SPOKE TOO SOON

TOK. I’ll admit it. I spoke too soon. My faith was misplaced. Last month on the program I was talking (again) about our legal system and lenient judges whose penalties handed down do not fit the crimes committed. But on this occasion I was commending judges after an Appeals Court got tough. It overturned two lenient sentences against two child sex offenders and increased their jail terms.

In one case, the original County Court judge told the offender the sexual offences against a three-year-old girl and a six-year-old girl were ‘extremely serious’. As they were. Their attacker was a predator who met his victims’ parents at a parenting class and ingratiated himself with the family.

The maximum penalties for sexual penetration of a child under ten is 25 years jail. The maximum for an indecent act with a child under 16 is 10 years.

The judge gave the man 2-1/2 years with a minimum of 15 months. The Appeals Court increased that sentenced to six years with a minimum of four.

But what was most encouraging was what was said by Justices Chris Maxwell, Robert Redlich and Ross Robson.

They said one sentence was ‘so disproportionate to the seriousness of the crimes as to shock the public conscience’. I made the point at the time that
 the public conscience has been shocked and battered for years. It’s their judges who need a jolt.

Well, I spoke too soon. Two more cases dealt with in the past 48 hours show that judges are still out of touch. They talk tough from the Bench.  And then they hand down sentences that would be laughable if they weren’t so sick.  Glenn Wheatley spent more time in jail on tax charges than a child rapist gets. Go figure.

A child molesting priest, Desmond Gannon, was in court for the fifth time for offences committed over twenty years.  He pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault on an 11-year-old boy. When Gannon was a Catholic priest in Kilmore he assaulted his victim in a car, on a bush track, in a pool. Even in a church.

Judge Frank Gucciardo damned the serial paedophile for his lack of remorse. He said Gannon’s absence of contrition ‘displays a turpitude of character that borders on the scandalous and is offensive to morality and the law.’ And no compassion for his victim.

Them’s fighting words. So what does the scandalized judge do? He jails Gannon for 25 months with a minimum of 14 months. Go figure.

And then there was the case of Jeffery Alan Brown. He moved in with a friend who had separated from his wife and was looking after his sons aged 11 and 13. Brown, who was also one boy’s football coach, indecently assaulted them and raped one.

Judge Barbara Cotterell said the abuse was very serious and ‘deplorable’.

‘Your behaviour meant that two very young boys were unable to feel safe or even comfortable in their own home.’ The offences occurred twenty years ago and the judge made much of the fact that Brown, now living in Queensland, had ‘accepted his wrongdoing, expressed disgust and remorse, and is prepared to face the consequences’.  Only after he got caught.

For this deplorable behaviour Judge Cotterell sentenced Brown to two and a half years in jail. And then suspended all but nine months of it.

I spoke too soon. Who’s looking after the children?

Friday, June 12 , 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009