AUSTRALIA - Dangerous Sex Offender Act under review

Original Article (Video available)

07/04/2014

West Australia's Attorney General says the government is currently reviewing the state's Dangerous Sex Offenders act.

It follows the removal of serial rapist _____ from a small wheatbelt town amid fears of vigilante attacks.

_____, 41, was released from prison last week by the WA Supreme Court on a strict supervision order that includes curfews and electronic monitoring.

Corrective services commissioner James McMahon said _____ was relocated from his property because the situation had destabilised.

'I've moved him for his own safety,' Mr McMahon said.

'The situation has become untenable in that location for all ... parties concerned.

'But the No.1 priority for my department and for the police department is the safety of the community.'

_____ was handed an indefinite detention order in October 2008 after spending most of his adult life in prison.

His release from prison last week sparked an outcry from talkback callers and politicians.

_____ had five episodes of serious sexual offending, starting in 1987 when he was 15.

The victims were generally adult women, but five offences in 1994 were committed against a nine-year-old girl.

It was reported in The West Australian newspaper on Thursday that the Wheatbelt town's residents were given no warning about _____ moving in, and some female residents had begun arming themselves for protection or fled town.

WA opposition police spokeswoman Michelle Roberts said relocating _____ to another location only shifted the problem.

'It seems to me just really unfair to take him out of one community and inflict him on another,' Ms Roberts said.

'If he presents any kind of danger to the community, to children, to women ... the place for him is in a secure facility.'

AUSTRALIA - Sex abuse fears driving men from teaching

Original Article

05/12/2014

Fear of false child-sex abuse accusations is driving Australian men away from a career in teaching, according to high-profile education officials.

Australian Education Union members have reported that young men are showing an increasing reluctance to become teachers, said the president of the union's South Australian branch, David Smith.

"Quite frankly, there are concerns about (men's) safety regarding vexatious accusations," Smith told the Advertiser.

Smith said that the Debelle royal commission, which released a report in 2013 that was highly critical of the response to a child sex abuse case at an Adelaide school in 2010, has only made men more hesitant about becoming teachers.

"The recent publicity following the Debelle inquiry has led to a negative atmosphere," Smith said.

SA Primary Principals Association state president Pam Kent agreed, saying male teachers have become "more vulnerable to the possibility of unfair or vexatious allegations" when they are alone with students.

In South Australia, more than 50 schools did not have a single male teacher in 2013.

Those figures are reflected across the nation: The Australian Bureau of Statistics' Schools Australia 2012 report indicated that the number of male teachers had declined in the previous decade.

The NSW Department of Education and Communities said the percentage of male primary school teachers slipped from 20.1 to 18.9 from 2009 to 2013, while male secondary school teachers fell from 45.3 to 43.

AUSTRALIA - Fears the sex offender register is not the solution to keeping kids safe

Original Article

05/09/2014

By Sally Whyte and Elizabeth McKenzie

Community fears have been heightened with reports a known sex offender has been seen loitering near children in Melbourne.

In a separate incident, police are investigating reports that a man approached a boy at a Daylesford school on Thursday afternoon. The boy notified a teacher, who passed the information to police.

Former head of Victoria Police's child protection squad Chris O'Connor, said the community is understandably alarmed at such cases.

Mr O'Connor said he is comforted that in 2014 the community is positively responsive to this kind of activity.

Mr O'Conner said there are thousands of people on the sex offender registry, and 24 hour police surveillance would be impossible.

'There are thousands of people on the registry we clearly and very quickly come to the realisation that we would never have enough police to be able to satisfy totally the community as to their level of protection against these people.'

Mr O'Connor says parents have a responsibility to protect children, but warns against the public taking the law into their own hands.

'Vigilantism is often the result of a couple of things, victimisation or ignorance or a total lack of understanding of the circumstance. It is irrational behaviour.'

Mr O'Connor said children should be educated about how to respond in the unlikely event they come into contact with sex offenders.

'Teach them basic crime prevention, be aware of who is around, remove yourself or call out to somebody. If somebody approaches you, you yell the living daylights out.'

AUSTRALIA - False abuse claims are the new court weapon, retiring judge says

Justice David Collier

Original Article

07/05/2013

By Harriet Alexander

Allegations of child sexual abuse are being increasingly invented by mothers to stop fathers from seeing their children, says a retiring Family Court judge.

Justice David Collier, retiring from Parramatta Family Court at the end of the month after 14 years on the bench, sees unprecedented hostility infiltrating the Family Court, and a willingness by parents to use their children to damage one another.

”If a husband and wife really get down to it in this day and age, dirt flies,” Justice Collier said.

The worst are those mothers who direct false allegations of abuse against former partners.

”When you have heard the evidence, you realize that this is a person who’s so determined to win that he or she will say anything. I’m satisfied that a number of people who have appeared before me have known that it is one of the ways of completely shutting husbands out of the child’s life.”

”It’s a horrible weapon.”

