Gary Jubelin talks to Andrew Carpenter about how sex abuse victims can pursue their alleged abusers

There are other legal ways Australian victims of sexual abuse can get justice that are more successful than the criminal courts. See how some paedophiles are being punished.

Sexual abuse victims have a better chance bankrupting their abusers than getting a criminal conviction, according to a lawyer who specialises in abuse cases.

Andrew Carpenter said with as few as three in 1000 abuse reports ending with the offender jailed, victims could get justice by stripping their alleged abusers assets through a civil action.

“I’m telling people on the bat now - if they’ve [the alleged abusers] have assets, sue civilly,” Mr Carpenter told former homicide detective Gary Jubelin on the I Catch Killers podcast.

By taking civil action, abusers would have to “run the gauntlet” and give evidence due to the different standard of proof required in civil cases compared to criminal ones.

In a criminal case, a court needs to be sure beyond reasonable doubt something has occurred, but a civil case only requires something highly likely occurred on the balance of probabilities.

“Because if the poor conviction rate and [survivors] effectively having to run the gauntlet while the alleged perpetrators sits in silence and gets to enjoy everything...sue civilly, because that way they do have to run the gauntlet, they have to give evidence, they have to be heard by a judge and avail themselves to cross-examination,” Mr Carpenter said.

Gary Jubelin and Andrew Carpenter. Picture: Adam Yip

Mr Carpenter said he was committed to helping survivors piece their lives back together.

The former accountant took on cases no on else wanted soon after graduating from law school.

“I just found the stories of people that they needed someone to be their voice -they’re suppressed by law - they can’t talk about this. I just basically took it on and realised the level of damage this causes and know it’s not just a keyword [victims] are really suffering a life sentence.”

Mr Carpenter said sexual abuse of young people was rampant throughout Australia.

“It’s rife at the moment. During Covid it was quite bad, because people weren’t able to escape because they couldn’t go to school. But the one thing that happened most during Covid, was people would be paying individuals over Skype to abuse children in South East Asia. That went through the roof.

Child abuse is “rife” across Australia, Mr Carpenter said.

“The thing is, you see these people on the news that have these images. You never see someone arrested for five images or ten images. It’s usually either harddrive after hard drive or terabytes. It’s hundreds and hundreds or thousands of images and you think, ‘how could it get that far’,” he said.

With borders closed during the pandemic, paedophiles used technology to get abuse children.

“What was happening during Covid was because a lot of these sick individuals couldn’t travel to South East Asia to go on their abuse holidays, they were finding people and paying them to abuse people or abuse young children over Skype,” he said.

Originally published as Gary Jubelin talks to Andrew Carpenter about how sex abuse victims can pursue their alleged abusers