Article submitted to the Queensland Teachers Union -

8 Feb 2006 (unpublished- isn't everything?)

What disturbs me about the jailing of Bill D’Arcy

For those of you who might have forgotten, Bill D’Arcy was a teacher and a member of this organisation. He later became a Queensland Member of Parliament who was convicted of raping an eight year old girl in front of a combined class of about 20 primary school children. The supposed year was 1966. He was sentenced to fifteen years in the slammer. On the grounds of an otherwise exemplary life, the appeals court later reduced this to ten and a half years.
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For reducing his sentence the judges were mercilessly attacked in the media. Lot’s of grabs included remarks like “They should lock these people up and throw away the key”, and, “They should take these judges out of the courtroom and send them back to the classroom and teach them what real life is about” etc. It was good stuff for TV ratings and newspaper sales.
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At the time all this happened D’Arcy held the safest Labor seat in Queensland. In the faction ridden ALP this was never a safe place to be. He was also just getting over a heart attack and didn’t have the health and energy to fight the rumours that had originated near preselection time, from no one knows where.
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The rumours emerged into intense media publicity over accusations of getting a young girl pregnant. The headlines lasted for nearly a month. The accusations later proved manifestly false but the counter evidence hardly got a mention. Then a new accusation emerged from a woman who had a thirty seven year old “recovered memory” to the effect that Bill D’Arcy had raped her as an eight year old. He went to trial, no one thought that he could be found guilty, but he was. In the light of the media frenzy it is clear he never had any chance of a fair trial in the first place.
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If you are reading this and you are over twenty you will know immediately how dicey the human memory is. You only have to revisit a scene in a film, which you “clearly” recall to find that it wasn’t like you remember it at all. “Play it again Sam” – was that what Humphrey Bogart really said?
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In the courts in every place in the world except Queensland, Australia, “recovered memory” is a style of evidence, which has been so often discredited, that it has no credence. There have been numerous recantations by accusers, so often have people been influenced by “suggestion”, and so often has the human memory proved unreliable, that it never gets past first base before the lowest ranked junior magistrate anywhere else but Queensland.
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Bill D’Arcy, as I say, was accused and tried at a particularly vulnerable time in his life. He had just recovered from a severe heart attack and was still in a state of precarious health. This is probably why factional opponents moved in to take preselection of his seat from him.
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The original accusation against D’Arcy was patently absurd in itself. How a jury could find him guilty beggars belief. He was found “guilty” of raping an eight year-old girl in front of a class of approximately twenty children of varying ages. None of those children present saw the rape, or anything like it. The eight-year-old didn’t scream in pain, or run out of the classroom, or make any sound, or even tell her parents. She didn’t even remember it until over thirty-seven years later, and then only when it was suggested to her by a police person.
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Her evidence, later examined with care, reveals that she is speaking of a time when Bill D’Arcy was not at the school in question, but had in fact left a year earlier! She describes the school in 1966 but D’Arcy in fact had left in 1965. She appears to be describing another male teacher who now lives in Canada and is not available for questioning. (No innuendo of innocence or guilt is made regarding this teacher.)
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The sentence on Bill D’Arcy was excessive. The original sentence was fifteen years. Even sexual assailants of children who have been filmed on video doing so, to the horror of the world, received only a third of this sentence. Bill D’Arcy has now been so long in Jail that he has now served more than the normal time for such a crime. Because he won’t admit to any guilt, and subject himself to any in-prison psychiatric “help”, he can’t come out on parole!
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There have been a number of trials of Bill D’Arcy, relatively minor, since the original one. No one can work out why. Having put a man away for fifteen years (later reduced) – why was public money continually spent on more trials - to send the D’Arcys broke with legal fees?
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The original accuser i.e the woman who claimed to be raped as an eight year old, faced Judge Botting in the civil trial. He disallowed this accuser’s attempt at gaining a large sum of money in victim compensation. I read his findings. Though carefully worded, the Judge, in summing up, pointed to a large number of inconsistencies in her evidence. In plain layman’s terms he declared Bill D’Arcy “innocent” on the evidence.
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Another aspect disturbs me. Anyone who knows anything, or reads anything, about paedophiles, knows that they regularly re-offend. Bill D’Arcy was examined by the main Queensland psychiatrist on paedophilia. (D’Arcy did not realise who he was, or why he was being examined). The psychiatrist said, “You’re no paedophile”. This has never been clearly evidenced in court, or indeed anywhere else.
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Not only is D’Arcy “no paedophile” but he has sustained an admirable marriage and has raised an admirable family. His wife, Lois, and his three grown children, totally love and esteem their father, totally believe in his innocence, are in daily contact with him, and have stuck together, though grievously harmed by his fate.
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There is another factor, which I think is totally central to the incarceration of D’Arcy. The Queensland political scene and the public life of Queensland have been coloured by the Hetty Johnstone campaign against sexual offences against children. Though the stated objectives of this campaign are unquestionably laudable, the excessiveness and extremism of its methods, so ably criticised by the Journalist Christopher Pearson in the Canberra Times, has created its own list of the falsely accused – these are also victims and so are their families.
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Let us now look at the role of the police. It is the job of the police to establish whether a crime has been committed and thence determine what action should be taken. It is not the job of the police to target a person, decide a priori that such a person is guilty, and then set out, by selecting evidence against, and ignoring evidence for, to secure a conviction. Such a tactic is called trawling, i.e.ignoring any evidence in favour of the targeted person, and persuading those who may be persuaded, that they must strengthen their so called “evidence”. They do this on the grounds that “we know this person is guilty but to nail him we need your help”.
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There seems to be a great deal of evidence that some in the police task force acted in this manner. Police can be influenced by media frenzy and Hetty Johnstone campaigns like anyone else!
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I attended the fourth trial and sat through it. I witnessed Judge O’Brien disallow Mr D’Arcy’s counsel from cross-examining the police on this tactic. I am still astounded by this and wrote to Judge O’Brien asking, as a citizen, for an explanation. I did not receive a reply.
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I have many more misgivings and concerns about these series of trials – I know that much of the evidence is contradictory and faulty. I know the D’Arcy family still believe that within the law they will ultimately find justice. They are from Irish stock so they will keep fighting.

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Dally Messenger III
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