AUSTRALIA - Dangerous Sex Offender Act under review

Original Article (Video available)

07/04/2014

West Australia's Attorney General says the government is currently reviewing the state's Dangerous Sex Offenders act.

It follows the removal of serial rapist _____ from a small wheatbelt town amid fears of vigilante attacks.

_____, 41, was released from prison last week by the WA Supreme Court on a strict supervision order that includes curfews and electronic monitoring.

Corrective services commissioner James McMahon said _____ was relocated from his property because the situation had destabilised.

'I've moved him for his own safety,' Mr McMahon said.

'The situation has become untenable in that location for all ... parties concerned.

'But the No.1 priority for my department and for the police department is the safety of the community.'

_____ was handed an indefinite detention order in October 2008 after spending most of his adult life in prison.

His release from prison last week sparked an outcry from talkback callers and politicians.

_____ had five episodes of serious sexual offending, starting in 1987 when he was 15.

The victims were generally adult women, but five offences in 1994 were committed against a nine-year-old girl.

It was reported in The West Australian newspaper on Thursday that the Wheatbelt town's residents were given no warning about _____ moving in, and some female residents had begun arming themselves for protection or fled town.

WA opposition police spokeswoman Michelle Roberts said relocating _____ to another location only shifted the problem.

'It seems to me just really unfair to take him out of one community and inflict him on another,' Ms Roberts said.

'If he presents any kind of danger to the community, to children, to women ... the place for him is in a secure facility.'

AUSTRALIA - Sex abuse fears driving men from teaching

Original Article

05/12/2014

Fear of false child-sex abuse accusations is driving Australian men away from a career in teaching, according to high-profile education officials.

Australian Education Union members have reported that young men are showing an increasing reluctance to become teachers, said the president of the union's South Australian branch, David Smith.

"Quite frankly, there are concerns about (men's) safety regarding vexatious accusations," Smith told the Advertiser.

Smith said that the Debelle royal commission, which released a report in 2013 that was highly critical of the response to a child sex abuse case at an Adelaide school in 2010, has only made men more hesitant about becoming teachers.

"The recent publicity following the Debelle inquiry has led to a negative atmosphere," Smith said.

SA Primary Principals Association state president Pam Kent agreed, saying male teachers have become "more vulnerable to the possibility of unfair or vexatious allegations" when they are alone with students.

In South Australia, more than 50 schools did not have a single male teacher in 2013.

Those figures are reflected across the nation: The Australian Bureau of Statistics' Schools Australia 2012 report indicated that the number of male teachers had declined in the previous decade.

The NSW Department of Education and Communities said the percentage of male primary school teachers slipped from 20.1 to 18.9 from 2009 to 2013, while male secondary school teachers fell from 45.3 to 43.

AUSTRALIA - Fears the sex offender register is not the solution to keeping kids safe

Original Article

05/09/2014

By Sally Whyte and Elizabeth McKenzie

Community fears have been heightened with reports a known sex offender has been seen loitering near children in Melbourne.

In a separate incident, police are investigating reports that a man approached a boy at a Daylesford school on Thursday afternoon. The boy notified a teacher, who passed the information to police.

Former head of Victoria Police's child protection squad Chris O'Connor, said the community is understandably alarmed at such cases.

Mr O'Connor said he is comforted that in 2014 the community is positively responsive to this kind of activity.

Mr O'Conner said there are thousands of people on the sex offender registry, and 24 hour police surveillance would be impossible.

'There are thousands of people on the registry we clearly and very quickly come to the realisation that we would never have enough police to be able to satisfy totally the community as to their level of protection against these people.'

Mr O'Connor says parents have a responsibility to protect children, but warns against the public taking the law into their own hands.

'Vigilantism is often the result of a couple of things, victimisation or ignorance or a total lack of understanding of the circumstance. It is irrational behaviour.'

Mr O'Connor said children should be educated about how to respond in the unlikely event they come into contact with sex offenders.

'Teach them basic crime prevention, be aware of who is around, remove yourself or call out to somebody. If somebody approaches you, you yell the living daylights out.'

AUSTRALIA - LNP Government in push for indefinite jail time for sexual crimes

Jarrod Bleijie

Original Article

Isn't the government suppose to prove someone is dangerous instead of a person trying to prove they are not?

01/26/2014

Every sex offender in the state faces being indefinitely held in jail unless they can convince psychiatrists they are unlikely to reoffend.

From serial rapists to perverts who like to film up girls' skirts - hundreds more predators are in the firing line as the State Government moves to overhaul sex offender laws.

Advisers informing the State Government's review of sex offenders laws want to widen the Dangerous Prisoners Sexual Offender (DPSO) Act to not only make it even tougher for the courts to release predators but also to include other sexual offenders.

Asked about their advice, Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said he was "open to any ideas" and was consulting with relevant stakeholders.

"The brief is simple. We want to make these laws as tough as possible to ensure the worst of the worst stay behind bars," Mr Bleijie said.

