Andrew L. Urban.
I visited Noel Greenaway in maximum security last year. As he came out to greet me, I made a mental note that he was wearing spotless white overalls; prison issue. How ironic, I thought, yet how fitting. The man convicted of egregious sexual and physical abuse of troublesome teenage girls nearly half a century ago – wrongfully, I maintain – is issued a white garment symbolic of innocence by the very system that destroyed the presumption of his innocence.
In my book, Presumption of Evil, I shine the written spotlight on his case, drawing on court transcripts, diaries, personal reflections and painful family recollections. His guilt was not established beyond reasonable doubt. Indeed, it was not established to any level.
By relying on untested claims, the court reversed the onus of proof. His innocence is not something he should have had to try and prove in our criminal justice system.
His accusers, referred to as victims from the time they made their complaints, had no corroborative evidence to present nor were they required to. Many people don’t know that. As the judge told the jury, the evidence is what the complainants said in court. She said, he said…and what she said goes.
That’s how the law currently stands in such cases, with the furious agreement of the #MeToo movement.
As I detail in my book, the court was provided with dozens of glowing character references for the law-abiding, morally upright Noel Greenaway for the purposes of sentencing (little good did they do him). But the characters of his accusers were never examined. Of course, the jury didn’t get to see Noel’s character references, but my point is how the presumption of innocence is lost in such cases.
Another case I studied involving sexual abuse, also historic, resulted in a conviction which is so obviously wrongful it doesn’t need a lawyer to see it. The man was convicted and jailed, satisfying the desire of the complainant who had alerted him before she even made the complaint that she set out to destroy his happy family – of which she had been a well treated member. But like Oliver, she wanted more …
When unscrupulous women take advantage of the new mantra that we should ‘believe all women’, they attack the presumption of innocence and become the unrestrained hunters of men. Their reasons are varied and do not really matter. Revenge, politics, fame or monetary reward, justice is abused, with help from a deformed new legal privilege.
Innocent men have become collateral damage. Teen Vogue columnist and outspoken feminist Emily Lindin came under fire on social media in November 2017 after tweeting that she was “not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs” over false allegations of sexual assault or harassment. Perhaps karma might change her mind …
As I explain in the book, child sex abuse is today’s crimen exceptum – a crime so exceptional that the established rules of justice need not be applied to it. And adult sex abuse is not far behind. Misusing allegations of sexual assault for an ulterior purpose is a uniquely female weapon.
But that is wrong. If society exempts one category of crime from the established rules of justice which set guidelines for the protection of the accused, we are back in the dark ages where justice was an aspiration not a reality and every citizen at risk of the massive powers of the state disabling the presumption of innocence.
At the start of my book I quote an observation from the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato: The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.
75 years ago a nice girl would set next to me in the classroom, our bare arms gently touching. Haven’t. forgotten her name.The little vixen cast a spell over me. We later married. However, with no Statute of Limitations on such egregious behaviour- can I sue? She does have a pretty penny in Super. A decent countries system of justice would refuse ancient allegations, especially those that seem to have a possible monetary motive.He said- she said, and no substantial proof is crappe.
