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Could ‘Australia’s most evil parents’ get out of jail? · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Friday, December five, twenty twenty five. Medical specialists who
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  Speaker 1: overcharge their patients are on notice, with the federal government
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  Speaker 1: preparing to require doctors to disclose their fees on a
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  Speaker 1: public website and also considering regulation of fees. A new
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred million dollar wast incinerator was supposed to produce
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  Speaker 1: low carbon energy, but it's spewing out emissions at twice
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  Speaker 1: the rate of a nearby gas fired power station. Neighbors
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  Speaker 1: are furious, and the case is raising new questions about
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  Speaker 1: whether waste to electricity plants should be part of our
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  Speaker 1: low carbon energy future. Those stories are exclusives live now
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  Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au. It's the case
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  Speaker 1: that we've got all of Australia talking. The Australian's investigative
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  Speaker 1: podcast Shadow of Doubt in twenty twenty three raised serious
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  Speaker 1: doubts over the convictions of parents nicknamed Australia's Most Evil.
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  Speaker 1: They were accused of grotesque sexual abuse of their own daughter,
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  Speaker 1: but journalist Richard Gilliad revealed inconsistencies, recovered memories and some
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  Speaker 1: huge twists. Now the case is the subject of a
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  Speaker 1: legal petition to the Governor of New South Wales today,
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  Speaker 1: could these convictions be overturned? Richard Gilliot is one of
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  Speaker 1: Australia's most experienced investigative reporters, and today in The Australian
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  Speaker 1: he's returning to a story that became the subject of
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  Speaker 1: his top rating podcast Shadow of Doubt a couple of
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  Speaker 1: years ago. Richard, this story is about two parents who
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  Speaker 1: are serving very long jail sentences for the sexual abuse
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  Speaker 1: of their daughter, something they've always denied. What's happening now,
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  Speaker 1: what's the new development in this case?
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  Speaker 2: Well, Claire, Largely as a result of the podcast, a
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  Speaker 2: legal team representing the mother has filed a petition with
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  Speaker 2: the Governor of New South Wales requesting a pardon or
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  Speaker 2: a judicial inquiry into the case, based on new and
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  Speaker 2: fresh evidence, quite a bit of which was revealed by
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  Speaker 2: the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, this couple, who we've called Martin and Susan Johnson
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  Speaker 1: were not allowed to identify them for legal reasons. They
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  Speaker 1: were convicted in the District Court of New South Wales.
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  Speaker 1: Then their convictions were upheld by the Court of Criminal
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  Speaker 1: Appeal in that state. And then the High Court declined
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  Speaker 1: to hear their case. This is really a lastich effort
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  Speaker 1: for them to get out of jail, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: It is, and it's the same process that Kathleen Folbig
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  Speaker 2: used successfully, in fact, which resulted in a judicial inquiry
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  Speaker 2: three years ago which released her after twenty years in
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  Speaker 2: prison for the murder of her children. So there is
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  Speaker 2: certainly a precedent for this sort of inquiry not only
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  Speaker 2: to be held, but to show that there was in
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  Speaker 2: fact a miscarriage of justice.
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  Speaker 1: Kathleen Folbig, though, had the support of dozens of scientists
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  Speaker 1: who questioned the veracity of her conviction. This couple, Martin
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  Speaker 1: and Susan Johnson, are really alone, aren't they.
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  Speaker 2: Well, because of the nature of the crimes that their
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  Speaker 2: daughter accused them of, which was essentially thirteen years of
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  Speaker 2: extremely sadistic abuse, which they say never happened. Because of
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  Speaker 2: the nature of that, yes, they have not had a
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  Speaker 2: lot of support in pursuing their claims of innocence. However,
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  Speaker 2: this petition, as I understand it, does contain expert reports
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  Speaker 2: from four very senior medical and scientific experts who are
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  Speaker 2: really raising quite serious doubts about significant parts of the
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  Speaker 2: prosecution case.
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  Speaker 1: Let's just talk a little bit about who these people are,
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  Speaker 1: what were they accused of doing, and what's been their
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  Speaker 1: life since they were convicted.
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  Speaker 2: They were involved in athletics and they trained their children.
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  Speaker 2: They had four children, three daughters and a son, and
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  Speaker 2: the father was the coach and also coached a lot
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  Speaker 2: of other young sports people. They held sporting camps on
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  Speaker 2: their property over many many years. Their daughter originally went
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  Speaker 2: into a psychea hospital because she was suffering severe depression.
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  Speaker 3: She said that she'd.
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  Speaker 2: Been raped by a coach, not her father, another man,
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  Speaker 2: and then after about five months of counseling and really
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  Speaker 2: severe suicidality, she began making allegations against her father, and
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  Speaker 2: then began making allegations against her mother, and eventually after
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  Speaker 2: about two years, she was basically saying that she had
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  Speaker 2: been sexually assaulted by her father from the age of
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  Speaker 2: five all the way through to eighteen in the most
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  Speaker 2: sadistic way, being tortured with tools, locked in a box
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  Speaker 2: in the garage, held in a chicken shed. The parents
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  Speaker 2: were described in the media as the most evil parents
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  Speaker 2: in Australia when they were convicted, and the sentences were
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  Speaker 2: as you might expect extremely severe. The father is serving
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  Speaker 2: the longest jail term in Australian history for child abuse,
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  Speaker 2: forty eight years, and the mother is serving a sixteen
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  Speaker 2: year sentence.
