Josephine Greensill Was Wrongly Convicted Of Assaulting Her Students

In March 2008, 57-year-old semi-retired schoolteacher Josephine Greensill opened her front door in suburban Melbourne to find three detectives waiting to arrest her. Two men had accused her of sexually abusing them at a backyard sleepover almost 30 years earlier, when they were eight-year-old boys in her class. No medical experts were ever called, and the jury believed them. Jo spent two and a half years in prison as a convicted child sex offender before her conviction was quashed. The court found the men had colluded and had a financial motive, and that what they described was physically impossible. Award-winning crime reporter Neil Mercer investigated her case, along with eight others, for his book Falsely Convicted. In this episode he tells Gemma about the common sense failures that sent an innocent woman to jail and what her life looked like once she was released. Neil also looks at the cases of Eric Honeysett framed by NSW police in 1983, and Gene Gibson's case. LINKS Purchase Falsely Convicted by Neil Mercer here https://fave.co/3TcaiBZ.https://www.ellywarren.net/ We want to hear from you! Take our quick 3-minute survey for your chance to win a $1,000 gift card. https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8954679/HF-BUS-2026 GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 MAMAMIA OFFERS: Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59. 25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go toveryperi.com.au http://veryperi.com.au/ today. You hot? Same. Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. CREDITS Host & Executive Producer: Gemma Bath Guests: Paul Warren Produced by Ella Maitland Video Editor: Artemi Kokkaris Audio Design: Tegan Sadler Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Gemma Bath?

  It's just after midday on a March day in 2008. And still in her pyjamas, Josephine Greensill is sipping on a cup of coffee in the lounge room of her Melbourne home. After losing her husband a couple of years ago in a tragic accident, the 57-year-old semi-retired schoolteacher is still dealing with her grief. But as her thoughts wander to him, as they often do, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. She opens it to find three detectives on her doorstep. "We're here to arrest you," one of them tells her. "What for?" she asks, shocked. Josephine is about to find herself in a police station,

• 0:43Gemma Bath?

  sitting across from a detective accusing her of doing horrendous things to two little boys who were students of hers more than 30 years ago. She'll go to prison for the allegations. She's innocent, but no one is listening.

• 1:18Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. It's the stuff of nightmares, to be wrongly convicted of a crime you didn't do. But that's exactly what happened to Josephine Greensill, and it destroyed her life. In 2026, she's still dealing with the ramifications. You'll have heard of some of the more famous cases of injustice in Australia, like Lindy Chamberlain and more recently Kathleen Foulbig. But our guest today has revisited some of the cases you might not know by name. In his book, Falsely Convicted, award-winning crime reporter Neil Mercer

• 2:03Gemma Bath?

  turned his investigative skills towards the most chilling crimes of all, the ones committed by the system itself. He joins us now.

• 2:20Gemma Bath?

  Neil, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. Miscarriages of justice, why this topic?

• 2:27Speaker 01

  I guess I've been a journalist for a very, very long time now, and I've been covering crime, courts, royal commissions, judicial inquiries, that sort of thing. And over the years, there's been a lot of cases where you go, "Oh, this doesn't sound right. The evidence doesn't sound right." Whether you're talking about corruption back in the bad old days of the New South Wales Police Force in the 80s and early 90s, or in other cases where the evidence just doesn't add up. So I've always had that interest and I thought, you know, I should put something down.

• 3:02Gemma Bath?

  After so many years working in and around this beat, what concerned you the most about the way our justice system works?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I think it's the reluctance to admit mistakes. I think the justice system works generally. You know, I think the jury system works generally, but mistakes are made. And, you know, we've all heard the stories about people in jail where, you know, half the people in jail are innocent, quote unquote. I don't believe that, but some are. Some are definitely innocent. Some have been wrongly convicted. And in many cases, they've got no recourse. It's very, very hard to, if you are wrongly convicted,

• 3:53Speaker 01

  in many cases, it's very hard to get that overturned.

• 3:58Gemma Bath?

  Delving into wrongful convictions in detail for your book, were you surprised by what you uncovered? Was it even worse than you thought?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I was surprised by some things and in some cases, what appears to be, and this is, you know, I'm looking at these cases with the benefit of hindsight, which is always good. But I think sort of a lack of common sense in a couple of cases where you just went, "That, that evidence just can't be right." No, I'm not shocked because I've been around a long time and I've covered a lot of court cases or inquiries. I've met a lot of police officers, lawyers, crooks. And you get to know the system. But I think, I think a couple of things struck me that, you know, that the authorities are reluctant to admit they've made mistakes.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  As I say, common sense in one or two cases seems to have flown out the door. Yeah, there's a whole, the nine cases I'm looking at, there's different reasons for each one of them miscarrying.

• 5:05Gemma Bath?

  I feel like that common sense factor is going to be big in the case we're about to discuss, Josephine Greensill. Has that case always been on your radar? Or when did you come to know about her?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Only when I really started looking into cases of people who'd been falsely convicted or had been exonerated by the courts. All these people in the book have been exonerated either by the State Court of Criminal Appeal or by the High Court. And her case came onto the radar. She was, at the time of her arrest, she's a 57-year-old semi-retired schoolteacher, never been in trouble with the law in her life. A year or so earlier, her husband had been killed in a level crossing accident and she received a considerable sum of money, some 600,000.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  So on this particular day, she's at home. She's still, she's semi-retired. She's still dealing with some issues. She's in her pyjamas. Her son's on his exercise bike. They're in the middle of Melbourne. It's modest suburbia. Knock on the door, knock, knock, knock. Opens the door. There's three detectives there. You're under arrest for historical child sex offences. And she goes, "What?" She's a retired schoolteacher or semi-retired. She's just totally gobsmacked and they said, "Well, you're under arrest. You have to come with us to the station." Which she does. They do allow her to have a shower and get changed. Very nice.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  She goes to the station. The cops say, "Look, you're entitled to a lawyer." The only lawyer Josephine Greensill knows is the one who did her will. And she thinks, "Look, I don't really need a lawyer anyway because I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't done anything wrong. I'll be able to handle this." Over the next hour or two at the police station, I think she answers 351 questions. And she answers, you know, without, you know, saying, "I don't want to talk anymore." Nothing like that, answers every single question. At the centre of this case, her allegations by two men, now in their late 30s, who say that almost 30 years earlier,

