lock up your daughters

Paul Sheehan in the SMH



http://www.smh.com.au/news/paul-sheehan/court-ordeals-could-lead-to-street-law/2005/07/24/1122143724317.html



"....I'm sure this oversight would distress Justice Hidden, a decent man. But T has learned to expect nothing more: "The system is stuffed. It needs to be fixed. We go through an ordeal. Then we have to go through another ordeal in court. Sleazy barristers can say anything they like, accuse us of anything ... The boys were mentally raping us all over again by the way they were able to screw the system, mock us, and mock the courts. The courts are supposed to represent the people, but the way the boys were allowed to act is an offence to us all."

She may be only 17, but T has acquired a keen grasp of how the law was used to her disadvantage: "The judges were lenient. They let the delays keep happening. Sometimes they could have used their discretion and they didn't. [MSK] kept finding media stories that were irrelevant to his case - like the Skaf trials - yet these were used to delay this trial. The excuse of media coverage was pathetic and shouldn't have been allowed ... And look at what they did with legal aid. They must have spent $3 million of taxpayers' money so they could have so many barristers and keep sacking them to delay the trials ... And then there was that delay because it was Ramadan. That's totally a religion of convenience to them."

As for the impact of the incessant delays, she said: "You prepare yourself for court, you go over all the details in your mind over and over again, and then you're told, 'Sorry, false start.' That happened to me nine times!"

That was the whole idea. After the Court of Criminal Appeal began throwing out gang-rape trials and victims started collapsing under the weight of aborted trials, MSK and MAK were encouraged to begin a process of delay for delay's sake, wearing down T and X, breaking their resolve. In this they used a series of lawyers and judges, all servants to due process........"