Anglican Church of Australia
Sydney Diocese
A common diseased culture?
A comparison of the NSW ICAC[1] and the Sydney Anglican Church PSU[2]
Part 1
By Louise Greentree[3]
‘The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation, than any other person in America. …. Nothing better can come out of this meeting of law enforcement officers than a rededication to the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor. Your positions are of such independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just. Although the government technically loses its case, it has really won if justice has been done.’ Robert H. Jackson[4]
I spent some time over the weekend of 5-6 December 2015 reading the news items, opinion pieces and the editorial in The Weekend Australian newspaper concerning a ‘damning report produced by the ICAC Inspector, former Supreme Court judge David Levine’ which NSW Premier Mike Baird said ‘raised “very serious” issues relating to the use of its “extraordinary powers”.’
The Nationals MP Trevor Khan, member of the NSW parliament’s ICAC oversight committee and deputy president of the legislative council called for the ICAC commissioner to stand down, or at least to stand aside while the matters contained in the report were investigated. Mr. Khan described the report as “one of the most devastating reports that you could see delivered” and “it found abuse of power, maladministration in the performance of ICAC and it also indicates bias.” Other abuses of power found by David Levine included a serious breach of privacy, that it had engaged in unlawful conduct and that it had acted with “unreasonable, unjust and oppressive behaviour”.
The article in The Weekend Australian by Sharri Markson and Chris Merritt says this: ‘(Mr. Levine’s) report documents ICAC’s sustained resistance to the accountability mechanisms imposed by statute’. ‘The report called for a series of changes to ICAC’s internal decision-making system to ensure there was no repeat of the Cunneen inquiry, which he described as “unreasonable, unjust and oppressive”.
Acting outside jurisdiction
David Levine’s report had been instigated after ICAC pursued a high-profile public prosecutor, Margaret Cunneen SC in respect of allegations arising out of an incident involving a car crash in which her car was being driven by her son’s girlfriend. The allegations involved two sentences she is said to have uttered in her private capacity, not as a holder of public office, and nor did the sentences involve evidence of corruption. She applied to the High Court of Australia to stop the ICAC inquiry, called Operation Hale. In April 2015 the High Court had no difficulty in deciding that the inquiry was outside ICAC’s jurisdiction, which is to investigate public corruption[5]. As a result of that decision jurisdiction to make some other ICAC inquiries were also called into question.
About Operation Hale – the pursuit of Ms. Cunneen: a trivial case even on the face of it.
In an interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr. Greiner said of Operation Hale: “The situation can be put simply: assume that Cunneen did everything she was alleged to have done, I doubt that but let’s assume that for the sake of argument. The truth is you would have to be deluded as a commissioner and as an organisation to engage in the behaviour ICAC adopted in relation to Margaret Cunneen. It defies common sense that ICAC should have passed this off as part of its charter. This was a position that could never be sustained. It was just crazy and, in the end, the High Court found against ICAC”.
ICAC Inspector David Levine said of the instigation of Operation Hale: “(It), from my point of view as Inspector, should be seen, and justifiably can be seen, as the low point in the history of an entity whose functions properly exercised, constitute an essential safeguard to the integrity of the governance of this State.”
The media release that is an “indictment”
Notwithstanding the High Court decision, the Commissioner was responsible for further activity in respect of Operation Hale: on May 27 2015 a 622-word media release was issued, which said that ICAC’s evidence “indicated an attempt to pervert the course of justice by Ms. Cunneen”. Mr. Levine described this media release as “indictment” and said it is “another example’ of “unreasonable, unjust, oppressive maladministration” by ICAC.
Disclosure of private text and media files from her phone to DPP (Cunneen’s boss)
Then in October 2015 The Australian reported that ICAC had delivered 2274 pages, from 2005, of Ms. Cunneen’s private text and media files from her phone (which had been seized unlawfully, without a search warrant[6]) to her boss NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb[7].
