You're listing to a Mumma Mea podcast. Mamma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waterers. This podcast was recorded on it's early August in Sydney in the year two thousand and the city is gearing up to host the Olympics. Two year twelve girls aged seventeen and eighteen are at Chatswood shopping center chatting to a group of teenage boys. They're offered a lift home, so they accept.
Hopping into a white van with the group, they're taken to Greenacre in the city's west, where they're slacked, threatened, pushed, and raped by a total of eight males. Two days later, the group strikes again, giving a sixteen year old girl a lift into the city. Taken to a park and ambushed by a group of fourteen the teenager is raped by two of them while the others watch on and laugh. On August thirty, an eighteen year old woman is approached
by the group on a train to Bankstown. She's persuaded to get off with them, tricked into entering a public toilet, and raped over and over. Both there and in two other locations. She's sexually assaulted by fourteen men and boys in total over the course of six terrifying hours. As a final humiliation, they hose her down and throw her into the street near a train station. In early September, two sixteen year old girls are picked up from another
railway station in the city's southwest. They're repeatedly raped by three males over a period of five hours. This series of horrific crimes becomes known as the Scaff Gang rapes, named after the gang's ringleaders, brothers Bellal and Muhammad Scaff. The magnitude of the horror they subjected their victims to left our country in a state of shock and outrage, with a judge which describing the offenses as events that you hear about or read about only in the context
of wartime atrocities. The group, aged between sixteen and twenty, consisted of up to fourteen boys and men, but only nine were convicted, sentenced to a total of more than two hundred and forty years in prison. Only one of them remains behind bars. I'm Jemma Bath and This is True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Our guest today led the prosecution of
the two thousand Scaff gang rapes. Margaret Kneen sc has enjoyed a long career as a Crown Prosecutor and Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor, leading hundreds of judge only and jury criminal trials and appeals in the New South Wales Court
of Criminal Appeal and High Court of Australia. She's recorded a long succession of convictions against rapists and murderers, including the butcher of Beager and pedophile Robert Dolly Dunn, and has served as Commissioner of the New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into matters relating to the police investigation of certain child sexual abuse allegations in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland Newcastle. She's had her fair share of
controversy too. At the end of twenty fourteen, she was investigated by the New South Wales EYEKAC, who were pursuing her for corrupt conduct. She was accused of perverting the course of justice for advising her son's girlfriend to fake chest pains to avoid a breath test after a car crash. She was fully exonerated and her involvement in the inquiry
at all was revealed to be a big misunderstanding. Retiring from public office in twenty nineteen, Margaret embarked on a brand new chapter, doing the complete professional opposite of what she's done for so long, defending the accused instead of prosecuting them. Her career is outlined in a chronicle called The Boxing Butterfly, which explores some of her biggest cases and moments. Margaret joins us, now, Margaret, you've had a
very big career. Do you have a proudest moment? Is that something you're even able to do with so many achievements.
I do have one, and it's fairly recent, and it's in my time as defense counsel. Because my career is now forty eight years old at the end of this year, forty eight years of full time work. My goodness, no wonder, no wonder, I feel tired. The big moment for me, the biggest achievement was winning a case that perhaps most people wouldn't have seen the success in. And it's the case of Coulwynda Singh, who was charged with burning his
wife to death. And I sensed very much a bit of a racist persecution going on and even that the Crown was going to get an expert to say that Indian men burn their wives and on her short list to prove that this expert, who had never been to India, by the way, she already had mister Singh's name on it, and he hadn't been convicted. And as it happened, there was plenty of evidence in that case, plenty of forensic evidence, and it all pointed to the deceased woman having set
her self on fire, but not to burn herself. It was a mistake. She used petrol instead of kerosene. She'd prepared herself, she'd put a hair up that she usually had down in a wet towel. She prepared everything, and hers were the only fingerprints in DNA on the petrol can and on the lighter. But poor mister Singh, who is who I could faithfully say to the jury, has never had a drink, smoke, gambled, didn't have anyone on the side, so to speak, never been to a brothel, casino, nothing,
Just a hard working guy with a lovely family. It wasn't him, but he was. He was treated so badly by everyone who assumed it must have been well that he did it to her. So it was hard won victory because the first trial was conducted in a way which wasn't allowed the second time by the prosecution desperate for a conviction and breaking it up. Well, even if she did it, you forced her to and all these different permutations. But finally, and that was a hung jury.
