Killing Time (8 page)

The real question is: How, over all of the years of Dupas's sexual offending, was he allowed time and again to be back on the street or time and again to be released unsupervised, only to reoffend? On some occasions, as you will see, he offended time and again over the space of a couple of weeks, yet never, ever was he found to be a serious sexual offender, which would have enabled a court to sentence him to an indefinite term of imprisonment without parole.

Being a defence lawyer and a court room smarty pants is all well and good, except when society is genuinely being put at risk. When Dupas was sentenced for the last offence before the murders of Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis, he was in the gun to be sentenced as a serious sexual offender. But the joint efforts of the prosecution and the defence led the judge to not sentence Dupas to an indefinite term of imprisonment. I really wonder how the barrister appearing on his behalf on that occasion – being from Legal Aid, which is funded by you and me, the taxpayers – and the prosecutor live with themselves. I wonder if it ever crosses their minds in the dark depths of night that they are partially responsible for the death of these three innocent women. More importantly, what about the presiding judge? On reading the reports of these proceedings I see that it was one and the same judge who sentenced me years later, Judge Leo Hart.

Peter Dupas was born in Sydney on 6 July 1953, the youngest of three children. His parents moved to Melbourne while he was still a baby. At fifteen years of age, Dupas first manifested his violent disposition towards women when, on 3 October 1968, he visited unannounced the house next door to where he was living in Melbourne's Mount Waverley and asked the single mother whether he could borrow a kitchen knife as little Peter was helping peel the vegies for the evening's dinner. Not surprisingly, Dupas's first victim thought “What a nice boy, he is helping his mum.” Julie went to the kitchen and gave him a knife, whereupon Dupas, without warning, attacked Julie and started stabbing her over and over. He knocked her to the ground and ended up on top of her. Dupas then started crying, saying “I can't stop, I can't stop.” This was an extraordinary outburst from such a young offender and he was duly sentenced in the Children's Court to eighteen months' probation and sent to a psychiatric hospital for examination.

Note the obvious power of this attack when a fifteen-year-old boy easily overpowers a grown woman. This attack was a precursor of things to come. Every alarm bell in creation should have been ringing in that Children's Court, even back then.

You will love this: have a guess how many times Dupas saw the psychiatrist for psychiatric evaluation after such an extraordinary, unannounced, gratuitous and violent assault. Once! Yes, he saw a psychiatrist once. That was the extent of his supervision over eighteen months while subject to a probation order.

For many years, as a defence lawyer, when I couldn't avoid it, I appeared in the Children's Court. The attitude of the magistrates in the Children's Court is one of benevolence. Time and again little Johnny reappears before the Court having offended again, and once again the child is released on a bond to be of good behaviour for a given period of time, notwithstanding the fact that they have often breached a previous bond or bonds. In extreme cases, the young offender is placed on probation. Probation, while it is ordered to be supervised, is in fact unsupervised. By definition, probation is supervised; but such is the state of the system that probation is nothing more than window dressing.

I should know. I have experienced the joys of supervision by the parole board personally and can say that parole has done absolutely nothing for me and on occasions has actually placed impediments in the way of my rehabilitation. Here are a couple of examples. When
Court in the Middle
was published, it was arranged for me to be interviewed on
Enough Rope
on the ABC, the highest rating TV interview show in the country. To be interviewed I had to travel to Sydney. I should say the ticket was paid for by my publishers and I was to be travelling up and back on the same day with my manager and a publicist.

I was told, to my amazement, that my request to travel would probably be denied. I was staggered. This was the launch of my new life. On my next visit I told my parole officer that I would certainly sell more books if permission to travel was refused. Why? “Because I will pillory you in the media.” To which came the reply, “But it won't be my decision.” I replied: “You will be the one conveying the decision to me.” About an hour later I was telephoned and told I was allowed to travel.

The second and more surprising example was when I applied for a state government clearance to work with children. I had been working with a Melbourne charity, Open Family, speaking in schools to kids about the dangers of drug use and how drugs can bring anyone down. One would have thought that these talks were of enormous relevance to kids and of real community benefit, so an application was made for a clearance. I attended Parole and my parole officer advised that, while he supported my application, his superiors opposed it. No reason given – just opposed. Fortunately the police could see the value of this contribution and supported my application, which has since been granted after an eighteen-month delay. No thanks to the Office of Corrections!

Back in the Children's Court, kids very quickly wake up to the fact that you can go back to court again and again until you are blue in the face and you will at worst receive a slap over the wrist from some caring and sharing magistrate. Only in the most extreme cases will a juvenile offender be sent to what is oxymoronically referred to as a Youth Training Centre. At YTC the youth is supposed to be taught appropriate skills to cope in society, without reoffending, after release. How is it, then, that the majority of the young blokes I have seen over the years, both in and out of the nick, who have had stints at these so called YTCs are illiterate? Once again there is no explanation. Society ought be outraged. By the way, it is a human rights violation not to offer education in a place of detention.

We live in a society and are required to live by its rules, irrespective of our age. If we don't abide by society's rules, we should be sanctioned, and sanctioned in a manner that makes us think twice about reoffending. The present regime in the Children's Court is such that kids don't get that message. I've appeared for kids who have stabbed people at parties and they receive a good behaviour bond. These kids should be subject to stringent sanctions that see them properly supervised and
educated
. They should be required to do something of benefit for the community by putting something back into that community. Good behaviour bonds must be changed to mean more than just that. Otherwise, it's as the criminals say – “sign the sorry book” and head off into the sunset with the overwhelming feeling that you have committed an offence with impunity and can do so again. The Children's Court is a paper tiger.

