Women Killers of NSW: On Facebook
WITH their distant looks and sinister appearance, these women all share the same brand of notoriety.
Each spent time in a NSW jail charged with murder.
Their stories are even more haunting than the images.
They include details of the first woman to be hanged in Sydney’s Darlinghurst jail (she was also the last woman to be hanged in NSW).
Another, at the age of 22, shot the man who employed her because she was carrying his twins and refused to marry her.
Her great-granddaughter is living in Camden and told The Sun-Herald she also has twins (see story on opposite page).
Now the rogues gallery of some 34,000 women and men prisoners is to be made available for the first time from tomorrow through the Ancestry website.
“The records in this collection contain a unique insight into the who’s who of NSW prisons in the late 19th century and early 20th century,” said Brad Argent of Ancestry.
Mr Argent said: ”The wonderful resources at Trove (trove.nla.gov.au) enabled me to access historic editions of The Sydney Morning Herald with the background information
I needed to pull together these fascinating stories.”
Emily May Macdonald is a haunting beauty. In January 1901, she was charged with the wilful murder of her 18-month-old daughter Thelma. Macdonald had poisoned herself and Thelma with phosphorous from match heads, the toddler dying from the effects.
She spent a short time in Darlinghurst jail but was released into the care of an asylum later that year.
Louisa Collins was the first woman to be hanged at Darlinghurst jail and also the last woman to be hanged in NSW. Her crime was to poison not one but two husbands, using an arsenic-based product known as ”Rough on Rats”.
She apparently killed the first, Charles Andrews, to marry the second, Michael Peter Collins. Then, perhaps not happy with her choice, she decided to murder Collins as well.
Much was made of the case at the time. It was referred to in the press as “The Botany Mystery”.
Louisa was convicted of murder by poisoning and hanged at 9am on January 8, 1889, despite much protest (no woman had been hanged in NSW for more than 20 years).
Her execution caused an outcry, partly because Collins was a mother – she was farewelled by three of her children – and partly because there was a view at the time that women, barred from voting and sitting on juries, should not be held accountable to the same laws as men.
The report of the hanging in The Sydney Morning Herald the next day said that Collins, dressed in a ”common brown wincey prison dress”, walked slowly and firmly towards the door which led to the scaffold.
A chaplain said that in her last days she had shown great courage which did not desert her in her final hour.
Mother and daughter Mary Ann Burton and Sarah Louise Keep were both convicted of murdering Keep’s husband William Henry Keep in the “Maitland Poisoning Case” of 1884-85.
Such was the ill will locally that the trial was moved to Sydney to ensure justice prevailed. Keep died in Darlinghurst jail in September 1885 of natural causes. Shortly after, Burton confessed to poisoning William and exonerated her daughter. Burton herself died seven months later (in April 1886) also in Darlinghurst jail.
A PREGNANT Ethel Herringe shot her employer, Maurice John Lee, on November 19, 1902. Herringe, aged 22, was charged with murder after Lee died six days later.
Lee, the licensee of Cowra’s Clubhouse Hotel, had apparently promised to marry Herringe, who was carrying his twins.
She arranged for a clergyman and witness to be present one night after closing then attempted to ambush Lee into marriage.
Lee reneged and Herringe unloaded.
In hospital, he made something of a death-bed confession, suggesting he had got what he deserved. There was much community support for Herringe and a petition for leniency attracted 5000 signatures.
Community sentiment prevailed and her charge was reduced to manslaughter. She was released from prison in 1904, thanks largely to the work of prominent feminist Rose Scott.
Great-granddaughter Julie Sligar said last week her father had memories of Herringe, who was allowed to keep the infants in jail – something of a first at the time. She later married Bill Laws and had three more children (the youngest, Therese, was Ms Sligar’s grandmother). Herringe died in 1958, aged 78.
Ms Sligar, 38, speaking from her home in Camden, said: ”I feel proud of her; she stood up for herself and she certainly never intended for him to die – she wanted to marry him, for goodness sake. I have twins too, Natalie and Amy, aged 8. I joke with my husband Damian to watch what he does or he’ll cop the same fate.”
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/haunting-facebook-of-nsw-women-killers-comes-to-life-20101211-18th0.html
Chaos at the Crossroads: Family Law Reform in Australia
The book Chaos at the Crossroads: Family Law Reform in Australia is launched today and fulfils a long held dream of Dads On The Air to include publishing alongside its weekly broadcasts. The book marks another step forward for the community radio program that began in Western Sydney in 2000 with a small group of disgruntled separated men who had no experience of radio and no resources.