Conducting a surveillance that was a breach of privacy
The report disclosed that ICAC had her under surveillance for some days, which Mr. Levine says was a waste of resources as well as a breach of privacy. It is not surprising that Ms. Cunneen calls ICAC: “This band of lawless gangsters who are neither competent nor impartial …”
The collapse of relationship between commissioner and ICAC Inspector
Then there is the issue of the collapse of a proper relationship between the commissioner and the ICAC Inspector Mr. Levine, appointed under a provision of the governing Act of Parliament to oversee the responsible use of the wide powers given to ICAC. There is a line of accountability from the commissioner to the Inspector through to the parliamentary sub-committee. The report reproduced correspondence between him and the commissioner and of one letter from the commissioner he says it is “as insulting as it is disingenuous and as reflecting a total lack of understanding of the role of the inspector”.[8]
“the self-righteousness lawlessness” culture of the “legal Left”
An interesting comment in the editorial of the Weekend Australian 5-6 December 2015 is made about the NSW Premier Mike Baird. It says that when in April 2015 the High Court found that ICAC was acting outside its’ jurisdiction in pursuing Ms. Cunneen he should have “reined in the agency”. He did not do that, instead giving it more power. In so doing “the Premier has played into the hands of the culture of self-righteous lawlessness by the legal Left”
Since then news articles from time to time report other unacceptable behaviour by ICAC which I will detail in later Parts of this series.
What I will do is to take each example of unacceptable behaviour in ICAC and look at the process, personnel and operations of the Professional Standards Unit (‘PSU’) of the Anglican Church of Australia Sydney diocese and its’ senior clergy and others including a self-styled ‘consultant’ on child abuse and examine how the strictures reported about the toxic culture in ICAC apply equally to a toxic culture in the Sydney PSU.
The first thing to note is that, in the words of the quotation at the head of this article, the person who is a ‘prosecutor’ in the process should be dedicated to ‘the spirit of fair play and decency’ and to act in a way ‘that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just.’ This is most definitely NOT the way that the ‘prosecutor’ acts in Sydney PSU, and nor do the other people associated with the process. Consequently the ‘prosecutor’ does not take the opportunity to ‘afford to be just’ and there is no justice, nor, for that matter, truth, to be found in the culture of the Sydney PSU. The case studies in the following section of this Part and in the following Parts of this series will more than adequately demonstrate this.
So how does this relate to the PSU of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia?
Let us have a look at the first two of the sub-headings and the descriptions that Mr. Levine has given the case and see how they apply equally to the culture and the operations of the Sydney PSU.
Acting outside jurisdiction: here are just three cases –
The Figtree Affair
The Figtree affair is the most obvious case of going to the ‘door of the court’ (in this case the disciplinary tribunal) before admitting that the director PSU (in this case Phillip Gerber, the founding director and a solicitor) had never had jurisdiction. The PSU action taken against Dr. Dobbs and affecting his wife and six children was based on the trumped-up complaint of the mentally ill mother of a mentally ill 20-year-old woman, neither of whom were parishioners of Figtree Anglican church, and the complaint was ‘sexed up’ by Yvonne Gunning, FAC’s malicious and deceptive Children’s Minister at the time.
And yet Phillip Gerber had flagged from the start that he doubted he had jurisdiction and that the 20-year-old’s consent was a problem. None-the-less this glimpse of a responsible and measured response was soon swamped by the hysteria being generated by Yvonne Gunning and her assistants. Notably, her assistant Camille de Roy hounded some of the Dobbs’ daughters out of a leadership-in-training session in front of their friends for no other reason than the existence of a complaint against their father, not yet even investigated, weeks before the existence of the complaint was disclosed to Dr. and Mrs. Dobbs. The hysteria promptly spread around the parish councillors and church wardens as well as other parishioners, spread with zeal by the assistant minister the rev. Bruce Clarke (a man of monumental lack of wisdom) aided and abetted by the wife of the senior minister Helen Irvine[9].
Not only did he abandon his initial assessment, Phillip Gerber had to have lied about the existence of evidence to support a claim of jurisdiction or otherwise misrepresented the situation in later interactions, such as with the then diocesan chancellor former judge of the Supreme Court of NSW Peter Grogan QC (now deceased) and with the investigator employed to interview so-called ‘witnesses’[10]. At the least, he had to have asked the former judge to take the issue on trust that evidence would be produced. The result was that the former judge made the extraordinary pronouncement that he was ‘comfortable’ that the PSU had jurisdiction when he had no evidence of Dr. Dobbs’ appointment by the rector to a position of leadership (the test under the terms of the Ordinance) and his ‘comfort’ was irrelevant to determining the question as a matter of church law. When the case was referred under the ordinance to the Professional Standards Committee (the PSC), the members, equally without actual evidence to support jurisdiction cravenly adopted the ludicrous ‘finding’ of Peter Grogan and pronounced themselves ‘comfortable’ that they had jurisdiction. This was despite there being a barrister on the committee who should have known better and who should have applied proper legal judgment.
