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Five Minutes of Silence: When a Judge Refuses to Let Evil Be Minimized · The Slippery Slope

• 0:00
  OK, welcome back to the Slippery Slope podcast.
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  I'm Jay Fallon, obviously, and today you're going to be talking
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  about what, in my opinion, one of the most powerful acts of
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  judicial leadership I've seen in a long time.
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  Actually, I think one of the most powerful acts I've ever,
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  ever seen, ever heard of. A Queensland judge stopped a
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  courtroom, not for an objection and not for a procedural issue,
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  but for 5 minutes of silence. So why do you do this?
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  Because a defence barrister tried to talk down a grown man's
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  sexual act with a 14 year old child by saying it only lasted 5
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  minutes. You know, fairly despicable
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  wording really. And the judge, Acting Judge Ryan
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  Haddrick, refused to let that narrative stand.
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  So today I want to honour this judge because I mean, I've said
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  several times about judges who in my opinion, have made the
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  wrong decision or you, you've got to question the decisions
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  that the judges or magistrates have come to.
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  This, I think, needs to be talked about.
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  This judge, in my opinion for this example, needs to be
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  honoured and it exposes, I think, the dangerous
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  minimization attempted by the defence.
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  And it reminds us, reminds everyone, why moral clarity
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  matters. Like I said, I'm Jay Fallon and
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  this is the Slippery Slope podcast.
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  Get. My street.
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  OK So what happened during sentencing submissions defence
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  barrister Damian Gates Damian Gates defence barrister He's
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  argued that his 35 year old client, 35, had sex with a 14
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  year old girl for 5 minutes, not more than that and then stopped
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  because he realised it was wrong.
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  He called it poor impulse control.
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  So let's let's be blunt, very blunt.
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  This is not impulse control. This is a grown man sexually
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  abusing a child. The judge knows this.
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  So you've got this moment that Gates tried to frame the
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  duration as some kind of mitigating factor.
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  Judge Hadrick cuts him off. He says sit down for a second,
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  just sit down for a second. Then he goes on and says in fact
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  sit down for 5 minutes. Starting now.
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  He forces the whole courtroom, the entire courtroom, lawyers,
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  staff, gallery to sit in silence for the same length of time the
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  offender assaulted the child. That is leadership.
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  I've said numerous times about how Queensland, how Australia
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  lacks leadership when it comes to our courtrooms, when it comes
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  to our police. This, in my opinion, is
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  leadership. This is moral clarity.
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  This is a judge refusing to let language distort reality.
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  So after the silence, Judge Hadrick explained the
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  proposition I am putting through to you and through to your
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  client is that in 5 minutes, engaging in sexual conduct with
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  a 14 year old, the penny should have dropped before it occurred.
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  And then he says this line which I think cuts through any excuse.
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  That's a long time to continue engaging in a sexual act while
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  you know, the wrongness of that conduct.
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  This is the heart of the issue. 5 minutes is not a momentary
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  lapse. 5 minutes is not poor impulse control. 5 minutes is a
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  deliberate act of child sexual abuse.
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  I keep saying sexual abuse, this is going to be demonetised, I'd
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  say on, on YouTube. But I, I believe it's important
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  to say the actual and not try and minimise, you know, if a lot
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  of people say or essay and all this thing because they don't
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  want to get demonetised. And I get that, but I think it's
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  important to actually say the words.
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  Let's not be afraid to be demonetised sometimes.
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  If you're actually talking about things that are truthful and
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  naming these things out loud, you know, YouTube wants us to
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  keep, you know, to sterilise things.
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  And our governments don't want us to talk about things.
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  They want us to gloss over, gloss over some of these things.
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  We need to say the whole sentence, the whole narrative
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  out loud. So the judge refused to let the
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  defence sanitise it. This is what this is what our
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  government and YouTube and things like that, that's what
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  they do. They they sanitise everything.
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  What the defence attempted is something I think we all
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  repeatedly see over the last couple of years.
