…and this is tolerated why?
Jan 18th, 2008 by Rebecca
From today’s Age comes the latest example of male members of the judiciary who can simply not be trusted to hear sexual assault cases:
Victorian County Court Judge Michael Kelly was accused of making insensitive comments during a case against Dean Woodbridge, whom he sentenced last December to two years and nine months’ jail, wholly suspended for three years.
Judge Kelly reportedly described the victim’s impact statement as “a waste of time” and said the victim would not have coped well in a British public school in the 1930s.
Woodbridge was convicted of the rape of a boy nine years his junior.
It’s a disgrace to the legal profession that we still have judges here who just don’t get the message on sexual assault. Judge Kelly has been publicly called out on his comments by Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Rapke and Premier John Brumby, but it isn’t good enough that the matter ends there, with Brumby’s response being to mumble something about educating the judiciary.
Quite simply, Judge Kelly should be removed from office, or at an absolute minimum be prevented for hearing any sexual assault cases. This would send a clear precedent to the judiciary both here and interstate (I called out the late Justice Terry Connolly of the ACT Supreme Court for similarly repulsive comments last year) that this nonsense would not be tolerated. Allowing judges to go on their merry way with mumblings about educating them when they’ve shown no sign that they understand or can fairly adjudicate sexual assault proceedings is nothing short of disgraceful.
What the hell does that even mean– “You wouldn’t have done well in the schools of the 1930s”?? Does that mean men were assulted there all the time? That’s a troubling statement in itself. This judge sounds like a huge BULLY.
That judge SHOULD be fired. UGH, unbelievable.
I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that either, but that’s definitely the implication I’m getting. It’s disturbing that he seems to place male sexual assault on the same level as say, high school bullying, or having a strict teacher. I think that says quite a bit about the sorts of attitudes that are still prevalent in the judiciary, even after thirty years of people trying to get some of the older members of the legal profession to grow a damned clue.