MAD AS HELL

It was an awesome experience. One of the most touching and compelling moments of this 60-year-old’s life. To stand at the top of the steps of Parliament House in Spring Street and look out at a sea of around ten thousand passionate faces.

People who, at short notice, had voted with their feet. People who had elected to give up time on a Sunday to echo the words of Peter Finch in the movie Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”

Genuine, law-abiding, concerned and frightened Victorians who look at recent court decisions and think that something is wrong. That judges are out of touch. That politicians are spending too much time in Ivory Towers. That criminals get more sympathy and solace than their victims.

That maybe it IS finally time for the people who cast our laws to consider – or at least debate – the idea of minimum sentences for rapists and child abusers.

At that rally the mood of betrayal and frustration and bewilderment and fear was palpable. I talked to victims from the age of seven to seventy. And it is hard when a grieving mother is clutching the ornately-framed photo of her raped and murdered daughter. It is hard when a middle-aged man whose son was murdered recently grabs you in a bear hug and you can feel his wracking sobs almost touch your spine.

I said on radio the day after that awesome rally that I felt humbled and touched and a bit inadequate.

I thought I was having a heart attack and I knew I would cry. They came. YOU came. About eight thousand – ten thousand -- of you came.

Premier Bracks didn’t. Attorney-General Hulls didn’t. Although he “coincidentally” put out a press release about crime and punishment about an hour before our rally started.

What got to me most about the rally was (a) that thousands of you cared enough to come and (b) it was a sea of heartbreak.

When it was over, on the steps of Parliament House – YOUR Parliament House – I talked to the mother and the grandmother of the seven-year-old rape victim who triggered it all, prompted it all, only a few days earlier.

I had talked to her mother on 3AW and her anger and her frustration and her betrayal over the fact that her daughter’s rapist – who pleaded guilty after the mother bravely wore a wire – had walked free. Around the same time a 22-year-old woman, raped in her apartment -- after she fell asleep reading a book -- by a drunk who leered in her window, not only saw her attacker walk free with a totally suspended sentence but heard the judge wish the rapist the best for the future. Those things prompted the protest rally.

And I whispered to the mother of that seven-year-old child: “You ARE not alone. The judges may have betrayed you and your little girl. The Attorney General may have betrayed you and your little girl. The Premier of this state may have betrayed you and your little girl. The Director of Public Prosecutions may have betrayed you and your little girl. But people didn’t.”

And I told her to go home and watch the TV news and tell her daughter that this was for her.

On the supposedly hallowed steps of our Parliament I talked to a seven-year-old rape victim. I talked to the mother of a little girl about to go to court. Talked to a fourteen-year-old brave enough to stand up in court against her stepfather and put him in jail for four years.

I talked to a married man who has only recently had the confidence to tell his wife and family what happened to him. Because there are male victims too. I talked to a woman in her fifties who was raped by her brother forty years ago.

Of the 10,000 people there the casualty count of victims could have been three or four thousand. Maybe even more. It was a sea of heartache and heartbreak.

So what next? What can ordinary people achieve?

I believe we DO need a Federal Royal Commission into child abuse. It is not good enough for Primer Minister Howard to scoff and say that could cost $70 million dollars. Isn’t one child’s innocence worth $70 million?

We need a review of the role and power and apparent impotency of the DPP in the State of Victoria.

We need a review of the merit of mandatory sentences in this state.

We need judges to be more in touch with the real world. We need more female judges.

We need… we need… we need. We need leadership. Bracks and Hulls did NOT show it this week.

I said at the rally that if I were Premier Bracks I would have turned up. I would have looked those anguished faces and honestly said: “I don’t have all the answers. But I feel your pain. We are trying. We are on your side.”.

And just maybe he would have taken some time to read some of the flood of letters and e-mails that have come to me and I am sure have reached him.

Letters like:

Heart-felt congratulations on your initiative and the demonstration on Sunday. You have touched a nerve across the community which the pollies must be made to realise is so widespread as to be a major election issue.

I am a "non-redneck" 60 year old with a strong concern for the well-being of my community and it was my first attendance at a demonstration . EVERYONE I talk to has strong feelings that the judiciary and the justice system has increasingly let the community down, and that the legal system is now just a self-perpetuating self-serving commercial playing field (industry} for the lawyers.

Derryn, don't let the government slide away on this one. I am scratching my head to think of what more I can do. I am thinking of a petition via email but have not yet worked out the practicalities. A very concerned, non-redneck, non-roughneck, non-radical, non-bleeding heart, middle of the road Aussie. I am simply an individual not linked to any group or party.

I am 68 years of age and have never been involved in any sort of a protest—until Sunday. I feel so passionate about the leniency of sentences. My husband and I caught the trains in and were part of Melbourne people with similar views.

They may have caught the train. Bracks and Hulls are on the wrong tram.

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004