The second time, we were able to keep the crown to admissible evidence and the jury very quickly came back with a not guilty verdict. But he spent a lot of his own money, he did four months in jail, and he's just suffered so much. And it just shows that investigators ought not to jump to conclusions and that the legal process testing all the evidence is there for a good reason.
It's interesting that you pick a proudest moment from your I'm going to call it second act, because you spent so much time on the other side prosecuting cases. What has it been like spending the last few years in defense?
Yes, six years now. I didn't know whether anyone would brief me. I left the Crown at sixty and thought, well, that's the sort of where the super comes to a sort of stop. So let's see what it's like. Will anyone brief me, But I didn't get any briefs from the prosecution none, And so I was briefed by many different defense solicitors, most of whom I'd never worked with. But there's just so much work, and I'm still turning it away and booked out well towards the end of
next year. So it's true that I did some wonderful cases as a Crown prosecutor, and I'm still in contact with dozens of families, especially bereaved parents of children who were killed, such as Lindsay van Blanken, whose body was found in a cricket bag. I'm still friends with her mum and her sister. But in a sense, Jemma, I've got to say that it's a bit more of a challenge on the defense side. It's generally more straightforward on
the prosecution side. If you're on the correct side, and you should be by the time a trial gets up, the Crown prosecutor should be very confident of the evidence and very confident of the way the matter should go by having made sure that it's all been tested to some degree and everything checked before someone is put on trial.
But from the defense point of view, being against the zeitgeist against the publicity and the tendency now it seems to me for people to make up their mind before someone is convicted, and so that's a very negative influence
carrying through the trial. And it's very hard for people, especially people in the public eye, who get put on because so often it's as though they've already been convicted just when they're charged, and people forget that as they would want if they were charged, they'd want the evidence to be tested and proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Everyone is innocent until they're not.
Yes.
So is that a welcome challenge for you?
Well, I was daunted by it and thought it might be difficult to change because I used to be criticized a lot for this. I get very close to the people I work with, and I was criticized very much, and I think, perhaps in a somewhat sexist fashion for decades for being just affectionate with young women who'd been terribly assaulted or parents who'd lost a child. And I warmed to those people and thought it would be easier for them if they knew how much it meant to
me for them to get justice. And so I've been criticized for hugging people and having my arm around people and so forth, showing oh that's it, yes, Oh, yes, we must have none of us be kind. Yes, that's right, even if we were you know, mothers and grandmothers and in.
The worst moments of their lives.
Yes, it is the worst moment of anyone's life to go through a court process, and the more serious the case that the worse it is for all parties. And so you can see that people need kindness. But then when I was a prosecutor and I saw a woman just quietly crying, and I knew it was the mother of the man who had just been convicted of murder. And I saw her crying there, and she was a mum, and I just I asked the defense counsel could I just go and see her? And I ended up holding
her and hugging her because no one else was. So we have to have humanity in our justice system, because it's very, very much a part of it. It's not it's not a mathematical calculation. It's even the determination of these cases has so much it relies on so much knowledge of human nature, and.
Court is scary if you haven't been in one. I've covered them as a court reporter. They're really intimidating places. And so these families have often never set foot in a court before, and suddenly there's judges, there's prosecutors, there's defense, there's criminals, and it's very overwhelming.
Yes, in a bit of an arcane language too, perhaps deliberately set so that people don't quite know what's going on.
Ye.
And the intimidation is deliberate too, to try to scare people into telling the truth. I don't know if it really works like that anymore. That, like many other of the trappings of the criminal justice system, have changed a lot in the forty odd years I've been in it.
It's probably a good segue to bring me to a sentence in your book that really stood out to me right at the start in the introduction, and it said, she has been trenchantly attacked by some colleagues in the profession. Perhaps they mistook her niceness for weakness. It was an observation by your co author. What would you say to that, because that kind of speaks to what you've just been saying about people looking at you showing empathy and kindness and positive emotion as a weakness.
For a few decades. I think it was ago I noticed that people thought that if you're quite pleasant and polite with people and nice to people, polite with the other side, you can't be taking it seriously enough. You've got to walk in there with a stern look and don't get too close to people, and be a bit
of an object rather than a person. But well, I've just continued to do it my way, and if people don't like it, well, many of the people who don't like it aren't there anymore, so it doesn't matter, and you've.
Got your achievements to show. You have spoken before about your own experience of sexual abuse in your childhood. Did that help to inform your why when you entered this career, And also, I guess the empathy that you.
