Lifting the lid on Trevor Jenkins, the Rubbish Warrior

FEATURE: Quirky eccentric or a public pest? Trevor Jenkins, the Rubbish Warrior, faces being handed real jail time by judges who have had enough of his behaviour

Trevor Jenkins, aka the Rubbish Warrior, remains a polarising figure in Darwin, with some seeing him as a quirky, harmless, eccentic character at the same time as others peg him as a troublesome nuisance.

DARWIN’S so-called Rubbish Warrior has refused legal aid, thrown tantrums, filed masses of illegible documents, made unreasonable demands and stripped naked during his long courtship with the legal system.

NT Supreme Court Justice Judith Kelly has said the “disproportionate allocation of resources” dedicated to Trevor Jenkins’s court cases — as he insists on representing himself — must not continue.

“Society can be judged by the way it treats those most disadvantaged,” she said.

“Cases of unrepresented litigants involve patient consideration ... to ensure people perceive they get a fair hearing.

“But Mr Jenkins is taking up a disproportionate amount of the time and other limited resources of a relatively small court, to the detriment of other litigants (who are left waiting for their turn).”

Justice Kelly found Jenkins had broken a suspended prison sentence, imposed for contempt of court, after he intentionally disrupted his assault hearing and failed to obey the presiding judge at Darwin Local Court.

The man who began his life in Darwin as a public curiosity and environmental hero more than a decade ago has routinely demonstrated obstructive and misogynistic behaviour during his dealings with authorities.

The root of the breach case Justice Kelly heard began in 2014, when Jenkins — upset that his NT Literary Awards submission was rejected — assaulted a security guard in his desperation to crash the event at the Northern Territory Library.

Police tried to arrest him while he was “eating hors d’oeuvres and mingling with his fellow literati”.

He fell to the ground, latched onto a chair with his legs and screamed. On appeal last year, Justice Peter Barr quashed a resisting arrest conviction but upheld Jenkins’ convictions for assault and trespass.

Justice Barr stated during the appeal that Jenkins believed he was “a misunderstood genius”.

He said the appeal “demonstrated the difficulties of doing justice in the case of a self­-represented man who demands to be tolerated, perhaps even indulged, as a homeless man without resources”.

“He has an extraordinary sense of entitlement, is obsessed with his perceived artistic and literary greatness, is arrogant and unreasonable, disrespectful to the bench, untruthful in his statements from the bar table, and given to vituperative outbursts when (flaws were exposed) in his arguments,” he said.

Jenkins, known as the Rubbish Warrior, behaved badly in Justice Barr’s court and was charged with contempt, for which Justice Kelly sentenced him to three months jail suspended after two weeks in May, 2016.

He stripped naked in the courthouse cells and during his sentencing.

Jenkins demanded Justice Kelly recuse herself from his breach case based on an unsubstantiated claim she might be biased. Justice Kelly declined. She cancelled subpoenas he had issued to people involved in the assault hearing at Darwin Local Court in October, 2016 — when the breach was committed — including Judge Greg Smith, prosecutor Sandy Lau, a court officer and “Male Wilson Security Guard”.

Jenkins told her: “I don’t like dominant women.”

Justice Kelly said Jenkins had not demonstrated that the breach case was an “abuse of process” and dismissed his permanent stay application.

He is expected to be sentenced for breaching his suspended sentence — and could face serving the remaining two-and-a-half months in prison – on April 21.

RESOURCES SPENT ON TREVOR JENKINS

Jenkins’ NT Supreme Court appeal hearing against the convictions for assault, trespass and resisting arrest took six days.

His contentions were “without merit” but the appeal was allowed on a technicality that Justice Barr identified.

Justice Kelly said the 56-page judgment would have taken days to compile.

Bad behaviour during the appeal hearing resulted in the contempt of court charge, which saw multiple directions hearings, an failed bid to dismiss the proceeding on the ground that Justice Kelly had no jurisdiction, a hearing and a sentencing hearing.

Justice Kelly said she spent “many days” reading transcripts, sifting through Jenkins’ handwritten submissions and bulk photocopied material, and writing two judgments — one on the baseless jurisdictional issue and one on the contempt application — and sentencing remarks.

The suspended sentence breach this year again resulted in multiple directions hearings, preliminary applications, sifting through a “large volume of barely legible written material” Jenkins filed, and “many, many days” dealing with contentions that had no merit whatsoever in her judgment.

Justice Kelly said the NT Supreme Court registry and library had put substantial time and effort into dealing with Jenkins’ “special needs and problematic behaviour”.

She said: “This disproportionate allocation of resources cannot continue indefinitely.”

TACTICS

Jenkins adopts stalling tactics and provoking behaviour, including interrupting prosecutors and judges to ask for copies of documents he has already been given — or has been offered and refused.

Justice Kelly said Jenkins constantly interrupted the prosecutor and refused to comply with her directions to “be quiet”.

“I threatened to have him taken into custody, but allowed him to remain at the bar table on a condition that he ‘not say another word until invited to do so,” Justice Kelly noted on her judgment.

“He agreed, then asked the prosecutor unnecessarily to repeat every single transcript page number he referred to.

“Eventually I resorted to the expedient of having Mr Jenkins take part in proceedings from the vulnerable witness room, where the microphone could be turned off.”

TIMELINE

■ 2005: Having found god, given up his possessions and taken on nomadic life 10 years before, 40-year-old Trevor Jenkins arrives in the NT on his Rubbish Warrior crusade, collecting litter and leaving it in neat piles on the roadside for council to collect.

■ 2008: Jenkins was number 120 on the NT News most powerful Territorians list and won the “peace” category in the NT Pride of Australia awards.

■ 2009: Jenkins was kicked out of Wadeye, west of Darwin, amid claims he attacked Victoria-Daly council staff and embarrassed the shire.

■ 2011: He was kicked out of a chaplaincy course at Royal Darwin Hospital and ejected from church for being disruptive during a service (he is charged with disturbing religious worship).

■ 2012: Jenkins comes third of four candidates in the race for lord mayor — which Katrina Fong Lim won — after a hard fought campaign under the slogan “Vote One Homeless Bum”;

he is arrested and fined for impersonating a magistrate; and his audition for the X Factor is rejected.

■ 2013: Jenkins, by this time no stranger to the judiciary, graffiti bombs Darwin Magistrates Court;

his Rubbish Art Rap fails to score him a spot on Australia’s Got Talent.

■ 2016: His convictions for assaulting a security guard and trespass — bourne of desperation to attend the NT Literary Awards — are upheld; he is convicted of contempt of court and given a part-suspended sentence; he is prosecuted and fined for littering, marking the end of an informal Darwin Council amnesty regarding his prolific roadside “art”.

■ 2017: Jenkins is found guilty of breaching his suspended sentence bond, due to more bad behaviour at an assault hearing in Darwin Local Court, and awaits sentencing.