The book tells the story of the last decade of struggle for family law reform in Australia, not just by separated fathers, their supporters and their lobby groups, but by grandparents and other family members cut out of children’s lives by the discriminatory and destructive sole-custody model purveyed by the court.
Chaos also tells the story of how, from the humble beginnings of that disheveled little group, Dads On The Air became the world’s longest running and most famous fathers radio program, regularly interviewing national and international activists, advocates, academics and authors. Dads On The Air, broadcast on Liverpool’s community radio station 2GLF each Tuesday morning, went on to attract a talented team of people with legal, journalistic, managerial, entertainment, academic and counseling backgrounds. This was achieved with no more motivation than a sense of outrage over institutional corruption, social injustice and the fate of our children.
From today Chaos at the Crossroads will progressively become available throughout the month in most of the world’s online eBook retail outlets, beginning with Amazon and ending with Apple’s iBook store.
When Dads On The Air began in 2000 we had no idea we were part of a worldwide trend protesting the treatment of fathers in separated families. Internationally, Fathers 4 Justice in Britain had yet to climb Buckingham Palace or invade the House Of Commons. Bob Geldoff was yet to speak out. But we were fortunate to find ourselves broadcasting in an era when there was no shortage of stories. As that first small band of dads rapidly discovered, like no other subject, family law cut deep into hearts and lives, a seemingly infinite well of pain.
The history of Dads On The Air coincided closely with the evolution of Australian groups such as Dads In Distress, the Non-Custodial Parents (Equal Parenting) Party and the Shared Parenting Council of Australia. Dads On The Air was born not just out of a sense of outrage, but frustration with the mainstream media’s failure to take men’s issues seriously. We were proud to provide a conduit for groups otherwise little heard.
At first we felt very much alone. Our bolshie broadcasts put us out on a limb. We would say what we had to say nervously, thinking that at any time the Australian Federal Police would come to silence us. Our fears were not unfounded. The Court, which we referred to as The Palace Of Lies, had a long history of attempting to stifle its critics. One man who suggested in a letter that the court belonged on a garbage tip found himself being arrested by three Federal Police. Criticism of the court as “criminal” and “corrupt” now fly across the internet without consequence.
Dads On The Air was itself a prime example of the way the information revolution made it possible for a small group in western Sydney to cheaply create a 90 minute weekly program that could be downloaded by anyone with a computer in many different parts of the world. The immediate reach the internet provided outside the Liverpool radio footprint allowed us to attract some of the nation’s and the world’s leading political, academic and social commentators simply did not exist a decade before.
With the spread of communication technology, the court’s arbitrary and cruel judgements were already the stuff of legends by the time we began broadcasting. One Indian immigrant was jailed for writing to his parents in English. The court ignored his protestations that his father had two masters’ degrees in English. The court has also ordered litigants not to contact the United Nations with their concerns, not to publicise the injustices of their cases in any way and not to take their children to a doctor or raise welfare concerns. One father was ordered not to contact his children after he allegedly carried his daughter around on his shoulders, in a crowded park, in a suggestive manner. Another father who expressed a desire to see his adolescent son after the boy’s suicide attempt was ridiculed from the bench. Yet another was jailed for sending his child a birthday card.
Similar stories of damaged lives circled the Child Support Agency. The Agency claimed to be treating fairly a young father who was losing 80 per cent of his income in tax and child support and died with one of their letters in his hand. Another man took more than two weeks to die when he swallowed poison after a call from a CSA officer. The CSA refused to attend the inquest despite a request from the Magistrate.
Chaos at the Crossroads unabashedly looks at the issue of family law from a father’s perspective. Father’s voices are often invisible in the public debate and we try to redress the imbalance in our humble way.
Dads On The Air was strategically placed to cover the push for family law reform in Australia. For a period many of the country’s leading politicians, including the Attorney-General, queued to come on the show; most wanting to demonstrate their support for shared parenting and for fathers. This openness has not been matched by the present government.
Despite architect Lionel Murphy’s vision of a “helping” court when he brought no-fault divorce to Australia in 1975. co-operative parenting after divorce was rarely encouraged.
Almost from the minute the Family Court opened its doors it became a law unto itself, imposing sole mother custody on separating families despite the harm it caused. Reforms meant to promote shared parenting in 1995 actually saw the small percentage of such orders drop. Historically, the Family Court denied fathers contact with their children on the flimsiest of excuses or most ludicrous of accusations. Overly legalistic, enormously bureaucratic, secretive, unaccountable and ideologically based, defying community norms of morality and propriety, it soon became one of the country’s most hated institutions.
