A Supreme Court judge has found a Local Court judge’s reasons for finding a police officer slipped her finger into a woman’s vagina during a search for drugs and jewellery to be inadequate, setting aside the judgment, and calling for the matter to be reheard in the lower court again before a different judge.

In a judgement delivered by emails to the parties on December 13, 2023 – 14 months after the hearings – Judge Ben O’Loughlin awarded Tahnee Lee Kellie $120,000 in civil damages over the physical search of her by a police officer, after she was arrested on August 22, 2020, for committing various property offences in Stuart Park, where the judge said she was “extremely abusive to the police and was generally resisting”.

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