Certainly Mr. Gerber lacked the professional strength and will to stand firm against these people and to stop the matter going further. Instead he subjected the family to 2 years of torture until, on the first day of a hearing to determine whether the tribunal did have jurisdiction, he was forced to ask the tribunal to recommend to the Archbishop that the complaint be withdrawn and dismissed.
In the meantime he stood idly by and allowed the parish members and clergy to abuse the Dobbs’ daughters, who were all under the age of 18, by inflicting on them as well as both their parents systematic shunning culminating in de facto excommunication of the whole family. He did not lift a finger to stop the abuse of the Dobbs’ children, but then neither did the senior minister the rev Rod Irvine, nor did the children’s minister Yvonne Gunning, nor did the youth and young adults minister the rev. Ron Irvine nor did any other member of the clergy and staff employed by Figtree Anglican Church. Nor did the church leaders supply a pastoral carer for the family. When reproached about this, the senior minister the rev. Rod Irvine said that the parents could look after the children, meaning, without any input from the self-described Christians of his church.
Drew and Pippa
A different problem under this heading is exposed by the actions of a later director PSU, solicitor Lachlan Bryant in Drew’s case. Lachlan Bryant said at the end of the first meeting with Drew and Pippa that the Discipline Ordinance 2006 did not really apply to Drew: that meant that Lachlan Bryant had no jurisdiction to accept the complaint nor to even talk to Drew about it. He used this as an excuse for not complying with the requirements of the Ordinance in his dealings with Drew, and for behaving with bullying and intimidation in a joint operation with the diocesan consultant on child matters, the rev. Peter Barnett. Later he went back on that view but instead of returning to base with a properly conducted interview that complied with the Ordinance he pushed forward and he has subjected Drew and Pippa and their four children to 3 years of torture. When I first started writing this article the end was not in sight: since then, 3 years and two months after the first complainant sent a defamatory SMS to former youth group members alleging that Drew was a child abuser (a view that has now been acknowledged by the diocesan representatives as false), a settlement has been signed.
A ‘church worker’
And then we come to the case of a man who had already faced proceedings in the State criminal court concerning the allegations of two men, which had been fully considered by a judge and jury in two separate cases, and in each case the jury acquitted the man and the judges made strong comments about evidence of collusion between the two complainants and fabrication of their evidence. Notwithstanding this the PSU presumed to go behind the properly conducted state court proceedings and act on the complaints thereby subjecting the man and his family to even further torture and legal expenses before a change of holder of the position that was formerly called a regional archdeacon has led to the PSU being made to back off. For the PSU to take a case that has already been dismissed by Judge and jury after fully contested hearings under the State criminal court system is an outrageous example of the director PSU taking upon himself the right to overrule the principle of double jeopardy that protects a person from being in effect subjected to a second trial on the same facts.
Any assumption of jurisdiction in such a case represents abandonment of the rule of law.
Pursuit of a case that is trivial even on the face of it:
Immense resources of the PSU (paid for out of funds supposedly dedicated to the mission of the church) have been expended on cases where the facts even on the face of them were trivial at best, non-existent at worst, and in no way worthy of being accepted as complaints; but even if accepted needed the application of common sense to deal with them. Certainly, none of them should have been subjected to tribunal proceedings.
John’s case
To start with: the case which I have called ‘John’s case’ in the articles on my website. The allegation was that a married youth minister, whom I call ‘John’, had formed a sexual relationship with a young woman parishioner, an adult. There were a number of problems with this case on the face of it: the first was that there was no complaint by either the young woman nor by John’s wife. In fact, BOTH denied the allegation.
The original ‘complainant’ was the daughter-in-law of the senior minister of the parish. Her complaint was then supported by her husband, the son of the senior minister, by the senior minister himself (who could only repeat what he had been told by his son and daughter-in-law), by the youth minister who took over John’s youth ministry and decimated it in a failed attempt to emulate Hillsong (which was located just along the road) and by his wife.
There was no direct evidence of any impropriety in the relationship with the young woman who cleaned the church, babysat for John and his wife, and was part of the youth ministry team. All the so-called ‘evidence’ was circumstantial and not just capable of an innocent interpretation but ONLY capable of an innocent explanation. As an example: there was the allegation that when the youth ministry team gathered, as usual after their meeting at the church, at the local MacDonald’s Family Restaurant, which was also frequented as usual by other parishioners, they found John and the young woman sitting at a table in a conspicuous position. They were joined by the members of the youth ministry team. Hardly capable of interpretation as a secret romantic rendezvous other than in the mind of a malicious or monumentally stupid person.
