David Penberthy: Two years in prison for all this pain is not justice
A HOLY roller and fully fledged paedophile, Vivian Frederick Deboo took advantage of kids for decades. His victims are still suffering but he has not been adequately punished, writes David Penberthy.
FOR most South Australians the place names Victor Harbor, Carrickalinga and Normanville conjure memories of childhood camping adventures.
For many adult South Australians these places will forever be associated with sickening breaches of trust that no child should endure.
Back in 1996 a 51-year-old man by the unusual name of Vivian Frederick Deboo was jailed in relation to 10 child-sex charges. Deboo was described at the time as a Pentecostalist born-again Christian, Gospel Church choir member and Christian Camping Association president.
A paid-up holy roller, and a fully fledged paedophile.
Deboo ran his own catering company, Portersfield Catering, which serviced church campsites.
It was this business that gave him the chance to prey on children.
According to the old court documents, Deboo received a six-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to nine counts of indecent assault and one of unlawful sexual intercourse, against three boys aged 14 to 16 between 1989 and 1990 while caterer at Aldgate, Carrickalinga, Normanville and Victor Harbor.
One of the victim’s mothers told the court she thought she was doing the “right thing” by allowing this “good Christian man” to become involved with her son.
I spoke this week to one of Deboo’s victims. He is a successful professional who, despite his suffering as a child, has managed to soar in his career and leads a happy personal life and is married with children. He works in the kind of industry where he helps alleviate people’s suffering. But his adult life has been marred by a torturous 30-year quest for justice which is only now reaching something resembling a conclusion.
This man and his brother were both victims of Deboo’s offending on these camps in the 1990s. However, the original charges Deboo faced did not relate to those crimes, just the crimes committed against the three other boys.
It was only in the past few years that police re-examined Deboo’s conduct and laid fresh charges relating to attacks on this man and his brother, to which Deboo has now pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentence.
The man explained that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was, in part, the impetus for the fresh charges. His brother attended hearings in Adelaide where the name of Deboo and two other men who worked at these camps kept coming up. But there were two chilling chance encounters that made him and his brother decide to go to police.
“My brother was at his kid’s school Christmas concert and he was looking at the crowd and Deboo was standing there staring at him,” the man told me.
“My brother confronted him but Deboo sniggered at him, told him he couldn’t prove anything. There was an altercation and police were called.”
“The other was when I was at my local Mitre 10 and went around an aisle and walked straight into Deboo. I almost had a fit. My heart was racing a million miles an hour and I walked into a pile of brooms. In the end my brother and I didn’t want to cop the fact that Deboo had never faced true justice for what he did.”
And it’s legitimate to question whether he did.
I mentioned earlier he got a six-year sentence for attacking those three boys 10 times. It was actually reduced to a two-year non parole period, then reduced again with time served awaiting trial. Was that enough for attacking three boys, 10 times? For those who think that it was, perhaps they should talk to this man.
It is easy for the judicial purists to dismiss criticisms of sentences as a cheap search for a tabloid headline.
They should talk to this man.
“If a person had robbed a store but served their sentence and emerged from prison showing remorse, that person would be welcome for a beer in my home.
“I’ve discussed this with my mates, and it’s the mainstream view. But with these guys you wonder if leopards can change their spots.”
He felt the sentence was an insult.
“Sentences are meant to reflect community standards. For these crimes, they do not,” he said.
“Three years ago I had to attend four sessions, each lasting about five hours, where police asked me every pointed and horrific question about what Deboo did.
“There is a reason we develop the ability to block things out. I’ve got weeks of my life that I can’t remember from those interviews.
“Now that he has pleaded guilty, after so many years, I have this looming deadline where I have to write a victims impact statement. I don’t even want to think about it. I live in fear every day that I might have a nervous breakdown. The idea of writing that statement makes me worry I could collapse.”
Holding back tears the man tells me this:
“As a parent myself, there are two things that have changed me that are pretty sad.
“First, I don’t trust anyone. If my kids have a sleepover I will always be paranoid about what might happen.
“Second, it changes your interaction with your own kids. My little son jumped into bed with me and started nuzzling into my chest, and I said to me wife that it made me feel guilty. I shouldn’t feel that way.”
This man’s case was raised in State Parliament by the Liberal MLC Terry Stephens. Mr Stephens has known the man for some time and never knew about his backstory.
It only came to light recently when the man contacted Mr Stephens for an urgent meeting where he revealed full details of his past, to demand a better deal for victims.
As a miserable postscript to all this, the man told me that when he was at the recent court hearing an old friend from Victor came along to attend the trial.
He confided to the man that his own brother had also been one of Deboo’s victims. That man’s brother did not attend the trial, however. He had committed suicide.
Two years in jail, for all this.
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