NSW police settle trespass case after 150 bail checks at Aboriginal mother's home

Mother and sons press federal racial discrimination claim against NSW police

New South Wales police have settled a civil trespass lawsuit brought by two Aboriginal mothers whose children were the subject of repeated bail compliance checks, with officers visiting one of the homes more than 150 times over 20 months — many of those visits occurring between midnight and 4am. The settlement, on confidential terms, was reached three weeks before the case was scheduled to go to trial in the NSW Supreme Court.

The case was launched in April 2024 by the Justice and Equity Centre, a legal advocacy group, on behalf of two single mothers identified in court documents under the pseudonyms Megan and Joanne. Megan, who lives in regional NSW, has two sons who were placed on bail at ages 11 and 13 after being found as passengers in a stolen car. Police subsequently attended her home more than 150 times over the following 20 months to verify the boys were complying with their bail conditions, with many of the visits occurring overnight.

Megan described the visits as physically intrusive and emotionally exhausting. She said officers would bang on doors, shine torches through windows and let themselves in through the back gate in the middle of the night, and that her sons often missed school because of fatigue.

“My eldest is driving around with his head held high now, knowing police can’t just randomly pull him over,” Megan said. “But I know he’s still shaking in fear about what they could do. They’ve already done the damage, and it will take a lot for my boys to start trusting police again.”

The second complainant, Joanne, a single mother of three in western Sydney, said police attended her home more than 90 times over 18 months to conduct bail checks on her son. She said officers conducted three such checks within a few hours on one occasion. “The checks often happened on school nights, which meant my youngest daughter was too tired to go to school in the morning,” Joanne said.

Under NSW legislation, courts may authorise police to attend a private residence to verify that a person on bail is complying with their conditions. The Justice and Equity Centre argued that many of the bail checks at issue were conducted without that court authorisation, which it said amounted to trespass.

NSW police defended the officers’ conduct. A spokesperson said the officers were acting lawfully when conducting the checks and described bail compliance checks as “an important tool for keeping the public safe and managing risks associated with letting people out of jail during an ongoing court process.”

The case follows a 2025 report from the state’s Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, which found police were stretching their authority by relying on a weak legal principle to conduct bail compliance checks without court authorisation.

The mothers’ solicitor, Kate Sinclair, said the women had shown courage in pursuing the case. “They did it for their families and their communities and we respect their courage,” she said.

Separately, Megan and her sons have filed a racial discrimination claim against NSW police in the federal court, alleging the boys were targeted because they are Aboriginal. That case remains ongoing.