The book relies on many sources already available in the public domain to trace the antecedents of the Howard government’s 2003 parliamentary inquiry and the story of what has happened since. Despite the deliberate blizzard of women’s and domestic violence groups stacking the inquiry, the public hearings around the nation exposed for anyone who cared to look the massive dysfunction of Australia’s family law and child support systems and the distress they created in the community.
It also exposed the divide between the taxpayer-funded mandarins and the general populace. The industry continued to blindly insist their only concern was the best interests of the child. It was little short of a lie.
The 2003 inquiry was given added piquancy by virtue of being held during the final days of that aging lion of the left Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson. He had dominated family law in Australia for more than half of the Court’s life and took every opportunity he could to attack the Howard government for its investigation of shared parenting.
The original 2003 announcement from the Prime Minister that the government would examine the idea of a rebuttable presumption of joint custody provoked a wave of positive media coverage and community support. However the parliamentary inquiry’s final report, the poorly written, intellectually sloppy and ridiculously named Every Picture Tells A Story, caused many problems. It was condemned by family law reformers as a betrayal of the nation’s more than one million children of separated parents and of the sometimes tearful parents who had appeared before the inquiry. DOTA described the report as just like a Family Court judgement, it bore no relationship to the evidence and no relationship to reality.
The Howard government dithered for years over the issue of family law reform, destroying the public momentum for change. Embarrassed by accusations it was influenced by men’s groups, it would not be until 2006, after yet more committees and calls for submissions, that the Howard government finally passed what DOTA condemned as sadly inadequate laws promoting shared parental responsibility.
Unconvinced the legislation would make any difference in practice, DOTA declared with characteristic chutzpah the fight lost: “The liars, the lawyers, the bureaucrats and the social engineers have won the day.”
Not withstanding DOTA’s stance, the lengthy public debate engendered a cultural shift. After 2006 many separating parents expected to share the care of the children. But the court itself was largely hostile towards shared parenting and impatient of parliamentary interference.
Just as with the name Dads On The Air, the title Chaos at the Crossroads popped into my mind one day and stayed. An early draft went up online in 2004. Come 2010 and the title could hardly be more appropriate. The narrowly returned Labor government had neither the guts nor the integrity to mention family law during the campaign leading up to the August election. Fearful of losing votes, they did not acknowledge they were winding back the popular shared parenting laws. The rollback came under the guise of protecting women and children from violence. The government ignored the findings of the Australian Institute of Families Studies that there was no evidence shared parenting resulted in higher levels of conflict and that the new laws were widely supported.
The government’s expansion of the definition of domestic violence in the proposed Family Violence Bill was cheered on by shared parenting’s greatest opponents former Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson and Justice Richard Chisholm.
After more than 20 years of ferment, community agitation, government inquiry, thousands of submissions and countless stories of suffering and distress, there now appears less hope than ever for separated dads. As the government fuels moral panic over domestic violence, family law is heading straight back from whence it came, to those dark days when too many fathers entering the court never or rarely ever saw their children again.
There has been almost no public input into the shared parenting rollback. The public submission period for the Family Violence Bill runs across Christmas and ends at the height of the holiday season. The Bill is the result of blatant manipulation of the public inquiry process. The plank of reports being used to justify the changes, commissioned by the Attorney-General’s department after it became clear the AIFS intended to be neutral, almost all fall under the category of feminist advocacy research. One expensive two volume report took their sample from women’s services, a naturally self selecting group of disaffected. The appointment of former Family Court judge Richard Chisholm, whose hostility to shared parenting was already well known, to produce one of the many reports was simply shameful.
Yet the Labor Government, led by Julia Gillard and ably assisted by Attorney-General Robert McClelland, appears determined to press on with its lunacy.
Show me a person who has not been guilty of emotional and financial manipulation and I’ll show you Christ on earth, but this is just one of the new and greatly expanded definitions of domestic violence being placed into the Family Law Act.
There can be only one result from defining domestic or “family” violence so broadly as to include much normal human behaviour, in such a gendered way and couched in such a manner as to target only men as perpetrators - and that is a return to the days when many fathers entering the Family Court of Australia rarely or never saw their children again. The resultant personal pain created a large body of disaffected men as well as grandparents and other extended family members, did the community as a whole great harm, brought the judiciary into disrepute and impacted badly on the children involved.
Chaos At The Crossroads concludes: “Successive governments from both left and right have failed to listen to their constituents and respond to their concerns. Even when enacting legislative reforms, these same governments left their enforcement in the hands of institutions notoriously resistant to change. They allowed or encouraged fashionable ideology, institutional inertia and bureaucracy to triumph over common sense. Common decency was lost long ago.
