Ballarat paedophile Ramon D’Arcy was ‘living as a couple’ with his sister, Tribunal told

The sister of a dead Ballarat paedophile claimed he was her ‘soulmate’ to try and get his pension benefits.

The sister of a dead Ballarat paedophile has tried to claim she was his “domestic partner” and that they were “for all practical purposes … living as a couple” so she could be paid a widow’s pension

Raphael D’Arcy in June took the Emergency Services Superannuation Board to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to argue she was the “domestic partner” of her deceased paedophile brother, Ramon D’Arcy, who died in 2018, aged 70.

Mr D’Arcy in 2002 sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy, and pleaded guilty to sexually penetrating a child in 2010 after confiding in a friend that he “loved” and “missed” his victim.

Ms D’Arcy told the tribunal her late brother was a deeply spiritual man and said their “shared spiritual life was a cornerstone to how our relationship worked”.

Ms D’Arcy described her late brother as her “soulmate” and said they had purchased two graves next to each other.

“During winter nights Ramon would light the fire in the lounge, have a sherry and discuss culture and solve the problems of the world with classical music in the background,” she said. “During the summer it would be cold drinks on the back veranda.”

Ballarat woman Raphael D’Arcy claimed she should be paid a partner pension because she was “domestic partner” of her late paedophile brother, Ramon John D’Arcy.

Ms D’Arcy unsuccessfully argued her and her late brother met the criteria of being “domestic partners”, and that she was entitled to pension from the Emergency Services Superannuation Scheme, which would seen her paid two-thirds of what her brother was taking home from the scheme before he died.

“With reduced income (since his death) I find I am spending a lot more time in the house alone,” she said.

“Previously I could say ‘let’s go out for a bite to eat’ or on reading something in the paper we would attend for a day out.”

The scheme originally only paid a partner pension to a member’s widow or widower, but a later reform extended it to anyone who was “living as a couple (with a member) on a genuine domestic basis”.

The tribunal rejected Ms D’Arcy’s claim that she and her brother met the new criteria, with senior member Anna Dea saying the reform was aimed at intimate, marriage-like relationships between two people, and not to brothers and sisters who lived together as adults.