Warning signs of Dudley Davey’s evil ignored before he raped and murdered Outback nurse Gayle Woodford
A LITANY of warning signs were missed or ignored as Dudley David Davey descended from a teenager groping a schoolgirl into a reviled murderer and rapist, an Adelaide criminologist says.
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A LITANY of warning signs were missed or ignored as Dudley David Davey descended from a teenager groping a schoolgirl into a reviled murderer and rapist, an Adelaide criminologist says.
University of Adelaide lecturer and criminologist Allan Perry said it was clear that Davey’s extensive criminal record — dating from his teens to early-30s — exposed a troubling “escalation” in the violence and brazen nature of his attacks on female strangers.
After admitting to luring, abducting, raping and murdering nurse Gayle Woodford at Fregon just before Easter last year, Davey is now serving a mandatory life prison term and will learn his non-parole period in coming months.
Mr Perry said Davey — like many sex offenders — had displayed classic warning signs that his crimes were becoming increasingly violent.
“If you see a persistent pattern going from childhood through to adulthood, with a continuing degree of escalation, you can pretty confidently predict that this type of behaviour will continue,” he said.
While Davey had been convicted of numerous sexually-motivated offences, most of his charges were of a minor indictable nature and did not attract hefty maximum sentences.
But Mr Perry said that Davey’s 2012 indecent assault of a sleeping woman — in front of witnesses on Adelaide’s busy North Tce — should have sounded alarm bells for authorities.
He said Davey’s alcohol abuse did not create his violent nature, but added an extra element of danger because he had little or no control over his impulses when drunk.
“Most of these types of pathologies are not subject to only manifesting themselves under certain kinds of intoxication,” Mr Perry said.
“Intoxication can certainly be a precipitating factor, but it is not the underlying cause of the pathology.”
Mr Perry said judicial officers were faced with “an almost intractable problem” when sentencing sex offenders, and weighing up their potential risk to the community against their chances of rehabilitation.
“It’s hard to separate out the serious from the less-serious cases, it’s hard to properly diagnose what type of psychopathology an individual might have,” he said.
“And with the very limited resources available within criminal justice, it is almost impossible to effectively treat.”
The experienced criminologist said judges, and particularly magistrates, were constrained by time and often scarce information about personal and psychological history of criminals they are to sentence.
“First of all, judges aren’t really trained in understanding really extreme forms of psychopathology, so they have to rely on reports that are prepared for them,” he said.
“And those reports are often done with some degree of urgency and haste, without adequate opportunity to properly diagnose the situation … and the resources to deal with somebody with serious pathology within the correctional system is very low.”
Mr Perry said offenders such as Davey should be given intensive therapy while in prison and be subject to more stringent monitoring upon their release.
He said Davey — and other deviants who offended while drunk or on drugs — were often hard to evaluate because they appeared stable while free of substance abuse in custody.
“It’s much more difficult for some to cope with outside society than it is in the regimented, regulated society of prison,“ Mr Perry said.
“That’s why individuals displaying some psychopathology may not manifest it while in incarceration, but quickly do once released.”