“In terms of human suffering, the Australian public has already paid dearly for the failure to reform outdated, badly administered and inappropriate institutions dealing with family breakdown – and for the failure of governments to take seriously the voices of the men and women most directly affected by them. The country’s failure to reform family law and child support is ultimately a failure of democracy itself.”
Chaos at the Crossroads is now available directly from the internet publishers at: https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000027/Chaos-At-The-Crossroads.html
By John Stapleton – posted Wednesday, 8 December 2010
John Stapleton wrote for a variety of Australian publications including The Bulletin and The Financial Review before joining the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald in the mid-1980s. He spent the last 15 years of his journalistic career, until 2009, working as a general news reporter on The Australian.
He is the very proud father of two teenage children. His work has appeared in several anthologies, including Men Love Sex and Australian Politics. In 2000 he joined a small group of separated dads at 2GLF in Western Sydney and helped to found Dads On The Air, now the worldʼs longest running fathers’ radio program.
Over the next nine years, while holding down a full time job and taking care of his children, he spent many hours keeping the then struggling program alive. He is currently living in Bangkok. The show is now prospering without him, a feat of which he is extremely proud . On a visit to Sydney in October 2010 he participated in Dads On The Airʼs tenth anniversary program, which featured some of the original members and most enduring supporters.
The Conflict of Interest Game women play against their ex-partners
If you are male, in need of legal aid to assist with your separation, divorce or family parenting or property settlements you had better be prepared to go it alone! Unless of course you act quickly.
There is a game that women play. Legal firms, legal aid, community legal centres and even the Public Interest Legal Clearing House buy into this game. Why? Perhaps to protect their lucrative income stream“ men.
This game is called a conflict of Interest. I obviously can’t spell out how it works, because some audiences of this article may be educated by it and use it against their ex-husband. But it’s very effective.
Legal firms will claim a conflict of interest without ever having represented a client. There are a few criteria they use and they will maintain the COI for life. Once it’s done, there is nothing you can do about it.
The only solution is to get in first. If you are thinking of separating or taking legal action against your ex-wife then make sure you shop around for a solicitor and complete the legal aid assessment forms. All solicitors are not equal and some are more helpful than others.
This can be tricky too. Legal aid often require that the proceedings be well in progress before they will approve assistance. There are several valid reasons for this, and one not so fair reason; it gives the woman a chance to create the COI before you get your legal aid approved, then Legal Aid can reject you on the basis of a COI.
I had this happen to me. 36 solicitors had been contacted by my ex and her mother (yes, legal firms will create a COI from anyone, whether related to your ex-wife or not). I had to engage private legal assistance and self litigate. On a pension that was extremely difficult to cover.
Mind you, you can try and create a COI against her, but it only works one way. If you’re male – Legal firms, community legal centres and so on will not treat you as a life client, until they actually appear on your behalf in court, or engage a barrister to do so.
Disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, magistrates refuse to believe this game exists, or that legal firms are not “robust†enough to offer legal support. Why? One can only speculate. Could they be that naive, or are they too protecting their livelihood?
Written by fathersdomatter – published exclusively on F4E on 8th December, 2010
DIVORCE LAWS: Gillard Govt to curb fathers’ access to shared custody
Dysfunctional Labor - On the nose with almost everyone
Child Custody laws in Australia
Recently, I wrote in News Weekly (Letters, October 30) that if the pro-family political parties want to make huge gains in their vote, all they need do is make a sustained assault on the Family Law Act, the Family Law Court and the domestic violence industry. I stated that of all the factors which harm the Australian family and do draconian injustice to individual Australians, nothing remotely compares with these in scope or severity.
Now the Gillard Labor Government has revealed its intention to amend the Family Law Act to make it even more draconian and unjust.
In 2006, the Howard Coalition Government amended the act to require judges to approach custody cases with the “rebuttable presumption” that both parents are equally important in a child’s upbringing. The presumption is rebuttable in the sense that if there is compelling evidence that one of the parents is likely to harm the child, access should be limited in proportion to the risk.
Unfortunately, as a sop to the feminists, the Howard amendments broadened the act’s definition of what constitutes harm to children to include “physical or psychological harm from being subjected to, or exposed to, abuse, neglect or family violence”.
Those acquainted with the government-sustained feminist domestic violence industry – as I have been since a daughter brought home some of its hate-propaganda from her diocesan Catholic school – will know that this diseased cult always defines “family violence” to mean any behaviour by the father in a family which might vex the mother or a child.
