Posts Tagged ‘DCSI’
the latest summary of my battle for justice
SA’s Supreme Court, a possible destination
I’ve written five posts recently on what I call ‘the big lie’ (see links below), and I might end up turning it into a book. It looks like I’ll have plenty of time on my hands to do so. My last post was on January 20, and since then there’s been no word from DCSI (SA’s Department for Communities and Social Inclusion) on the review of the decision, which officially commenced on October 31 2017 – 105 days ago. On the website for the Screening Unit of DCSI (or DCSE in my case), we’re told that a review will take 6-8 weeks or longer. Of course they don’t say how long longer is.
105 days is of course exactly 15 weeks. I have been suspended from work without pay since November 10. I’d been in my job as an educator in English for Academic Purposes for only four years. It was mostly part-time, and TESOL is probably the most lowly-paid job in teaching, which is already well-recognised as an under-paid profession. However it’s the best job I’ve ever had, and I miss my students – a lot.
I point all this out because I want to make it clear that I lack the financial resources to hire a lawyer to help me clear my name in a civil or criminal court, even if there were any avenue for me to do so, and at this stage it appears not.
However, if I can find an avenue, I will represent myself.
So, two weeks ago I wrote an email to the people responsible for my review. I used the same email address they gave me for sending any further information that might assist my case – personal/professional references or any other documents I might have unearthed. My email was essentially a begging letter about the personal and financial stress I was going through due to their delayed decision. I received no response, so last week I wrote a letter of complaint to DCSI about the delay. I received no response from that either, so yesterday I filed an official complaint about the matter to the SA Ombudsman, whose office looks into official complaints about state government departments, inter alia. After managing finally to fill out correctly their not-so-user-friendly form, I was told they would respond within a fortnight.
So that’s where things stand at present, but I worry that the longer it takes for the Screening Unit to decide for or against me, the less likely it will be that I’ll be reinstated in my job, whatever the outcome.
Meanwhile, as well as trying to turn my mind to other things, and to blog about them, I’ve been looking online for possibilities for clearing my name, taking action against wrongful arrest or wrongful prosecution, and so forth. And I’ve come up pretty well empty. DCSI provided me with a pamphlet on Procedural Fairness as part of their request for further information back in April last year. Under ‘further avenues of appeal’ it states: ‘You may also seek a judicial review of an administrative decision in the Supreme Court’. If the decision is against me, I will do that, but that won’t be enough, though it may be that the Supreme Court, in reviewing the case, will accept that a nolle prosequi decision was unfair in light of the complete absence of evidence presented. In which case, the DPP and SAPOL may have a case to answer, a case that I would be keen to pursue.
The problem with this, though, is that first and foremost I want my job back, and I’m getting on for 62 years of age. How long would all this take? And it’s also clear that seeking redress for false accusations, and even for unjust convictions leading to deprivation of liberty, is no easy matter in Australia. My online research on this stuff just leaves me feeling depressed. It should be said that the case of Roseanne Beckett, linked to above, ended well for her after 26 years (and the injustice she suffered completely dwarfs my own, to put it mildly).
My concern in fighting this case is:
First, to find out if the accuser is still sticking by his accusation.
Second, to determine how the police can justify not visiting the so-called scene of the crime until after the case had been transferred to a higher court (thus necessitating the production of evidence, or at least verification of the boy’s story).
Third, how can the police justify arresting me without evidence? Their own justification is stated tersely on their charge sheet:
‘Accused arrested to ensure appearance and due to the serious nature of the offence’.