Have it certainly did infor me, because because I knew very well from when I first started working in the prosecution of child sexual assault in the nineteen eighties, I knew things that other people who only had a theoretical knowledge didn't appreciate. And one of the main things is how child sexual abuse can happen virtually under the noses of parents. And so it's not really an answer to say, oh, well, the parents were there, and how could this have happened?
Because so much of it is furtive grooming behavior. And I also understood that a long time ago, and in the sixties, when I was a child, there was very little ability to say something about a respected adult and be believed. And especially if a child, a small child, was talking about parts of the body or something that was regarded as rude or shocking for a child to say, it was very hard for them to get the message across.
And I remember getting very very sternly treated when I was trying to tell people who should have known, and I used, at about the age of six or seven, use the word penis to try to tell the message, and I got hit really using that word. So I didn't bother to tell anyone sell the same people again until I was an adult.
Just goes to show, though I would hope that nowadays, you know, young children, I'm teaching my two year old about consent or trying to yes, teaching him about body parts, like, we're just so much more knowledgeable.
We are so much more knowledgeable there seem to be in that generation of people. They weren't all like this, but there was such a people just take a sharp intake of breath at the mention of anything sexual. It was also behind the curtain, and so I think it's so much more healthy that everyone just takes sexual matters in their stride and it's not something that only people of a certain age can talk about it in hush tones. So good for you with your little boy.
You've been involved in so many high profile cases during your time as a prosecutor and crime prosecutor, too many to touch on in this episode, so I want to hone in on one the scaff gang rapes. Would you say that it's among one of the cases you're asked about the most.
Yes, I'm asked about that the most, really the most.
Why do you think that is?
There's a few reasons. Those offenses took place in August two thousand, so it was kind of a change of history in a sense, and it was just before the Olympics. The occurrence of the crimes was a bit concealed by authorities at the time, so that there wasn't a huge panic.
But there were fifteen men in a gang, not always all all together, but easily able with the relatively new invention of mobile phones to get together and to have sort of a military type operation, just so that there'd be literally shifts of men coming in to assault a young woman or two. It was really shocking. The mobile telephones gave us a lot more detail, and so too did the victims were extremely articulate and well able to
give so many descriptions of what happened. One victim in particular, who was involved with this gang over six hours and four locations. Her memory of it was so impressive because not just because there was a lot of detail in a statement that can happen anytime and a prosecutor or a police officer isn't sure whether it's true or not, but so much of the detail was able to be checked because of the other relatively new thing of CCTV
on a railway station. But even details like the one in the yellow jumper had something to do with his private area, and that turned out to be true, and
so she was. So she just took it all in, even through the stress of probably believing at the end she might be killed, just going through something so terrible, but remembering so accurately because mobile phones backed up what she said about he left and he came back, and so forth, and mobile phones I suppose that this was the first case where mobile phones were used so much
in the detection of the offenders. And I learned things like a mobile tower being able to say not just that it's picked up on that tower, but which of three sectors the direction of the call comes from. So even if some of the offenders lived close to the mobile tower, their home wasn't in the correct sector, and
so they were they were found out that way. And the other interesting thing about the mobile telephone that I learned then and we'll never forget, is during the offenses, Miss c as she was called by the court, heard her own ring tone her phone had been taken from her, and heard her ring tone, which was the real slim shady eminem two thousan. Yes, that's right. She saw one of the offenders at his phone with that and saw it was her phone. But in the end they gave
her back her phone. But he had put his SIM card in there because he liked the phone ring tone or both and used it that night. Perhaps he used it to ring people and didn't want it on his phone, or was or who knows, probably as simple as wanted to try that phone out. But then, as I learned for the first time in the preparation for that case.
Every phone, even then the old Nokias, the phone sends a message of the call, and the SIM card sends a separate message of the call, so it could be proved that the call was made with his sim card and her phone, so that linked them so that he couldn't get out of it at all, even though of course he said I was at home, it wasn't me, someone who looked like me, and so forth.
So this kind of technological side of investigation that was fairly new.
Yes, it really was. It was the first sexual assault case I'd ever done that was investigated like a murder.
Because I've heard it said that the brief of evidence that you got was as good as you would get from a murder, which is impressive in a sexual assault case.
It really was, And it was such a big strike force of about a dozen fantastic detectives who many of whom had homicide experience. They did it like that, So it was not just a usual case of at that time of alleged sexual assault, where there'd be a statement from the complainant and perhaps a statement from a doctor and a statement from a police officer saying, we arrested the guy and he wouldn't say anything, and that's that,
and that was all you got. But in this case there was so much more CCTV and all the phone evidence, which was fascinating.
