Scared and scarred: first Direction 99 victim to speak out describes harassment from Glenn Taylor

A victim of a violent NZ-born menace Glenn Taylor but was saved by Direction 99 from deportation has laid ‘100 per cent’ of the blame with the Immigration Minister.

Jesica Mills detailed the threats and harassment she faced at the hands of New Zealand citizen Glenn Taylor. Picture: Liam Mendes

A victim of a violent New Zealand-born menace who attacked police ­officers and terrorised his family and neighbours but was saved by Direction 99 from deportation, ­despite him racking up 35 convictions, has laid “100 per cent” of the blame with embattled Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and called on the Albanese government to fix the crisis.

After it was revealed by The Australian on Tuesday that Mr Giles had boasted to refugee ­activists that Direction 99 would “reflect our obligations” to ­foreign-born criminals, single mother Jesica Mills detailed the threats and harassment she faced at the hands of New Zealand citizen Glenn Taylor.

Ms Mills and her children were “living on eggshells” when they were living next door to Taylor – who also subjected former partners to shocking harassment – on the NSW central coast. She believes he should have been thrown out of Australia, given his long list of victims and crimes.

Ms Mills is the first Direction 99 victim to speak publicly. Her harrowing account combined with the criminal record of Taylor dials up pressure on the government and Mr Giles, who is facing renewed calls for his scalp as the scandal dominates another week of federal parliament.

“None of us (her family and ­neighbours) could come outside because we were that scared … constantly having to be aware, keeping tabs on what he was up to,” Ms Mills said.

“What we went through was traumatic. No family should have to go through what we went through. I believe he (Taylor) should have been deported. Not just because of what he put me through … it’s an extensive case with multiple victims.

“If there’s convictions again and again, when does the government say ‘This person is not a good person in our country’.”

Taylor, who arrived in Australia in 1978 aged about four, has been offending since 1993 and has a history of domestic violence against former partners stretching back years. In 2007, he threatened to kill one former partner while pacing the house “in a rage”, ­forcing her to “barricade” herself inside a bedroom.

Taylor sent, over the course of just one night in October 2022, more than 100 messages to one of his former partners threatening her life, NSW police documents noted.

Ms Mills was subjected to Taylor’s harassment and threats simply because of where she lived, after he moved in to a neighbouring unit in a social-housing complex on the central coast. The offending started in mid-2022 and escalated in the months after.

He was released from immigration detention in February, after serving a 14-month custodial sentence for a raft of harassment and intimidation offences. The victims were all women.

Under Mr Giles’s Direction 99, Taylor escaped deportation given his strong ties to the country and an existing brain injury.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles boasted to refugee activists in 2022 that Direction 99 would ‘reflect our obligations’ to foreign born criminals who have resided in Australia for most of their lives.

Asked whether the minister had cancelled Taylor’s visa or was reviewing his case, Mr Giles’s office issued a statement to The Australian: “If Peter Dutton had been held to the same standard he now holds others, he would not have lasted a week in the home affairs and immigration portfolios.”

While Mr Giles has been claiming community safety was always the priority in the government’s immigration policies, The Aus­tralian on Tuesday revealed he talked up the need to release more people from detention ahead of Direction 99 being implemented and described the Coalition’s approach to the issue as “punitive”.

Mr Giles told a Refugee Council of Australia event in November 2022 that he was having discussions with “our friends in New Zealand” over the creation of the policy.

The political problems for Labor over the issue deepened on Tuesday amid revelations Kevin Farrugia, a Maltese associate of gangland figure Tony Mokbel, had been reissued with a visa by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal the day before.

Mr Giles said he was considering whether he would strip Farrugia – a career criminal with 40 convictions including kidnapping and drug trafficking – of his visa.

He revealed in question time that the decision was “under consideration in accordance with the national interest”.

Mr Giles said he had cancelled 35 visas issued to rapists, pedophiles and other criminals who successfully argued in the AAT to overturn deportations as a result of his own ministerial direction.

As the parliamentary sitting fortnight continued to be dominated by the latest detainee fiasco, Mr Giles pledged that a replacement ministerial direction would be unveiled by the end of the week.

However, a submission from the Department of Home Affairs suggests it could be weeks before the direction takes effect, with the document showing Mr Giles was warned that the AAT needed a six-week adjustment period before Direction 99 took effect.

“Note, upon you signing MD 99, to ensure procedural fairness, that the department must provide the MD 99 to the Administrative Appeal Tribunal at least six weeks prior to commencement to enable management of the AAT caseload on hand and notification to impacted review applications where identified,” said the submission dated December 12, 2022.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the document indicated the AAT could continue to overturn the cancellation of foreign criminals’ visas for another six weeks after Direction 99 had been replaced.

“We also know based on FOI documents released from his department that it will take at least six weeks until a new direction will come into force,” he said. “And the minister needs to explain how he will deal with decisions made in that period by the AAT and by his department, which could be another 20 to 30 cases.”

