AN EVIL, EVIL MAN

A truly evil man is in the news again. I know him well. His name is Michael Glennon. A defrocked Catholic priest and serial paedophile. It was for trying to stop his predatory behaviour against kids as young as ten that I went to jail back in the 1980s. Back then, and despite an earlier conviction for raping a young girl and spending time in jail, Glennon was not only still an ordained priest but was running a martial arts school for young boys in Melbourne and a camp for boys and girls at Lancefield.

He finally went to jail for a long time and from inside this former man of the cloth threatened to kill me when he got out.  Well there is good news and bad news about Glennon.

He is still in jail, currently serving a minimum 10-year sentence after being convicted of the rape and sexual abuse of a number of young boys. Some of the crimes took place in the 1980s, while he was out on bail awaiting trial.
His many court hearings were later the subject of numerous suppression orders that were finally lifted in 2003 at the conclusion of three trials. Glennon will not be eligible for parole for at least another four years.

He was convicted on charges of sexually abusing another 12-year-old boy but that conviction was overturned on appeal in 2005.

Glennon was due to face a retrial in County Court on charges of rape and indecent assault but Judge Geoff Chettle has granted a permanent stay.  That means Glennon will never be held accountable for those alleged crimes against a young boy.

In fairness to the judge his reasons included the delay in prosecuting the matter and the previous number of times the complainant has been forced to give evidence. And both those reasons are valid. It’s a terrible and arduous time for a victim. But then Judge Chettle also gave as a reason his concern that Glennon would not receive a fair trial because of media attention.

And here’s where we get into increasingly dangerous ground. More and more, notorious criminals are using the media as a weapon to try to avoid trial. They claim pre-trial publicity poisons the atmosphere so much that a fair and impartial jury is impossible.  They could always apply for trial by a judge alone but that wouldn’t suit them, would it?

I have said before that people called for jury duty take their job very seriously. When a judge instructs them to convict or acquit on the evidence alone they do that. They listen when a judge instructs them to discard a piece of inadmissible evidence.

But, increasingly, and often at your expense through Legal Aid, notorious criminals are milking and exploiting the system. And, like the disgraced Michael Glennon, they are getting away with it.

And to make things worse too many judges I believe are making sentences concurrent when they actually do send a crim to jail. Rather than cumulative.
It means if you are going to commit one crime you might as well do ten. You’ll spend the same time in jail because judges rarely add one jail term on top of another. And the criminals and their lawyers know that.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009