The natural extension of this regime is that a child offender who continues to offend until they reach adult court age will eventually front court and be somewhat stunned to find out that the presiding judge or magistrate takes a very dim view of their very lengthy history of anti-social behaviour and they finally end up in jail. Of course, jail is merely an advanced college of criminal education, in the practical sense, and you come out worse than when you went in.

I have made this complaint before and I will continue to make it until somebody takes notice and puts an end to this idiocy.

If, as an ordinary member of the public, you sat in the Children's Court for a day and saw the categories of offences that are committed – particularly car theft and offences of a similar nature, such as burglary, where your home has been invaded and your valuables are stolen – and saw the manner in which the children are “reprimanded”, you would be horrified.

No doubt the signal, this disposition, sent to the fifteen-year-old Peter Dupas was similar. He could reoffend with impunity, and did so time and again over many years until he finally brought himself undone. What would have been the case if Peter junior had been jumped on from a great height when a pattern first emerged in his offending.

I remember talking to a senior police officer one day at the Children's Court. He was there because there had been a very serious assault and I was appearing for the accused, but there had also been a complaint made by that kid and his parents about police treatment. During the conversation I asked him why there were so many kids being charged and processed by the Children's Court these days. I found his answer very interesting.

Once upon a time, in the good old days, if young Johnny was caught breaking windows or playing up in the street and fighting, the coppers would get hold of him and (quote) “give them a good foot up the arse and send them home”. If that had happened to me as a young kid, I would not have gone home and told my old man what I had been up to in a million years. I wouldn't have done it because Dad's very first question would have been: What were you doing to deserve a foot in the arse from the coppers? Instead, what this senior officer told me was that the kids go home and say “I have been assaulted by the police” and the parents immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and think they have a problem with the police. They don't stop and take stock of what the child has been up to in order to earn that foot in the arse. Rather, these days, by making an allegation of police brutality the kid slips off the hook without being dealt with properly. Such is the idiotic state of our society.

On 10 March 1972, young Peter Dupas was caught peeping at a woman through the window of her Oakleigh home. He already had a conviction for stabbing another woman multiple times and in such horrific circumstances, so it would have been reasonable to assume that he might have been planning to behave in that way again. He received a fifty dollar fine.

What happens next is illustrative of my argument that people like Dupas should be dealt with swiftly and early. On 5 November 1973, he rapes a woman in Mitcham at knifepoint and threatens her baby. No one in their right mind would threaten a child but it's indicative of the type of person Dupas is.

Ten days later, Dupas is questioned again by police after frightening a twelve-year-old girl by following her and repeatedly staring at her. This staring aspect raises its head again and again in his behaviour and is one of the reasons he could be identified as being at Fawkner Cemetery on the day of the murder of Mersina Halvagis. It is a cold, calculating, unblinking stare that I have personally witnessed on a number of occasions and let me tell you, even for a bloke it is very unnerving indeed!

A mere fifteen days later, on 30 November 1973, Dupas is charged with the rape and in addition also cops charges of house breaking, stealing and house breaking with intent to commit a felony. This warped kid has become a one-man sexually driven crime wave and is still only twenty years old. He has already chalked up three different sets of sexually related offences. The alarm bells should have been well and truly ringing by now, but the powers that be appear to suffer industrial deafness!

Then, still not twenty-one, and while on bail for all of the other offences committed in November 1973, Dupas is remanded to a psychiatric hospital for peeping at young girls showering in a toilet block at Rosebud beach. He is fined the princely sum of $140 for an attempt to commit a felony and offensive behaviour.

How long did Dupas spend in that psychiatric hospital? One day! By the time he has spent his one day in a psychiatric hospital he has committed no fewer than five sexually violent offences or sexual offences. He is remanded in custody at that stage for the previous bail-related offences but he has still only spent one day in psychiatric care. It appears that he did not receive any other psychiatric counselling or treatment during that period yet his violent sexual behaviour was far from normal.

The long arm of the law finally catches up Dupas on 30 September 1974, just after his twenty-first birthday and he is jailed for nine years with a minimum of five.

Dupas completed his five-year minimum for the 1973 rape and was released on 4 September 1979. With the remainder of his nine-year term to be served on parole, he was subject to Parole Board supervision for the outstanding four years. This meant that they were supposed to look after him and assist with his re-integration into the community and with his rehabilitation.

Every red light possible should have been flashing when Dupas was released. I can say from personal experience that the Parole Board does absolutely nothing to assist in your reintegration into society or with your rehabilitation. In the twenty-month period up to the writing of this book, I have had four parole officers assigned to me, none of whom has been able to assist me in any way. I have been asked countless brainless questions such as, “How's it going? or “Has anything changed?” Nobody can explain to me what “Has anything changed?” means. Have I changed my mind, my socks, my diet, my attitude? If they could explain, then I'd be only too happy to answer the question.

The only other thing they do is occasionally send you off for a random urine sample at Dorovich Pathology, where you are met by people who clearly hate the fact that they have to take urine samples from – as one Dorovich employee put it to me – “junkies”. (As I had at that stage been clean for seven years, I took extreme exception to this.) I was also told that I could not give a sample in the morning – that time is reserved for people who work. Instead, the afternoons were when “your type” attended. I hit the roof and told the woman that she was discriminating against me and was wrongly supposing that I did not work and that I still used. I refused to move until my sample was taken, which reluctantly happened. How do people fare who cannot stick up for themselves like I did?