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  Speaker 1: When we were working up this podcast, ideas as a
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  Speaker 1: story that you've worked on for many years, you're the
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  Speaker 1: most meticulous journalist, I've got to say, Richard, that I've
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  Speaker 1: ever worked with, and you think about things very deeply.
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  Speaker 1: We had a lot of conversations about your doubt that
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  Speaker 1: you were not sure what the truth was in all
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  Speaker 1: of this, and you decided to just present all your doubts.
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  Speaker 1: That's why the podcast is called Shadow of Doubt. What
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  Speaker 1: were some of the things, What were some of the
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  Speaker 1: facts that you discovered that made you unsure whether this was,
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  Speaker 1: as it initially seemed on the surface, a possible miscarriage
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  Speaker 1: of justice.
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  Speaker 3: Well, there's always doubt in these stories.
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  Speaker 2: And so in this case, the daughter who accused the
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  Speaker 2: parents was backed by one of her sisters, who told
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  Speaker 2: the court that the father, when he used to conduct
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  Speaker 2: sports massages, had sexually assaulted her.
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  Speaker 3: And so even though that sister didn't.
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  Speaker 2: Corroborate any of her sister's allegations or had never noticed,
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  Speaker 2: in fact, no one had ever noticed any of the
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  Speaker 2: signs of this torture and statistic abuse that was said
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  Speaker 2: to have been going on. But the sister's testimony certainly
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  Speaker 2: introduced an element where you've got two sisters accusing the
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  Speaker 2: same parent. In addition to that, in the course of
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  Speaker 2: researching the story, I learned that the father forty years
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  Speaker 2: ago had been a high school teacher. He had been
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  Speaker 2: accused back then of brooming some senior girl students. I
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  Speaker 2: spoke to one of those women, and look, certainly that
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  Speaker 2: raised a whole lot of issues, And I think in
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  Speaker 2: retrospect it was pivotal in this case in the sense
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  Speaker 2: that it made I think the police and perhaps the
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  Speaker 2: counsel is determined to go after him.
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  Speaker 3: And it's clear from the medical.
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  Speaker 2: Records that the daughter who accused him of torture, her
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  Speaker 2: memories of abuse didn't occur until she found out about
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  Speaker 2: his history as a teacher, and appear to have been
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  Speaker 2: triggered by that knowledge. And so that just introduced this
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  Speaker 2: whole element of ambiguity into the whole case.
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  Speaker 1: Really, yeah, some of those memories flooded out in or
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  Speaker 1: after counseling sessions. This is a phenomenon known as recovered memory.
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  Speaker 1: It was big in the eighties, Richard, and I thought
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  Speaker 1: it had gone away until you started working on this case.
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  Speaker 1: Where there's a theory that memories lie deep within us
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes can only be tapped in the course of
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  Speaker 1: counseling or in the course of a conversation, and then
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  Speaker 1: the memory comes back. In this matter, recovered memories that
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  Speaker 1: this woman didn't know that she had of childhood abuse
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  Speaker 1: were used as evidence against her parents. Did you ultimately
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  Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that these recovered memories were genuine
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  Speaker 1: or that they were perhaps ilicited in an unethical way
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  Speaker 1: by practitioners.
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  Speaker 2: Well, this phenomenon of people going into counseling and being
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  Speaker 2: told to think back to their childhood and over many
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  Speaker 2: months of treatment, beginning to have glimmers of memory, it's
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  Speaker 2: been problematic in counseling for a century, and it did
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  Speaker 2: seem to die down in the nineties, But my sense
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  Speaker 2: is that there's a large number of counselors who still
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  Speaker 2: do this kind of excavating of memories. I should say
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  Speaker 2: that the daughter herself denied that she had ever recovered
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  Speaker 2: repressed memories, but the psychiatrist who treated her made it
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  Speaker 2: quite clear. In her trial testimony that this young woman
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  Speaker 2: had blocked out her memory of these events with her
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  Speaker 2: father and they'd all come back to her as an adult.
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  Speaker 2: So that is, in fact one of the principal issues
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  Speaker 2: that's been raised in this petition to the governor. A
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  Speaker 2: neuroscience expert, and memory expert and a pharmacology expert have all,
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  Speaker 2: as I understand it, written reports stating that the drug
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  Speaker 2: regime this young woman was put on and the sorts
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  Speaker 2: of counseling that she was administered over two years or more,
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  Speaker 2: could have caused her to go into delusional states where
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  Speaker 2: she was confabulating and experiencing false memories of events that
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  Speaker 2: never happened, but which she believes happened. And that's one
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  Speaker 2: of the keys in these cases is that the person
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  Speaker 2: who's had these memories believes these events happened, and so
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  Speaker 2: in the witness box they can be extremely convincing.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up more of my conversation with Richard Gilliot. Your
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  Speaker 1: podcast for The Australian was phenomenally successful. I think even
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  Speaker 1: we were surprised that this pretty heavy material in which
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  Speaker 1: we were exploring whether a victim of sexual abuse had
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  Speaker 1: fabricated her case was incredibly popular with our audiences, and
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  Speaker 1: one of the people who listened was a senior lawyer
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  Speaker 1: who then got in touch with you. Who was that
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  Speaker 1: and what did she want to know?
