JUSTICE DENIED

This sounds like something out of the movie Deliverance or an episode of Law and Order. But this nightmare really happened. Here in Victoria.

A bunch of young thugs decided that a country bloke was a ‘bit of a pest’ and deserved a bashing. And so they broke into Jason Woolstencroft’s rural property at Scotts Creek, near Timboon, and dragged him from his bed.

They kidnapped him. Forced him into the back of a station wagon. Drove him into the bush and started to beat him. Bashed him with a cow bone and tree branches and then hooked him up to an electric fence and gave him about ten shocks. They told him they were going to kill him. By the end of the assault the victim was begging them to do just that.

As a parting shot, when they drove him home, one of the thugs slashed him with an axe behind the knee and almost severed his leg.

The man was lucky to survive. He suffered swelling of the brain, a lacerated kidney, bruises and abrasions on his chest, stomach, arm, back and knee and the almost severed leg.

The big brave louts who did this were Andrew Benjamin Rankin,24, Aaron Peter Carl Pennell, 24,  Cody John Clark, 20 and Matthew Aaron Condi, 21.

Two of the ring leaders, Rankin and Pennell, got what they deserved 10 years and 9-1/2 years in jail. Some would say Condie got what he deserved. He was found dead in his cell at Port Phillip Prison last month  and Clark, the youngest, who drove the station wagon got three years in a youth training centre.

Done and dusted they’d say. Justice prevails. Oh, no. The nightmare for bashing victim Jason Woolstencroft continues.

When he sentenced the men last year Judge Leslie Ross described the assault as ‘an unrelenting, brutal and cowardly attack’.

A three-member Court of Appeal apparently disagreed.  Yesterday Rankin had his ten years reduced to seven with a non-parole period slashed from seven years to 4-1/2 and Pennell had his sentence reduced with a similar non-parole period.

Why? The judges were Elizabeth Curtain, Geoffrey Nettle and Peter Buchanan.

Nettle admitted the new sentences could be viewed as lenient.

‘It is only because of their relative youth and their lack of prior offences of a violent nature that I am persuaded a degree if leniency is warranted’.

Maybe their lack or priors was because they’re too young to have stacked up a long record. Or maybe they just hadn’t been caught before. And where was even a shred of leniency shown towards the victim. This stinks.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007