They will further know that the cult deems any friction between the parents to constitute psychological violence against the children. Indeed, it is now standard practice for interventionist social workers to seize the children in families in which the parents are quarrelling, purportedly to protect the unwilling captives from psychological harm, and to place them in foster care until the parents agree to break up.
The Gillard Government intends to incorporate the domestic violence industry’s infinitely elastic definition of “family violence” and “abuse” into the formal lexicon of the Family Law Act. Thus, a father will be guilty of “family violence” not only if he physically assaults his wife or a child, but if he “torments, intimidates or harasses” them with “derogatory taunts”; if he “controls, dominates, deceives or coerces” them “unreasonably”; if he denies them money they need for “reasonable living expenses”; if he causes them “to feel threatened”; and so on.
Even if his behaviour is eminently reasonable, that is no defence against the charge of “causing” fear. Thus an explanatory note for the draft bill states: “The element of ‘fear’ would be a subjective test based on the victim’s actual state of mind rather than an objective or semi-objective test of how a reasonable person in the street may react to the behaviour with or without the same history.”
In practice, just as at present, this criterion will be applied selectively by “family violence” assessors. A mother who claims to have felt intimidated by the father of her children will be believed, and her alleged fear treated as a product and proof of serious psychological abuse, while a father who claims to have felt intimidated by the mother will either be disbelieved or his fear will be disdained as wimpish.
The pre-inquisition and pre-conviction of fathers for “family violence” will be, as now, conducted not by the Family Court judge in the court-room but by the court’s sub-judiciary of registry managers, psychologists, counsellors, and “family consultants”. Fathers are required to submit to the inquisitions but are not allowed to bring their solicitors: the pretence is that they are being impartially assessed, as if by their GP. If a father obdurately denies having committed physical, psychological or emotional “family violence” when deemed by a pre-inquisitor to have done so, and thus shows no remorse, the court is advised by its own March 2009 guidelines, Best Practice Principles for Use in Parenting Disputes when Family Violence or Abuse is Alleged, to interpret this as evidence that he is incorrigibly violent.
Basically, every father in a marriage or “relationship” is presumed by the Family Court’s sub-judiciary, by many of its judges, past and present, and by the domestic violence industry which operates hand-in-glove with the court, to be a continuous threat to his children’s welfare.
It is assumed that while the marriage or relationship lasts he will probably be committing “family violence” of some kind; and if a relationship breaks down, the court’s sub-judiciary see their role as being to trawl back through its history to find proof of his physical or emotional violence. He will then be deemed to have psychologically harmed his children by creating an abusive environment, and to be likely to continue doing so if given the chance.
There is much more that needs exposing about the horrors of the Family Law Act, of the Gillard Government’s proposed amendments to the act, of the culture of the Family Law Court, and of the domestic violence industry; but what I have said should at least give an idea of the nature and magnitude of those horrors. If there is one moral to be drawn, it is that every Australian father is in continuous peril from the act, the court and the industry, and thus, by extension, so is every Australian family and child.
By Colin H. Jory
News Weekly, 27 November 2010
Dr Colin Jory is a Canberra teacher, historian and pro-family activist.
Some Australian schools get an “F” for recognition of Shared Parenting
In 2009 I was awarded not only 50/50 care of my sons, but also “Equal Shared Parental responsibilityâ€. But what does this really mean? Legally we are told that as fathers we have to contribute 50% of the costs, minimum, but it also affords us equal rights to make decisions about our children’s development, upbringing and education.
But for most separated fathers this is a fantasy. Many mothers imprudently refuse to let fathers contribute to decisions, and most will blackmail and extort the fathers. Most fathers end up paying for almost everything. What’s really sad is that some schools support a father-pays paradigm, as is the case in a secondary college in the Maroondah area, East of Melbourne.
My ex-wife refuses to pay almost everything, threatening disadvantage to the children if I don’t comply. When the school can’t get money from her, they come after me and won’t let go, even going so far as to state that I should cover 100% of the costs, and that they should not have to chase the mother.
The Australian education system is governed by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD). Don’t expect any sympathy from them. They are completely sided with the schools. Indeed, no matter how persistent and prevalent any problems you have with a school they are unlikely to find in your favour. They certainly had no interest in helping to resolve the issues I have been dealing with since 2004 with this secondary college. And reports I’ve had from other fathers who complained to the DEECD got the same results. Interestingly, some of the fathers I spoke with had the same review officer as I did.
The issue: Schools work off an antiquated system called CASES. It is their student enrolment and contacts system. Whilst it does partially cater for separated fathers – who are called “alternative parentsâ€, it only functions in an almost effective manner for primary carers. This system believes that mothers are primary carers, and is implemented is such a way as to ensure only mothers get to make decisions – contrary to the court orders.
