YELLOW RIBBON TIME

I have been doing a lot of thinking since I came on air at this time yesterday and tried to pass on to you the name of one of the worst, most predatory, paedophiles in Australian history.

A man whose name and image are being kept secret from you by our courts and the Justice Department. And a tricky piece of legislation called  an Extended Supervision Order which serial paedophiles are using to hide their identities –supposedly to help their rehabilitation.

And your taxpayers dollars are being used to fight attempts to lift those suppression orders. To preserve the anonymity of these depraved, degenerate scumbags who have dedicated their lives to sexually abusing children.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. My mind going back four years to when I organized a rally on the steps of Parliament House to protest  against lenient sentences for child molesters and rapists. And also my mind drifting back twenty years to a time when I tried to stop an evil molesting priest from claiming any more victims and I was sent to jail before he was.

It’s been twenty years since you tied yellow ribbons of support to your car aerials. I think the time has come to do it again. Back in 2004, at short notice, I took up a listener’s suggestion and organized a rally on the steps of Parliament House. I thought maybe a couple of hundred people would be there. Ten thousand of you turned up.

I’m asking for your support again. On Sunday, June 1 – Sunday week-- at Noon I am going to be on those steps of Parliament House again. For a Name Them and Shame Them rally.

A protest against keeping secret the names and photos of repeat offenders. Murderers don’t get their names suppressed when they complete their sentence and leave jail. Why should rapists of women and children?

Why legally protect the identities of men who fantasized about building a prison farm where they would molest the attractive children and use the others as slaves?
Why protect the identity of a man whose wife held a child down while the husband raped the boy?
It is time for you to be heard –because the kids don’t have voices loud enough to reach the steps of Parliament House. At that last rally you echoed the words of Peter Finch that you ARE mad and you are not going to take it any more. I ask you to do it again. And bring a yellow ribbon.

After that rally, that Sunday, among all the touching, at times harrowing, letters and e-mails was one from a man named George. He said:

‘Derryn, don't let the government slide away on this one’. And he signed it ‘A very concerned, non-redneck, non-roughneck, non-radical, non-bleeding heart, middle of the road Aussie.’

I hope you’ll be there at noon On Sunday June the First, George. Name Them and Shame Them. And ask our judges and our politicians: Who’s looking after the children.’ Because you bloody well aren’t.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008