On another occasion John and the young woman set off to the Christian campsite in Sydney’s outer north-western suburbs on a Friday afternoon earlier than usual to avoid peak hour traffic and upon arriving there within a normal time frame set up for the youth weekend camp under the eyes of the campsite manager.
The senior minister’s son and daughter-in-law tried to rely on a lengthy exchange of SMS between the two, but as they had no information about the content of these – which are in the form of a conversation so that quantity is not a guide to content – there was no evidence of anything improper in the relationship.
Phillip Gerber allowed himself to be dragged into the case, this time by the senior officer of Church Army. An attempt to have reason prevail in an application to the PSC for the complaint to be dismissed as ‘frivolous’ (in the legal sense of being a waste of time) because it lacked an evidentiary foundation was rejected[11]. Diocesan funds were wasted on an investigation that interviewed witnesses who had not seen anything. In this case the process required the ‘evidence’ to be referred to a senior barrister[12] who after an excruciating delay and with evident reluctance had to pronounce that the circumstantial ‘evidence’ was all capable of an innocent explanation, and he had to recommend that no further action be taken.
The Figtree Affair: Figtree Anglican Church (FAC) and the Dobbs family
Then let us consider the ‘facts’, highly coloured and sexed[13] up by FAC’s Children’s Minister Yvonne Gunning and Lee Nicholls (under evident coaching from Yvonne Gunning) in the Figtree case. The gossip that spread so rapidly throughout the parish of FAC was that Dr. Dobbs was guilty of child grooming and sex abuse and adult sexual harassment. None of the allegations was supported by the facts[14]. In fact the alleged two incidents of ‘child sex abuse’ did not involve sex nor abuse but a hug in reasonable circumstances in the presence of other people and the child was aged 14 and 16 respectively. Allegations of grooming could not be sustained because there was no intent, there was no ‘course of action’, there being only two incidents complained of over a period of 4 years to adulthood, and the next complaint was so evidently not any sort of abuse or harassment, being merely a compliment in the presence of the Dobbs’ daughters, when Emma Nicholls was aged 19. The ‘child’ remained a virgin even at age 21 when her medical practitioner was interviewed and gave that evidence[15].
The centrepiece of the allegations was an incident[16] precipitated by Emma herself aged 20[17]. Ultimately, after the child abuse allegations were abandoned on the recommendation of the investigator and the Professional Standards Committee (PSC), and a whole raft of minor allegations cobbled together after the centrepiece incident precipitated by Emma herself had also been rejected[18], it had to be manifestly clear to any unjaundiced eye that the whole thing was a beat-up by Lee Nicholls and Yvonne Gunning and that even the remaining allegations would not stand up to ‘judicial’ scrutiny. In addition Emma herself had effectively withdrawn from the case well before it was set down for a hearing in the disciplinary tribunal and her treating medical practitioner, a GP specialising in Emma’s particular mental illness, made a trenchant criticism of the PSU handling of the case to the investigator.[19]
The members of the PSC recommended that Dr. Dobbs be ‘reprimanded’ (for what, it is hard to understand) and that he attend counselling (for what is also hard to understand). The suggestion from these PSC members that Dr. Dobbs be made aware of the effect he has on people whether intended or not (!) was most certainly far outside anything that the PSC was authorised to consider let alone recommend.[20] In the light of the actual facts of the case the only credible recommendation they could have made (apart from the immediate termination of the case and negotiation with Dr. Dobbs for compensation for the scandalous and incompetent treatment of himself and his whole family) would have been for him to undertake at diocesan expense a course of study of the symptoms and effects of mental illness in certain people like Emma Nicholls and her mother Lee Nicholls. The director PSU and FAC clergy and Yvonne Gunning could also have benefited from such a course.
‘A clergyman’
Phillip Gerber, then Sydney PSU director, ran a 5-day hearing before the diocesan tribunal against ‘a clergyman’ where the complainant alleged that, many years before the respondent became a clergyman, while he was a teacher in a Southern Highlands school and she was a student in her teens, he sat her on his knee. In her mother’s home. While others, including her mother were just a doorway away. This event scarred her for life, she said. She became sullen and unresponsive at school and her previous joy and good progress at school was destroyed.