This particular school takes the position that since the mother completed the enrolment forms only she can make decisions about much of the content of the CASES records for our children. In order to get paperwork as a separated father, with any care level, you are going to have to invest enormous amounts of time and money. I have spent well over $1,000 in phone calls over six years trying to get forms, reports, paperwork etc from the school. Because “Alternative parenting† is largely a manual process mistakes occur – regularly and repeatedly.
“Equal shared parental responsibility†gives both parents equal rights. Except from the schools perspective. Despite requests to the school not to divulge my address, as I was trying to stay safe from a violent ex-wife, the school disclosed my contact details. The school on several occasions challenged changes I requested to the CASES database. Changes requested by my ex-wife were never challenged and from the evidence I have seen, her changes overrode changes I had made on more than one area (Eg Emergency contacts lists). In most cases they completely ignored my update requests. Indeed, when my court orders were issued they negligently missed applying them to the system until I found out in April 2010.
The kids live with me full time now. I have always paid almost all costs – yes extortion and blackmail works because as fathers we hate to see our children neglected and suffer. Statistics suggest that 93% of negligent parents are mothers.
So as the primary payer, and the sole carer, and with the courts authority by virtue of the very first clause in the court orders “Equal shared parental responsibility†I requested to be listed as the primary carer on CASES. This would have solved all of the contact and notification problems. Would have reduced financial problems, ensure more timely payment of accounts, and reduced conflict considerably.
The school refused. DEECD upheld the schools position. Even though they already have a direction from the court to give me equal authority, they are requesting that they be ordered by the court to update the records. Otherwise they refuse, and ignore any and all requests.
And what can I do? There are options, not the least of which is legal action against the school, which I am actively pursuing, but right now I still don’t get all the paperwork and things will get missed. Does the school care? Not particularly, as long as they are seen to be supporting the mother that’s all they are really concerned about. It’s not personal. This school, and others I’m sure, as supported by other fathers I have talked to, all treat fathers as second rate human beings.
The Australian education system is as corrupt as the Australian family law system. And these are the people we leave in charge of our children’s education. Very scary indeed!
Written by fathersdomatter – published exclusively on F4E on 4th December, 2010
Woman who had sex with young boys claims it was just sex education
SEVEN boy boarders at one of the State’s most exclusive private schools have alleged they were raped by their female house mistress earlier this year.
The boys have told police that the offences took place on the school grounds between February and June.
Their 40-year-old “house mother” appeared in Forster Court last week charged with 34 counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated indecency with the students.
She was first arrested in August over offences against one boy, but has since been charged with assaulting six other students after continuing police inquiries.
Her identity and the name of the school have been suppressed to protect the boys.
The revelations have rocked the exclusive school, among whose well-heeled alumni are former politicians, top-level sportsmen and the sons of several powerful Australian and international identities.
At the time of the alleged offences, the woman was employed by the school as a “caring” mother figure, organising beds and uniforms.
She lived in a flat adjoining the student dormitories.
She is alleged to have had sex with the seven boys under “aggravated circumstances” 24 times at the school this year.
Under the Crimes Act, “aggravated” is a term applied to sex acts committed with persons under the age of 16.
Court documents allege she had sex with one 11-year-old boy eight times while he was “under her authority” in the space of five months.
She is alleged to have had sex with the other six boys in her care 14 times during the same period.
The woman, who is out on bail, is also accused of having committed an act of indecency in front of four of the boys in April this year. Court documents also allege the woman incited one of the boys, aged 12, to commit an act of indecency.
She has since been sacked from the school, which faces the prospect of more alleged victims coming forward as police investigations continue.
The woman arrived with her mother at Forster Local Court last week before walking into the adjacent police station, where she is required to report to officers three times a week.
She sat in the court’s waiting room with her head on her mother’s shoulder while waiting for her court hearing.
When approached by The Sunday Telegraph, the woman declined to comment.
Detectives first arrested the woman on August 18 when she was charged with five child sex offences allegedly committed against one 12-year-old boy.
After intensive police investigations, six other boys came forward alleging they also had sex with the woman. She was rearrested and charged with an additional 29 child sex offences.
The charges include 24 counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child under 16, nine of aggravated indecency with a child under 16, and one count each of inciting a person under 16 to commit an act of indecency and committing an act of indecency with a child under 16.
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In a brief mention of the matter, Magistrate Shaughan McCosker granted a continuing suppression order last week.
The case is the latest in a series of sex cases to reach court this year involving teachers at a number of elite schools.