As I have read in previous contributions to WCR . In the privatised 1789 second fleet, apparently 400 of the convicts were murdered for profit on the voyage to Australia . There is absolutely no record of any punishment whatsoever. Just a nice profit selling the uneaten food of the dead convicts in Sydney Town These ships were previously used to transport slaves . Slaves were worth money alive-nothing dead. Dead (murdered) convicts uneaten food was extremely valuable in Sydney when sold to those in positions of power and with money. Police troopers / judges / magistrates and real estate agents.The fight for harbourside land started in 1788.and has not abated. Neither has corruption in all the many spheres of an Australian citizens life. The 3 police on horses watched the homeless man drown in the billabong. Doubtful if this type of behaviour has gotten any worse. Just more rats to pray on you. At least, and much to their disappointment,those scoundrels can no longer murder you with the government rope. Just as was done to poor innocent Ray Bailey, and was sought for innocent Darryl Beamish. Innocent Derek Bromley would have been strung up with glee. No hanging victory for Colin Manock and the South Australian Judges .All that DNA concealing and fabrication work by the Tasmanian police with the help of their judge and DPP mates and no hanging of the innocent Sue. So justice delivery has improved for some (not Aboriginals) if you don’t die in custody, or the brave police don’t shoot you. Don’t ever forget ,convicts were flogged to death in front of witnesses. (in Tasmania) That will learn them to be good Christians. The Reverend Samuel Marsden ,the flogging magistrate, what a little police darling. Of course, if you were later found innocent, you could be dug up and unflogged. See – so things ain’t all that bad today. (unless you are a homeless–
Or unless you are accused by a female of an offence that didn’t happen 30 or more years ago . The DPP/ police and judge t seems,can’t lose on that one . Can’t lose! Defies common sense. Now, there is an example of modern stupidity in the delivery of justice. They ( those with the power) cant hang you as they did not long ago But they sure can wreck your life without any evidence . Suppose that will have to do – where do I sign up ?
Jerry, hello, I know you; it is a sad world in which we live Jerry. I was at the Dr today and I told him I laughed last night, and also a few months ago. But, We Never Surrender; Never Give Up, and Justice Will Prevail, Amen.
Owen.
If Justice Will sits on the Courts of Criminal Appeal. He and his cronies will almost certainly prevail . Do you like a dinner Praise the judgemental ones lest youse be judged . They will brook no criticism from the mug punters.
My historical accusations dated back to 1986. My stepdaughter would have been around 13 at the time. She first raised the matter when she was about 16 , having gone to see a counsellor for aggressive oppositional behavior. , at the instigation of her mum.My wife of now 43 years. During the proceedings of the initial accusations my stepdaughter was naturally questioned by her mother. Only one of the 4 allegations later made , were made at that time. My wife dispelled that one , as she was present at the described event , and no such impropriety had taken place. My stepdaughter then explained the failure of the counsellor to report to DOCS or to police by saying that she had told the counsellor that she’d made up the accusation in anger over my role in assisting her mother in her discipline. This assertion made no sense as she later told a second counsellor that I had made admissions to the first one. If I had made admissions to the first counsellor , it would not make sense to then say she’d made it up.
In her statement to police in 2008 , some 19 years later, she wrote that I had made no admissions. This would make the third version of her story. ???? In 2008 when she decided to go to police and lodge a complaint she was 34 years old. As a child she had already admitted to her mother that nothing had happened and told us she had even admitted it to the counsellor. So in 2008 the single event she described in 1986 had now become 4 events and thus 4 charges against me.
In 25 years neither her mum or I or anyone else had heard of the other 3 accusations. This mass array of anomalies were available to DPP and Police. Neither institution raised any questions to explain the anomalies.
The point I’m making of course is that the ultimate accusations were not brought against me by a child . They were brought against me by a 35 year old jealous of her mothers happy life with a second husband and 2 half siblings. The catalyst for the breakdown of the relationship, this time was my refusal to donate money to her husbands failing business.
From that early conflict in 1989 -90 where everything was addressed, my stepdaughter continued to live with me till age 20, came on holidays with our family and accepted 2 cars , clothes a room in our house , food and shelter , without once being asked to contribute anything except for respect for me and her mum and the sisterly treatment of her half brother and sister . She was asked to leave at age 21 as she could not behave in a civil manner .
The second conflict started by her. So in 1994 she left our home again and lived with her grandparents for a while. In 1995 her father died in a boating accident. To help with her distress i rang her , ! I said I was sorry about her father and that if she wanted to , she could come to us for help. She came to my door and I welcomed her. I said you are and always will be welcome to be with us as long as she did not make outrageous claims about me .
So for the next 11 years , not one accusation , not one argument , not one conflict Nil.
In 2001 I walked her down the aisle at her wedding at her request . In 2002 she asked her mother and ME to attend the birth of her first child. In 2004-5 she asked me and her mother if we could look after her 2 year old daughter , while she and her husband took an overseas holiday. Hardly what you would ask of an offender against children. Please remember. !!!!!! please !!!