Which makes your job easier, right, I mean, it's not an easier case, but you want as much detail as possible.
That's right. And as much as we know that it still doesn't prove whether sexual intercourse is rape or not. In a case like this, it sure does. In the back of buildings, with men coming and going, different cars coming and going, and more and more offenses taking place, it was obvious that that complainant and all the other complainants were there against their will and certainly not consenting to these waves of men who were arriving.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the names that people might remember, and it's the reason it's called the Scaff rape. So the Muhammad and Blal scaff who were the kind of ring leaders or Balal was the ring leader?
Yes, what was the setup?
They were the brothers that were kind of running it.
Yeah, yeah, they were in a sense. Bill Al was always involved and Muhammed was a bit of a runner for him. Muhammed was only sixteen at the time and he well he's still in the news, Yes he is. He's still in the news. But he was sixteen and bill Al was eighteen. I'm not trying to take away from their crimes, but there was something. There were a few features in their upbringing that seemed to scream out
that they weren't necessarily brought up to respect young Australian women. Yeah, that was very clear from their supporters and members of their family and the way that they would harass the victims, well at the time complainants, but imagine that that women associated with them were harassing.
Well, you're kind of touching around the edges on the racial motivation side of this case, which is kind of what the media ran with. You know, it got this huge This is a racially motivated attack and it kind of was stemming from the fact that the victims were being called things like ossie pigs. You deserve it because you're Australian. How did that side of things overtake this case, particularly in the media.
Yes, Well, as I've always said, I wouldn't have ever mentioned any racial aspect of it, except that those were the words that were said by some of the offenders during the rapes, and so they brought it on themselves
in a sense. But that was very bad for the Lebanese community, very bad because they wore it all and every Lebanese person you know, felt like that the finger had been pointed at them, and that was most unfair, most unfair, because this is a very tiny proportion of people who would act like this, and it's very very unfair. And in the book I do tell the story about naming the offenders because.
They were under suppression because they were kids.
Yes, that's right, and even the naming bill Al's name would have would have named Muhammad or in a sense because brothers and everything like that. But I made the submission.
In the end, I didn't know whether I should or not, but I made the submission to name them after a young Muslim law student who I was teaching at the time, lecturing, said they've got to be named otherwise our whole community has to wear it, that it should be put the blame should be put on the people who did it, not on the whole community, and that you can't argue
with logic like that. And the judge agreed, and so they were all named, and whilst their names now are so well known, but it is better than blaming a whole racial group.
Definitely. It's a shame we don't really know the other names as well, you know, we just know the Scaff brothers.
Yes, well they were named. But because there were two Scaffs and Bill al was in all the trials, they're the ones that have worn it.
How were they caught in the end? Was it with the mobile phones that did.
Yes, that was the main thing, the mobile phones. But not all were caught. Only nine of the fifteen were caught, and one or two of them did got almost nothing really because certain proofs weren't available against them. There are five or six who got away with it.
And so we will never know.
No, probably not, probably not. I don't think there's DNA, but you never know. There was so much DNA taken and methods of DNA keep coming back.
There ended up being a number of trials in this gaff.
Yes, gang reps.
Were you involved in all of them?
Yes? I was, and so in fact in the end there were trials involving four complainants, two in one trial and two separate other ones, and there were other complainants where there were pleas of guilty entered that they were a little less serious. But by then the offenders knew that they were going to jail anyway, and they might as well fess up to some of the others. And the point had been made and long sentences were imposed. Bill E's still in None of the others.
Are He's the only ones still in prison? Yes, because something that stands out to me when you look back at this case is how they acted in court. There was no remorse, was there?
Oh no, they were laughing. They were terribly badly behaved. But it must be said that that they weren't very bright. You know, they were tested and their IQs were exceedingly low. You know, that's something that has to go into the mix about whether they it was almost borderline on whether they should be sentenced as hard as people with average at least average intelligence.
But like laughing in court and falling asleep.