Such cases are fraught for Family Court judges. Once an allegation has been made it is impossible to ignore. The court must deem whether there is an ”unacceptable risk” of abuse occurring in the father’s care.

Sometimes the allegations are obviously fabricated, other times they are probably true.

”It’s that grey area in the middle that you lose sleep over at night, and you do lose sleep,” Justice Collier said.

”They’re difficult to disprove. The allegation lingers there.”

Barrister Esther Lawson, who sits on the family law committee at the NSW Bar Association, said anecdotally there appeared to be an increase in allegations of sexual abuse coming before the court, but the reasons were unclear.

She also warned that the consequence of false allegations could return to haunt the accuser, including the loss of time with their children.

”Clearly there are cases where there is reliable evidence that sexual abuse has taken place and these matters need to be properly ventilated,” Ms Lawson said.

”But if the court finds that allegations have been maliciously motivated then there may be potential consequences, including a change in the child’s primary residence.”

It is rare for Family Court judges to speak publicly about their views. Many are still haunted by the 1980 murder of Justice David Opas and 1984 bombings of the Parramatta Family Court building and homes of two judges.

Judgments are now more involved, partly so the losing party can understand the reasoning behind decisions. Justice Collier said the cases were also more complicated, as litigants raise more matters and run each of them to Earth. Facebook pages are frequently called into evidence.

”A mother declares she lives a chaste and modest life and then on Facebook says, ‘Guess what I did last night’, and Dad’s only too happy to put it before you.”

He puts much of the venom down to a generation of people more assertive of their rights, and now entering relationships.

But it disheartens him to leave the court so, after a satisfying career. He used to keep a magic wand, which he has now passed on to his colleague Justice Bill Johnson.

”I wished I could wave that magic wand and say, ‘Be nice to each other’,” Justice Collier said. ”That’s the only order I would have to make.”

AUSTRALIA - Sex offender squad faces axe

Original Article

04/02/2014

A specialist WA Police squad responsible for monitoring thousands of convicted sex predators could be axed as part of a push to shave millions off the police budget's bottom line.
- Not all sex offenders are predators!

A high-level razor gang has been examining the operations of the sex offender management squad, which tracks the movements of more than 3000 rapists and paedophiles living in the community.
- Not all sex offenders are rapists or pedophiles!

The squad also monitors about 20 offenders who are classified as dangerous, such as the recently released serial rapist known only as TJD.

But despite the importance of the work it does, senior police have refused to guarantee the unit's survival.

"All business units in WA Police are being scrutinised as part of the Frontline 2020 Reform Program," Acting Deputy Commissioner Paul Zanetti said.

But Mr Zanetti denied any decision about the future of SOMS - or any other specialist unit - had been made.

The recidivism rate for those monitored by SOMS is less than one per cent, well below other jurisdictions.

Police working in the unit fear any attempt to close them down will lead to that rate going up.
- Which is based on personal feelings (job security), not facts!

If the unit was scrapped, suburban detectives could be forced to pick up the workload.
- So tell me, what is the purpose of probation and parole officers again?

"Any suggestion that there have been proposals put forward or decisions made regarding State crime are completely untrue," Mr Zanetti said.

Hetty Johnston, founder of child protection group Bravehearts, urged WA Police to look elsewhere to find savings.

"Any talk of scaling back in this climate - especially with the Royal Commission running - is just dangerous and irresponsible," Ms Johnston said.

SOMS was formed in 2005 after the establishment of a national sex offender register.

Those on the register have to meet regularly with a case officer - usually an experienced police detective - and disclose any changes to their personal circumstances including travel plans, the car they own, where they live and who they work for. Offenders who are considered dangerous - like TJD - must comply with stricter conditions such as wearing a GPS tracker, night-time curfews and bans on drinking alcohol.

Shadow police minister Michelle Roberts called on Police Minister Liza Harvey to intervene and guarantee the future of SOMS.

"These are crimes that the community find abhorrent and any winding back of this would disturb me greatly," Mrs Roberts said.

AUSTRALIA - Support programs challenge community hatred

"It's Madness"

Original Article

This reporter posted the following question under the image on the article: "Is redemption possible for paedophiles?" Well of course it's possible! Not everybody who sexually abuses a child is a pedophile, by definition. Reporters need to stop misusing the terms "sex offender," and "pedophile" as if they mean the same thing, they do not.

03/29/2014

By Daniella Miletic

Barbara pulls a thick stack of handwritten notes from a cloth bag, places them on the table and starts talking in a voice that never rises above the softly conversational. On a warm Melbourne morning in a city cafe, she smiles comfortably but glances discreetly around, not wanting to be overheard. There are few topics, she says, that are more volatile than the one she is here to talk about.

She grips a small clump of her hair, saying it was fear that drained the pigment from these strands the day her husband told her his secret. The day she decided to leave. ''It caused instant menopause. I decided I was going to go,'' she says, and then stops. ''I love him. It's bloody hard.''

Even when pressed, she offers little more detail of that day, of that time, of the crime her husband revealed to her. ''The fact is, I knew he was in a bad place and I suppose my head didn't want to let the suspicions through. But once I knew, I told him what we had to do, and that was to hand himself in.''