But in other cases, where the alleged crimes were committed years ago and victims are now older, there have been no suppression orders.
Four former teachers from exclusive Knox Grammar School on Sydney’s north shore were this year charged over child sex offences from the 1980s.
Two year old Girl Dies after being tossed over Bridge by her Grandmother
A grandmother was arrested and accused of the unthinkable, killing her two-year-old granddaughter. Fairfax County Police say she threw the child from a 6th floor walkway at Tysons Corner Center Monday night. On Tuesday, the grandmother was charged with murder.
The girl’s mother and uncle witnessed her fall to her death. Initially it looked like an accident, but the walkway wall is waist high, with a guardrail. After talking with witnesses and looking at video from mall security, investigators say it became clear the grandmother, 50-year old Carmela Dela Rosa, threw the girl over and no one seems to know why.
“We’re puzzled,” said Victoriano Torres, the child’s uncle.
He says the family never suspected anything like this could happen.
By all accounts, Dela Rosa was a loving grandmother who often babysat her granddaughter Angelyn Ogdoc. Neighbors say she doted on the little girl and can’t fathom her killing the child.
“She seems happy,” said neighbor Makra Chhay, who often saw Dela Rosa with Angelyn. “That’s her first grandchild.â€
On Monday night, after shopping at Tysons Corner Center, police say Dela Rosa inexplicably threw her granddaughter from a walkway leading from the mall to the garage, on the 6th floor. One of the girl’s uncles and her mother were with them.
“It happened so quickly, the other two adults didn’t know what was going on,” said Officer Tawny Wright, a Fairfax County Police spokesperson.
Police say mall security captured the crime on video. That video, which is not being released, doesn’t explain why. Family and friends are struggling for answers. They gathered at the child’s home. Lynne Kreher and her husband Bill walked past the family’s home this morning, saddened by her death even though they didn’t know her.
“When I heard it this morning tears ran down my eyes. What does a two-year-old do to deserve this? I don’t know,” said Lynne Kreher.
The couple has two grandchildren of their own and can’t make sense of this.
“You don’t, no rationale as far as anyone’s heard. You know, to be coming back from a shopping trip and have something like this happen, it’s inconceivable,” said Bill Kreher.
Police don’t know what prompted something so horrendous. As part of their investigation, police will be looking to see if there were any family problems, mental illness or something in Dela Rosa’s background that can offer some explanation.
“It’s very tragic, it’s atrocious. I don’t know who does that. We don’t know why people do what they do and these things do happen unfortunately,” said Wright.
Dela Rosa remains behind bars after her first court appearance Tuesday. She has another hearing in January. She was initially charged with aggravated malicious wounding, but after the two-year-old died early this morning, those charges were amended to murder.
Relatives are at a loss for answers. No one, not even Dela Rosa’s family or neighbors, saw it coming.
“She’s very nice, sometimes she’d come to our house and bring popcorn and candy,” said Chhay.
For the family, the pain of losing a child is even greater because the person accused is no stranger but her grandmother.
By SHERRI LY
UK Ballet teacher accused of child sexual assault let off with minor charge
A BRITISH ballet teacher with a budding career in showbusiness was warned today that she faces a possible jail sentence after pleading guilty to abducting a teenage pupil.
Sarah Pirie, 27, was an aspiring dancer, actress and choreographer and had appeared in TV dramas Waterloo Road and Hollyoaks when she met the 15-year-old boy during one of her classes at a dance school.
She was initially accused of having sex with the youngster at a succession of hotels in Manchester and across the UK’s North West over a three-month period between March and June last year.
But the dancer learned that she would no longer have to face the five charges of sexual activity with a youngster when she made a brief appearance before Judge Michael Byrne at Preston Crown Court.
Instead she changed her plea to guilty on a single count of abducting the teenager on May 22 last year. She was freed on bail until January 7 when she will be sentenced.
Judge Byrne ordered a pre-sentence report to be drawn up but warned Pirie that all sentencing options, including jail, remained available to him.
Pirie, the daughter of a wealthy banker based in Luxembourg, cut a glamorous figure in a black trouser suit in the dock, the (London) Times reported.
Michael Lavery, for the prosecution, told the court that there had been discussions with Pirie’s defence team for some time. He said that the change of plea was “acceptable” to the prosecution.
He said: “The consideration revolved around the boy’s video evidence in this case which, in the light of disclosures, were scant in detail. The Crown is very concerned in respect of the boy’s previous behaviour, allegations that have been made and his assertions as to what happened in this relationship with the young lady.”
