he then inadvertently smashed a door into her face and "picked up and dropped'' her head on the cement after checking and finding she was unconscious.
He claimed other injuries occurred when outdoor furniture she threw against a wall bounced back and hit her.
Mr Whittaker told the court he was a "lovely husband''.
On February 16 last year he was convicted of breaching a domestic violence order.
Mr Pyke is consumed with the fight to keep his family together and championing the cause of others caught in the same vicious cycle.
"The women become trapped because the psychological, emotional and physical abuse may completely erode their confidence,'' Mr Pyke said yesterday.
"They are left feeling terrified and powerless.
"It's my experience of nearly 20 years in this field that women don't make up stories of abuse and in fact will only ever tell about one-tenth of the story,'' Mr Pyke said.
MARYANNE Pyke, then Whittaker, the day after she finally fled her marital home.
MARYANNE and Peter Pyke outside their Corinda home which they had to sell to pay a $100,000 legal bill for defence of assault charges.
They are left feeling terrified and powerless . . . women don't make up stories of abuse.