Barbara convinced her husband to confess and he went to jail. She chose to stand by him because of her love and her religious faith, she says. If anything else had been wrong with him, if he were schizophrenic, an alcoholic, she knows she would have tried to help him. ''People might hate these men, but God doesn't,'' she says. ''And one of the reasons Jesus got nailed on the cross was for mixing with the wrong kind of people. Back then it was prostitutes and lepers.''

Today, it is paedophiles.

But Barbara believes in redemption. When she was growing up, her father worked in prison reform, helping criminals, mainly men, restart their lives outside prison. Often, he would take them into the family home. ''They would live with us until they got work. They were my friends,'' says Barbara. ''We wouldn't talk about their crimes, most criminals don't want to talk about that, but we often talked about their lives when their lives were good. Their memories.''

Since her husband's release several years ago, Barbara has dedicated her own life to his rehabilitation, learning about paedophilia and its treatments and watching him to make sure he never does anything like it again. She read about a Canadian program that aims to prevent child abuse by creating a friendship group around sex offenders. She felt there were similarities to Alcoholics Anonymous and believed it might work for her husband. Besides, no other treatment program was on offer except a Salvation Army course for drug addiction, which he also took on, because his was an addiction of a kind.

She has been unofficially mimicking the program since he was released, with just her and a counsellor as his support group. For years she has also been campaigning, pleading - with police, politicians, church groups - for help to start a group to make the treatment available for all child sex offenders in Australia once they get out of jail.

Barbara says she had not prepared herself for the hatred, sometimes the violence, she would encounter. ''I am trying to make sense of the monster theory, the rock spider thing,'' she writes in a diary entry almost a decade old. ''I have discovered a wall of suspicion, and an overwhelming resistance to viewing sexual offending as anything but the worse kind of intentional evil …"

''The resistance is so great, that anyone who bears any other kind of message is viewed as naive at best, and plain evil at worst … The experts in this area stay very quiet for they also shrink from the hysterical reactions. Consequently most people do not doubt the monster model, and seem to prefer to believe that either these people are untreatable or that they don't deserve to be treated.''

This is why a treatment program like Circles of Support and Accountability, she says, one that carries the motto ''No More Victims'', can't seem to get off the ground here. ''It's madness,'' she says, shaking her head.

Read the rest of the story

AUSTRALIA - We don’t want consensual sex teens listed

Bill Byrne

Original Article

03/25/2014

Rockhampton MP Bill Byrne said at this stage a public register was only theoretical, and he would reserve his judgment until he had the opportunity to review all information.

"I have seen commentary that's been put out by the LNP cabinet ministers and they seem to be equally divided, as I imagine the rest of the community would be, about such a matter," he said.

"There are reasonable concerns that the notion of vigilantism would rear its head; there have been examples of that in Queensland."
- Oh it will!  All you have to do is look at these examples.

"While I'm not defending the histories of those that are targeted, it does give me concern that the prospect of vigilantism exists."

He also raised concerns about people who were not a danger to the community being placed on a public registry.

One example of this could be underage teenagers having consensual sex, which is technically illegal.

"We don't want to have two 15-year-olds that have had what I consider to be a consensual relationship to end up on the sex offender register," he said.

"It could be a catch-all legislation that has ramifications well beyond the intention of the legislation."

"The bikie legislation was meant to target the criminal element of motorcycle gangs, and it has had a much broader effect than what was the intention of the legislation."

He maintained that the idea behind the justice system was to hold people accountable for their actions, but to also offer them a chance of rehabilitation.

AUSTRALIA - Provest supports national public sex offender register

Geoff Provest

Original Article

There are already laws on the books for murder so why is another useless law named after a dead child needed? Is it just so this man can look like a "savior" of children to help his career?

03/21/2014

By Alina Rylko

Tweed State MP Geoff Provest has supported the call for a national public sex offender register to prevent heinous crimes against children.

The push for the legislation, dubbed Daniel's law, follows the conviction of _____ for murdering 13-year-old Sunshine Coast boy Daniel Morcombe.

_____ was a known sex offender who broke parole numerous times before kidnapping Morcombe from a bus stop.
- If he broke parole numerous times, then that's an issue in your parole system that needs to be fixed, not something more laws will fix.

"In the Tweed, offenders can move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to avoid prosecution, so a national approach is needed," Mr Provest said.

"Therefore I'm very open to an unrestricted list of sex offenders."
- Which will just open them, their families and their own children up to vigilantism, which is a problem all across the world where online registries exist.

"Any parent will want to know if there are sex offenders in their area and if they're safe."
- What about all the other ex-felons who are dangerous?  Sex offenders have one of the lowest recidivism rates of all other ex-felons, yet they are singled out?  What about an online registry for every ex-felon?

"You can never get back a child's innocence once they have been sexually assaulted; it's a lifetime sentence for them."

"Therefore it should be a lifetime sentence for the offender, who I believe should loose a lot of their rights."