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  We see in within courtrooms, whether it's judges,
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  magistrates, we see this minimization, this reframing and
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  narrative manipulation. It's the slow, the slow erosion
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  of of moral clarity inside the justice system.
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  The defence wasn't arguing innocence, no, the defence that
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  were arguing less guilt. As if the duration of the abuse
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  it's abuse, so as if the duration of the abuse somehow
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  softens the horror of it. This is the slippery slope.
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  It was only 5 minutes, he stopped himself, it wasn't that
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  bad and he realised it was wrong.
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  These arguments don't defend justice, they defend the
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  offender. And Judge Hadrick refused,
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  refused to participate in a courtroom.
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  Silence it. You know, it's fairly rare in
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  some things. And it kind of gets
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  uncomfortable when I was in a courtroom when I was a police
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  officer and sometimes when I was in the early days when I was
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  still doing, doing general duties and I was on court duty
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  enough to escort prisoners in through, from the, the watch
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  house and in through to the courts.
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  It was always a little uncomfortable in there.
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  And it's, it's confrontational. So when you've got this, a judge
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  forcing silence, it is very uncomfortable.
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  It's confrontational. It forces reflection by ordering
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  5 minutes of silence. Judge Hadrick did something
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  fairly profound I believe. He made everyone feel you have
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  to sit back and you feel the weight of what the defence was
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  trying to minimise. 5 minutes is not just a short period of time.
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  He he turned the abstract into the concrete.
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  He turned a number 55 minutes into an experience.
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  You're sitting there for 5 minutes and you realise when
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  you're thinking about, you're realising just how long it is,
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  just how many things you can get done.
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  He forced the courtroom to sit inside the horror of that time
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  frame. It's not, it's not really
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  theatrics. It was moral instruction.
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  It was a judge saying, do not dare to trivialise the suffering
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  of a child, which our society does far too often, and we've
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  seen that in our judicial system far too often.
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  Scripture. Scripture teaches that justice
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  is not merely legal, it is moral.
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  Proverbs tells us the law detests lying lips.
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  Minimization is a form of lying. It's a distortion of truth.
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  It's an attempt to, it's an attempt to reshape evil into
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  something palatable, which isn't just happening in Australia,
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  it's happening worldwide. We want to reshape evil into
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  something else that we can digest.
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  Palatable. Amos condemns those who turn
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  justice into bitterness and casts righteousness to the
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  ground. That's what happens when lawyers
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  try to soften the reality of child sexual abuse.
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  Judge Hadrick's silence was a rebuke not just legally, but
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  morally. He refused to let the vulnerable
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  be overshadowed by clever phrasing, A sophist phrasing if
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  you were. He refused to let evil be
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  dressed up as a misunderstanding.
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  Evil is evil. He refused to let the courtroom
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  slide down the slope of moral relativism.
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  This is what I'm talking about today.
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  In a time when many judges are criticised for being too lenient
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  or too detached, this judge demonstrated courage.
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  He didn't shout, he didn't grandstand, he didn't moralise.
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  He simply made the courtroom sit in the same silence the child
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  endured. That is honourable, that is
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  righteous, that is leadership and we need more of this type of
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  leadership in Australia. Judge Ryan Haddrick deserves
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  recognition for this act because he defended truth when someone
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  else was trying to distort it. This podcast exists to expose
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  the slippery slopes in our institutions also, so I can just
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  go and rant every now and then when I want to the places where
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  truth gets bent, where narratives replace reality and
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  where moral clarity is lost. But today we want to highlight.
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  I want to highlight someone who stood firm.
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  A judge who refused to let a child suffering be minimised, a
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  judge who refused to let the language become a shield for
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  evil, and a judge who reminded everyone that justice requires
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  courage. 5 minutes of silence, 5 minutes of truth. 5 minutes that
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  cut through all the BS, all the excuses.
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  Of course, this is all just my opinion.
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  I'm Jay Fallon, and thanks for listening to the Slippy Slope
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  Podcast.