• 7:28Speaker 01

  when Jo Greensill was their schoolteacher, primary schoolteacher, she molested them, sexually assaulted them. And there's a variety of allegations, but basically the main one is that I think in 1979, certainly when they were eight years old, they had a sleepover at her home in a tent in the backyard. It sounds a bit maybe weird now, but back then, not so. And Jo Greensill knew their families, had met their parents. The two eight-year-old boys have the sleepover. They allege that Jo Greensill assaulted them,

• 8:08Speaker 01

  that they had sexual intercourse with her on multiple occasions, and that they obtained erections and produced semen. It's, it's, you know, Jo Greensill had to listen to all this evidence when she was on trial. It's, it's extremely difficult. I can't imagine how she dealt with it. But these two boys say the tents were in the backyard of her home. Her husband was home, by the way. The tents were only a few metres from the back door. The allegations sound fantastic. And her barrister says, "Look, don't worry. Nobody's going to believe these blokes."

• 8:52Speaker 01

  They go to trial. The jury does believe them. She's sent to jail as a child molester. I mean, she is absolutely stunned. She doesn't know what to do.

• 9:06Gemma Bath?

  The main allegation that the men were kind of talking about is this tent incident. Can you explain exactly what they say happened?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  What they say happened is that they were going to have this sleepover in the tent. In the tent, Josephine Greensill comes out in a nightie and initiates sex with them. And both boys say that they had penetrative sexual intercourse. These are eight-year-old boys. They say, "I got an erection. My penis went into her vagina and I produced semen because at one stage we both went outside the tent and because we had to do a wee and our wee was all gooey." And that's what, that's the initial allegation. It's backed up when they give evidence.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And, and they, one of them says, "I produced semen."

• 10:03Gemma Bath?

  Didn't they also say that they had multiple rounds of sex intercourse? As eight-year-olds?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  As eight-year-olds.

• 10:10Gemma Bath?

  In the tent?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Repeated, repeated instances of sex, not just once. This is not just one case of sexual intercourse, of penetration by the eight-year-old boys.

• 10:20Gemma Bath?

  On that one night?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  On that one night. There are other, there are other allegations in other places. But this is the central, this is the central part of the case. Yeah, they say they achieved erections, that they had sexual intercourse with her. One of the boys says, "I left the tent at one stage and saw her husband in the house a few metres away, bizarrely. And then I went back to the tent and I, and they were still at it." So it's prolonged sexual intercourse.

• 10:55Gemma Bath?

  So many question marks there, isn't there?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Well, even the Crown, I think, even the Crown in the end said, you... The Crown Prosecutor said, you look at some of this evidence and you go, oh, come on, this can't be real. And you know what? It wasn't.

• 11:12Gemma Bath?

  What does Jo remember about that night? Because there was a sleepover, wasn't there?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  There was a sleepover. She just went indoors and went to bed. Um, her husband was there, and there's no doubt about any of this. Her husband was there, there's no dispute. And he's in the kitchen, which is at the back of the house, I think. So he's sort of overlooking the garden. Um, it's sort of bizarre that to think that he would just be standing there watching this go on.

• 11:39Gemma Bath?

  The part that does jump out at me is why are two eight-year-old boys having a sleepover at their schoolteacher's house? Do we know why?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  There was apparently a, um, some sort of event at a local park that night where there was a bonfire and a lot of kids were going to it. And it was just the parents of the two boys knew Jo Greensill. They knew her husband, they'd been out to dinner. The boys said, can we have a sleepover? Um, and everybody said, yes, you know, sleep in the tent, it's all very exciting. Sleep outdoors.

• 12:17Gemma Bath?

  It's definitely not something that would happen today.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  No, it's not. And, um, you know, not, not with the schoolteacher.

• 12:24Gemma Bath?

  No.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  I mean, if you're close friends, your kids might go for a sleepover. I mean, kids have sleepovers.

• 12:31Gemma Bath?

  But not with their teacher?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Not with their teacher, no, not now. I think it was a different era. Those things were like, oh, yeah. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the sixties and seventies. Um, and yeah, you did have sleepovers and, and those sort of things. And sleeping out in a tent was like a big adventure. It was really exciting. Um, so, yeah, these days, that would not happen. But back then, nobody questioned it.

• 13:00Gemma Bath?

  The other part that frustrates me about this case is that it gives an example to question other victims.

• 13:11Gemma Bath?

  If you see what I mean there. Because most of the time, victims of sexual assault, as we've discussed, are telling the truth. But you've got this case. Look, they made it up. People make it up. But most of the time, they're not. So, you know, it adds that other layer of complexity.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I, maybe I don't think people should take this case as, oh, see, I told you.

• 13:35Gemma Bath?

  I hope they don't.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Women, women make it up. Well, in this case, it's a couple of blokes. Um, but

• 13:44Speaker 01

  in this case, it did happen. But I don't think people should extrapolate that out and go, oh, you know, you know, people who, who say, these things happened when I was a child or when I was going to church or, or whatever. Um, I think the vast majority of people are believed. And, and I think rightly so. I think the, the instances of people completely fabricating stuff are pretty rare.

• 14:12Gemma Bath?

  If we kind of go back a bit into Jo's history, how did she grow up? What was her story?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  She was one of four sisters who were all adopted by, by all accounts, a loving family. Her dad was a schoolteacher. Um, her mum did home duties. Uh, her mother and father were teetotalers, um, never been in trouble with the law. The four sisters were very, very close and are very, very close. And, um, Jo followed in the footsteps of her father and became a, a schoolteacher, primary schoolteacher. And that's where the allegations stem from, that she did certain things to these boys.

• 15:03Gemma Bath?

  Were you able to ascertain what kind of teacher she was? Was she well-liked? Was she good at her job?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I think she was well-liked. There was nothing to indicate anything untoward. Um, she was leading a, a normal life, um, apart, you know, apart from the fact that her husband was killed in a, in a train accident.

• 15:26Gemma Bath?

  And that was a tragic accident, wasn't it?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an accident. And, um, and she received compensation for that. Interestingly enough, one of her accusers also worked in the railways. And the $600,000 payment was reasonably well-known. Uh, that boy, that boy, the, the main accuser, I'd call him, denies he knew about that six thou, uh, 600,000 or that he was after money.

