As Devon and Cornwall police officers drove away on the night Michaela Hall was murdered, body-worn cameras recorded them saying they could imagine her “lying there with him covering her mouth”. “But what can you do?” they added. “She doesn’t help herself.”
This is outrageous. The duty is on the police and probation to manage a dangerous offender's risk - not the victim.
The next day, Michaela’s father found her dead.
Michaela Hall, 49, from Mount Hawke, in north Cornwall, was killed in 2021 by her partner Lee Kendall who was later jailed for life.
She rang a friend saying she was being attacked by Kendall and feared for her life. Police attended but transcripts showed they saw no sign of a disturbance and left as they did not think they had the power to force entry.
Michaela's father Peter Hall said her death could have been prevented and police could have entered the property.
The police and probation service knew Kendall was abusing Michaela. He had 47 previous convictions across 78 offences, with links to many more. They had recorded 16 assaults on Michaela – likely only a fraction of the abuse she endured.
Kendall was a prolific, violent and controlling abuser. His history was not joined up.
Kendall was incorrectly risk assessed by probation services following his conviction for assaults on Michaela in April-May 2021. He should have been assessed as posing a HIGH risk of serious harm to Michaela. Several opportunities for line managers and others to correct the error were missed. This gave rise to a number of other probation shortcomings:
- FAILING to recommend a PRISON SENTENCE sentence to the court,
- proffering a community order instead;
- not considering options for more intensive scrutiny in the community;
- allocating him an inappropriate level of probation officer, who did not have time to meet with him before going on leave – during which time he missed a probation appointment (a known risk factor) and Michaela was murdered.
The probation service said Kendall was only “medium risk” – even though there was a clear pattern of escalating violence. That decision mattered. It meant he was released back into Michaela’s life with minimal supervision.
On the night she was killed, Michaela called a friend in fear for her life. When she screamed and dropped the phone, her friend called the police. They knew who they were dealing with. They knew Kendall’s history of domestic violence. They had been to the house many times before.
But when the officers arrived, nobody answered the door. They checked the garden and tapped at the back window. And then they left.
They knew Michaela was in immediate danger. They knew they could break down the door to save her life.
Instead, they walked away – leaving Michaela inside.
When the state knows someone is at real and immediate risk of serious harm, it has a duty to act. The police and probation services failed to meet that duty.
This happens time and time again and women and children pay the price.
These dangerous men's histories must be joined up. Coercive control and stalking correlate significantly with serious harm and femicide and these risks continue to be missed with far too much emphasis being placed on the victim instead of a mandatory proactive duty being firmly placed on the police, probation and prison services to manage these dangerous men.
Serial and high risk domestic abusers and stalkers must be proactively identified, assessed and managed and they must be included on the same register as sex offenders and terrorists. The same tactics that are used on terrorists must be used on these domestic terrorists.
How many more women will be murdered before this change happens in law?