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...Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were wanted over the killing of three people and the subject of a weeks-long manhunt across Canada
Canadian police say they believe two fugitives suspected of killing an American woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as another man died in what appears to be suicides.
The Manitoba Medical Examiner completed the autopsies and confirmed on Monday that the bodies found last week were indeed 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky. Both were found in dense bush in northern Manitoba.
Continue reading...Melbourne gangland widow freed on bail after being charged with kidnapping and death threat
Gangland widow Roberta Williams has been given bail by a Melbourne court after allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill a television producer making a show about her life.
The 50-year-old widow of convicted killer Carl Williams, who was killed in prison in 2010, is one of four people charged with assaulting and threatening to kill producer Ryan Naumenko at Collingwood on 9 July.
Continue reading...Convicted drugs supplier David James Jackson left Queensland armed with crossbow
A British fugitive who made it across the Torres Strait on a jetski trying to flee a drugs supply charge in Australia has been sentenced for the audacious escape attempt.
Armed with a crossbow and supplies for the 90-mile journey, David James Jackson, 57, took off from the tip of Queensland and made it to Papua New Guinean waters.
Continue reading...Bourhan Hraichie planned attack on Bankstown police station and threatened to kill NSW prisons boss
A New South Wales man who carved a terrorist slogan into a cellmate’s forehead and planned an Islamic State-inspired police shooting will spent at least 29 years in jail.
Bourhan Hraichie, 22, pleaded guilty in the NSW supreme court to four offences over his long-running plan to organise a terrorist attack on Bankstown police station, and causing grievous bodily harm to Michael O’Keefe with intent to murder.
Continue reading...Claims including links to Triads to be ‘re-examined’ and rules covering junket operators reviewed
Victoria’s minister for gambling, Marlene Kairouz, says she has ordered the state’s casino regulator to conduct a snap investigation into a flood of allegations made against Crown Resorts and its Melbourne operation that include claims of links to organised crime and that its high rollers got waved through immigration without proper checks.
Kairouz said her department would also review the regulation of junket operators who bring high rollers from China, some of whom have been linked by Nine to Triad gangs.
Continue reading...Court of appeal orders former getaway driver be immediately released due to miscarriage of justice caused by his lawyer Nicola Gobbo
Melbourne gangland getaway driver Faruk Orman will be immediately released from jail because of a “substantial miscarriage of justice” caused by his double-agent lawyer Nicola Gobbo, also known as Lawyer X.
Victoria’s court of appeal ordered Orman be released without delay after a hearing in Melbourne on Friday found he should be acquitted due to Gobbo’s actions while she was representing him.
Continue reading...The 51-year-old mother was jailed in 2003 for at least 25 years for killing her four babies
An inquiry into Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions for killing her four babies has reinforced her guilt, a former New South Wales district court chief judge has found.
Reginald Blanch QC, who presided over the inquiry, has concluded he does not have “any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Kathleen Megan Folbigg”, in a report made public on Monday night.
Continue reading...Anthony Harvey murdered his wife, Mara Lee, their three children and his mother-in-law in their Perth home
A man who admitted using knives to murder his wife, three young children and mother-in-law has become the first person in Western Australia ordered by a judge never to be released from prison.
Anthony Robert Harvey, 25, killed two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, three-year-old Charlotte and their mother, Mara Lee Harvey, 41, at their Bedford home on 3 September 2018.
Continue reading...Explosion in number of boats carrying cocaine and meth from Latin America to Australia is causing havoc for islands on the way
• Cocaine used as washing powder: police struggle with Pacific drug influx
It is the drug route you’ve never heard of: a multibillion-dollar operation involving cocaine and methamphetamines being packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported to Australia via South Pacific islands more often thought of as holiday destinations than narcotics hubs.
In the past five years there has been an explosion in the number of boats, sometimes carrying more than a tonne of cocaine, making the journey across the Pacific Ocean to feed Australia’s growing and very lucrative drug habit.
Continue reading...Four men died and a woman was injured in this week’s shooting rampage in Darwin
Northern Territory police have charged the man suspected of a shooting rampage in Darwin with four counts of murder.
Four men died and a woman was injured after being shot in the leg on Tuesday night.
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