• 15:53Gemma Bath?

  It's an interesting detail, isn't it?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:56Gemma Bath?

  She was also a mum. She obviously really liked kids. She had five of them.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Look, she had lots of kids and that's, you know, one of the interesting things about this case, that, you know, when the police do arrest her on the day, on these historical child sex offence charges, they ask her during the interview, after they take her to the station, this is one of the 350 questions or so, oh, do you still have an interest in children? You know, what do you think about people molesting children? And she's horrified. So they're clearly sort of intimating that she might have an ongoing interest in children, but they don't seize her phone, they don't seize her computer,

• 16:39Speaker 01

  they don't seize anything to see if there's any evidence there. Um, and, and there is none. Um, we, as far as we, well, not as far as we know, we know there is none. Um, it's, it's a very curious case that these two boys have come forward. On the one hand, the police have to take the allegations seriously. We've, we've seen and heard, we all know the allegations that have emerged in the last 10, 20 years in particular. They have to take these allegations seriously. Where it seems to me to have fallen down, and this

• 17:15Speaker 01

  goes back to our common sense thing, these two boys say, we had prolonged sexual intercourse at the age of eight, in this tent, in the backyard. And they say certain other things. Seems to me that the Director of Public Prosecutions, and most certainly the defence, failed Jo Greensill, uh, Jo Greensill utterly by, you know, saying, hang on, that, does that sound, does that sound real?

• 17:47Gemma Bath?

  Hmm. It wasn't really interrogated, was it?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  No medical evidence was called, no experts were called, no, say, paediatric, uh, doctors, no endocrinologists. There was no expert evidence at all, which is, again, with the benefit of hindsight, staggering. Because when it finally was gathered, the experts said, um, this, this can't happen in eight-year-old boys. What they, or at least what they described to the police and what they said in their evidence in the trial, it's, they, you know, eight-year-old boys, they're, they're pre-puberty.

• 18:30Gemma Bath?

  It would be sexually impossible for them.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Sexually impossible. And, and those were some of the words used by some of the experts. And the, the, that's never been challenged. Words like, um, impossible, uh, producing semen, um, unlikely, so unlikely as to be incredible. Um, and these are both, one was a professor, one's a doctor with a long history of, of study in, in, in this area. Uh, nobody's challenged this. If before she'd been charged or after she'd been charged, somebody had called for the expert evidence, I don't think she'd ever gone to, would ever

• 19:12Speaker 01

  have gone to trial. Because the experts say, what these two boys are alleging is impossible. It is not recorded anywhere in the literature that eight-year-old boys will sustain erections, produce semen. And they're, they're saying, we had repeated sexual intercourse.

• 19:30Gemma Bath?

  Do we know what age, the youngest age, that those two things combined would happen in a young boy?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  It's, it's generally around the age of 12 onwards.

• 19:41Gemma Bath?

  That's a fairly big gap, eight to 12.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  There's a very big gap. And apparently, um, and I'm only reading the reports of the experts, but apparently this is well-settled. There's not any dispute that, oh, yeah, an eight-year-old, it could, it's possible. The, the experts say, no, this is, um, an invention of, um, enormous proportions.

• 20:04Gemma Bath?

  It is interesting, that common sense factor that you mentioned, because there were a lot of men, grown men, that were part of this trial, that had been eight-year-old boys.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Presumably.

• 20:16Gemma Bath?

  That didn't kind of question it.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:19Gemma Bath?

  Either.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  That's right. Neither the prosecutor nor, nor the defence. And I guess really, um, well, both, both are to blame. Because the Director of Public Prosecutions is supposed to, you know, approach it on a, on a fair basis. I know that these allegations, when they're made, most people believe them. And, and, and I'm in that.

• 20:40Gemma Bath?

  Yeah. Believe the victim.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, of course. But, you know, what this case proves is that occasionally, you know, sometimes it's just unbelievable. Jo's, um, sent to jail for, uh, five years. She's a child molester. She goes to, I think it's Dame Phyllis Frost, um, prison in, in Melbourne. Uh, she's the lowest of the low. Um, she's maligned. Every time she has a visitor, she's strip-searched before and after. Um, she's, she's really, her world is turned upside down. And interestingly, she said, I just had to adapt very quickly because

• 21:24Speaker 01

  in there, it's like a mini-city. And the prison officers are in total control. And if they say you have to do something, you do it. And all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, but after a while, you tend to just not have to think about things. You've got a routine and you obey it and you do it.

• 21:44Gemma Bath?

  Did her family, did her kids stand by her?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Her family stood by her, her three other sisters, in particular one, Annette, stood by her and fought on. They didn't believe it for a second. They were stunned when the guilty verdict came down and she was carted off to jail.

• 22:03Gemma Bath?

  Because that was the first time she was in jail, right? She got bail after the charges?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, she got bail. So she's just, when the guilty verdict's announced, she's taken down to the cells, and she remembers it was freezing, freezing cold, and she hadn't brought any warm clothing. She, she thought she was going to lunch with her sisters. They'd booked a restaurant. The sisters thought, this is going to get thrown out. The jury will not believe these guys. Not only the fact that it's eight-year-old boys and it's physically, sexually impossible, but also that they've colluded, and this was the other, one of the other main points in the, in the defence, that these two boys had colluded to get money from Josephine

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Greensill, maybe part of the $600,000, that was the compensation for the death of her husband, or victims of crime compensation money. And as it turns out, the, the first bloke had gone to a specialist lawyer, a lawyer who, who deals primarily with compensation for child sex victims, before he went to the police. And during the trial, he says, I'm not interested in money. I don't want your client's money. I don't want Joe Greensill's money. I just want the truth to come out. Eight days after he's sentenced, off he trots to get an expert opinion

• 23:30Speaker 01

  as to how he's been abused, and he sets in train his victims of crime compensation claim.

• 23:37Gemma Bath?

  Right.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And for which he's paid, well, he's not paid, he's awarded $60,000. So having completely denied in the witness box that he's interested in money, eight days after she, Josephine Greensill is sent to jail, he sets in process the motion, the motions of, of, of getting money, the very thing he's denied. And the, the second man does exactly the same thing.

• 24:02Gemma Bath?