So, two reasons are given. To take the second one first – due to the serious nature of the offence. Is it fair to arrest someone solely on the basis of a claim being serious or extreme? Think of the term used in science: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Prima facie, I can’t see how you can justify arresting someone for a crime as serious as rape, with all the opprobrium understandably attached to it, and the damage to the accused’s reputation, without any evidence whatever beyond the story of the accuser. To do so would, IMHO, lack due diligence to an extreme degree. So now to the first reason – to ensure my appearance – that is, to ensure I wouldn’t ‘do a runner’. However, this makes no sense. For many weeks before my arrest I was aware that a serious allegation had been made against me. I also made the police aware of this because, after weeks of being kept in the dark, I made an official complaint to the Police Complaints Authority about my situation. It was Anglicare who informed me, by phone, that a serious allegation had been made, immediately after they had manoeuvred my new foster-kid out of the house on a false pretext. Clearly, the police had contacted Anglicare about the allegation against me, and they (the police) would have ensured that no other minor was in my care until this matter was investigated. So the police knew that I knew something was afoot, and they would have known, or should have known, from the Police Complaints Authority matter, that I wasn’t going anywhere. In short, neither of the reasons given by the police for my arrest bear close scrutiny.
Fourth, how the DPP can justify proceeding, when their mission statement is clear that no case will be prosecuted unless there is a reasonable chance of conviction.
But at first glance there seems no avenue for fighting the whole case, so I would have to begin by fighting the DCSI’s decision. This fight would mean questioning why the screening unit looks upon nolle prosequi so negatively. But here I must say that my researches have uncovered something which I may have written about before, forgive me. That is, that there are three possible way in which the prosecution could be unsuccessful, not two, as I’d previously thought. They are: a finding of not guilty (i.e. acquittal), which would entail an expensive full trial, which was never going to happen; a dismissal before arraignment, in which the DPP recognises it doesn’t have a case; and a nolle prosequi dismissal after arraignment, because the DPP has somehow convinced the magistrate that the defendant has a case to answer. It is because the case was sent to a higher court at arraignment (or did the arraignment actually take place in the higher court? I’m not sure) that I’m in the position I’m now in, without a police clearance, and in danger of never being able to teach again, even in a voluntary capacity, at least not in a community centre, where these more stringent police clearances are now mandatory.
In any case, it’s time now to act, I can’t keep waiting, stuck like a rabbit in the headlights. I’ve been too passive in this case. I need to take it to the Supreme Court, if possible – regardless of the eventual decision of DCSI.
https://ussromantics.com/2017/11/11/the-battle-for-justice-part-1-some-background-to-the-case/
https://ussromantics.com/2017/11/13/the-battle-for-justice-part-2-the-problem-with-nolle-prosequi/
https://ussromantics.com/2017/11/21/the-battle-for-justice-an-update-the-problem-with-documents/
https://ussromantics.com/2018/01/20/police-procedures-the-dpp-and-subtle-corruption/
Trump downfall update. The latest indictments of Russians obviously undercuts Trump’s claims about the ‘Russian hoax’ as well as the ‘tattered FBI’ and might have an affect on the Trumpets. They should have an undermining effect on the Congress Trumpets in particular – Nunes, Collins, Cotton and co. If, after this, the GOP Congress continues to deny or do nothing about Russian conspiracy to influence elections, including the coming mid-terms, isn’t this obstruction of some sort? Or some sort of passive collusion? It certainly is an outrage. Pressure should next be brought to bear on sanctions, and that would mean more pressure on Trump.
the battle for justice part 3 – is there any way to clear your name?
A prosecution should not proceed if there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction being secured. This basic criterion is the cornerstone of the uniform prosecution policy adopted in Australia.
from ‘The decision to prosecute’, in ‘Statement of prosecution policy and guidelines’, Director of Public Prosecutions, South Australia, October 2014
shit, please don’t tell me the other 24
I’ve argued that it’s pretty well impossible to clear your name, once you’re arrested and charged with a serious crime, due to the nolle prosequi conundrum. And if the charge has to do with a child, you’re unlikely to get work which may involve children, even if no evidence whatsoever has been presented against you, as in my case. But surely there must be some way to clear your name. It can’t be all doom and gloom. Can it?