The people who report child abuse against them after 25 years or more , are adults. Adults lie to get what they want. It’s been seen over and over. ! The accusation is by an adult and people fail to set aside that a 20 year old accusation may not be real. Especially as , when made as a minor all the detail was different.
What a weapon for disgruntled nasty women when a ton of anomalies are ignored in the fervor to achieve a conviction . Guilty until proven innocent is our new legal standard. Please stop this witch hunt. Pv
What was the outcome of the case against you?
PV was found guilty by a District Court jury of one act of indecency and one act of sexual intercourse without consent and was jailed for 18 months.
He lost a subsequent appeal.
An application to the HCA was dismissed.
The appeal and application to the HCA turned on the use that the trial jury might have made in applying the evidence of another step-daughter (from an earlier marriage) [‘SD1’] to the ‘less serious charge of one-act-of-indecency against [SD2] but also to the more serious charge of sexual-intercourse without-consent also made by the step-daughter from PV’s later marriage [‘SD2’].
PV was found guilty on both the act-of-indecency and sexual-intercourse without-consent counts/charges.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but both the appeal and application to the HCA involved the possible use of [SD1]’s evidence to use ‘tendency’ evidence about an earlier, separate act of indecency alleged by [SD1] to [allegedly] wrongfully convict PV of sexual-intercourse with [SD2]] without-consent.
I don’t think PV’s failed appeal or application to the HCA involved challenging the ‘guilty of an act of indecency finding’.
Please, I would welcome my comment being corrected and/or welcome additional information on PV’s case.
Hi Gary , I was found guilty of an act of indecency , being asking her to touch me inappropriately. This was a very specific event , described by my stepdaughter. He mother , my wife of 42 years , told the court this simply did not happen in the circumstances she described … my wife was present in the described circumstance. She was not believed . Part of the story of this event was to create a circumstance , whereby my wife was not at home . In Nov 1985 my wife gave birth to our twins. My wife was exhausted and went to Tresillian for a weeks rest. My stepdaughter claimed that it was while her mother was there , that the touching event took place. PROBLEM… while she was in tresillian she arranged for her daughter to stay with her father. She wasn’t even with me !! Prosecutor ended up saying that it could have happened while my wife was shopping. As the complaint circumstances were very specific, that would mean there would have to have been a second event …. But only one was claimed ??? The sexual intercourse without consent involved a claim that I went to her bedroom on two occasions and touched her with some degree of digital penetration . That was the alleged sexual intercourse. In this instance she claimed she remembered coming to a new bedroom where her mum and I were sleeping. She was stressed and could not sleep. Her mum had tried to settle her 5 or 6 times , could not , so I went and performed this touching allegation . She then said that a couple of days later she could not sleep , came to my room at the other end if the house , followed her to her room and did it again. Her mother didn’t hear what was happening as the room was a long way away. Involving walking along corridors , up and down stairs and through a study. The police’s own brief had evidence within it that the approval to build the new parents bedroom was obtained in Oct 1988 and took over a year to construct as part of a major renovation and extension. So early 1990 was the first time the room was usable. Yet, the complaint was that it all happened in 1986 . The new prosecutor told the court when she first appeared in court that the complainant had made an error and I had in fact come from the room next door to hers ,contradicting the whole description of the event. .Reasonable doubt. ??? She claimed it happened twice yet I was found guilty of one. Now to your question of appeals. The leave to appeal to the CCA was granted by judge Ian Harrison . This was based , not upon the Tendency and Coincidence aspect of my conviction but on problems with evidence and there were 8 points of appeal , lodged by Tony Bellanto QC. I was released immediately as in Justice Harrison’s view , I had 8 valid appeal points. One in particular was the performance of Judge Ken Taylor un instructing the jury. Several Lawyers have called his instructions incomprehensible as did Mr Bellanto. The CCA refused to read All his instruction but in particular , the component he offered which was not straight from the book. Mr Bellanto also listened to the recording of Judge Taylor’s instructions and told the Judges they MUST hear it as No Jury could possibly understand what he was saying. Bellanto said HE couldn’t!
