Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Acts of charity – the William
Street Pieta, jail visits and gold-plated legal defence teams
On 30 May 2011, there was what the
Christian Brothers Oceania (Australia, NZ and the Pacific region) blandly termed a “sudden change in Best's legal position” – that is, their fellow brother Robert Best, who by
then had been living for about four months on pre-sentence remand in Port
Phillip Prison, after being found guilty of multiple child sex crimes by
various juries in the County Court in Melbourne (William Street), and/or
Ballarat, earlier in 2011 (as well as, possibly, back into 2010).
The exact details here are hard to
fathom; the suppression orders and closed courts applied until that May 2011
day haven’t seen much emerge retrospectively into the public domain since. We do know, however that it was a protracted
saga – Best’s committal was at Ballarat in 2009, and one of Best’s victims,
“Damien”, committed suicide before he got to see justice done.
We also know that it was an
expensive saga: a figure of about $1 million in defence-side legal expenses (for
the 2009-2011 cases) was widely reported in 2011 (and again, at the time of
Best’s unsuccessful appeal, in November 2012). But this same figure nonetheless
drew gasps from the public gallery when it was once again cited at last
Friday’s Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry. Of course, the taxpayer-funded
prosecution case and court facilities would have added up to millions more (same URL).
As to why the Christian Brothers
saw Best’s guilty plea to all remaining charges as a “sudden change” is also
hard to fathom. Granted, proceedings at that stage were only about
halfway through the marathon, in total, and all Best’s pleas to that date had
been not guilty. But Best had been found guilty by juries on most of the
earlier charges, and so was facing significant jail time, whatever happened in the second “half”. One might
have thought the early-2011 day (oh happy day!) that Best was remanded,
pre-sentencing, in Port Phillip Prison was a bigger “sudden change”.
(Note that prior to this day, the previously-convicted Best had not so far
served time, other than a three month appeal interlude between his March 1998
trial and the ordering of a re-trial on 23 July 1998 – a re-trial that never
went ahead.)
But for the Christian Brothers,
sudden changes, and acts of charity, are obviously very fluid and relative
things. Here’s Br Vince Duggan, the leader of Christian Brothers Oceania
in an early March 2013 email:
“Quite a few brothers in
Victoria are regular visitors to Br Bob Best who is currently in prison. I
applaud the brothers who do this. I have visited Bob on one occasion myself,
and plan to do so again in the future. One can visit someone in prison without
making any judgment about the innocence or guilt of that person. Visiting
someone in prison is in no sense condoning criminal activity. Indeed ‘visiting
those in prison’ is listed among what used to be commonly termed the ‘corporal
works of mercy’. I find it appalling that brothers who perform this act of
charity should be publicly condemned in the press by one of their own [viz
Christian Brother Dr Barry Coldrey]”.
Yep, being criticised just for
going about one’s charitable day-to-day business is “appalling”. If the
high-minded Vince Duggan is quite that sensitive, the mind boggles how enraged
he must feel, to this day, about the fates of the hundreds of children sexually
abused by members of his order. Or not – there is no public statement to
that effect by him, at least. Plus it is not hard to imagine at least a
sliver of self-interest behind all these prison visits (I stress here that I am referring to Best’s many Christian Brother
visitors generally): if Best is kept a happy man in prison, he is
less likely to have a pang of Christian conscience, and name others –
particularly those who concealed his crimes.
The $1 million or so of donated
Church funds that Vince Duggan also saw fit to tip into the pockets of Best’s
defence lawyers between 2009 and 2011 also stretch the meaning of “charity”, if
you ask me. Blessed is the guilty-as-hell, got off by a smooth-talking
QC, perhaps? One mysterious element here is that Best’s (sole?) defence counsel, (first URL) at least in May 2011, was the relatively junior – and so
cheap-ish – barrister Sarah Leighfield*,
The Christian Brothers recently said,
by way of vague explanation, that spending on Best's defence between 2009 and
2011 “spiralled out of control”. I suspect that Best may say much the same
thing, by way of vague explanation, about his two
decades of rampant crime. In other
words, the Christian Brothers are still perpetuating what Best (and his
accomplices) started – albeit by being selectively incontinent with their wallets, this time.