  Did Jo remember these men? Well, she would have known them as boys.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  She did. She remembered them because, and she remembered the night in, when they slept over in the tent. She knew their parents, not particularly well, but I think that on one or two occasions, she'd been to dinner with her husband and the parents of these two boys.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, she knew them well.

• 24:30Gemma Bath?

  And hadn't heard from them since they were eight?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  No. The, one of the fascinating things about this particular case is that the lead boy, because I'll call him that because these two men can't be named. Jo Greensill wants them named. After she was cleared, she wanted the Victoria Police to investigate them for possible perjury or conspiracy to pervert, pervert the course of justice. I think the Victoria Police did a sort of perfunctory investigation and said, no, it's too hard. So they've never been named. She's never had the satisfaction of seeing them in court. But just going, just going back a bit to when she was teaching them,

• 25:20Speaker 01

  one of the boys said, I was the teacher's pet. Until one day, Josephine notices there's 10 bucks missing from her purse, which she keeps on her desk in the classroom. And she searches the bags of the kids. It turns up in the bag of the man known as, only as RS, the initials that were given to him in court. It's a relatively minor thing. He's eight years old.

• 25:48Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  You know, maybe, maybe he's nicked it. It's certainly in his bag. This turns into a lifelong grudge against Jo Greensill, and this emerges during the trial.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  His, the wife of RS, by now she's the ex-wife, remembers him talking about a primary school teacher he had, and saying he'd been, you know, he'd been accused of taking the $10 out of her purse. She'd accused him. He'd never done it. Maybe I should take her to court and sue her. This is the evidence of the ex-wife.

• 26:29Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  The man, RS, says, yeah, I, I probably, probably did say that, but I, I, I didn't take the $10. It wasn't me. So it appears that this minor incident, which would have been forgotten by everybody else, has stayed with this man for decades. And it's been, at least in part, the reason why he's taken this action that he did.

• 26:57Gemma Bath?

  It's such a big decision, though, for these two men, to make a decision to accuse someone 30-plus years after the fact, go through all the court processes, make sure they've got watertight. Like, why? It wasn't even that much money that they ended up getting.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Part of it might have been greed. Maybe they were thinking they could sue her, Josephine, personally for part of the $600,000. It's, it's just an extraordinary case. And the boys, the men, colluded. They denied they'd colluded in court. They said, we haven't spoken to each other since we're in primary school, essentially. And then the defence lawyer reads out the statement of, I'll call him Boy Two, or the, the second man, where he says in his very first paragraph of his own statement, after being contacted by the police, I spoke

• 27:54Speaker 01

  to my old mate before I made a statement to the police. And he then says in court, oh, I never said that. And the defence lawyer goes, but this is your statement. It's in the first paragraph that you spoke to Boy One, that you had a long chat about it. And he says, oh, I, I didn't read my statement. I didn't, but you signed it. Yeah, I signed it, but I didn't read it. We never colluded. There was other evidence that they had potentially colluded as well. They'd used similar phrases in their statements. They both named a teacher, a Mrs Bailey, they said, had walked in on Josephine Greensill and one of the boys at one stage and been shocked.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Mrs Bailey is still alive. She's called. She says she never saw any such thing, and if she had, she would have reported it. But the key fact here is Mrs Bailey is not actually her name. It's a Mrs Bailo, B-A-I-L-O-H, I think. They're both. They say independently.

• 29:03Gemma Bath?

  Misspelt it.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Misspelt it and, and given exactly the same spelling.

• 29:07Gemma Bath?

  After the break, Neil tells us about what it was like for Josephine to re-enter society.

• 29:13Gemma Bath?

  You know the drill. You pick the couch, pay the deposit, then wait 12 weeks praying it matches the living room. Let's skip that. Mamma Mia is giving one lucky subscriber a $5,000 voucher for B2C furniture to spend on pieces that are in stock and ready to ship right now. High-end style, zero weight. To enter, head to mamamia.com.au/subscribe. You'll unlock all our subscriber-only podcasts, articles, and our fitness app, Move. Already subscribed? You're already in the running. Offer ends October 31st. T's and C's apply. The thing that I find hard to grapple with is we know that child sexual abuse convictions

• 29:56Gemma Bath?

  in Australia, all over the world really, are so rare.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I think there's, I think there's a desire by the part of the police and the prosecution to, obviously, to, to believe people and to push these prosecutions through. And here, again, it comes back to common sense, failure of lawyers, men, to ask themselves a basic question. And I have to say that when I first heard about this case, I sort of thought, I sort of vaguely remember when I was eight. And I don't, no, this is not sounding right.

• 30:29Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  And that was my first reaction. And indeed, when Josephine, she's in jail, she appeals her conviction, they go to the appeals court, the Crown, the Crown, who's opposing her appeal, by the way, says something like, oh, you know, no one can say they're not deeply troubled by this case, Your Honour. You read some of the evidence and you just go, oh, come on, that can't be for real. This is the Crown, this is the Crown, the Chief Crown Prosecutor in Victoria. Come on, this can't be for real. But he then argued that the jury had heard both men. They'd

• 31:11Speaker 01

  had the benefit of hearing their evidence and assessing their credibility, so the conviction should stand. It didn't, because the judges went, eight-year-old boys? Was any medical evidence called? Chief Crown Prosecutor goes, no, no, that was the first thing I thought of, Your Honour. The DPP never thought to call any paediatricians.

• 31:35Gemma Bath?

  So that easily it was quashed, like thrown out?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  They threw it out on, on a number of grounds. One was that the two boys had clearly colluded, they said, that there was a financial incentive. They'd both made similar mistakes in their statements, but also because of the unlikelihood of what they'd alleged, producing semen at the age of eight years old. It's just not possible. She'd also been unfairly denied because she was, by the time the court case came around, the husband who'd been there on the night, bear in mind, her husband's in the house, three metres from the tent where this is all allegedly happening.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  And we know that for sure because one of the boys, you know, when he's eight, says, oh, at one stage I left the tent and wandered into the house, and her husband was there, you know, in the kitchen doing various things. And you could see out from the kitchen into the backyard.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  You know, there's this, I think there's this desire to do the right thing, which is obviously the right thing to do, given what we, we know now about what's gone on over many, many, many years in churches, institutions, and so on. But I think there was an essential failure on the part of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the defence to ask some common sense questions and to get an expert opinion.

• 33:09Gemma Bath?

