Ex-magistrate Simon Milazzo tried to blame autism spectrum disorder diagnosis for his sexual harassment of women

Exposed as a sexual harasser, desperate to keep his job, this magistrate behaved like a defendant in his court – blaming autism and asking for leniency.

For months, it was the open secret of Victoria Square – the hearing in courtroom 9 that did not appear on a single published case list.

Upstairs in the Supreme Court, behind a door marked “closed court, no public admittance”, a magistrate fought to keep his job.

His accusers were his subordinates – four young women he had subjected to gross sexual harassment over a number of years.

His judges were his superiors – two retired judges and the vice president of the Australian Medical Association.

Sitting in the witness box rather than at the bench, Magistrate Simon Milazzo was called on to explain his actions – and fared poorly.

“The archetypal old man bemoans his age by saying ‘if I was only young again’, which is open to a couple of interpretations,” he responded.

“One (is) ‘if only I had my strength and virility’ … the other one is ‘the attractive women who are at the table with me would be interested in me’.

“I parody it … it’s a silly thing to say … I mock myself and the old man, the archetypal old man.”

The Judicial Conduct Panel would somewhat agree with Mr Milazzo – it found his behaviour archetypal of the sort that erodes public confidence in the courts.

Fired magistrate Simon Milazzo.

RED FLAGS

On Thursday, Attorney-General Kyam Maher announced in parliament that Mr Milazzo had been fired – an intensely public end for a magistrate with a low community profile.

Born in 1954 and appointed a magistrate in 2006, he was regarded in legal circles for his “depth and breadth of legal knowledge”.

He was also known as “someone who sometimes takes things too far”.

“I recall him making inappropriate comments to other people, mainly associates … I remember feeling uncomfortable about things he had said while I was an associate,” a witness said.

Another said there were times where his “behaviour was, in my view, borderline unprofessional” and “inappropriate”, with women putting themselves “on guard”.

In April 2021, an Equal Opportunity Commission report found sexual harassment went “all the way to the top” in the state’s legal profession, including a sitting judicial officer.

Within two months, the Judicial Conduct Panel – retired Justices Trish Kelly and David Bleby, and Dr Chris Moy – had been convened.

Six days later, Mr Milazzo was stood down pending investigation.

EXPOSED

Behind court 9’s closed doors, the panel heard what Mr Milazzo’s defence lawyers dubbed “a catalogue of adverse findings”.

He had invited a gay staffer to his home, pointed out an “anatomically correct” statue in his garden and saying “you have a vagina, it was designed for a penis”.

He said “if I were one or two years younger, I’d definitely want to have a crack” at another staffer, then whispered into her ear “I know what you did on the weekend, confess your sins to me”.

Mr Milazzo had sat on a woman’s leg, touched her neck “as if to massage it”, and “raised his voice” when a staffer declined an invitation to his home.

In an elevator, he had responded to a staffer’s complaints of being cold by saying “let me warm you up” and placing his hands “within a millimetre of her breasts”.

The women said they had been left feeling “uncomfortable, guilty and sick”, and called Mr Milazzo “creepy and inappropriate”.

The panel not only found their allegations proven, it damned Mr Milazzo for having “not expressed any genuine understanding of, or insight into, his behaviour”.

“His denial of the most damning aspects (of the case) amounts to a denial that he engaged in any inappropriate conduct with sexual connotations,” it found.

The only question left was whether or not he should keep his job.

Mr Milazzo is now unemployed. Picture: Campbell Brodie

NO REMORSE

In the space between verdict and penalty, defendants will seek to explain their actions through personal circumstances or medical issues, hoping to be shown a degree of mercy.

Mr Milazzo was no different, with his counsel highlighting two diagnoses – depression in 2001 and his newly-discovered autism spectrum disorder.

They called evidence from an expert who said he could be educated to “stop and think” before “being funny” and get “a better understanding of how people” perceive him.

The Magistrates Court could be similarly improved, they argued, by educating his colleagues and staff about his disorder so that “the power imbalance would be addressed”.

The panel was not swayed by those submissions.

“To tie ASD to a reduced culpability or as an excuse for the Magistrate’s pattern of making comments of a sexually inappropriate nature is presumptuous and discriminatory to those in the community with ASD,” it said.

“Beyond this, although education and treatment may assist … the prospects of that happening in the next 18 months are not good.

“This is because he has not expressed any genuine remorse and has, in effect, denied outright any improper conduct in the form of sexual harassment.”