Throwing things at people and yes, laughing and disappearing and being on the ground and screaming out things, and they clearly had no respect for the judicial system. Do you know that something happened to me only about a month or two ago and I didn't even expect to tell you this today because it just came back into my mind thinking about the other offenders. One of the other offenders who was right in there with and his name
was MG. It was and it became I was taken off a retrial in relation to him because of a lecture, so he ended up and because that trial didn't succeed, even though he did time for one in which it did succeed. I do believe that he was involved in the other case that he was acquitted of because he had very distinctive hair. But anyway, I digress. Two months ago,
I was walking in Park Street, Sydney. I just got out of an uber with some friends who were going a different way and I was just going to peel off and I was crossing Park Street to go and get a cab or bus or whatever. It was dark, and there was a beautiful white Ferrari purring at the lights. And I do like cars a lot, and it had gone old trim and it was really new and I'd never seen such a beautiful Ferrari and it was making this beautiful noise. And I must confess that as I
walked across in front of it, in the dark. I was looking for it and looking at it, looking at everything, and did not looking at the driver. When I got to the other side, the window wound down and said Margaret, and I said hello, and he said do you know who it is? And I said no, but I like your car and he said it's it's MG and he sped off. And I wasn't frightened or anything, because he had a big smile on his face. And my goodness, he's got a Ferrari and I haven't.
But that's so many decades later as well.
Yes, yes, but I suppose my face is still about. And I am told as recently as yesterday that criminals in jail's talk about lawyers a lot.
That's so eerie.
Though, yes, it was so eerie. Idn't even believe it. And I texted my friends and I said, you can't believe what just happened. I'm just telling you in case anything happens now. But he wasn't menacing, but he wanted you to know he was there. Though he was pretty triumphant well.
As you were mentioning. And I want to dig into it because he was acquitted of one OF's charges. Tell me about being taken off the retrial.
Yes, well, it is an interesting case, and I think a wrong case. I do think it was a wrong case because I was invited to give a prestigious lecture in two thousand and five to the University of Newcastle. It's called the Sinninian Stephen Lecture, and I was one of the few people more lowly than a judge who'd ever been invited to do it, and the Dean paid me a great honor in asking me, and so I prepared a lecture. It's a lecture very carefully and most
of it wasn't about any cases at all. Most of it was to try to be in s firing to the first year law students who were the target audience, about the power that that one gets from being a lawyer and how to be good with it and how you know. I even said such things as it would be the worst nightmare of a prosecutor to think that he or she had prosecuted someone who was actually not guilty.
But she's a pretty obvious thing, you would think, I would think.
So I hope that that always is the case. And so I thought it was good. But the Dean had asked me to comment because he said, so many of the students wonder why all the scaff cases are still limping on through the system, and it just hasn't come to an end, and there's more trials and then there's an appeal, and then there's a re trial and all that business. So I just gave a bit of a background of the allegations and the way it's gone through
the courts. And I didn't even mention their names. I don't know if the names were public by them, probably not. I didn't mention their names. I mentioned them by initials so as to differentiate the cases and make it clear. And this is a university lecture, and it's pretty normal for lawyers to be able to lecture student lawyers about
cases even though they're still ongoing. When you're just mentioning the things that are in the public domain, about the course of the trials and the appeals, and why they're still going five years after the offenses and we're still going for years after that. In two thousand and seven, when the fellow, now he's now got a ferrari, was up for trial again, some lawyers who didn't want me
in the case. That's all it was about. They've told me since thought they'd take a point that they didn't expect, but they thought it'd buy some time with the Court of Criminal Appeal, saying that I should never be as a prosecutor. I should never be talking about cases that I might be in the future, publishing something, they said publishing. Actually I didn't publish anything.
So you're a Crown prosecutor. You're going to know if you're doing something that's legally dubious.
Yes, that's right. But this point was taken and a judgment was given by the court, and leading judgment was then a judge who later went on to have some experience in sexual assault, but who said since I didn't know how bad it was for victims for years, but he took me off it. He took me off the case and said I shouldn't be in it because I've made public comments about a case I might be in. And so the victim didn't come back. She didn't want to come back again, and they changed the legislation so
that her evidence could be read and so forth. But it wasn't.
She didn't come back again because you were taken off.
Yes, that's right, And I promised her that I would stay with her through it always and I couldn't keep my promise, but I'd go to anyway, and someone else did the case, not with the same knowledge. I'm not being at all critical, but there are things that had to be put across to a jury anyway, it was not successful. So Ferrari man, Well, anyway, I shouldn't say that, because you have to be things have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, and it wasn't. And that's exactly how
the court, the system should should prevail. But that's just my thoughts, and maybe I've gone too far yet again, but.
So well, as far as we know, none of them are doing appeals right now, so if fine.
Yeah, that's right. I think we're allowed to talk about it now. And that's just my view, no one else's view.
It's well known though that it's very hard to get a rape conviction, and even looking at this case, you know, the amount of appeals and the amount of charges that weren't able.
To it was much harder than than it is now.
But why do these cases struggle so much compared to like, I.