"We are consulting with a range of relevant bodies, including the legal fraternity and child protection groups."

Looming reforms have, in part, been sparked by serial rapist _____, who successfully argued he should be released from his indefinite jail sentence.

Lawyers have already informed Mr Bleijie of shortcomings in the DPSO Act and the potential for it to be widened to include all sex offenders.

There are 96 offenders under the DPSO orders, which can attract an indefinite jail sentence, GPS tracking and tough community restrictions.

Unless an offender has committed a significantly violent offence, they cannot be dealt with as a DPSO.

It means even if a psychiatrist believes the predator will reoffend or escalate offending - such as a pervert who experts believe will eventually rape - they cannot be captured under the laws and they are released on parole.

And, those who try to meet children for sex online but are unknowingly trapped by an undercover police officer are also not to be captured under the DPSO legislation, even if doctors believe the offender will try to have sex with a child.

Bravehearts executive director Hetty Johnston said she first wanted the DPSO act tightened, and then widened to potentially capture the hundreds of other offenders.

She said she had advised Mr Bleijie that a sex offender should only be released into the community if three psychologists all agreed the offender was a low-risk of reoffending.
- Even if this is done, if one of them re-offends, then in the typical knee-jerk fashion, they will react again to further strengthen the laws.

"What we want is the legislation strengthened. This is not vigilantism," she said.

AUSTRALIA - Sex-offender care to cost $1600 per day

Original Article

10/22/2013

By NEDA VANOVAC

The Northern Territory's attorney-general says taxpayers should not foot an exorbitant bill to keep a sex offender under 24-hour community supervision if prison is an option.

Under the NT's new Serious Sex Offender Act, the government can apply to the Supreme Court to keep sex offenders in prison indefinitely beyond their sentence in order to protect the community.

Attorney-General John Elferink says the act can be justified on grounds of both cost and community safety but, in the Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Jenny Blokland ruled that a 34-year-old man from central Australia should not be detained but put under 24-hour supervision for five years.

Mr Elferink says the government does not want to ask Territorians to pay high costs when the best place to keep an eye on someone is in custody.

It costs $214 per day to keep a person in prison, but 24-hour supervision for the offender in Monday's ruling runs to more than $1600 per day.

"The Territory taxpayer is a finite resource and my primary concern is making sure that potential rapists don't rape," he said.

"There's always going to be a bill attached to keeping a person in custody, but to ask us to pay multiple times that amount is not what I would consider an effective outcome for the community."

Mr Elferink said there appeared to be a focus on the offender's prospects of rehabilitation by the court, which he said was secondary to the safety of the wider population.

He said he would seek legal advice to revisit how the legislation operates if judges continued to rule against indefinite detention for serious sex offenders.

"If a person is declared to be a serious risk to the community, then it might be the case that how that person is managed is left to government," he said.

The man, who cannot be named, had completed a one-year jail term for sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl at Hermannsburg near Alice Springs and exposing children to pornography in July 2012.

He had previously been jailed for sex offences and has assault convictions.

He has been living in a caravan since July on the grounds of Darwin's Berrimah jail on an interim supervision order until the new act was tested in court.

"The client had a background that justified a view that he was a serious danger to the community, though he wouldn't have been so recognised if the legislation hadn't been framed in a particular way," defence counsel Rex Wild QC told AAP on Tuesday.

"He's not the worst sex offender you've ever heard of."

Mr Wild said the NT is following the knee-jerk reactions of other jurisdictions in implementing the legislation.

"The political view is always `lock `em up for as long as you can and the community will reward you for it'," he said.

"Politicians are in a place where they can't lose on this, because nobody cares about an Aboriginal offender who's already committed one or two offences."

Justice Blokland said in her ruling the act raised questions of civil liberty, and that evidence suggested the offender's likelihood of assimilating back into the community would shrink if he spent an extended period in prison.

"In the longer term, a supervision order supports the primary object of protection under the act and is preferable to detention," she said.

"It is reasonable in my opinion that a form of intensive supervision be ordered, even if that will mean a readjustment of resource distribution within Correctional Services."

AUSTRALIA - Attack prompts check on sex offender trackers

Original Article

This just shows you how brain dead politicians are. Apparently this man was wearing a GPS and still committed a crime, and this politician thinks something can be done to prevent it. Well, it cannot. A person who is intent on committing a crime, will do so! But you keep living in Fantasy land and wasting more money trying to prevent something you cannot.

01/22/2013

By Eric Tlozek

Premier Campbell Newman says the State Government will make sure a program to track the location of sex offenders is working properly.

A man on a dangerous prisoner supervision order has been charged over a weekend attack on a 31-year-old woman at Wacol in Brisbane's south-west.

Mr Newman says he wants authorities to check if the system for fitting GPS trackers to sex offenders could be improved.

"Look I believe the program is one that works," he said.

"Can it be done better? Yes."
- How?  Magic pixie dust doesn't exist yet!

"And will we be looking at ways to improve the safety of security of Queenslanders through this and other initiatives? Yes we will."