Is There a Paedophile in Cabinet
The debate on lowering the age of consent was fiercely fought in the NSW Parliament’s Upper House. The Government had forced the issue through in the Legislative Assembly because it has the numbers, but in the Upper House the Government depends upon the Crossbench and we were going to have our say.
The age of consent is not legislation aimed at getting young people who have sex charged with assault. It is a defence for youth who are assaulted by much older abusers. It does mean that older men cannot claim they did not know the youth or child was that young when they abused them. If the children are under the age of consent, then the predator can be charged. It was argued that most assaults took place upon girls, so it was unfair to give the boys the extra protection of having a higher age of consent, therefore the move was the lower the boys age of consent from 18 to 16 years to be the same as that of girls.
I argued – almost won the day – that the assault upon girls was so common and so serious, that we should raise the age of consent for girls from 16 to 18 years of age and bring it into line with the boys and give girls more protection. After all, at 16, no youth can vote, join the army, get married and so on. Eventually my argument was narrowly defeated and the government won the right to lower the age of consent.
But there were two other aspects of the Bill that disturbed many people. The first was that the Government intended to make the legislation retrospective. That is, anyone convicted in the past of assault on a person between the ages of 16 and 18 would have their conviction removed. Further, anyone being investigated by police for such an assault would have the investigation stopped. And anybody currently before the courts would be released without charge. This news was welcomed by paedophiles everywhere!
Why would the Government do that? Was the Government trying to hide someone – someone in their own ranks perhaps? That was enough to encourage the Hon Charlie Lynn, a former Army major whose two young daughters were assaulted and raped, to ask if the Government was seeking to cover up anyone in their own ranks.
At 10.33 on Tuesday night, The Hon Charlie Lynn told the chamber that he had police documents linking “a senior member of the Carr Cabinet” to “illegal underage sex”.
He read an alleged statement made to Strike Force Cori by a 15-year-old boy who claimed the unnamed minister of the cabinet had sex with him and robbed him. Strike Force Cori had been set up in 1997 to investigate claims by the Labor MLC Franca Arena of political protection of pedophiles in high places. It led to charges against just one individual which was dropped for lack of evidence.
The name of the politician concerned was not mentioned. Although that name has been known to politicians for years, and in Wesley Mission’s work with homeless streetkids, the same name has been gossiped about. I have never mentioned the name to any single person, because as far as I am concerned it is merely gossip. Such crimes against underage children, are always furtive and covered up and denied. The witnesses are often unreliable. But as we saw after the Wood Royal Commission a number of prominent people including politicians from Wollongong were convicted.
Mr Lynn did not claim that he had investigated the 15-year-old’s allegation or had any reason to give it credence. Neither did Mr Lynn claim that police had failed to investigate the claims or that prosecutors had failed to act on any substantial information from police. Indeed, Mr Lynn did not claim that he had been rebuffed by any authority that might have been expected to pursue the matter. In brief, he asked the Government minister a number of questions and said if the answers were not forthcoming he would do his duty as a Parliamentarian and presumably name the people mentioned in the police documents.
Mr Lynn has subsequently sent all the material to the Police Integrity Commission for investigation. We now await the result of their investigation.
This is GORDON MOYES.