  But how did it get? Across, were they just really,

• 33:15Gemma Bath?

  were they really good at giving evidence, these men, like, because it was a jury trial?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:19Gemma Bath?

  So there must have been something really compelling about their evidence, or the way they delivered it, or I'm just trying to understand.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:27Gemma Bath?

  How?

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's the thing. I mean, that's what the chief ground prosecutor said when the appeal came around. Um, you look at some of the evidence and you say it can't be real. I, I can't explain that. I wasn't in the courtroom. I think there's, there's a desire to believe people.

• 33:46Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 33:47Gemma Bath?

  Because the instances of children or even adults alleging something that happened in their childhood, it's, it's very rare that you make that up, isn't it?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I, I, I think the evidence is not just in child sexual cases, but in most sexual assault cases, the evidence is, it's rare that somebody has completely fabricated something. So th- these two boys did that. The court found that they did that. Um.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  The expert opinion says what they alleged to have happened could not have happened. No, no ifs, buts or maybes. It's like, this is not possible. And the medical literature, which goes back decades, uh, says that eight-year-old boys just can't do the things they claimed they did.

• 34:40Gemma Bath?

  So when Jo is told that she's going to be released, she's already been in prison for two and a half years.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:48Gemma Bath?

  Does she remember being told? How was she told?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  She knew the appeal was on, uh, in the Court of Criminal Appeal in Victoria. But if she wanted to actually go to the courtroom and watch it in person, she was told by prison officers that she would not only be handcuffed, but she would be shackled, which is, is slightly eighteenth century to me, but, and she didn't want to do that. So they said, well, you can watch it all on audio visual link, you know, on, on a screen in a small room. So there's a table, a couple of chairs, she sits down, looks up at the screen, it's blank. Doesn't work, which is not, I have to say, certainly back then uncommon.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  So she's sitting there for two days, not knowing anything that's being said. She's not watching her own appeal. Her family doesn't know this. But on the second day, she's booked a call to her son. You know, just in case there's been a decision or to find out what's happened. And he goes, mum, you, you, you're free, the conviction is quashed. And she goes, oh, oh my God. All the prison officers knew before that, but didn't tell her.

• 36:02Gemma Bath?

  What?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'd, they'd known for several hours. Um, she told me in this interview, because we sat down for some hours and had a long chat about it. She said, I asked, could I say goodbye to the girls? You know, the fellow prisoners said, no, no, get your stuff, you're out.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  She said, it was like I got kicked out. Um, not that she was complaining about that.

• 36:25Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  At the time, but people sort of go, oh, well, you know, justice has been done. She's free. She's had an unblemished record and, um, the experts say, and the crown pretty much concedes. You know, this is, this is not real. But she then finds herself

• 36:48Speaker 01

  completely discombobulated, I guess. She gets panic attacks in crowds. She can't remember the layout of her own house. She can't remember simple things like what's in her wardrobe. Um, she said, when I went to the supermarket to, just to buy, say, a simple thing like milk, there were all these varieties. In prison, it was just full cream or skim. Decision was made for you. I, I just couldn't cope. Uh, and I've heard that from a number of people who had similar experiences. I, I think everybody thinks, oh, once you're out of jail, everything's okay.

• 37:26Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  But for a lot of people, and I'm suspecting, and I'm not saying this is a case in, in Josephine Greensill's case, but I'm suspecting PTSD, if people are innocent in particular.

• 37:39Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Um, you know, one minute you're in there, next minute you're back out in the world and there's a lot of people and there's a lot of decisions you've got to make and which you haven't had to ma- make for two and a half years.

• 37:52Gemma Bath?

  Well, you met her last year, so twenty twenty five.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:55Gemma Bath?

  What was she like as a person?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  She was quiet. Um, she describes herself as, as shy, and I think that's right. She's softly spoken. She had her sister Annette there as support. Um, she struck me as the sort of person who probably had never had a parking ticket, you know? I mean, she just struck me as an upright, normal, uh, citizen who'd been a schoolteacher, had never been in trouble with the law. None of her sisters had. Her parents had been fine upstanding citizens. They'd come from a fine family. Mum and dad had adopted four sisters, which is quite an extraordinary story in itself. And all the sisters had remained close.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  You know, um, I can understand why she's, I, I'm not even sure she's angry, but she would like to, she would like some compensation, but she says, look, money's not the thing. It, right towards the end of our conversation last year, she said, you know what? I just, what I'd really like to do is to sit down with these two men and just say, why? Why did you do it? What was the reason?

• 39:14Gemma Bath?

  But I, I do want to touch on that compensation bit for a second. Because she's had no compensation for what she's been put through?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  No, the, her lawyer, um, Peter Gordon from Gordon Legal in Melbourne, a very, um, you know, prestigious firm, have, uh, the firm has written to successive attorney generals. And they've basically come back and said, well, tough luck, sister. Compensation's usually only, only paid when someone has incurred financial loss or where it's at the, or where the state is at fault. Which seems sort of bizarre because she's outlaid hundreds and hundreds of thousands in legal fees. And the state, I think the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police are part of the state.

• 40:02Gemma Bath?

  Counters the state. But what about like psychological trauma, taking two and a half years of her life?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:08Gemma Bath?

  The fact that she had to go through a trial, like, to me, it's not just about those things. Like, what about what they actually did to her?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, she was, she was the lowest of the low in jail, as pedophiles tend to be in, in male or female prisons. She was malign. She was, um, isolated from the main population. Um. She said, for the first few days or the first week, I just cried. And, but then I realised I had to get into a routine to survive.

• 40:41Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Um, and I treated all the other women, no matter what they were being accused of doing. Um, you know, as I met them. And, um,

• 40:53Speaker 01

  you know, she, she read a lot of books, uh, which the prison officers then came around and said, oh, you've got to get rid of all the books out of your cell. And Jo said, why? And they said, it's a fire hazard. Because if a prisoner's smoking, Jo didn't smoke, but other prisoners did, if they flicked a cigarette butt into her cell and this big pile of books was there, they might catch fire. She wasn't allowed to have a photo of her family in her cell because the photo was of her parents and of herself and her three sisters as very young kids. Because as a child molester, she was not allowed to have photos of children, even though it's herself and her, and her family.

• 41:33Gemma Bath?