She gave the names of others in her class who could verify her account of her reaction to this event, which she had only now complained about to the Sydney PSU because the man was now a clergyman. It is important to note that there had never been until then any complaint against the man, and even this complaint was not reported to the school, to the Police nor to the authorities, State or private, responsible for the school.
A solicitor with the keen, sceptical intelligence that is the mark of a good lawyer (do not believe things until you see the evidence) would have followed up with the former school mates named by the complainant, but Phillip Gerber did not. Had he done so he would easily have found them as most still lived in the area or could be located easily, as the solicitor for the respondent found. They did not in any way support the complainant’s story of her reaction to the alleged event, and one had kept the school magazines including an article written by the complainant some time after the date of the alleged incident about how happy she was at school.
So there he was faced with an allegation of one sole event which did not involve grooming or any overt sexual contact which did not take place in connection with the church at all, but years before the man left the teaching profession and studied for ordination. Faced with this, how could it be that the PSU could possibly proceed?
Once the complainant’s very large file from her psychiatrist had been produced to the tribunal it was clear that there was a very serious problem with the PSU prosecution of the case, and the tribunal had no difficulty in rejecting the complainant’s version of events on the basis that she was the unfortunate victim of false memory syndrome.
However, the damage had already been done, through reputation damage and devastation and distress to the clergyman’s wife and family.
Had Phillip Gerber done his job before accepting the complaint then these facts would have been available. And even without an early investigation, the triviality of the alleged event so many years ago and an exaggerated response to it should have sounded a warning as to possible psychiatric issues which would cloud the case.
However, the complainant’s husband was a lawyer and appears to have put pressure on the PSU to take the case, perhaps after exhausting all other avenues of complaint – if so, why was Phillip Gerber unresponsive to the warning contained in that fact?
Drew and Pippa
The facts relied on by the main complainant (the second one was soon shown up to have lied) were trivial in the extreme yet this youth minister who had been mentored by Drew as a part-time paid assistant in the youth ministry between 2002 and 2004 (and thereafter when complainant 1 was studying to be trained as a youth minister) used them as the basis of a defamatory SMS to all the members of former youth groups that he could access with the invitation to pass the SMS on to others they may know of, accusing Dew of child abuse. Then in an unconscionable manner the director PSU and a child abuse ‘consultant’ the rev Peter Barnett accused Drew of child sex abuse and criminal behaviour.
The main facts that were alleged to constitute abuse divided into three categories. The first category involved activities shared or experienced by other members of the youth groups without any complaint[21]. They were carried out only with consent and in public places with youth group members aged from their mid-teens up to and beyond age 18.
The second category involved more particular attention paid to complainant 1[22]. In this category the activities were in public.
The third category contained activities that centred on the relationship between the two men but yet again without there being any allegation of impropriety, as if the mere existence of the relationship was ‘bad’. These activities were mainly in private[23].
None of the facts fitted the descriptions of ‘child abuse’, ‘child sex abuse’, and ‘grooming’ contained in the secular or ecclesiastic law, ordinances or codes of conduct. Each and every action complained of was lawful and ethical. Drew was teaching mentoring and modelling the role of the youth minister as one not of just an organizer of programs and activities, but one of relationship, just as Jesus taught the apostles and Paul taught Timothy and Silas and others who went on to teach the gospel of salvation, by means of relationship and example. This was Drew teaching complainant 1 in the same way as he himself had been taught by his training with John Mark Ministries and mentors in youth ministry. All this was lost on complainant 1 who must rate as Drew’s greatest failure in discipleship.
The whole case was an extraordinary abuse of process by the director PSU, Lachlan Bryant, the child abuse consultant the rev. Peter Barnett (‘Pastor Pete’) and other members of the Anglican Church Sydney diocese bureaucracy, committee members and other office holders.
It is now accepted by the director PSU that the diocesan intervention has not disclosed any ‘reportable conduct’ and the recent settlement requires him to take corrective action rather than leave Drew with the option of suing the diocese for both the announcement to the parish alleging grooming and his improper reporting to the Office of the Children’s Guardian and the NSW Police and/or suing complainants 1 and 2 for their dissemination of false accusations.
Conclusion to Part 1
Earlier in this article I quoted Mr. Greiner: The truth is you would have to be deluded as a commissioner and as an organisation to engage in the behaviour ICAC adopted in relation to Margaret Cunneen.