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  Speaker 2: Well, in fact, a large number of people contacted me
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  Speaker 2: after the podcast was released, and first of all was
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  Speaker 2: a group of psychiatrists who were extremely concerned about the
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  Speaker 2: material in the case and in the podcast, and they
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  Speaker 2: started a petition calling for a review of the case.
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  Speaker 2: That petition found its way to a very senior barrister
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  Speaker 2: in Sydney called Ragney Mathur, and she agreed to take
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  Speaker 2: on the mother's case pro bono. She then formed a
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  Speaker 2: legal team which contacted me and essentially asked me to
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  Speaker 2: provide them with any material I had that could be
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  Speaker 2: relevant to this petition that they were planning to submit
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  Speaker 2: to the governor. And so look, I did that. I
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  Speaker 2: did have a lot of material. I had found a
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  Speaker 2: lot of witnesses. They were interviewed on the podcast. Some
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  Speaker 2: of them worked in the hospital where the young woman
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  Speaker 2: was treated. A lot of them were her close friends
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  Speaker 2: or former friends, and they of course were vital witnesses
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  Speaker 2: to events. So yeah, I did provide quite a lot
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  Speaker 2: of material to the lawyers and put them in touch
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  Speaker 2: with people who I thought could be crucial.
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  Speaker 1: One of the pieces of material that's included with this
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  Speaker 1: petition to the government is an extra or a series
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  Speaker 1: of extracts from the diary of this young woman who
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  Speaker 1: we've called Emily Johnson. This is a diary from when
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  Speaker 1: she was fourteen years old, and her entries, which are
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  Speaker 1: written in handwriting, indicate that she was being tied up
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  Speaker 1: and abused in this shed. That the entries say things
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  Speaker 1: like January twenty one, next time, do better, March seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: night in shed. June nineteen counted three nights in shed
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  Speaker 1: only water and chilies. What was actually going on on
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  Speaker 1: these nights when this young woman said that she was
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  Speaker 1: looked up in the chicken shed.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that was a question that was actually never really
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  Speaker 2: explored during the parents trial, which is one of the
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  Speaker 2: things they say was a crucial lapse by their lawyers.
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  Speaker 2: This diary was an absolutely crucial piece of evidence because
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  Speaker 2: she told the police that not only had she been
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  Speaker 2: tortured with tools in the shed over and over again,
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  Speaker 2: but that she had recorded this torture in this diary,
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  Speaker 2: and that she had buried the tools on the property
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  Speaker 2: and that she had recorded.
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  Speaker 3: The burying of the tools in the diary.
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  Speaker 2: So about a year after she first accused her father,
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  Speaker 2: she produced this diary to police saying that she just
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  Speaker 2: found it, and then she took them to the property
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  Speaker 2: and they sure enough dug up these buried tools. So
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  Speaker 2: the diary authenticity is absolutely central to the case. And
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  Speaker 2: I decided to do a kind of a forensic sort
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  Speaker 2: of examination of this thing because this young woman was
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  Speaker 2: a very acclaimed high performance athlete.
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  Speaker 3: She was in the media, her sports results are quite
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  Speaker 3: widely available.
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  Speaker 2: And also the family, being all athletes, kept training diaries
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  Speaker 2: and journals and all that sort of thing, and of
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  Speaker 2: course had a lot of photos which had date stamps
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  Speaker 2: on them. And so I got the parents' other daughter
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  Speaker 2: to send me a lot of the material of that nature,
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  Speaker 2: and I went through this diary and basically what it
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  Speaker 2: showed was that there were one hundred and more than
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  Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty entries where her account of where
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  Speaker 2: she was on any given day, whether it was being
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  Speaker 2: tortured in the shed or going into state to compete, was.
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  Speaker 3: Just completely wrong.
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  Speaker 2: She had herself being tortured in the shed when her
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  Speaker 2: father was overseas or when she was actually interstate competing.
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  Speaker 2: There are entries that show her being raped in this
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  Speaker 2: chicken shed, when there's photos of her on that day
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  Speaker 2: smiling at the winner's podium at a sporting event. And
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  Speaker 2: so I understand that this diary is going to be
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  Speaker 2: quite a crucial piece of evidence in this petition that's
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  Speaker 2: been sent to the governor, because if it's shown to
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  Speaker 2: be unreliable, then the question as to how it came
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  Speaker 2: to be written, and the question of her credibility as
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  Speaker 2: a witness, I think, you know, really becomes quite crucial
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  Speaker 2: in this whole case.
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  Speaker 1: M You can find our podcast Shadow of Doubt now
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  Speaker 1: wherever you're listening, and go to Shadow of Doubt dot
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  Speaker 1: com dot au to read all of Richard's reporting.