An alleged victim of domestic violence has been convicted after she took out a protection order on her partner and then allowed him to live with her without reporting it to police, a court has heard.
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She also accepted his phone calls, and later visited him in prison.
The woman was charged with three counts of aiding or abetting a breach of a protection order, and spent three weeks in jail before she was convicted and released on a good behaviour order on Friday.
She had earlier pleaded guilty.
The woman had taken out the order in the hopes of regaining custody of their 20-month-old baby, who was living with her mother in Goulburn, the ACT Magistrates Court heard.
The order conditions placed on the man included not going within 100 metres of the woman and not contacting her.
But having taken out the protection order, the woman then allowed the man to live with her at a Ngunnawal property without notifying police that he had breached the order against him.
Once he was in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, she visited him once and accepted 9 phone calls from 11 attempted contacts.
Her defence lawyer said she was ignorant of the legalities around having the order in place, and had in some ways attempted to take the law into her own hands.
The court heard she had given her partner written permission to stay with her, believing it was enough to circumvent the order.
Through her lawyer she said she would stop contact with the man.
The Crown prosecutor told the court while the woman felt she was in a "difficult situation", breaches put the entire system into disrepute.
"Compliance with the protection order by the applicant is a fundamental requirement of this system of protection," she said.
"It's important that any assisting in breaching the protection order is dealt with seriously by the court."
Magistrate Karen Fryar said the prosecutor was right.
"[The protection order] was there supposed to assist in your protection and clearly you needed that after such a serious assault.
"It's important that these orders are taken seriously."
She imposed a 12 month good behaviour order for the three offences of aiding or abetting a breach of a protection order, as well as for possessing a knife while at Palmerston shops.
