Derryn Hinch's Justice Party | Interest

Derryn Hinch's Justice Party

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23.01.2022 Here’s a message to all Australian women. As if you didn’t know it. Your lives, your protection, your safety, your welfare, are less important than if you were a man. Especially if he is a footballer. And indigenous. I wrote recently about the graphic, brutal, CCTV footage of a nurse, on her way to work for an early morning shift, who was set upon by then-19-year-old Essendon District footballer Jackson Williams presumably on his way home from a night on the town. She was ...ambushed, grabbed in a choke hold and dragged into a laneway. Williams threw her to the ground, dropped on top of her as she struggled and straddled her. It’s all on CCTV. Williams claimed there was no sexual intent and, inexplicably, a judge found him not guilty. He admitted to common assault on a defenceless woman and today avoided jail. Again. He was placed on a 2-1/2-year community correction order. How do you think that traumatised nurse feels today? Hearts, all over Australia, go out to her. And not just women. See more

23.01.2022 Think this through and let it sink in. On the TV News last night -- in reports of accused sex offender Jackson Williams escaping a jail sentence a second time the TV screen flashed a message: ‘WARNING: This report includes confronting vision’. That’s how brutal the CCTV footage was. Footage of the Essendon District footballer attacking a nurse on her way to an early morning shift. He was on his way home after a night on the booze, drugs, whatever. She was dragged into an a...lley. He knocked her down and straddled her. And a female judge ruled it wasn’t a sexual assault. Williams did plead guilty to common assault on that defenceless woman but avoided jail again. The same female judge, Amanda Fox, said the indigenous footballer had a low IQ. (He was smart enough to run away when challenged by an off-duty cop). She said he was naïve, would not handle prison well and could be easily led. Jesus wept. As I said recently: He didn’t go into that alley to play Scrabble. And a tragic real-life footnote that the judge obviously didn’t think important. Jackson Williams’ victim, a dedicated nurse, has not been back to hospital to work since that nightmarish assault in 2018. And she has moved interstate. I used to ask: ‘Who’s looking after the children?’ Now, it’s ‘Who’s looking after the victims?’ Our courts certainly aren’t. See more

21.01.2022 There are times, I’ll occasionally admit, you think ‘why do we bother?’ The Justice Party was founded to protect vulnerable kids. We have two Victorian Upper House members committed to that cause. Stuart Grimley and Tania Maxwell. This week we submitted a motion that would allow more data/information on sexual assaults to be gathered, collated and available for analysis. Specifically, this data would include: the reasons why victims withdraw their case why a case doesn’t ...make it to court and why convictions are not handed down. This was based on the thought that ‘you don’t know what you can’t find’. The more information we have around why many sexual assault cases do not make it to court, or are not being successfully prosecuted, the easier it will be to reform this area and the more successful our laws would be. Research shows that out of every 10 sexual assault cases reported to police, only ONE results in a conviction. Our hope was that this motion would give us insight as to why this is the case. We lost 16-19. Our ‘help the victims’ motion was NOT supported by Labor, or by Fiona Patten (Reason Party), Andy Meddick (Animal Justice Party) and Samantha Ratnam (Greens). Watch what they do, not what they say.

21.01.2022 To be honest, I had never heard of a place called Mernda until a diabolical act of brutality inside a young woman’s home early yesterday morning. Now it is seared into my mind. Celeste Manno, a 23-year-old described as a ‘beautiful soul’, was murdered there. Her promising young life snuffed out. Her mother’s life is also wrecked forever. She was in the house when her daughter was killed. She will live with unjustified guilt that she couldn’t save her girl. A 35-year-old man, who reportedly once worked at the same call centre as Celeste, has been arrested and is under guard in hospital. Relatives of the dead girl said ‘She didn’t even know him. They had met but they didn’t know each other He must have been stalking the house.’ In one of life’s cruel ironies, one of the subjects Celeste was studying at uni was criminology.

20.01.2022 This is one of the worst stories I have ever passed on to you. Forty-six children have been rescued, including 16 from one childcare centre, in one of the biggest child sexual abuse cases ever detected in Australian history. Police in three states have arrested 14 men, now facing more than 800 charges over ‘abhorrent’ systemic sexual abuse of children. Some of the victims were babies. Police will allege a network of abuse where men (and some women) engaged in acts of depravit...y and abuse of children. The victims were aged from 16 months to 15 years. One man was a soccer coach who allegedly abused seven children and produced heaps of child porn. One man is a 27-year-old former childcare worker who faces 300 charges related to sexual child intercourse and indecent assault of 16 children attending his childcare centre. It makes you want to vomit. See more

17.01.2022 Dear Victorian Justice Party members, you should have received a letter from the VEC asking you to verify your membership of our party by next week. Just a gentle reminder to send the form back in the provided envelope asap. If you haven't received the form or you have any questions, please call my office 0431 443 705. Thanks DH