- Approach the former plaintiff
A number of people who know about the case have asked me – what about the boy who accused you? He’s a young man now, maybe he regrets it all and has changed his tune. If he could be prevailed upon to admit it was all a lie..?
To be honest, I have no inclination whatsoever to go looking for him, and it would probably look bad if I did. And if he changed his story after encountering me, or someone acting in my name, how reliable would his new story be? So I’m very reluctant to go down that path, though it might be a last resort.
2. Approach the DPP
More promising, perhaps, would be to go to the DPP. Why did they abandon the case? My guess has always been that the boy’s story was full of contradictions and kept changing, but it’s also possible that, under pressure, he admitted it was all made up. Way back then. As one of my quotes on nolle prosequi, from my previous post, states: Normally the DPP doesn’t give a reason for such a decision. I’m in the process of requesting all the court documents from the case, and maybe a reason for the decision will appear there, but again I’m very doubtful. And approaching the DPP for a reason now would surely be like trying to get blood out of a stone. Still, such a request might be worth a try.
3. Take it up with the ombudsman/human rights commission
Assuming my appeal fails – and it probably will – the DCSI website kindly suggests that I could take the matter up with these other organisations. The obvious problem with this is that it would be a long-term process, and I’m 61 years old, poor, and desperate to be reinstated in the job I love now. So, yes, I do feel it’s a human rights issue, and I would like to take it up, regardless, with the HRC, though I can hardly imagine it being a priority for them. It’s not a serious option for my immediate situation.
4. Appeal to consistency of character
This is the one that screams at me (and at others) as my best defence. We’ve all heard of criminal profiling, where the police or criminologists seek to predict future offending and victims based on past behaviour, but I have no criminal profile. When I was accused by this boy I was forty-nine years old, with no history, and never any accusations, of violence or sexual abuse of any kind. I’d fostered two young boys before this lad, and I fostered another three after him, with no complaints. I’m proud of what I did as a foster carer, and I’m particularly proud of my work as a teacher in recent years, with mostly young adults but a sprinkling of under eighteens in each class – scores of them overall. And never a hint of a complaint. On the contrary…
And this is what really hurts. When the police arrested me for rape, they had never so much as seen me before. They knew nothing about me, they wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap. They arrested me purely due to the seriousness of the allegation. When the DPP took up the case, passing it from lawyer to lawyer for about a year, none of them knew me from a bar of soap. I was no more than a name. Similarly, when the DCSI began screening me 11 years later, they didn’t know me from a bar of soap. I was just one of the presumably thousands of individuals they had to screen. And they didn’t investigate me, in the way the Dunedin Study studied particular individuals longitudinally – profiling them, essentially. They investigated documents. The documents of the police and the DPP. The documents relating to that one, isolated allegation. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
So an appeal to consistency of character won’t work when character isn’t being looked at at any point down the line. The DCSI appears to look at documents, not at character. The DPP also looks at documents, police documents, and the police don’t seem to look at anything much. The DCSI has stated that an adverse finding isn’t binding. Employers can make up their own minds. But it’s no surprise that employers, especially large-scale impersonal employers, given the current state of moral concern or panic over sexual abuse, will have a policy of accepting the DCSI finding. Thus in this case, they’ll rely on DCSI documents, which rely on court documents, which rely on police documents, which rely on, in this case, nothing much. I think they call this ‘procedural fairness’. Let’s not let our human, personal biases get in the way of effective decision-making.
The Dunedin longitudinal study, and every other study of its kind, give strong scientific credibility to the insight that the best guide to future behaviour is past behaviour. My life-time record of civilised, tolerant, non-violent and caring behaviour, however, was never taken into account by the police when they asked me to sit down at the Port Adelaide police station, not knowing me from a bar of soap, and promptly charged me with rape. And everything that I suffered over the next year, and everything that the DCSI is putting me through now, results from that event.
