Hey Dad! paedophile Robert Hughes makes fresh bid to appeal against sex attack convictions

EXCLUSIVE: Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes is arguing through lawyers that the Court of Criminal Appeal was wrong to throw out his appeal against ten counts of sexual and indecent assault on young girls.

DOWNING DISTRICT Court. Pictured is Robert Hughes leaving after he gave evidence in his child sex offences trial. He will be the first witness called in his own defence.

• Prisoners throw excrement at Robert Hughes

Former Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes is continuing to fight his paedophile convictions and yesterday lodged an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court.

The 67-year-old actor will argue through his lawyers that the Court of Criminal Appeal was wrong when it threw out his appeal against the convictions and sentence last month.

He has since been moved from Goulburn to Long Bay Jail after the court was told he had been showered in urine and had faeces thrown at him by fellow inmates.

Hughes is serving a non-parole period of six years, with a maximum term of 10 years, for 10 counts of sexual and indecent assault of four young girls over a period of 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s.

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His victims included former child star Sarah Monahan, who played Hughes onscreen daughter in Hey Dad!

His application to the High Court challenges the appeal court’s decision to rule there was nothing wrong with the jury at his trial hearing so-called “tendency evidence” about him, that is evidence which did not go directly to the crimes but showed a pattern of behaviour.

It also states that the Court of Criminal Appeal was wrong in finding that Hughes had not suffered a miscarriage of justice by the Crown prosecutor’s “inflammatory” final address to the jury in which she spoke about “disturbing things happening to our children at the hands of strangers and friends and at the hands of those who are placed in their trust”.

In the challenge to Hughes’ sentence, his appeal states that he should have been resentenced on the basis of how he was being treated in jail by fellow inmates because it caused him additional hardship.

Hughes’ lawyer, Greg Walsh, said yesterday that he had written to corrective services minister David Elliott and the governor of Goulburn Jail about Hughes’ “appalling treatment” in jail but thy never replied.

“It’s extraordinary,.” he said.

A date has not yet been fixed for consideration of the application.