There is no difficulty in substituting words applicable to these cases pursued by the PSU, thus:
The truth is you would have to be deluded as director PSU and as an organisation of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church to engage in the behaviour they adopted in relation to John and his wife and family.
The truth is you would have to be deluded as director PSU and as an organisation of Figtree Anglican Church and the organisation of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church to engage in the behaviour they adopted in relation to Dr. Scott Dobbs, his wife Machelle and their children.
The truth is you would have to be deluded as director PSU and as an organisation of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church to engage in the behaviour they adopted in relation to ‘a clergyman’.
The truth is you would have to be deluded as director PSU and as a ‘child abuse consultant’ and as an organisation of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church to engage in the behaviour they adopted in relation to Drew and Pippa and their children.
In Part 2 I will look at Sydney Anglican PSU cases that correspond to the finding against ICAC deploring the media release that ‘was an indictment’.
[1] The Independent Commission Against Corruption is a body established by the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 1988 (ICAC Act) which, with some other Acts, governs its operations. The ‘originating policy architect’ of the commission was Gary Sturgess (so described by Paul Kelly in The Weekend Australian newspaper 5-6 December 2015) and the establishing and enabling Act was introduced into the NSW Parliament under the Liberal government led by the Hon. Nick Greiner AC. Both of these men are now highly critical of the direction taken by the Commission under the leadership of Commissioner Megan Latham and are calling for her to stand down in the wake of the damning report by the ICAC Inspector former Supreme Court Judge David Levine.
[2] Professional Standards Unit of the Anglican Church of Australia Sydney diocese, the currant director of which is solicitor Lachlan Bryant. This was established by church legislation in 2002, and its operations are presently governed by the diocesan Discipline Ordinance 2006.
[3] Louise Greentree BA LLB LLM(Hons) ProfCertArb Admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW and to the High Court as a solicitor(now retired). Former partner of Sydney city firm of solicitors. Lately law academic with special interest in Legal Professional Conduct, Alternative Dispute Resolution and restorative processes. Professional training includes Real Justice Restorative Conferencing and Collaborative Law.
[4] Robert H. Jackson, United States Attorney General (1940 – 1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954). He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. “The Federal Prosecutor”, 24 J. Am. Judicature Soc’y 18 (1940) (Address delivered at the Second Annual Conference of United States Attorneys, April 1, 1940).
[5] According to the ICAC website ICAC’s principal functions are in summary: to investigate and expose corrupt conduct in the NSW public sector; to actively prevent corruption through advice and assistance; and to educate the NSW community and public sector about corruption and its effects. Its jurisdiction covers all NSW public sector agencies (except the NSW Police Force) and employees, including government departments, local councils, members of Parliament, ministers, the judiciary and the governor and those performing public official functions.
[6] The Weekend Australian 5-6 December 2015 says: “Mr. Levine’s report revealed that the commissioner authorised the unlawful seizure of Ms. Cunneen’s mobile phones using a ‘notice to produce’, with ICAC later obtaining a search warrant for the mobile phone that it had already obtained.” About a week later there was the farce of a filmed ‘re-enactment’ of a raid and seizure of the phones which were already in ICAC’s possession.
[7] Of the release of the material going back to 2015 to the DPP, Mr. Levine said he had ‘the gravest reservations as to the fairness and propriety of this step’.
[8][8] ICAC commissioner Ms. Megan Latham rejects this and has issued a statement accusing the inspector of legal and factual inaccuracies.
[9] Whose involvement is examined in part 2 of the series ‘This is the Church that Rod Built’ on the website www.churchdispute.com
[10] Despite the fact that no-one had witnessed anything the investigator interviewed some nine or ten people apart from the actual complainant, who had not wanted to make a complaint! Phillip Gerber did instruct the investigator in his letter of appointment that the issue of jurisdiction was settled.
[11] Another example of the PSC not allowing common sense and rational thought to interfere with doing the bidding of the director PSU.
[12] In fact the same barrister who became a member of the Professional Standards Committee and who found that he and his fellow members were ‘comfortable’ that they had jurisdiction in the Figtree case!
[13] For example: Yvonne Gunning and Lee Nicholls both asserted that in the incident referred to in footnote 16, Scott’s hand was not around Emma’s waist but up under her skirt fondling her buttock (or buttocks, depending on which one you believed). Neither of these ‘witnesses’ were present. Emma vehemently denied this and said to the investigator that Scott’s hand was outside her skirt. She went on to say that she put one of her hands over his hand on her waist and with the other hand she stroked his hair.