I was home for over a year before the result of the appeal was given. Justice Adam’s comment that evidence was implausible and inconsistent yet dismissed the appeal. ???
I then sought the services of David Jackson QC who said there was a fundamental failure of the court to use tendency and coincidence evidence correctly in that the tendency evidence only related legally to the lesser charge. I asked why we would not bring up so much more that was available to us which was not used in the CCA proceedings.
He said there was irrefutable precedent that T and C Evidence was incorrectly applied . The HighCourt appeal was not heard as , 3 to 2 our leave to appeal was refused.
Jackson said They got it completely wrong. !!!
Justice Bell told Jackson that I was only interested in Stepdaughters. There was a third stepdaughter who told her sister I had never acted inappropriately in any way … so there goes that theory ,! My first wife’s daughter who said I asked to ti help My with a hernia , thereby touching my private bits lied. Why? Because to cover for her infidelity. , her mother told I her I had broken into the fam home and stolen furniture. Untrue ! I took a couch and a chair out of a 500 sq m house full of furniture . I did not break in . I had a key. She told her daughters I had left her pregnant. Good trick… I hadn’t seen her for 6 months when she told that fib. She told the girls it was an acrimonious divorce. Her Lawyer was Helen Coonan. Later Senator Coonan. I told Helen Coonan that I loved my two step daughters and I was sorry for them losing me after losing their father to an earlier divorce. I gave them 100% of the family home , but in doing I could not afford to pay private school fees .Helen Coonan said it was the most generous gesture she had ever encountered . Their mother agreed. For 6 months after the separation started both girls came to stay with me every second weekend. My tormentor acknowledged that in her evidence. It was when their mother told them I was no longer paying their school fees
That they stopped the visits. Clearly the mother had not told them I had handed over ALL proceeds of the sale of our home in Seaforth. Sexual intercourse without consent is what put me behind bars . Yet in 1990 when through a repressed memory recovery session with a counsellor my accuser said I had touched her and her memories of this had been recovered she was questioned my my wife who asked ..so did PV stick his fingers down there. Her answer to her own mother was. No nothing like that !!!!!!!
My wife’s evidence of that conversation and comment was denied. Further Judge Taylor had told the jury that I had made admissions to the first counsellor . As it was reported to a second counsellor that I had done so. She had lied , because in her written statement She said I had Never ! Made Any admissions. I trust this gives you some insight about how such a lie was perpetrated but also how the whole Justice System worked towards a wrongful conviction and the slam every door shut in our attempts to
Finally get an acquittal. Never forget what people like Lindy Chamberlain .,Gordon Woods , Folbigg , Keogh, Pell and others have gone through to expose the truth of how their convictions were manipulated . There is so much more I could say !!! Pv
Dear Garry. I think all charges were challenged by Bellanto in the 8 grounds submitted by him incl the indecency claim. Because he was Challenging anomalies which were obvious , yet my SC barely raised of failed to object when they came up in proceedings, Bellanto was admonished , as theoretically the cross examination should have exposed. They basically ignored them as they were not new evidence , but evidence not challenged by the defense. So basically Jackson QC was convinced that the case would be overturned on his legal point on TAnd C evidence. He convinced us that if the conviction was overturned , and DPP asked for a retrial , a good criminal Barrister would make mince meat out of the allegations. You can’t have tendency to do something the evidence, if fully
challenged actually proves your innocence. The devastating thing that haunts me daily, is that both the police and DPP did not challenge the accusers statement , when large portions were forensically impossible. I think as in Pells case that Jackson should have challenged for evidence review. They did it for him , so why not for me. Because I’m not a Cardinal. ? My case was weaker than his. Pv
I’m reminded of Robert Richter KC who threw Susan Neill-Fraser to the wolves. He – in spite of the years of ‘fresh evidence’ which was produced in hearings and which led to the ill-fated 2nd appeal -Richter put all his appeal eggs (put all Sue’s eggs!) into the one basket and called none of the ‘fresh evidence’ witnesses … save for Meaghan Vass.
