Worst nightmare comes knocking: ‘The system made me think I was safe’

By Rob Kidd

An Otago woman who has twice been subjected to vicious attacks by her ex-partner says she has been forsaken by the justice system.

She tells Rob Kidd change is needed before someone is killed.

At 5am on November 28 last year, a boozed-up Anthony Kloosterman cut off his GPS tracker with a pair of scissors.

The court had ordered him to wear the anklet so authorities could ensure he remained at least 10km from the town of Lawrence, where his ex-partner and their two children lived.

The 30-year-old had brutally beaten the woman a couple of years earlier, had breached her protection order and had a history of violence against women stretching back a decade.

Corrections immediately received an alert the tracker had been removed and tried, without success, to contact Kloosterman.

At 5.18am, Corrections called police to inform them that the man’s last known location was Balclutha.

"Given there was no information to suggest any immediate risk", they passed the job on to the incoming early shift, police said.

A unit was dispatched to Kloosterman’s Waikouaiti home at 7.25am.

Five minutes later — two and a-half hours after he hacked off his tracker and 135km away — he arrived at the home of his former partner, Monique McLay.

The first she knew Kloosterman was on the run was when she opened the door and his fist connected with her face.

Had Kloosterman been on home detention, prison release conditions or parole and absconded in an identical way, Ms McLay would have been notified automatically under the Victims’ Rights Act.

But because he was serving a sentence of intensive supervision — primarily a rehabilitative measure — the formal notification process did not apply.

Ms McLay agreed to speak out about her ordeal in a bid to spark legislative change.

"The system made me think I was safe and they abandoned me when I needed them most," she said.

"We actually need to do something about it before something like this happens and it’s a fatality ... If I can stop this from happening to anybody else, it’s worth it," she said.

But there are no specific plans by the Justice Minister to close the legal loophole.

Kiri Allan said the Government had committed to spending more than $45 million over four years on improving victims’ experiences, which may include "addressing any gaps" in the Victims’ Rights Act.

"Situations like the one you are referring to are why our work to support victims is one of my top priorities," she told the Otago Daily Times.

Monique McLay says she no longer trusts the authorities to keep her safe from her ex-partner. Photo: Christine O'Connor

"Every person should be able to feel safe, and be safe, in their home."

Corrections confirmed the matter would be raised at this month’s Victims Advisory Group (featuring the Chief Victims Adviser Dr Kim McGregor) as an agenda item.

National’s Corrections spokesman, Simon O’Connor, said the incident appeared to expose an oversight in policy.

"What is the point of the electronic monitoring if failure to adhere by the rules doesn’t generate some sort of response?"

In 2016, Kloosterman organised a job for his then partner with him in the shearing sheds and it was not long before his jealousy and paranoia emerged.

Ms McLay said she was not suited to the role but enjoyed yarning with the other workers.

One summer day in Omakau, Kloosterman cornered her in the toilets.

"I can see what you’re up to," he said.

After the obligatory after-work drinks, the couple returned to their accommodation, where Ms McLay followed him into the garage, hoping to clear the air.

She could not remember what happened next and only learned of the ferocity of the attack through court documents.

Kloosterman punched her several times, dragged her around by the hair and kicked her in the body so hard the bottom of his Red Band gumboots was imprinted in a bruise on her arm.

He also admitted beating her with a pendulum — a long metal rod used in the process of sharpening shearing clippers.

"I woke up with him high-pitched screaming, standing over me, calling me ‘a drama queen’," Ms McLay said.

It was the first time she thought Kloosterman could kill her.

When the pair met for restorative justice, before he was jailed for two and a-half years, he told her he was giving up drinking; he would change.

"I wanted to believe that," Ms McLay said.

"I wanted to believe his anger was fuelled by alcohol because I didn’t want to believe he was just a horrid person."

By the time Kloosterman was released from prison, their son had been born and Ms McLay remained committed to facilitating a relationship between them.

Anthony Kloosterman was jailed for two and a-half years for his first attack on his ex-partner in 2016. Photo: Rob Kidd

Before one proposed meeting, though, she received a letter which changed everything.

In it Kloosterman called her a "snake in the grass" and referenced the fact that he had served time behind bars with murderers.

With escalating fears for her safety, Ms McLay obtained a protection order.

Under pressure as a single mother, though, she eventually allowed him contact with their children.

At one point Kloosterman moved back in with the family, but Ms McLay ordered him to leave after he made a series of crass comments.

He lashed out by making a derogatory post on a Lawrence Facebook page and one morning demanded to see her bank accounts to ensure she was not laundering gang money.

"Just these real crazy, out-the-gate accusations," Ms McLay said.

After months on the run, Kloosterman was apprehended by police over breaching the protection order.

On November 9 last year he was sentenced to 12 months’ intensive supervision during which period he was barred from contact with Ms McLay and ordered not to go within 10km of Lawrence.

