From the final verdict on George Pell to devastating Great Barrier Reef bleaching, here’s our roundup of important stories
As Australia’s coronavirus outbreak continues, a lot of important news has slipped under the radar.
Here are the most important stories you may have missed over the past week. From the statement of George Pell’s accuser to the worst coral bleaching the Great Barrier Reef has ever seen.
Continue reading...Australian high court’s decision is Pell’s last chance to overturn conviction for historical child sexual abuse
On Tuesday, almost two years after being committed to stand trial on multiple charges of historical child sexual abuse, the case against the former financial controller of the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell, will likely end with him either walking free or remaining in jail to serve the rest of his sentence.
After failing to appeal to Victoria’s appellate court in August, Pell’s legal team took his case to the high court, the final avenue in his bid for freedom. Across two days in March, the full bench of seven justices heard Pell’s barrister Bret Walker SC argue that Victoria’s appellate judges, who dismissed Pell’s first appeal in 2019 by a majority of two-to-one, may have been unduly influenced by the complainant’s testimony by watching a recorded video of it rather than just reading the transcript of his evidence.
Continue reading...Australia’s home affairs minister had linked New Zealand prime minister’s comments to her upcoming re-election bid
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has brushed off criticism from Australia’s home affairs minister Peter Dutton, saying his policy decisions are “regrettable”.
At her weekly news conference in Wellington on Monday, Ardern was scathing about Dutton’s criticism of her recent meeting with Scott Morrison, saying it was not her plain-talking that was to blame for increasing tensions between the neighbours – but Australia’s policy decisions on immigration matters which were hurting Kiwis.
Continue reading...The New Zealand prime minister was justified in taking Scott Morrison to task over a policy that is both spurious and damaging
We’ve seen this movie before.
Then, in Love Actually, Hugh Grant played the unlikely prime minister of Britain, standing up to an oleaginous Billy Bob Thornton as president of the US.
Continue reading...Police comments last week that they were keeping an ‘open mind’ on the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three young children by her former partner were widely condemned. In this episode of Full Story, reporter Ben Smee looks at the track record of Queensland police on domestic violence, and we hear from one woman about her own shocking story
You can read Ben Smee’s reporting on Dani’s case here, and his piece about how Hannah Clarke’s murder exposes a ‘failure in our system’.
You can also read his reporting on Queensland woman Julie, who was forced to go into hiding after a senior constable, Neil Punchard, accessed her address from a police database and sent it to her violent former husband.
Continue reading...Domestic violence campaigners appalled force wants to consider suggestions Rowan Baxter was ‘driven too far’ when he set fire to his family in their car in Brisbane
Queensland police have revealed that a man who killed his wife and three children by dousing them with petrol and setting them alight had a history of domestic violence and was known to them.
But in comments that have shocked domestic violence campaigners, the force says they are keeping an “open mind” about suggestions the 42-year-old Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far” and are appealing to people who knew the couple to come forward to understand his motives.
Continue reading...Waks, now an advocate for Jewish abuse victims, was one of a number of children Cyprys abused at Melbourne’s Chabad Yeshivah centre
A child abuse victim who blew the whistle on abuse within the Orthodox Chabad sect of Judaism in Australia has been awarded $804,170 in damages in a civil case brought against his perpetrator and serial abuser, David Cyprys, in Melbourne.
Manny Waks was about 13 years old when he was first abused by Cyprys at the Elwood synagogue, and he was also abused at the Chabad Yeshivah centre in Melbourne.
Continue reading...NSW detective is defending charges of illegally making recordings during investigation into disappearance of three-year-old William
William Tyrrell’s foster family has blasted the “personal agendas” of police behind the prosecution of former detective Gary Jubelin, saying the investigation into the boy’s disappearance has been “cavalier” following his removal.
Jubelin is defending four charges of illegally recording elderly neighbour Paul Savage during an investigation into the 2014 disappearance of the three-year-old from the NSW mid-north coast.
Continue reading...Australian federal police say livestreaming of children performing sexual acts marks ‘alarming shift’
Australian paedophiles are paying as little as A$15 for children to perform sexual acts online while being filmed in the Philippines, according to the head of the Australian federal police team in Manila.
Senior officer Andrew Perkins told Guardian Australia there was an “alarming shift” from previously more common types of “sex tourism” to “convenient and low-risk” online abuse of children which can be customised to the specific requirements of customers.
Continue reading...NSW police are investigating the possibility the husband of the woman, who was found in Pymble, has fled to China with two children
The body of a woman has been found in a freezer in a unit on Sydney’s upper north shore.