Ms Mills said she feared it would take “something horrific” for the government to change the system and deport those who posed a risk to Australians. “It needs to be taken seriously,” she said, laying the blame “100 per cent” at the government’s hands.

Glenn Taylor.

The AAT found in its decision to revoke his visa cancellation that Taylor’s risk to the community and of reoffending, remained “unacceptable”.

Ms Mills has raised her family of five children on her own. In late 2022, Taylor threatened her, breached an order intended to protect her, harassed her family, and destroyed her property.

She asked the government: “What’s it going to take? Is it going to take children to go through something horrific, and then read about it in the papers, to get ­offenders deported?

“If it was just me (as a sole victim), I could understand a bit better. But there are multiple cases against this man and they are all violent. Every single one.”

All Taylor’s victims, court documents showed, remained “fearful” about what he could do to them. “There’s always going to be that fear there,” Ms Mills said. “Knowing that there’s a possibility that he could just turn up here.”

In March 2023, a Gosford Local Court magistrate handed Taylor a 14-month sentence, backdated to start at his arrest in November 2022, for a total of eight convictions with a non-­parole period of six months.

These included two counts of stalking and harassment, two counts of assaulting police officers, destroying property, contravening two apprehended violence orders, and threatening someone.

On one night in October 2022, he bombarded a former partner with messages including “I will kill you”, “Some people are going to be executed …” and “People like you should be shot dead”, according to police facts tendered at court.

The police facts of that incident showed Taylor’s behaviour was “escalating … becoming very unpredictable”.

Texts from Glenn Taylor to a former partner.

In another November 2022 ­incident, detailed in the March 2023 sentencing documents, Taylor was walking around the unit complex “banging on doors and yelling at neighbours”.

Ms Mills saw him “snooping around her property with a torch” and after hearing “popping sounds”, she peered out the window to see him vandalising her car. Taylor later warned another neighbour that if Ms Mills didn’t abandon the AVO she had taken out against him, “more shit would happen (to her)”.

“(Before he was arrested) I was living on eggshells, constantly worrying about the kids,” Ms Mills said.

Her AVO against Taylor lasts until mid-2025, but after his release in mid-2023 he was hauled in front of the courts again for breaching a separate order and sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order.

Taylor’s serious offending began in 1999 when he was convicted of assault occasioning ­bodily harm and assaulting a police officer; in 2003 he was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for common assault. In 2007, he contravened an AVO and was also sentenced to six-months imprisonment for assault.

Jesica Mills at her home in Lisarow on the NSW central coast. Picture: Liam Mendes

Between 2017 and 2021, he was convicted of assaulting another police officer, stalking and intimidating, assault occasioning bodily harm, and damaging property.

He has thrown ashtrays at victims, threatened to use someone’s face “as a dartboard”, attacked a neighbour with a knife before throwing a rock through their window, and told police officers that they were “f..king dead”.

In February, while in immigration detention, he was given a reprieve under Direction 99, when the AAT revoked the mandatory cancellation of his visa. Despite that, the tribunal was “satisfied” his conduct was “serious”, and it “weighed heavily” against revoking his visa ­cancellation.

“(His offending) has involved violence and other unlawful conduct against women and public officials,” AAT deputy president Antoinette Younes said.

“(Taylor’s) conduct falls within … violent crimes, crimes of a violent nature against women, and acts of family violence.”

His risk to the community and further offending, Ms Younes found, would remain “unacceptable” if allowed to stay in Australia, which “weighed heavily” against Taylor keeping his visa.

“Some weight” was given to his ties to Australia – Taylor has a family “support network” in NSW and has lived there on and off since 1978 – and the interests of his three children, two of whom he hasn’t seen for years.

Taylor has a brain injury, sustained in 1997, which the AAT said was a “mitigating factor” and a “significant impediment” to resettling in New Zealand, and he suffered from alcohol and drug issues. “If removed from Australia, (Taylor) would experience mental, emotional, practical and financial hardships, which would be difficult to overcome given his brain injury,” Ms Younes said.

Ms Mills said allowing convicted criminals to roam free in Australia, putting victims at risk, was alarming, and she hoped by speaking up she could enact permanent change.

“You want to hope (he) wouldn’t be violent towards a child or do anything like that, but he expressed violence towards me – it was continuous threats,” she said. “Hurting me is hurting my children, it’s taking me away from my babies. This is god’s land, we are a fortunate country, and yet we’ve allowed this to happen.”

The New Zealand government has confirmed it ran a lobbying campaign inside Australia’s Department of Home Affairs over Anthony Albanese’s changes to deportation settings of Kiwi nat­ionals convicted of crimes.

A spokesman for the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed in a written response to The Australian that officials from NZ’s high commission in Can­berra had regularly engaged in meetings with Australian immigration officials over concerns about the level of deportations.