  This poor woman, is there any other avenues that she can take or has she exhausted them all in terms of getting? Because it's, it's not just about the compensation, it's the, it's the fact that someone should say sorry to her.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they've, they've not said sorry. They've, they've basically said, you know, as I said, bad luck. Um.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  I, I, Peter Gordon, her, her solicitor Gordon Legal have been writing to successive attorney generals. Um, I think Jo has, I, I don't, not sure, I wouldn't say she's given up. Uh, there's just been a change in government in Victoria.

• 42:09Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  There might be a new attorney general or it's just wrong. And this comes to the, the other question, which arises in these nine cases of people getting falsely convicted. If a court says you're exonerated, or if indeed evidence comes to light that you're actually the wrong person, um, who decides on compo, compensation for your time in jail? Well, it's the government of the day.

• 42:36Gemma Bath?

  The state government.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  The state government of the day. You're at the whim of the state government. Um, and there's no difference between Labour and Liberal governments. They've all made, in my opinion, terrible or bad decisions, or delayed and denied and deferred and tried to extend cases over, over many years. The attorney general of the day, he or she is basically the one who has to recommend a payment. And if they don't want to make a payment, um, tough luck. I mean, they had, the, people have been paid compensation in Victoria and other states, but many people have not. It's, it's a, it's a, like a lottery, you know, or a game of two up, uh, heads, uh, you win, tails, bad luck, you'll, you lose.

• 43:22Gemma Bath?

  Has Jo been able to enjoy her life, build her life back up again since getting out of prison?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I think so. I think so. I think the support of her sisters and her kids, you know, I think, I think she has, but, um, I, I don't think she's, you know, it's, it's a hard thing to shake, no matter what, how, um, clear the evidence is that she did not do it. You know, there's always people who go, oh, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire or something like that, you know? It's something you've got to live with, live with forever. Uh, and she's just been wronged and the Victorian government refuses to set it right.

• 44:08Gemma Bath?

  Up next, Neil is detailing more cases that ended in wrongful convictions. I want to get to some of the other cases that you looked into. I couldn't help but notice an over-representation of First Nations Australians.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:23Gemma Bath?

  Tell me about that. I'm not wrong, am I?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  No, you're not wrong. Uh, I think First Nations people make up about three percent of the population. And on the statistics that I think I read last year, they make up thirty, thirty-five to thirty-seven percent of the prison population. So it's vastly, vastly out of whack. I mean, there are so many Indigenous or First Nations people in jail. Um, and it, it sort of happened because, you know, people would come to me and say, you should look at this case. This is a really interesting case. Um, there's a number of cases. There's one in WA of a young, uh, Indigenous bloke who lived in a very remote

• 45:10Speaker 01

  community, was charged with the murder of a, of a young white man. It's a tragic case. Um, and that was in, he was charged with a murder in Broome. Um, he came from an incredibly remote community, barely spoke English, uh, went to jail, uh, wasn't him. And there's cases in Queensland and there's, there's case in, um, Sydney, New South Wales of a bloke called Eric Honeysett. And of the nine cases in the book, I think Eric Honeysett's case is probably the only one where you can say he was absolutely, completely and utterly framed. And he was framed by the police way back in nineteen eighty-three, but he eventually,

• 45:55Speaker 01

  he, he gets some compensation in twenty twenty-four, I think it was.

• 46:01Gemma Bath?

  Why was Eric framed?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Eric, uh, had a tough childhood. He was in trouble at a very early age, like early teens, um, in and out of institutions. Um, graduated the big time around about the time he's seventeen, eighteen, when he goes on a, um, break and enter spree with a mate of his in the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney. And they, one of the things they do is they break into a gun shop. They do multiple break and enters. The cops from the Blue Mountains are sort of chasing them all over the place. And during one of the chases, uh, Eric's mate decides he's going to start shooting at the police. This is

• 46:46Speaker 01

  generally not a good idea because the boys in blue, and they mostly were boys in blue back when this happened, um, take a very dim view of that. So I think Eric's card was marked from a very young age, but he did continue on a life of crime in heroin dealing.

• 47:04Gemma Bath?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  He was associated with, uh, at one point with Nettie Smith, one of, um, Sydney's, probably Australia's most notorious criminals. Nettie Smith's partner was a guy called Graham Henry. Graham Henry wrote a book and he spoke about Eric Honeysett and said he was a, a tough, violent criminal. He'd, you know, pick up a block of wood or a knife to, you know, in a fight. And he'd sort of, he would not back down if somebody called him a black so-and-so. Um, he was very, he would stand on his own two feet. So, short, short story is that Eric engaged in a life of crime. The cops charged him in a number of matters

• 47:45Speaker 01

  which he got off. Around nineteen eighty-three, they believe he's dealing in heroin. A task force is watching him one night, two days before Christmas. He's outside a pub in, in a Sydney, he meets with a bloke. The cops have got him under surveillance. They, they see him meet with a bloke and the cops say, oh, he did a heroin deal. They yell out, stop, Honeysett Police. Eric bolts down a laneway, cops chase him. One cop says, I grabbed him by the shirt, he turned around, screamed at me and stabbed me in the arm. Eric then

• 48:23Speaker 01

  escaped briefly over a corrugated iron fence before being detained. Eric then apparently makes confessions, and I put confessions in inverted commas because he's pretty hardened by this stage. He confesses that he did stab the cop, that he was dealing heroin, so on and so on. This is according to the police of, of.

• 48:46Gemma Bath?

  So do you think that was coerced because he, spoiler, didn't stab the police officer?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  He did not stab the police officer.

• 48:54Gemma Bath?