I had a chat with my semi-former boss today (I’ve been sort of suspended from work pending the outcome of my appeal). I told her I held little hope of my appeal being successful, because ‘I had nothing more to declare but my innocence’. I didn’t actually say that, just thought of it now, but that was the gist of it. But interestingly I feel more confident now as I go through the processes. That’s the usual way when you’re under this kind of cloud, your thoughts oscillate, often extremely, from pessimism to optimism and back again.
My hope, ridiculous as it is, is that when organisations like DCSI have their noses rubbed into the basic injustice of taking the most extreme, conservative view of nolle prosequi, thus destroying the careers of good people, they will see reason. And they might also be persuaded of the obvious truth that everyone else is taking the most extreme, conservative view of their findings.
I’ll no doubt survive, deprived of my vocation. I’ll go into retirement earlier, I’ll be more pressed for funds. I’ll most certainly miss my students, more than anything. But I won’t give up the fight. I don’t want any of these people to feel complacently that they’re making this world safer for children and young people. In this case, they’re most definitely not. And it’s not good enough to shrug and think that some collateral damage is necessary when you’re doing the ‘right thing’. It isn’t.
The battle for justice part 2: the problem with nolle prosequi
A prosecution should not proceed if there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction being secured. This basic criterion is the cornerstone of the uniform prosecution policy adopted in Australia.
from ‘The decision to prosecute’, in ‘Statement of prosecution policy and guidelines’, Director of Public Prosecutions, South Australia, October 2014
Continuing from last post, the case against me was dropped a short while after the arraignment, but not before the police made a visit to my home, the soi-disant scene of the crime. They’d never visited my home or made any contact with me since the arrest, many months before, but it seems the arraignment had spurred them, or forced them, into action.
This was something I’ve never really got. Like many of us I’ve watched my share of crime shows and whodunits. Typically, the arrest comes as the final scene, after weeks and months of painstaking sleuthing. Yet my arrest seemed to have come at the start (though I did have to wait for a while), before any questioning. And then, after the arraignment, the police suddenly showed up at the putative crime-scene to do their sleuthing at last.
I knew what they’d come for, too. Long before, my lawyer had told me some of the details of the boy’s claim. I had apparently raped him in the toilet, after which he’d gotten away and locked himself in the bedroom. I was able to tell the lawyer that none of the bedrooms in my house were lockable, so that part of his story was demonstrably false, so at long last they’d come to check. And then, almost the next day, I was told the case was over.
I don’t remember being sent any paperwork to that effect but I suppose I must have. I was just relieved it was all over, that sanity had prevailed, etc. But this year, more than 11 years on, I came to realise, thanks to a screening process by the DCSI (the South Australian government’s Department of Communities and Social Inclusion), that it wasn’t over, and that it would never be over. This was because of the little matter of ‘Nolle Prosequi’:
The entering of a nolle prosequi by the Director of Public Prosecutions means that he is not pursuing the prosecution at this stage. Theoretically he may pursue the prosecution at a later stage, but this rarely, if ever, happens. Normally the DPP does not give a reason for such a decision, but it is usually based on a problem with the evidence he has assembled. In the course of assembling it, or after it has been assembled in a book of evidence, a problem may arise with a witness or a crucial part of it, that would make it difficult to proceed. Difficulties of this nature usually undermine the whole basis for the trial. Even if new evidence is discovered, the problems with the old evidence remain. If a nolle prosequi is entered, and then registered by the court, the accused is discharged and free to go. He or she enjoys the presumption of innocence that all accused people enjoy until they are convicted of a crime beyond all reasonable doubt. (Carole Coulter, Irish Times, April 2006)
Nolle prosequi... is a legal term of art and a Latin legal phrase meaning “be unwilling to pursue”, a phrase amounting to “do not prosecute”. It is a phrase used in many common law criminal prosecution contexts to describe a prosecutor’s decision to voluntarily discontinue criminal charges either before trial or before a verdict is rendered. It contrasts with an involuntary dismissal. Legal effect [in the USA]: The entry of a nolle prosequi is not an acquittal, and the principle of double jeopardy therefore does not apply. The defendant may later be re-indicted on the same charge. Effect on future employment [in the USA] Federal agencies, especially the military, view nolle prosequi as an unfavorable judgement. This has the effect of requiring a waiver submission for service, or the outright denial of employment (WIKIPEDIA).