[14] Not that this deterred Emma Nicholl’s mother Lee. Lee was desperate to get the parish to take Emma over, provide accommodation and furniture for her and look after her because her behaviour at home with Lee and her husband had become so concerning. This was a concern shared by Emma’s internet friend and mentor, a Seventh Day Adventist elder and his wife who offered her a safe haven in one the houses he and his wife owned. It was unfortunate that Emma did not accept their kind offer but went ahead with her own misconceived and irrational plans to move out of home and into the Dobbs’ home, preferably as Dr. Dobbs’ mistress (!), plans which were indicative of her mental state of distorted reality. And Phillip Gerber told Machelle in his initial interview that Emma wanted ‘to replace’ her. What on earth was Phillip Gerber thinking of in accepting the case, even apart from the dodgy jurisdiction issue, when he already knew at that stage that Emma had not wanted to make a complaint and he was supporting a woman who was not a parishioner in relation to actions that did not take place on church property and had no relation to the church activities, and that the woman’s avowed intention was to break up Scott and Machelle’s long, loving and stable marriage.
[15] And, depressingly for those determined to pursue the case, isolated actions comprising a hug at age 14, another one at age 16 and a compliment at age 19 all in the presence of other people do not ‘a course of grooming to initiate or hide child sex abuse’ make.
[16] In this incident, one evening Emma crept up behind Dr. Dobbs while he was working on his computer in his private study accessed through the master bedroom and leaned over him. He, unaware at that moment that it was Emma and not one of his daughters, put an arm around her waist. He hurriedly withdrew it, and in fact ran from the room when Emma fondled his hand and ran her other hand through his hair. Emma herself admitted this in her interview with the investigator.
[17] It would appear that she was trying in some irrational fashion to draw attention to herself when Dr. Dobbs was scarcely aware of her existence nor, disastrously, the totally irrational view that she had formed that he was in love with her, returning her love of which he was also totally unaware. It was not as if he had done anything at all to encourage her to form this view. For a close examination of the issues in the complaint please see my article ‘A Cautionary Tale Unmasked’.
[18] Touching someone’s hand while teaching them at their request to operate a coffee espresso machine does not an incident of sexual harassment make, particularly when the same technique had been applied to teaching assistant minister the rev Bruce Clarke without complaint from him – and as he was one of the group of vicious pursuers of the complaint against Dr. Dobbs in the teeth of the evidence it is unlikely that he would not have complained if he could have!
[19] The fact that Phillip Gerber knew that he had lost his ONLY witness of fact and would not be able to proceed even if he did have jurisdiction, and he did not reveal this to Scott at the time is yet more evidence of his commitment to tricky behaviour that is another example of a bad culture in the PSU which has been carried on by his successors in the role.
[20] This is another example of the members of the PSC going far beyond their jurisdiction and beyond reason in an attempt to justify the errors made in the first place. In other words to sacrifice integrity and truth for protection of the Sydney Anglican church ‘brand’ as someone once described it: protection from public proceedings in a civil court and public scrutiny of its processes.
[21] Including therapeutic massages of legs, backs and/or shoulders before or after exercise (spear-fishing, skiing, fun runs and regular training runs and swims) or for mild muscle injury. This was experienced not just by complainant 1 but many others in the youth groups without anyone characterising them as sexual in nature (and nor did complainant 1).
[22] Including taking him at his request on Drew’s morning training runs and swims (although others also shared these at times) and showering among other men at the public change rooms at the local pool or beach (complainant 1 did not have to look, and he kept his own swimming trunks ON); and once buying complainant 1 a pair of Speedo swimming trunks (on special at a local store) for the routine training swims in a local pool (former Prime Minister Tony Abbott wears these for his own – gruelling – fitness routine).
[23] Examples of activities in pursuit of this relationship included Drew taking time out of his own commitments to work and family to help complainant 1 complete the requirements of the Duke of Edinburgh Award: this involved bush hikes over several nights camping out in freezing temperatures (May-June, one in the Blue Mountains behind Sydney NSW when complainant 1 was just a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday); another involved Drew taking him to check out other sites for youth camps and sharing accommodation; another involved Drew taking him on ministry-training exercises over a weekend at a parishioner’s holiday home, and so forth. Again, no impropriety was alleged and none took place.