  Which the police admitted later.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Much, much, much later. The thing is, when this gets to trial back in the eighties, um, Eric pleads not guilty. He denies he's made any confessions. He denies he's dealt any heroin. He denies not only stabbing the copper, he denies he even had a knife. First day of the trial happens, the police start to go through the witness box and give their version of events, which is that he did all these things. He did stab him. He was dealing heroin, blah, blah, blah. Overnight, Eric, as he said later, I did some arithmetic, because the charge he was facing, the maximum sentence was life imprisonment. But if he

• 49:38Speaker 01

  pleaded guilty, if he did a plea deal, he, he would get a lesser charge with a maximum of ten years. And he said, I did some arithmetic. I figured there are probably eight to ten cops prepared to perjure themselves. And so I just thought, I've got no hope in this. Puts his hand up and says, I done it. And, uh, he's convicted. More than a decade later, one of the police is called before the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption. So this is now nineteen ninety-five. Eric is charged with all this stuff back in nineteen

• 50:17Speaker 01

  eighty-three, twelve years later. One of the cops gets into the witness box and says, um, Eric was telling the truth. This police officer has become an informant for the Royal Commission. He's, what we said back in those days, rolled over and he's cooperating. He's telling the truth about police corruption. He said what actually happened that night was they did see Eric outside the pub. He was meeting with a bloke called Terry, but he didn't have any heroin. They did take him back to the C I B. The police officer did have a wound on his arm. But he'd tried to climb over the corrugated iron fence and he'd cut himself on the fence trying to chase Eric, who was a bit more nimble.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  The cops go, we'll say, they scrum down, as we say, we'll scrum down, we'll get our story straight. Eric stabbed Sergeant so and so. But of course, then they need a knife, because Eric didn't have a knife. Uh, so that somebody goes to um, some part of the C I B, finds a knife. They smear the knife on the arm of the injured sergeant, the one who's cut his arm on the corrugated iron fence.

• 51:30Gemma Bath?

  Yep.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  They take the knife back to the premises through which Eric has tried to escape, where he's jumped over the fence. They drop it in the backyard and then they call the scientific squad, who know nothing about any of these events, and the scientific squad discovers the knife with the blood of the police officer on it. And that's, this only comes out because one of the police officers there that night has rolled over and has told this story. And he said, no, he never had any heroin, never had a knife, the stabbing never occurred. About eight or 10 of us just scrummed down and decided we were going to make up this story. And they go to court and start telling it. Um.

• 52:18Gemma Bath?

  I know there was a period of quite a bit of police corruption, when we're talking about the eighties.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:24Gemma Bath?

  Just to make us feel a bit better.

• 52:28Gemma Bath?

  This isn't happening now, as far as we know.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  It's, it's.

• 52:31Gemma Bath?

  There's a lot more kind of stringent kind of things in place to stop stuff like this happening, right?

• 52:36Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot more supervision. I think what happened in nineteen ninety five, when this all came out during the Royal Commission into Police Corruption in New South Wales. There was a lot of revelations of what many people had suspected for a long time.

• 52:50Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  A lot of corruption around King's Cross, the old red light, you know, area, lots of bars and so on. Corruption in licensing. I think it's changed um immensely, which is not to say that corruption can't happen or won't happen. We've seen some, some examples, but compared to what happened in the seventies, sixties, seventies, eighties, and even into the nineties. No, I think it has changed, and it's changed for the better.

• 53:18Gemma Bath?

  The other case you've mentioned about the, the young Indigenous boy

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:22Gemma Bath?

  that didn't speak a lot of English, charged with the murder of a white boy.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:28Gemma Bath?

  That was a completely different case, wasn't it? There was no corruption there. You describe it as just like a perfect storm.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:34Gemma Bath?

  A lot to do with the fact that this boy couldn't understand what was happening.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  No, that's right. He, he was charged with the murder um of a, of a young white man um who'd been walking home after a night out in Broome. And yeah, he'd had a few drinks and so on. But, you know, there's stories starting to float around that he's been hit by a car or a whole range of things. The police know that the, the white boy who's dead, Josh Warnocky, has probably been killed with a, either a tomahawk or a machete.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  But anyway, the, the, the investigation takes two or three years before they actually start to get anywhere, primarily because of Josh Warnocky's mother, Ingrid Bishop, who would not let her son's death go. She said, what's happening? She, she really pushed the police. Death of Joshua Warnocky is in two thousand and ten, two thousand and twelve. They zero in on this teenage Aboriginal man from one of the most remote communities in Australia. His name's Gene Gibson. His first language is Pintupi, it's a Western dialect. His second language is also a dialect. His third language is English. They decide that he needs to be interviewed. Cops fly to this remote community.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Not, neither of the police officers had ever dealt with First Nations people from remote communities or people who had had substance abuse. Gene had had a very hard upbringing. Um, there was petrol sniffing, there was alcohol and so on. He was in fact cognitively impaired, as we discover later. But they interview him and at first he denies anything. He says, yeah, I was out on the, the old Broome Road that night. I was driving a car, I was with a couple of mates. We saw a white boy walking along the road and we went out to visit some friends. On the way back, we saw him lying by the side of the road, but we just thought he was drunk.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  We didn't stop, nobody got out, we're not involved in the murder.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  At one point during the interview, that one of the police officers shows Gene Gibson a photograph of Josh Warnocky, the dead boy. And he says, the cop says, it changed everything. And Gene Gibson then says something like, mistake, hit him with a car. The cop goes, what? He said, I hit him, hit him with my car. And then he sort of says, oh, no, that's not right, I hit him with a rock. The cops know this is not right because they've had the forensics from the day of Josh Warnocky's death, and it's come back to them that he's been struck with a sharp instrument like a tomahawk or a machete.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  And so they introduce that to the conversation. And Gene Gibson then says, oh, I hit him with a pole, which is about as close as they could get to a sharp instrument.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  He's charged with, he's charged with murder. Um.

• 56:48Gemma Bath?

  Why didn't he confess to that?

• 56:51Speaker 01

  He's a young Aboriginal man. He's probably never been spoken to by the police. Um, he's cognitively impaired. I think he just felt he should say what they wanted to hear.

• 57:06Gemma Bath?

  Was trying to please them.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  He's trying to please them, yeah. Um, and there was, a lot of this was never recorded on video, by the way.

• 57:13Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  But he, he does at one point have a interview friend there. It's a, an older man from his community, from his remote community. But it turns out the older man is um a relative in a kinship sense. He's something like a grandfather to Gene. The interview friend is talking to Gene in Pintupi. So the cops ask a question in English, I'll call him the grandfather. He translates Pintupi to Gene, Gene speaks in Pintupi to him. So the cops have got no idea what's being said.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Transpires later that the older bloke, and, and this was not out of malice. He's just saying to Gene Gibson, you've got to tell them the truth, you've got to speak. If you hit this man, rather than telling him, you don't have to say anything.