Don't think they do really really, yes, I think there's plenty of people being convicted nowadays. Oh, yes, plenty of people being convicted, and in fact there's few people being convicted where perhaps you know an appeal will produce a different result. And if one looks at the raw statistics about how many convictions there are, and I don't even think that's changed a lot. If it is said that there's any slight reduction in conviction rates, it's because there
are so many more complaints now. And I don't want to offend anyone, and I hope that everyone understands what I'm saying, but that in terms of seriousness objectively, and I know that for every victim it's their subjective feeling.
But there are so many cases now in relation to well relationships sex that is, one person thinks it's been agreed to and one person doesn't, and perhaps it could be in the context of consensual sex to a certain extent or a certain number of times, and then something more. I'm not diminishing anyone's experience, but they're also harder to prove, because the more aspects of things that are done to someone that are against their will, the easier it is
to prove. So, just as an example, if the complainant has removed her own clothes, gone somewhere private, got into bed with someone, decided to sleep with someone. It's going to be a bit harder to prove that there wasn't consent to something happening. It's just a bit harder to prove because there are two sides to the story, and the truth of the matter is no one really knows except those two people.
Which is hard to hear. Like you say, but you're speaking from like a courtroom perspective, through a lawyer's eyes. It's much harder to distinguishes than say the scaff rapes that we're talking about.
And there can even be each side might there might be no dishonesty from either, but each side might remember it in a different way. And that I suppose that's where where communication is so important, and maybe that is why it's a good idea to change it to let's have the specific conversation rather than the old days of just a look in the eye and things that came from Hollywood movies.
You mean asking for consent.
Yes, that's it, but not just generally, because many cases are cases where consent to certain acts have taken place, but there's got to be ongoing consent and continuous consent but many people say, oh, that's stupid, because you know, I'm in a relationship and we don't talk about it and all that. But well, perhaps everyone has to have ground rules with people, and every couple's different.
And I would also argue that people that do feel like they've been sexually assaulted and raped in that scenario do deserve to be able to go to and fight for justice.
Of course, of course they do, and they are and they are permitted to and they're given every ability to make it easier. They don't have to be in the same room. They can do it by AVL, they can have as many breaks as they like, support person, all the things, all the things that we pioneered when I was prosecuting these types of cases.
Well, there were some changes in criminal procedure after scuff, weren't there.
Yes, that someone doesn't have to come back time after time. So the evidence is recorded now audio and visual, and so it can be used well even if the complainant doesn't want to come back or well, it doesn't matter whether she does or she doesn't. I mean, she could if you wanted to, but that recording is there for the future.
You're listening to true crime conversations with me Jemma Bath. I'm speaking with Australian barrister and prosecutor kneen Up. Next, I ask Margaret about the release of one of the more high profile members of the scaff Rapes. Do you still read the headlines on the scaff story because they are still popping up. You mentioned Muhammad before he was released in twenty twenty three.
Yes, I like to see how everyone's going.
And we you know, we had another complainant come forward a few years ago. She was all over the media. You know, it was something that was such a big part of your life.
Yeah, yes, well it was for a few years and it certainly caused me well to be taken off.
Yeah, it was a lot of your own.
But it's sort of embarrassing and yes, that's right. But the good thing was that in the judgment, my whole lecture is recorded, so I'm pretty proud. I'm still proud of it and it's still a great lecture. And so things happened for a reason. They might seem terrible at the time, terribly offensive, but we have to get resilient and go through that. In the course of professional life, people see things differently I'm sure that wouldn't happen. Now
that's two thousand and seven. Imagine not being even given the opportunity to be represented in a case like that, which I wasn't wasn't asked question about it, wasn't asked any explanation, wasn't given the opportunity, just was done and I was off.
I want to ask about one of the cases you've worked on in your second act in defense, Craig Faulbig. People will know that name. Kathleen Folbig was sentenced in the nineties or early two thousands for the murder and man sort of her four children, and you came to represent him in twenty eighteen. How did that come up?
I did. I was briefed by Craig Folbick's solicitor to appear in an inquiry before Reg Blanche QC, who was the first DPP, and he appointed me a Crown prosecutor back in nineteen ninety and I'd worked for him as a elicitor in the DPP and since its inception, and so he was given the task of an inquiry into the convictions of missus Folbig to see whether he agreed with them, and so for the first time she was
cross examined. She hadn't been cross examined in her trials, as was her right, And I was instructed by Craig, and through his lawyer, I came to know Craig very well. He's a very fine man, and on any view of it, a victim, a victim of the loss of four children. He died recently, did he. He died within the last year, and he was quite young, still only in his fifties, and he went on to have another child, a son, with a new partner. But he died after the last decision.