While she regarded the punishment as "pitiful", she was reassured by the condition of a GPS tracker.

So much so that she gave up a family harm alarm that had been installed in her home.

"Because he was on that bracelet I pretty much put all my eggs in that basket, and that was my downfall," Ms McLay said.

When she heard hammering on her door at 7.30am on what should have been a lazy Sunday morning, she thought someone must have needed help.

Kloosterman struck immediately.

"It was all on from the get-go. All I could see was his fists coming in towards my face," Ms McLay said.

The second blow dropped her to the floor and caused a gash to her forehead.

She recalled scrabbling around for a metal poker she had previously kept beside the door for self-defence only to realise it had been moved to another room.

"The look in his eyes — I thought: ‘This is going to be it, he’s going to kill me’," Ms McLay said.

Though fearing for her life, she tried to stay quiet so her children were not woken.

When she retreated to the lounge the onslaught continued.

Kloosterman punched her repeatedly in the base of the skull.

"I actually thought my head was going to come off my shoulders because that’s how it felt," Ms McLay said.

It only stopped when their young daughter entered the room and yelled at Kloosterman to stop.

While the blows did not cease, their intensity diminished.

"She was my hero that day," Ms McLay said.

By the time Kloosterman came back from the kitchen with a paring knife and a rolling pin, both children were in the lounge with their mother.

He was there because the children were in danger; the people Ms McLay consorted with were unsafe, he claimed.

Yet he was willing to continue the attack in front of them.

After threatening to cut off her ears with the knife, Kloosterman took aim with the wooden rolling pin.

Ms McLay thrust out her leg to protect her son, who was sitting in her lap.

The audio of what happened next was captured by her niece who, unbeknown to Kloosterman, was in a neighbouring room with her child.

Ms McLay said it recorded the intermittent screaming of her ex-partner and the sound of the implement striking her.

"You can hear the actual cracking of that rolling pin hitting my shin. It sort of sounds like when a tree breaks," she said.

Kloosterman beat her until the wood snapped and he had dislocated his shoulder.

Then there was a brief lull when he returned to the kitchen.

Ms McLay was faced with a stark dilemma: stay to protect her children and potentially end up being murdered in front of them, or flee and hope his anger would not be directed their way.

Monique McLay has left Lawrence, the town where she was raised, to prepare for her former partner’s release from prison. Photo: Christine O'Connor

"Trying to get past that first step seemed to take forever. I remember my leg being so sore," she said.

"Then I was off."

In socks she sprinted down the gravel road.

"I came down here like Flo-Jo," she said, pointing out her route down the hill.

While she was being given shelter by a resident who heard her on the phone to police, at her home Kloosterman gathered the children for a group hug.

"Dad’s going away for a while," he told them.

When he was sentenced in the Dunedin District Court in October this year, Judge David Robinson set that period at five years, 10 months.

He imposed a minimum non-parole period of two years, 11 months.

After all she has been through, one might expect Ms McLay would be a shell of a person, haunted by the reverberating echoes of her trauma.

But she shuns the tag of victim.

She is warm and engaging; a doting mother with an irrepressible vitality; the epitome of hard-case.

Even discussing some of the darkest moments she has experienced, Ms McLay flashes what she admits is "a warped sense of humour".

It is her armour.

"If you don’t laugh you’ll probably cry," she said.

When describing the rolling pin that was used as an improvised weapon against her and ultimately broke, she quips about having only recently bought it from the Four Square down the street.

"I’ll have to give Pams a thumbs-down on that one."

As medics tended to her facial wounds she asked them to go easy on her eyelashes — she had only had them done a couple of days earlier.

When they suggested she might be in shock those who knew her set them straight.

"That’s just Mon."

Justice Minister Kiri Allan says supporting victims is one of her top priorities. Photo: The New Zealand Herald

But Ms McLay’s good humour ends when it comes to discussing the way her family has been affected by the events, which were wholly avoidable.

It took Kloosterman two and a-half hours to get to her after cutting off his tracker.

She would have needed just five minutes’ warning to get herself and her children to safety.

"My son wouldn’t be traumatised by the fact that he thinks his father’s going to get out of jail and come and kill me. He wouldn’t have Nerf guns lined up in front of his bed thinking his going to shoot his father and that’s going to stop him. My daughter wouldn’t have the spark she used to have in her eyes slowly diminishing because of what her own father put her through," she said.

"The village that’s helped me raise my children I have to leave because of him. All these things wouldn’t have happened ... all because of him."

Ms McLay recently made the heart-wrenching decision to move away from Lawrence, the town where she was raised.

"I will not rely on the justice system, the New Zealand Police, Probation or anybody. I’ll just do my own security measures and make sure me and my kids are safe. And if that means not letting anybody with anything to do with him know where I am then I’ll just have to do that," she said.

"I’ll have to do that for my kids and myself, otherwise he will kill me."