In all this money, squalor and
pious delusion, there was one beautiful, heartbreaking scene in court on 30 May
2011:
“As [Robert] Best stood and
gave his [guilty] pleas, one of his victims turned to stare at him as the man's
mother wept and embraced her son.” (first URL, again)
I call this three-way tableaux the
William Street Pietà. My favourite work of European art, when I
want to touch base with an inconsolably burdened inner-child – somehow a
creature both singular/“me” deep-within, and yet universal, liberated – is the
Palestrina Pietà. Photos don’t quite do this unfinished (?) Michelangelo (?) masterpiece justice. The languid Christ figure is sumptuously over-finished,
or put more bluntly, blatantly homo-erotic.
His mother Mary, directly behind, supports him rather well, with one
very hefty hand.
But it is the sparsely-chiselled third, child-size figure
that makes this sculpture. Viewed from the side, she (?) staggers under
a heavy weight – giving the sculpture a forward momentum that is perfectly
balanced and resisted (I’m talking art, not physics) by the backwards fall of
the Christ figure, into the immovable upright pillar of his mother’s arm/s.
The William Street Pietà is, in my
mind’s eye (I wasn’t there, and only know of it from the newspaper account), a similar
masterpiece: a sculpture of a moment of both steely resolve (between victim and
Best), and primal howling (between victim and his mother) – two personal
qualities Vince Duggan has evidently never encountered in his “charitable”
travails.
Update/re-post 8 May 2013
I’ve tweaked this post in mostly
minor ways, adding some links, and fixing some broken ones. There’s also now a clarification/disclaimer,
which I’ve italicised and underlined,
a new para on the Christian Brothers propensity to “[spiral] out of control”,
and a two-para
background on my thinking behind the William Street Pietà.
* Update 4 May 2015
EK Hornbeck writes in the comments that Sarah Leighfield was NOT editing MULR in 2011. While I don't think that my post implied that she was, since EK feels strongly about it, I'm underlining it here. By way of explanation, MULR's mention in my original post was only as a date-marker for Sarah Leighfield's legal career - Google is a useful trove for some barrister's biographies, but not Sarah Leighfield's.
* Update 4 May 2015
EK Hornbeck writes in the comments that Sarah Leighfield was NOT editing MULR in 2011. While I don't think that my post implied that she was, since EK feels strongly about it, I'm underlining it here. By way of explanation, MULR's mention in my original post was only as a date-marker for Sarah Leighfield's legal career - Google is a useful trove for some barrister's biographies, but not Sarah Leighfield's.
Comments:
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Dear Mr Watson
There is a mistake of fact in your post.
You wrote: "One mysterious element here is that Best’s (sole?) defence counsel, (first URL) at least in May 2011, was the relatively junior – and so cheap-ish – barrister Sarah Leighfield, (who was still at Melbourne University Law School, to co-edit the MULR, in 2000)."
You are correct in saying that the 31 May 2011 article from The Age that you hyperlinked to states that the defence counsel was Sarah Leighfield.
However, you are incorrect in asserting that Ms Leighfield was, at the time, "still at Melbourne University Law School, to co-edit the MULR."
The MULR website that you correctly hyperlinked to clearly states that Ms Leighfield was an Editor in 2000.
The hearing for the Christian Brothers case in which Ms Leighfield appeared as defence counsel took place in May 2011.
By May 2011, Ms Leighfield was clearly no longer still at Melbourne Law School editing the MULR. The MULR website makes it clear that Ms Leighfield was not one of the three 2011 Editors.
Please correct your mistake of fact.
Yours sincerely
EK Hornbeck
Post a Comment
There is a mistake of fact in your post.
You wrote: "One mysterious element here is that Best’s (sole?) defence counsel, (first URL) at least in May 2011, was the relatively junior – and so cheap-ish – barrister Sarah Leighfield, (who was still at Melbourne University Law School, to co-edit the MULR, in 2000)."
You are correct in saying that the 31 May 2011 article from The Age that you hyperlinked to states that the defence counsel was Sarah Leighfield.
However, you are incorrect in asserting that Ms Leighfield was, at the time, "still at Melbourne University Law School, to co-edit the MULR."
The MULR website that you correctly hyperlinked to clearly states that Ms Leighfield was an Editor in 2000.
The hearing for the Christian Brothers case in which Ms Leighfield appeared as defence counsel took place in May 2011.
By May 2011, Ms Leighfield was clearly no longer still at Melbourne Law School editing the MULR. The MULR website makes it clear that Ms Leighfield was not one of the three 2011 Editors.
Please correct your mistake of fact.
Yours sincerely
EK Hornbeck
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