And we saw how she was thrown to the wolves by her promised-not-to-be-published evidence being sprayed across the front page of The Mercury: ‘Sam did it!’
And then, DPP Coates seemed to take advantage of that situation in his cross-examination of Vass… she who had been publicly exposed as a ‘dog’ before the eyes of her criminal-class ‘peers’.
She imploded … obviously agreeing to whatever Coates put to her… just so that she could escape that court and escape the pressures, escape the import of the naming of ‘Sam’ as the killer, the evidence which she’d given the day before and which had been publicly revealed by The Mercury.
But I digress…
Robert Richter failed to properly advance Susan Neill-Fraser’s appeal when he told the court he would only call Meaghan Vass.
He could have called those several persons who had given ‘fresh evidence’ during the hearings leading to the 2nd Appeal … but he did not.
If I was in Sue’s position (knowing what I know now) I would have defended myself in court and not even as a last resort would I have taken on legal counsel … they seem more times often than not … to not follow their clients’ instructions.
That comment … of ‘self-defence’ is not a reflection on Sue …it is, rather, a reflection on the probity in general of the legal profession. By the way, people such as Robert Richter – according to Wikipedia – charge between $12,000 and $15,000 per day. The average daily wage (2022) in Tasmania was around $316.
Does not our ‘Justice System’ need reform?
Pv’s summary is just a small portion of the many legal issues that went haywire at his trial, his appeal and his High Court request for appeal. Pv’s appeal lawyers such as Tony Bellanto and the late David Jackson kept being flummoxed, saying afterwards that they’d never seen anything as crazy as the legal proceedings departing from normality in Pv’s case.
One theory is that Peter McClellan’s Royal Commission into child sexual abuse at institutions was just starting up, so there was no way the case against Pv could lose at that particular time, because a loss would throw into doubt the veracity of recollections of child abuse survivors, many of whom might be affected by False Memories – that could be a disastrous lead-up to the important Royal Commission. So Pv was collateral damage, having an enforced loss despite one piece of evidence against him after another collapsing like a house of cards when scrutinised.
I think there’s a typo when Pv wrote above that “Bellanto said HE couldn’t”. I think Pv means that Judge Basten said the Judges wouldn’t look at the video of the trial Judge’s Closing, for no reason at all, even though Bellanto had told the three Judges hat it was essential to see this video of part of the trial in order to understand what happened. Tony Bellanto replied to Judge Basten that he hadn’t foreseen that the Judges would refuse to look at the starting point of the appeal at all, and need a few minutes to replan his approach to the appeal. Those of us watching in the public gallery couldn’t believe it was really happening. So Gary Stannus’s comparison with the bizarre second SNF appeal is apt. Judge Adams then says he was going to look at the video even if the other two Judges would not.
Sorry I’m travelling overseas with no wifi, so my comment might be a bit of a mess.
Very good work Andrew, Victoria was known as the State of the verbals in the 80’s.
Corrupt police verballing clients, no evidence and a spate of shootings by police.
When has evidence ever been by she said she said.
People, do not trust them, I have 3 written false statements of perjury against me, and one occured in front of a nationally recognised journo whom I have not yet
spoken to about and would know the truth and never forget it, by the very nature of the false accusation, but the false witness was tv program pretty face, whom why would the police think he was lieing. Because he was a big noter and evil.
Evil is everywhere and getting worse.
Owen.
My wife wants you to know , that the DPP was permitted to destroy her credibility and challenged everything she said. She was so distraught that she tried to get her story across instead of answering DPP questions. She was even called a hostile witness. My SCasked no questions of her which would have resulted in her discrediting most of the evidence. If you read our anomalies list, ther is no evidence at all . In fact all evidence given in court contradicted written statements upon which the case was based. Police corruption started the whole dirty process which convicted an innocent man. I dare anyone to find 12 people , tell them a story and explain anomalies and then try and get a uniform answer. I still hear some women with no knowledge of the case, say lindy chamberlain was guilty ‘“ I don’t like the look of her !”was the telling factor for their view .
What chance a man accused of child abuse .