15.01.2022 A tangible follow-up today to the shocking failure of justice last week when footballer Jackson Williams avoided conviction for sexual assault and jail for common assault. A petition signed by nearly 100,000 people was handed to the Attorney-General. It called for the DPP to appeal Williams’ ‘manifestly inadequate’ non-jail sentence. At a media conference, I said Williams had three things going for him in court that his victim did not have. 1. He’s male. 2. He’s a footballer.... 3. He’s indigenous. The CCTV footage of him grabbing the woman (a nurse on her way to work) in a choke-hold, dragging her into an alley, throwing her to the ground, and straddling her, was so graphic, the TV news cautioned viewers about watching it. Also today, Justice Party Upper House member, Stuart Grimley, announced plans for a new ‘grab and drag’ law. It was spurred by the Williams case. Grimley, a former sexual offences detective in Victoria, said the law was currently failing victims, mainly women, because the bar to prove the charge of intent to commit a sexual offence was too high. ‘A grab and drag law will fill a visible gap in legislation where the threshold to prove an intent to sexually assault is failing women and other victims.’ See more

14.01.2022 A high school teacher facing more than 50 sex charges, including child rape, was told by a magistrate ‘some of the worst imaginable offences against children are alleged against you.’ And then, the magistrate, Luisa Bazzani, granted Steven Mellody bail. What the? Bail. Even though the former Phys. Ed. teacher at a strict Christian College (and he was a pious Salvation Army youth pastor) faces 59 charges of rape, grooming and sexual penetration of a child under 16. Mellody,... who recently became a father, is even barred from visiting his baby alone. And the family of one of his alleged victims, who told police they opposed bail, said they were so concerned about the influence the former teacher still has over their daughter that they would move to Asia. Magistrate Bazzani said it was ‘very difficult’ to decide whether or not to grant bail, and warned Mellody that if he contacted either of the alleged victims, bail would be revoked. And yet bail was still granted. Wrong !! See more

12.01.2022 This shows you how insensitive, how inured, we have become to our stuffed up court system. I was out walking when I heard that disgraced former prison boss Wayne Harper had been sentenced to three years and five months jail for disgusting child pornography crimes. I instantly thought, ‘That’s not bad’. I should have thought: ‘Bullshit, he deserved ten years’. Harper produced and traded vile child porn. The 58-year-old father of three was caught with more than 1000 child abuse and child pornography images on his phone, computer, USB sticks and iPad. Some of the children depicted in the images were girls as young as two. Two!! He told a fellow sicko: ‘Those little girls want sex just like we do I can’t get enough of these.’ This man ran a prison, the Marngoneet Correctional Centre until late last year. May he rot in jail.

11.01.2022 I hope you paused for a minute’s silence at 11a.m. At 11 o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. To commemorate the end of World War I. Supposedly the ‘war to end all wars’. Yeah, right. One of the most moving moments of my life, was leading a group of radio listeners to Gallipoli for the dawn service one Anzac Day. And I wore my dad’s WW2 medals. Lest we forget.

05.01.2022 Will somebody in authority finally listen? Some of us have been going on about the failings, the weaknesses, the dangers, in our bail system for years. It’s got so bad we’ve gone from ‘I wonder if he was on bail?’ to ‘I bet he was on bail’. Coroner Jacqui Hawkins has reported on the Bourke Street massacre, pointing out the failures of police, and the case of killer, James Gargasoulos, who was bailed only six days before he deliberately embarked on the slaughter. Six people d...ied, and 27 others were injured, when he drove a stolen car through the CBD lunchtime crowd in January, 2017. It is agonising ... such a violent, drug-fuelled, psychotic and delusional perpetrator was allowed to slip through the cracks,’ the Coroner said. She criticised poor police planning and inadequate resources amongst the ‘agonising failures’ before the rampage. We know cops on the frontline had many chances to block him in (I’m told seven) but were afraid of repercussions from ‘upstairs’. It was a fatal fear. Coroner Hawkins made nine recommendations yesterday aimed at preventing a similar rampage. They include changes to the granting of bail. Let’s hope and pray her learned advice is taken. Because, never, has the slogan ‘jail not bail’ been more appropriate. See more

03.01.2022 This is a sorta good news-bad news story. A paedophile, who lured a 10-year-old girl into a public toilet, has had his jail sentence increased after a public outcry. That’s the good news. The bad news is he should not have had his original sentence, for a gross crime against a child, reduced by 40% for pleading guilty, in the first place. With a short non-parole period, and the sentence reduction, Hamzeh Bahrami could have been free in 2022 for a ghastly crime he committed i...n 2019. On Friday, the SA Supreme Court ruled the sentence was manifestly inadequate and had to be corrected ‘to maintain public confidence in the judicial system’. His sentence was increased to seven years, with a non-parole period of five years. The judges called his crimes ‘‘shocking and brazen, abhorrent and degrading’. Bahrami finally pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated indecent assault and one count of false imprisonment. This was after his brother was originally, mistakenly, taken into custody over the assaults. At least, in this case, the DPP listened to the community outcry. See more

02.01.2022 I have complained endlessly that magistrates and judges don’t take child porn seriously and let too many men (users and producers of videoed child sexual abuse) walk free with suspended sentences. Seems it doesn’t only apply to men. In NSW, a 35-year-old woman has walked free with a three-month suspended sentence (3 months!) for producing and disseminating child abuse material featuring a child known to her. Allegations were made that the woman was using an international encr...ypted messaging service to share child abuse material. As a result of an AFP investigation, one child was identified and removed from harm. Whether the child was a member of her family was not revealed. What the courts have to realise is, that for even 30 seconds of a child porn video to be produced, an innocent child has suffered. Sentences should, must, reflect that. They don’t yet. See more