Hollywood superstar Mel Gibson’s brother avoids ice conviction
Hollywood superstar Mel Gibson’s brother Andrew Gibson has escaped a drug conviction on a charge of driving with methamphetamine in his system.
EXCLUSIVE
Andrew Gibson, the brother of Braveheart star Mel Gibson, has escaped a conviction on a charge of driving with methamphetamine in his system.
Mr Gibson, who lives in a squalid housing flat in inner Sydney, faced a sentencing hearing at the Downing Centre court on Thursday for driving under the influence of ice and cannabis.
The 51-year-old had pleaded guilty to drug driving near his Surry Hills home on October 31 last year, with methamphetamine and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in his system.
The one-time aspiring actor, who is 14 years younger than his multi-millionaire sibling, lives in Northcott Tower with his four pet chihuahuas.
On Thursday, Magistrate Michael Compton recorded no conviction for Mr Gibson, noting his complete absence of criminal history apart from a historical minor traffic offence.
He placed Mr Gibson on a good behaviour bond for nine months.
Mr Gibson told news.com.au in an exclusive interview last month that he had once had an addiction to ice, but had beaten it with the help of his biological family.
Andrew is the adopted youngest of 11 Gibson siblings which includes Mel Gibson, 65, the award-winning Australian who is one of the wealthiest actors of all time, worth $US425 million ($A549 million).
Speaking from his home inside the infamous red brick high rises formerly known as “Suicide Towers”, Andrew said Mel had always been supportive, unlike some other relatives.
Openly gay, and with his sexuality not approved of in the conservative Christian atmosphere of the Gibson family, Andrew has long felt like an outcast.
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Although he does not direct any criticism at Mel or any other living Gibson relative, he does single out the patriarch, Hutton Gibson, who he still calls “Dad”.
Hutton, a far-right conspiracy theorist who claimed the Holocaust was a hoax, the pope was a heretic and that “half the people in the Vatican are queer”, died last year aged 101.
“The Gibsons don’t want anything to do with me because I am tragic,” Andrew said.
“My sexuality is an issue. (Mel Gibson) has never been anti-Semitic or anti-gay, but the decision was made … by Dad. Hutton didn’t accept you for who you were.
“It was better for me to be with my genetic family because I was of the same ilk. I’ll never forgive what he did to me. He barred me from the family, told me he wished he’d never adopted me, called me a son of a b**ch.
“He called my genetic family ‘criminals’. He called me a b**tard once and I said, ‘I was born one.’”
Anne gave birth to 10 children including Mel before they moved to the birth country of Hutton’s Australian Opera singer mother (Eva Mylott) where they adopted Andrew.
Hutton, a quiz show champion with a genius IQ, worked in Australia as a computer programmer and theologian.
Andrew said the family lived in Mt Kuring-gai, Sydney, then Redcliffe in Queensland, then Windsor and later Albury in NSW.
As he packed to move flats this week, he showed news.com.au crucifixes he still had “from the Gibsons”.
He said that under Hutton’s influence, every Sunday the family attended a Tridentine mass, which is celebrated exclusively in ecclesiastical Latin.
Andrew has lived for five years in the same flat at the Northcott housing commission estate, once notorious for people dying by suicide there.
Andrew was himself the subject of an attack at the Northcott Towers which, he told news.com.au, had “made me get back on drugs”, but said that only included alcohol and marijuana.
In April last year, Gibson’s 70-year-old neighbour confronted him with a 21cm knife fastened into a 1m piece of wood in the corridor outside their flats.
Afterwards the man admitted he made the weapon “for my protection because I don’t like him”.
Of the incident which resulted in the conviction last month of the fellow resident, Andrew said: “I’m still fearful.
“There are factions of people in this building. It’s gang related. Drug gangs, prostitution gangs. People are treating me as if it’s my fault. They haven’t read the facts.”
Read related topics:Sydney