• 58:00Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  You don't have to speak. So Gene Gibson feels, I think, overwhelmed by the fact that there's police there and this sort of elder figure who, you know, he feels that he should um, you know, he, he, he should obey, he, he starts saying these things. It, it's, it's just not right.

• 58:21Gemma Bath?

  Because he was about eighteen, wasn't he? He was quite young.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  He was a teenager, he was eighteen. Um, he'd had a couple of minor brushes with the law before this, but it was for alcohol related offences like, you know, they jumped behind the bar of a pub and stole a bottle of scotch.

• 58:36Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, not murder.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  No, no, definitely not murder. Um, and Gene says, you know, I, I did it. And but a couple of the other blokes in the car that I was in incited me to do it.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  The cops interview them, it's the same deal. They get confessions. And the same thing happens, it transpires later that they just made it up. And there's some, some great quotes there. One guy just says, one of the Gene's friends says, you just kept pushing me, pushing me, pushing me, pushing me, pushing me. I just, I just gave up, I just said, all right. I saw him do it, I saw him hit him with a pole. And later he says, no, it wasn't true, of course it wasn't true, but I just, I felt I had to say it. Um, yeah, it's.

• 59:30Gemma Bath?

  It's sad, that, that case is really sad.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Well, it remains, Gene Gibson um was eventually, the conviction was quashed, but the case remains unsolved.

• 59:40Gemma Bath?

  Really?

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And the, no interpreters were used half the time. Even his own legal aid lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service on a number of occasions did not have an interpreter. His barrister said later in court, I'm not sure he understood the instructions I gave him. And one of the other legal aid solicitors, a woman, said something like, on the occasions that I met him, he mostly just sat there in silence and stared at the wall, which is pretty bleak.

• 1:00:15Gemma Bath?

  I know Gene received compensation.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:19Gemma Bath?

  About one point three million.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I think so, yes.

• 1:00:22Gemma Bath?

  Which he deserves.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:23Gemma Bath?

  I should say. But once again, it brings me back to Jo.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:28Gemma Bath?

  Where both of the other cases we've talked about, Eric and Gene, both received money, compensation.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Eventually.

• 1:00:34Gemma Bath?

  Eventually. And yet Jo is still waiting, still hasn't received any. It, it really, it's just like, it, it beggars belief, doesn't it?

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  I can't believe it, I, I just cannot believe the Victorian government is so mean spirited or unwilling to look at the evidence. This is one of the themes that runs through the book, that governments are very, are often, not always, but mostly um very unwilling to admit that a mistake might have been made. But in Jo's case, yes, she deserves it. But it's just, you run into this brick wall. The Attorney General takes a year to write back to her lawyers, literally, took a year to write. Yeah. And said, um, no, nothing's changed, not getting any compensation.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a, there's a feeling that the issue of compensation should be taken out of the hands of state governments.

• 1:01:30Gemma Bath?

  There should be some kind of federal.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Some sort of body that says, oh, well, yep, in, in Jo's case, yes. What they're alleging was impossible, you deserve to be compensated, rather than leave it to a politician.

• 1:01:43Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Because some of these things obviously can become very political. I hope that maybe she'll write again to the next Attorney General. And you never know, luck in the big city, you know, but it's, she certainly deserves it. She's been through a terrible ordeal.

• 1:01:58Gemma Bath?

  What do you want listeners to take from hearing these stories of injustice, apart from outrage?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I guess, I, I, I hope, in, in, it probably sounds weird, but some sort of better understanding of the legal system, how it works or how it doesn't work on occasions. As I said, I think at the beginning, I'm, I'm a believer in the, our system of justice. I think it mostly gets things right, but there's a unwillingness and, or an inability to say, we, we got it wrong. And you look at all these cases and there are different reasons. There are, um, one guy was convicted on DNA evidence alone, nothing else. As it turned out, um, the DNA had been contaminated. I mean, in that, that, that, that case again

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  defied common sense. I mean, you can, you can read about it in the book, but, um, seriously defied common sense because that was the only evidence was DNA. Um, other identification, other, um, cases involve, um, defence lawyers not doing their job. The, the director of public prosecutions in one case withholding evidence from the jury.

• 1:03:17Gemma Bath?

  Which I've heard about happening quite a lot, even today.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Crucial, crucial evidence. This is in a murder case.

• 1:03:22Gemma Bath?

  So maybe it's about like knowledge is power, like the more we know, even as listeners. Because what I took from hearing Joe's story is it could be any of us. Like, really, any of us could be convicted of a crime, if Joe can be convicted of a crime.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:36Gemma Bath?

  So we, we need to have our wits about us, about what can happen in the justice system.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I hope this book gives people that idea of how things go wrong. She was a 57 year old woman at home in suburban Melbourne, in her pyjamas, knock on the door and her life is turned upside down. The government goes, bad luck. I hope what people would take out of the book is, you know, they can see how things do go wrong, that people, some people in jail are innocent. There have been miscarriages of justice. Governments have been incredibly tardy in coming around and saying, oh yeah, maybe we did get it wrong. People don't like to admit mistakes. Governments don't like to admit mistakes. They don't

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  want to have things like royal commissions. Royal commissions cost money. Um, and you know, people don't like to be embarrassed.

• 1:04:30Gemma Bath?

  But these people matter.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do. That, that's, that's the thing. They're not just cases. They're, they're, it's, you're talking about people's lives. You know, you look at Joe, you look at, um.

• 1:04:42Gemma Bath?

  Jean.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Jean Gibson in Western Australia, the young bloke who had such a tough upbringing. Um, you know, Terry Irving, another indigenous bloke up in, up in Cairns. Um, he was, he was one of the lucky ones. He had a really good solicitor who stuck by him and worked for him for free for many, many years. Um, by the name of Michael O'Keefe, the good solicitor, I call him in the book. Um, but if it wasn't for Michael O'Keefe, he would have done it all these years and nobody would have given a, um, rats.

• 1:05:18Gemma Bath?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Because, you know, oh, he had a, he did have a record way back for armed robbery. So, so he's obviously done it again. You know, who cares? Well, people should care. And I think people should care about injustice. Um, and I hope the book makes a bit of a contribution to that.

• 1:05:37Gemma Bath?

  Thank you so much for joining us, Neil. We appreciate your insights.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:05:43Gemma Bath?

  Thank you to Neil for joining us on this episode. You'll find his book in our show notes. Make sure you're following our show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.