Silenced at the feet of a monster

NINA FUNNELL: Alicia’s attacker is entitled to meet with Tasmania’s Parole Board in person but Alicia is not, and the law prevents her from being identified

The #LetHerSpeak campaign aims to have gag laws preventing sexual assault victims speaking to the media reversed.

THIS Friday Tasmania’s Parole Board will meet to discuss the release of one of Tasmania’s most notorious and depraved “psychopathic” killers.

In 1986, Jamie John Curtis led a vicious rampage across Hobart where he abducted three people, murdering one and gang raping another, who he also tortured with a chainsaw — telling her that he would give her a two minute headstart to run into the woods before he would come hunting her.

At the time of Curtis’ capture in 1986, there were warrants out for his arrest in South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. He had also served jail time in Queensland.

Clearly he is a career criminal.

Yet in April last year, the Tasmanian Parole Board released the sadistic killer back into the community despite expert medical advice that he still displays a “high number of psychopathic traits” which “cannot be cured”. Within months of his release he was rearrested for allegedly assaulting another woman, who he met through an online dating account he set up.

Of course it was not the first time Curtis had been free from jail.

Eight months after his initial capture in 1986, a statewide manhunt was triggered after Curtis cunningly escaped Risdon Prison in a laundry van. He was carrying a table knife sharpened to a point at the time.

Days later, the deadly fugitive was found lurking on a neighbouring country property to where his gang-rape victim was being kept under police guard.

Now aged 51, that woman wants the opportunity to address the Parole Board in person to explain “who it is they are considering letting loose on the public, again.”

She wants to tell them how his actions have impacted her throughout her entire life.

“Jamie Curtis is a monster. I know this better than anyone else alive” she says.

“He should never have been allowed out of jail last year”

“How many more chances does he get? How many more lives need to be ruined?

But in May this year the Parole Board denied her request to meet — telling her to write to them instead. This has left her feeling that she has no other option than to take her story to the media.

But in another cruel twist, Tasmania’s archaic sexual assault victim gag-laws mean the woman cannot speak under her real name as she wishes.

If she does she could potentially be prosecuted.

“If the Parole Board refuse to meet with the victims, and the law says I can’t use my own name, what am I supposed to do to get heard?” she says.

“The killer already knows my name. This gag-law law doesn’t protect me one bit. It just works to silence me.”

It’s a good point. In response the woman has joined the #LetHerSpeak campaign which is now fundraising for the legal fees needed to take her fight to be named to the Supreme Court.

But this story doesn’t end there.

Because in a further irony, shortly after the gang rape and murder occurred (and before Tasmania’s victim gag-laws were implemented in their current form), Alicia* did speak out to the media under her real name.

In other words Alicia has already born all this risk and stigma of speaking out. She has already shown courage under fire in being named as a rape victim.

Only now, her right to free speech and self-expression is being scaled back.

No doubt when the Parole Board meet this Friday their decision will be made entirely independently of any media and political influence — as is entirely appropriate, and the Parole Board’s reputation for independence is rightly fiercely guarded.

But there is a risk that their decision could also be based on incomplete or unbalanced information since Curtis is entitled to meet with them face-to-face, while the victims cannot.

But Alicia has a message for the Parole Board, and she wants the public to hear it too.

She says: “I was a victim to a crime that was so savage and demented that I have suffered extreme trauma for the last 12,200 days.

“I have suffered trauma to the most excruciating degree and have been taken to the edge of total despair.

“Yet I never stopped determinedly taking one step after the next towards healing. But then last year the Parole Board released the devil back into my community. And his freedom ended my freedom.

“Until then, I had been functioning to a reasonable degree, despite the challenges. And I could do this because I always knew Curtis was securely behind bars.

“But as soon as Curtis was paroled last year I went into complete emotional and psychological meltdown. I was so overwhelmed I took leave from work for almost the entirety of his parole.

“I was engulfed by fear the entire time, just waiting for him to reoffend or breach parole.

“And then he did.”

“Please listen to me when I beg of you, keep him away from the community. I deserve to live in peace.

“The community deserves to be safe.”

Nina Funnell is the creator of the #LetHerSpeak campaign. You can donate to the GoFundMe to help cover Alicia* legal fees at https://au.gofundme.com/f/wq34q-let-her-speak