Nolle prosequi was the ‘finding’ in my case.
As indicated in the quotes above, nolle prosequi can be interpreted as anything from ‘presumed innocent’ to ‘still pretty suss’, and it seems any department, any arm of government, is at liberty to interpret it as they wish (and given the current environment, they’re more than likely to err on the side of the child/accuser). But here’s the kicker, as the yanks say. And it’s an extremely important and fundamental kicker for my argument. Once arrested (for sexual abuse or rape, say) nolle prosequi is essentially the best any accused can hope for!! This is the dirty little secret your lawyer is most unlikely to tell you about.
Let me explain. When you go and seek legal aid to defend yourself against a false charge [please, if only for hypothetical reasons, assume the accusation is false], it means you’ve already been arrested, and the DPP has already instituted proceedings against you. And once a prosecution is instituted, your lawyer will try to get it thrown out, i.e nolle prosequi. The other alternative is acquittal – but acquittal can only come after a full criminal trial. I quoted in my last post that an arraignment is the first stage of an 11-stage criminal trial in Australia. That should give an indication of just how humungous a criminal trial actually is – involving lawyers, witnesses and experts for both sides, the presentation of different types of evidence, examinations and cross-examinations, a jury presumably, and all in all a process that will tie up a courtroom for some time, with much expenditure of money and energy. So your lawyer is actually trying her best to make sure you don’t have your day in court. So nolle prosequi is the lawyer’s victory, but if organisations like DCSI interpret nolle prosequi as ‘still pretty suss’, that means you’re stuffed – for the rest of your life! If not longer.
Now, notice the statement from the DPP at the top of this post. It sounds impressive – they won’t go ahead with a case unless they have a reasonable prospect of succeeding (and this would surely mean having sufficient, or at least some, evidence). Now, let me tell you that during the whole 13 or 14 months that my case was ongoing, I was in a state of sleepless agony, and occasional rage, with the mantra ‘no evidence, no evidence’ echoing in my head, and on the day after I heard that my case was dismissed, I took to my computer and typed a terse paragraph to the DPP (yes I’m sometimes capable of terseness), accusing them of incompetence in my case, not only for seeming to pass the buck from lawyer to lawyer, but for going against their prosecution policy as stated on their website, which I quoted back to them (the policy was, I believe, worded a little differently in 2006 from the 2014 version quoted above, and I think then it actually mentioned evidence). Not surprisingly they didn’t respond, but I met my lawyer, purely by accident, a few months later and he told me my letter had caused quite a stir – which thrilled me as throughout the case I always felt like Mr Nobody or The Invisible Man. I asked him why, with no evidence at all, the case had lasted as long as it did. His response was that I was one of the lucky ones. Many people in his experience had gone through this process and been destroyed, based on no more evidence than they had against me. No more than someone’s story.
But I’ve had another insight since taking aim at the DPP all those years ago. Yes, I still think the DPP contravened their own policy by taking on my case, but I was forgetting, in my utmost naivety, the role of the police. Yes, the DPP say they won’t prosecute a case unless they have a reasonable chance of success, but when the police arrest a person and charge him with rape, the DPP obviously don’t know a thing about it. They only find out later, from the police. In other words, the DPP has cases ‘dumped’ on it by the police, and has to make the best of them. Their ‘reasonable prospect of conviction’ is based entirely on the word of the police that they have sufficient evidence. You can see here how a world of tension and acrimony might open up between the police and the DPP.
So it looks as if my anger against the DPP might’ve been misplaced. My anger should have been directed at the police. But of course if I’d written to the police about their lack of evidence, where would it have got me?