So he saw Kathleen freed. Yes, it is something he doesn't think should have happened.
That's very true. That's very true. And I have a lot of insight from his suffering, and he told me often how he kept trusting her and kept trusting her. But anyway, we know what's happened since. However, I cross examined her, and I cross examined her on her diaries. There's a lot of damaging materials there. And at the end of that inquiry, Justice Blanche decided that he was more fortified in her guilt than had been the case
even up to the High Court. Really and that was on the basis of a number of well on the basis of her cross examination, and we knew about the possible genetic difficulty suffered by two out of four of the children. One of the children, he was found to be not breathing Patrick early in his life life, but he was saved for a while. He ended up blind and epileptic until he died a few months later with having stopped breathing. But anyway, there was a very big scientific campaign, and well it.
Was interesting for you because you had not a small part, but you kind of played a part in the middle there, but not in the start and then at the end, so you kind of got to see it all unravel.
Yes, yes, that's right. It was very interesting cross examination. I think I cross examined this is fold big for a day and a half and.
The first person to do so. Yes, I want to bring up Ikak because half free up is very.
It makes me laugh.
Well, it was made into such a big deal. They dug into your life. They splashed it all over the news. It was, you know, your private life, which you've made a very big deal to make leave private, was kind of put out in the media all for them. To work out that you've done nothing wrong.
That's right. In fact, it was totally misconceived from the start because someone told them that somehow someone found out that my son's then girlfriend had a crash and found out that as it happened, she wasn't tested at the scene. But that's because the crash was so bad the car was written off. The ambulance came and took her to the hospital where her blood was taken. Straight away. She went by ambulance with lights and sirens and her blood
was taken. No alcohol, no drugs, and we knew that on the night and.
For it to become part of an Eykak inquiry.
Yes, and that's right. And as I kept saying to them, she was tested, she was tested, and they do you know that? They is it? Well? I think they thought that the police had helped me or something, but I wasn't there and neither was my son. And her phone, the driver's phone, was left in the car with her handbag because the car writen was t bone. She was pinned by the seat belts up on the side of the car. She really did have chest pain when the
ambulance came. And that's that. But the timing has always seemed very odd to me because I just completed a stint of about eighteen months as a commissioner inquiring into the investigations of pedophile priests in Newcastle historically, and I just the day before this crash, I had given my report to the Governor and so I was going back to my job. But there were all these rumors swirling
about me being appointed as Supreme Court judge. Now Gemma, I swear had I been offered, I would have said no, and just by means of a little bit of proof of that. In two thousand and seven, the then Attorney John Hat's sister Goss who's now head of VIKAC, which I think he's the best head they've ever had, frankly, and things probably being done properly now there at last. But in two thousand and seven I was rung up by the Attorney General and he said, oh, well it's
your turn, District Court judge. You're going to take the appointment. I said, no, what No one ever knocks us back. And I said, oh I am And he said why And I said, look, I don't think I'm really judged material because whenever I'm doing a moot or something, and one person speaks I think, yeah, that's really good, and then the next person speaks on that's really good too.
And I can't do much empathy.
I can't even choose, and I want to give both the prize. And I said, I really don't think that I'm very good at judging. Just leave me on a side, give me a side to work at four And that's where I'm happy.
When you think about it, it's a very hard job, like, yes, it's to me. It's that typical, like everyone expects you to keep climbing the ladder and you're like, no, I'm happy.
Yeah laterally, that's right. I had a great career and I loved it, and I wasn't too sure that i'd like it. And you know, I already had my own superannuation as a crawn prosecutor. A lot of people go to be judges because if you do ten years, you get superannuation, and that's why a lot of barristers will leave the bar and go and do it. I think I think that no one's told me that, but that
must be the attraction. But it didn't have that attraction for me either, And everyone that I've known who's become a judge. It's like losing your best friend to the priesthood or the nunnery, because you basically never see them again, certainly not in the same way. If you see them at any function or something and you call them judge, they don't correct you, and there's no more lunches or
drinks after work at the pub. They think that everyone's going to be looking at them, and to one or two I've said, don't worry, they won't be looking at you. They'll be looking at me. I won't even notice you. But no, they won't go. They sort of their lives become a little more insular, which is pretty ironic because what you need to do criminal law is to know what's going on. And I got the bus here and walk the rest of the way. I love getting public transport.