Pirie was bailed on condition that she does not try to contact the youngster.
Woman raped another woman, court told
Yes, the secret is out. Women are Rapists too!
A woman digitally raped another woman in a toilet cubicle at an inner Brisbane hotel, a jury has been told.
Anne-Marie O’Loughlin, 25, pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape, deprivation of liberty and sexual assault in the Brisbane District Court on Monday.
Prosecutor Chris Minnery told the court in his opening statement the victim, who cannot be named, was at the Caxton Street Hotel with her partner and friends when she went alone to the bathroom and was raped by O’Loughlin on November 29, 2008.
Mr Minnery said O’Loughlin first kissed the victim, who kissed her back in a bid to escape.
But when she tried to leave, the accused grabbed her by the hair, slammed her head into a wall and pulled her into a toilet cubicle, he said.
O’Loughlin then allegedly digitally raped the victim, Mr Minnery said.
“(The victim) heard someone in the cubicle next door and started to say something and bang on the wall,” he said.
“She was told by the accused to shut up and stay quiet. The person next door came and knocked on the door of the cubicle and said something like, ‘I’m getting security.’”
He said O’Loughlin left before security came but she had forgotten to take her purse containing identification, which was picked up by the victim.
O’Loughlin was detained outside the hotel and later told police she had only kissed the woman in the toilets.
Mr Minnery said police had taken samples of skin found under her fingernails and found it matched the victim’s DNA.
The trial continues.
Read what th verict of the rape case was here.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/8412131/woman-raped-another-woman-court-told/
How False Allegations Destroy Lives
The labor government wants to give women a free reign on perjury and false allegations. This article is about what damage was done by my ex-wife with just one single lie.
In December 2007 I, along with 4800 other employees of a global giant were outsourced and made redundant.
Between Christmas and April 2008 I paid maintenance of $1100 per month, and my ex-wife extorted around $6000 from me by using the children as weapons and made several threats if I didn’t keep handing over money.
I had absolutely no idea how the “system†worked, all I knew what that the terrorist organisations Centrelink and Child Support Agency would be of no help. Indeed, my ex-wife threatened I would not see my kids again if I told Centrelink and CSA I had lost my job. By March I was in a desperate financial situation.
With no income I could not pay child support and I told Centrelink and CSA of my situation and sparked a violent retaliation and spate of false accusations to both Centrelink and CSA which overtook my life in defending.
My ex-wife stated that if I didn’t stop paying rent and give her the money she would destroy me. She stated it was my responsibility to ensure she never had to work or support herself or the children. At the time I thought she could not actually do that. How wrong I was!
She started leaving bills on my doorstep, stopped paying for the kids sporting activities, stopped clothing them adequately, and ramped up extortion, threatening disadvantage to the kids if I didn’t pay up.
In August 2008 I started working for myself through a computer servicing franchise, having obtained a large unsecured loan. Unfortunately, it didn’t go very well.
In February of 2009 my ex-wife noticed a large franchise sign posted at a local sporting venue, which she alleged was mine. It wasn’t, but she stated she knew how expensive advertising was, and I was therefore making considerable income from the franchise. Nothing could be further from the truth. She stated if I didn’t start paying her enough money to quit work and support her and the kids she would make me regret it.
At the same time she was being supported by her new boyfriend, living at home with her mother, and got off completely free with no debt (I got all that).
In late May of 2009 she kept her promise. She made a false allegation to Centrelink stating I was earning considerable undeclared income at the same time as claiming new start. I was making no income, and under section 4.6 of the social security legislation I was entitled to claim new start. However, Centrelink, being the biased organisation that they are came after me with a vengeance.
Centrelink forced me to shut the business down at the threat of withdrawing benefits. Then they demanded all my records, in original form which they promised they would copy and return. Centrelink then put me on a very short leash and it was not until March 2010 that they finally closed the case. In the meantime, my physical and mental health had declined markedly, and I ended up on an outreach program trying to cope with the continual onslaught from my ex-wife, which persists to this day, more than 3 years later.
The outcome – My credit rating got destroyed. I defaulted on the bank loan, I lost my business, I became financially destitute, had to sell many of my assets and am now looking at filing for bankruptcy.
To make matters worse, Centrelink lost my records. As such, I had nothing I could file a tax return with. I applied to the Australian Taxation office for a private ruling to allow certain documents to be used as evidence of expenditure. They took 5 months to reject my application, and threatened me with fines for unfiled tax returns. To this day I’m still waiting on the ATO to make a determination on what documents they will allow me to use.
Written by fathersdomatter – published exclusively on F4E on 4th November, 2010