Police officers discovered the body of the woman, believed to be in her 30s, after forcing their way into a unit in Pymble on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...The Westpac scandal has brought the role of financial institutions in enabling child sexual abuse into sharp relief
On 25 October plainclothes police barged through the red door of a family home in a dense neighbourhood in Rizal, a province two hours away from Manila.
There they arrested a mother who was allegedly sexually exploiting her own 12-year-old daughter. The 45-year-old woman was clutching her phone. Police took it and then handcuffed her.
Continue reading...Full bench of seven judges will decide on Cardinal Pell’s appeal, likely to be heard in 2020
Cardinal George Pell will have a final chance to overturn his conviction on historical child sexual abuse offences after the high court in Canberra agreed to hear appeal arguments in a special full court sitting.
A date for the appeal hearing is yet to be set but it is likely to be early in 2020, by the full bench of seven judges. Led by the high-profile silk Bret Walker SC, Pell’s legal team will argue that the majority of judges in Victoria’s court of appeal erred by finding in August that jurors were not unreasonable to believe the testimony of Pell’s victim.
Continue reading...Sterling Mervyn Free molested seven-year-old in bushland before dropping her back at North Lakes shopping centre
A 27-year-old father of two daughters faced a sentencing hearing on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl after stalking her in the toy section of Kmart at a shopping centre in Brisbane last year.
Sterling Mervyn Free lured the girl from the Westfield North Lakes shopping centre, molested her in bushland and dropped her back to the centre more than an hour later.
Continue reading...Pregnant Melbourne woman told emergency services her partner, William Wilson, had a hammer, police say
A triple zero operator heard an argument, screaming and then silence during a call from a pregnant woman killed when flung from a ute allegedly driven by her partner, according to police.
Helena Broadbent, 32, suffered a “catastrophic brain injury” when she fell backwards out of the Mitsubishi Triton in suburban Melbourne on Saturday and died in hospital after delivering a baby girl by caesarean.
Continue reading...Meth, cocaine and ecstasy found stashed under seaweed off Western Australia after yacht used by alleged smugglers ran aground
Three more men have been charged over a massive A$1bn drug haul found on a tiny island off Western Australia after a yacht ran aground and was abandoned, sparking a search for its occupants.
Police launched a raid on Burton Island off the port town of Geraldton last week, finding Frenchman Antoine Dicenta, 51, and British man Graham Palmer, 34, allegedly with 1.087 tonne of methylamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy in dozens of bags that they had attempted to hide under seaweed.
Continue reading...New South Wales government fails in bid to keep the notorious paedophile behind bars
The notorious paedophile Michael Guider, who killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight decades ago, has walked free from a Sydney prison.
Guider was released from Long Bay jail on Thursday after the supreme court rejected a New South Wales government bid to keep him behind bars for another year.
Continue reading...Judge sentences Jaymes Todd to a non-parole period of 35 years for crimes described as crimes as ‘sadistic’ and ‘categorically evil’
Eurydice Dixon’s father said he hoped the man who raped and killed his daughter “gets better,” shortly after the killer was sentenced to to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 35 years.
Jaymes Todd stalked Dixon, 22, for more than an hour before attacking her as she walked through Princes Park following a comedy gig on 12 June last year.
Continue reading...Matthew James Williams sentenced for ‘horrifying’ attack on pair in Jindabyne
A British ski instructor has been jailed for 10 years for raping a woman and physically assaulting her male friend in Australia.
Matthew James Williams, 29, attacked the pair on a street in Jindabyne, south of Canberra and near the border between New South Wales and Victoria, in July 2018. He had followed the woman and her 25-year-old companion after they left a pub to walk home.
Continue reading...The family of the 24-year-old woman, whose body was found in a Clarence Street unit after Tuesday’s rampage, asked for privacy
The woman murdered in a vicious knife attack in Sydney has been named as Michaela Dunn.
The 24-year-old was allegedly killed at an apartment on Clarence Street in city’s CBD on Tuesday by Mert Ney, a 20-year-old who police say had a history of mental health issues.
Continue reading... Police say 21-year-old suspect from western Sydney was carrying information on extremist ideologies when arrested
A man who allegedly stabbed a woman to death in Sydney’s central business district before attacking others on a busy city street with a butcher’s knife was arrested carrying information about terrorist attacks and extremist ideologies on a USB drive.
But police say the man did not have any known links to terror groups, and that he acted alone. The attacks are not being treated as a terrorist attack, the New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, said on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...