I love hanging around in ordinary department stores, grocery stores, pubs, footy I love finding out what's really going on and what's the use of just going around in a shaff driven car not talking to anyone.
That's so interesting and interesting that you had that foresight, And for them to be like, but why not, you're turning is down? Yes, but this all happened as Ikak was sniffing around.
Well, yes see how I changed the subject.
Then I did let us get back to it. But you kind of a bit of a rat there, Well.
Oh, yes, that's right. I think that there may have been forces at work here didn't want to see me. Well, we had that in common. No one wanted me to be a judge, mostly me. I think some people may have wanted me to, but some people didn't want me to be. And this and this was all just a big distraction which had the inevitory when when it was looked at by wealthy the Ikak inspector, who the person who looks over k got hold of it straight away.
I didn't even have to ask him to. And he initiated an investigation and found that they'd acted illegally, unjustly, unfairly and with great prejudice against my family and me.
And so there's a very damning report and that. But then even when a person there persisted on such personal basis, someone I'd known for ages anyway and worked with for ages, but persisted and tried to get my boss to punish me for something to do with a phone by taking all these phone messages and engineering a bias against me. So it sort of kept going on, but luckily it was sent to an independent, kidding body in Victoria and the result came back there is nothing, no illegality by
miss Kneen or any member of her family. And you know that some some newspapers never print that, but some do.
Does it make you angry when you think back on.
It a little bit, But look, everyone's everyone's life has hardships in it. And even when that was happening and I was suspended from work and I was you know, I was well, I was mainly worried because they were dragging my family through it. And that's a tactic by bodies like iye CAC because if there was actually any evidence, it goes straight to the police, wouldn't it if of criminality and the police had said, well there's nothing to see here, there's so but that put that's made I
CAC go after the police there and quiz them. But so I cacks only exist when there's no evidence. And so the way one of their tactics is to put pressure on all their family only members by coming into the homes and going through everyone's stuff and surveilling family members to try to make the target go. Make it stop, Okay,
I admit everything, just stop against my family. But luckily my family is a praetorian guard and we're a martial arts family and a boxing family, and they all just just keep fighting, you know, don't worry, We're all in it' all fight.
Well, they picked the wrong family, but you know.
And luckily they're not a family who looked at me and said, oh, you know, what have you done? Oh I'm so embarrassed by you. They just got prouder and prouder of me.
But to me, it seems that you kept getting this target on your back when you would speak out about something. You would kind of question processes, or you would be like, hey, why don't we do this differently?
Or well, that's right, Isn't it kind of ironic that I was speaking up for victims of rape having such a hard time and having to go back to courts over and over again and being treated so badly because certain people in the system who would now totally agree with that hadn't yet come around to it, and that might be taking the credit for it when I was really pilloried for it. In fact, even down to being
questioned by people who may be ashamed of it. Now, these prosecutions are just racist prosecutions because they're nice white girls with blonde hair, and so you're just for Aussies and against Lebanese people. This is terrible. I was able to say when I was asked that question by people who surprised me when they asked it, namely women's groups. I said, why do you say that they're blonde haired girl? Oh?
I saw one on a current affair. Well, actually she's an Aboriginal woman who was wearing a blonde wig and green contacts to disguise her appearance. And when she was first spoken to on the train by Mohammed scaff He, noting that it's not entirely clear what her ethnic derivation is, he said to her, are you an Aussy? Where do you come from? And she said, I'm as Australian as they come, So that'll tell them yes. So yeah, yeah, that kind of quietened the group down.
What's next for you?
Thanks? Some people say when are you going to retire? And I say, do you think I should know? What's that? Well? Thanks for asking, Jemma, I am going to I've got
a pretty full book of trials. Right into the next year, and as it keeps happening, people are still asking me for trials that will probably go into the year after that, and so I figure that the clientele will decide when I've had enough, because I've seen people be too old for this job, although it's a great job for an older person, because juries trust your wisdom, and especially if you can render the stories in the common parlance, which
I think I can. From gosh, I spent a lot of time in pubs drinking beers with my kids and their mates mentees as well, and that's exactly right. As long as you keep in touch, it's still a great advantage. It's a job where being old is quite an advantage, but it starts to run out, and I hope I'll have the sense to know that I'm getting a bit past it in maybe ten years.
Thanks to Margaret for helping us to tell this story and for sharing so much of her own true crime conversations. Is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by Me, Jimma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown. And a huge thank you to all of you, our amazing listeners. We're so grateful to have you back for another year of the podcast. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show. Your feedback means so much to us. One easy way to share your thoughts is by leaving
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