As young thugs wreak havoc across our city, what’s going on in the children’s courts?
A teen accused of multiple armed robberies, stealing cars and making threats to kill has been given the green light to fly overseas with his family. As Andrew Rule reports, it’s one of many cases in the children’s court where magistrates and social workers are locked on compassion.
What sort of teenager invades a home, steals a car, drives at lethal speeds up to 200km/h while filming themself smoking a bong with both hands off the wheel, then pulls a string of terrifying robberies with machetes?
What sort of teenager, when grabbed by protective services officers to stop him walking on railway tracks, spits in their faces, kicks them and makes threats to kill?
What sort of teenager has a stash of cash from armed robberies in his bedroom when police come looking for him 24 hours after his crazed Saturday night early this month?
The answer to most of those questions is the 15-year-old sitting in the dock between two guards in the biggest courtroom in Melbourne’s sleek children’s court.
He’s a cocky kid from a good home in a nice bayside suburb trying to play remorseful but not quite nailing it. Little things give him away.
His defence counsel, a well-dressed and well-spoken young woman, gamely claims her client’s first night in custody has shaken his renegade attitude, so he’ll be a good boy now. She implies he would be intimidated by his surroundings and the fact he’s escorted by two guards. He clearly isn’t.
In truth, the rookie crim is casing the joint. He steals a quiet moment to ask one of his poker-faced guards who the stranger is at the back of the court, a gesture clear enough that his mother picks up the cue and turns to stare.
Alert, absolutely. Defiant? Too smart to let it show. Remorseful or intimidated? Give me a break.
The kid’s too sharp, maybe too well-coached, to act anything other than calm and attentive. But he exudes a baked-in self-assurance that’s hard to hide.
Unlike a few less fortunate youngsters having their days in court, this bandit brat is articulate. Proof that not everyone who despises school is unintelligent.
Not that lack of intelligence stops some kids being equally anti-social. Through the wall in a smaller courtroom, a rosy-cheeked lad sits beside his downcast father, glowering sullenly as adults talk about him as if he’s not present.
He looks like a big 12-year-old but is probably 14, dressed in the shapeless gangbanger uniform of black tracksuit and hoodie everyone wears to a court in which the accused’s comfort and ease is paramount.
Despite the best efforts of a calm and kindly judge, it is inevitable that the boy’s low intelligence is discussed. He might not know what some words mean but must sense he’s being labelled as stupid.
His poor intellect is his only defence to charges of theft and vandalism but that defence comes at a cost: he is referred to as if he’s a troublesome pet with no understanding.
It’s unavoidable but no less jarring for that.
The judge and the two lawyers at the bar table (notionally opposed to each other but notably collegiate) murmur discreet agreement that the youngster is a dozen IQ points below the level for making logical decisions.
The boy’s father, a big bear of a man thanked by the judge for turning up to court so often, looks both exasperated and anguished by his son’s incapacity to resist the bad company that leads him to steal, vandalise property and carry weapons.
In a full day the Herald Sun spent watching what happens in a court system swamped by a youth crime wave, that worried father seems the only person who looks abashed to be there.
Apart from that sad man, around the court there’s no detectable shame, real respect or fear of consequences.
Magistrates, lawyers on both sides and social workers all have the dial locked on “compassion” but seem weary from juggling a cascade of cases in which the same roster of names and faces appear so often. Teachers at rough schools and medical staff in emergency departments have the same harassed look.
Lawyers dart from court to court to play their walk-on parts in a giant board game in which most squares are marked “Do not go to jail”.
For the most part, those facing legal proceedings are hard to distinguish from young friends and relatives with them.
They dress way below casual and compulsively scroll through their phones in the hearing rooms. One teen couple slumped two rows behind the bar table smile and nod over a shared phone screen as casually as if they’re on a park bench, Juliet’s head nestled on Romeo’s shoulder.
In a waiting room featuring soothing pastel shades and framed childish artwork, a drug-ravaged couple of indeterminate age snooze, draped over bean bags misguidedly provided for young children no one would let near this wasted pair. Both are rake thin, with caved-in, twisted faces that come from years of feeding addictions.
When these junkies wake up, they stalk around making random comments and laughing, insolently loud.
Watching are five armed protective service officers who hang around the stair landing.
These armed officers, plus a couple of unarmed courthouse staff, are a sign of the ever-present risk of violence.
Security cameras sprout from the front and side of the building. They monitor the precinct and beam the vision to screens in waiting areas inside. Clearly, this is to let those inside check if rival gang members are outside. It’s not the only sign that gangs influence the day-to-day running of the court.
When a Sudanese youth appears via video screen, a lawyer explains that, of course, he couldn’t attend in person because a rival gang member was also due to appear.
The inference is that the inmates are running the asylum, with the justice system tacitly kowtowing to gang culture by scheduling around members of rival “crews”.
It smells like a silent admission that to do otherwise would risk warfare in the street – or, worse, in the court building.
Any such clash would be a public relations disaster, further disgracing a system already failing the pub test because of the public perception that repeat offenders are repeatedly bailed only to offend again.
Back in the big court in mid-afternoon, the bayside bandit’s lawyer is working hard to pull off a big concession for her confident client, the only child of doting parents.
She explains that the boy’s grandmother lives in Europe and the family has bought air tickets to visit the old woman for a month in mid-September.
But, adds the lawyer, if the accused is bailed under normal conditions and prevented from flying with his parents, they would be forced to cancel the trip to be with him.
The magistrate knows where this is heading and puts on his game face to show he can look very cross indeed.
For him, one possibility is the police request that the kid be refused bail on grounds he poses an unacceptable risk because he has broken bail conditions before. The other (and most usual) option is to bail him again, wagging a finger to say that this time the court really means it and will throw the book at him if he keeps behaving badly.
But here’s the rub: the bail option is complicated by the fact that the kid’s lawyer is playing the granny card. If he is bailed but cannot leave the family house overnight (let alone Australia for a month) mum and dad will have to cancel their excellent Qatar Airways flights.
Despite the magistrate’s studied frown, it’s clear the overseas holiday option is on the table. The teen sits forward, watching the grandfatherly figure on the bench like a seagull waiting for a chip.
The magistrate runs through his finger-wagging routine. He says he’s all too familiar with the names and addresses of “your entire crew” and that for the accused to mix with them can only “cause grief”.
He notes the “disgraceful behaviour” outlined by the prosecutor, especially “spitting on the PSOs”, which is “disgusting and dangerous” and shows the spitter places “no value on other people”.
On balance, he says, as if it just occurred to him, it might be better if there was a circuit breaker to help the accused stay away from the temptations of the “crew”.
Then he throws the switch to game show host. “You,” he says, turning to the offender, “are going to Europe.” On the strict condition, he adds, that the bandit returns to Australia with his parents in the first week of October and reports to court three days later.
“Yes, Your Honour,” he says in a clear voice, nodding his head gravely. “I’m grateful for your decision. Thank you.”
And that is why a repeat offender who allegedly steals and robs and assaults people and drives at homicidal speeds in stolen cars is now touring Europe with the people who made him what he is today.
It’s a good bet he will return to Australia. But if he has a dual passport like his father probably has, there’s not much to stop him staying over there apart from a fear of granny’s cooking.
The same day, the bayside bandit gets his exit visa stamped by magistrate Santa Claus, a gang online forum carries a line of wickedly simple political and legal analysis from some other machete-carrying car thief.
“Aye if liberal gets into power next election everyone’s cooked,” they observe.
