I’LL VOTE FOR THAT!

Back in the 1980s I was woken up one winter’s morning by a phone call at my Mt. Macedon farm. It was a television reporter with the news that one Bill Allen was dead. He’d committed suicide. Did I have a comment? Did I feel responsible for his death?

I told to my wife, Jacki, and she said ‘how do you really feel?’ I said ‘I wish he’d done it twenty years ago. It would have saved hundreds of kids. Allen’s death is one more vote for a cleaner Australia’.

And that’s what I said, as callous as it may sound, on the TV news that night.

Bill Allen was one of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles. He was a music teacher at various Melbourne private schools including Wesley College. He had molested hundreds of students but never been to jail. Despite convictions.

After his last conviction he went on A Current Affair or Sixty Minutes
And I remember him sitting on a park bench boasting to reporter Marie Mohr that he had had sex with 3000 children.

It was enough for me to start a campaign for the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal against his latest suspended sentence. On the morning he was due to appear before the Supreme Court, William Allen went to the top of the Gill in South Melbourne and jumped off.

I had that flashback this morning when I heard the news that one of the men arrested this week in the international swoop on child pornographers had committed suicide and another had attempted to.

 A 59-year-old  Sunshine Coast teacher, killed himself  after being arrested and charged on two counts.

A  48-year old Queensland primary school teacher also caught in the police swoop, was taken to hospital late yesterday. It is believe he  also attempted suicide.

That’s the man I was talking about yesterday who allegedly took photos of his own students and superimposed their heads on the bodies of child abuse victims and put his own photo on the child rapist in the pornographic images.

One Victorian man who has been charged with possession of child pornography is a senior officer in the Australian Army. His is 52-year-old Major Kenneth Paul Chapman, 52 of Werribee. Last year Major Chapman  led a United Nations peace keeping mission in East Timor.

As for the ones who kill themselves? I don’t care. As I said about William Allen: That’s one more vote for a cleaner Australia.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008