Ryan Haddrick’s move was lauded by a lawyer and an actor
Judge Ryan Haddrick’s five-minute rebuke to a child sex offender during a Brisbane District Court proceeding has gone viral, receiving praise from a lawyer and an actor.
News.com.au reported that Haddrick had been presiding over a hearing involving a 35-year-old man who had committed sex acts against a 14-year-old child after smoking cannabis. The offender’s lawyer, Damien Gates, had told the court that the man’s act “lasted five minutes, not more than that, as he desisted”, per a snippet of the statement published by News.com.au. Gates added that the act was “something that arose in the spirit of the moment, with poor impulse control”, occurring after the child “rubbed her waist up against [the offender], which I might take as something of an invitation”.
The judge responded by telling the court to sit down for five minutes.
“The proposition I am putting through to you and through to your client, is that in five minutes engaging in sexual conduct with a 14-year-old, the penny should have dropped before it occurred. That’s a long time to continue engaging in a sexual act while you know the wrongness of that conduct”, Haddrick told Gates in a snippet of the proceedings published by News.com.au.
The judge said that a 14-year-old could not consent and pointed out that the act would “do significant damage to this child over her forthcoming years”. He slammed the offender’s conduct as “immature, immoral and frankly selfish”.
“We live in an age where we have a very clear understanding now that we didn’t in earlier times, of the pernicious nature of this sort of sexual offending that can stay in the mind and stay in the life story of a victim for years if not decades to come. It robs that child of their innocence, but also many things that they should be able to take for granted, like trust in men, and an understanding of what is sexually appropriate and not appropriate”, Haddrick said in a snippet of the proceedings published by News.com.au.
Websters Lawyers partner Andrew Carpenter, who represents sex crime victims, applauded the judge’s words in a video he posted on social media, calling Haddrick “an absolute legend” in a snippet published by News.com.au.
“It’s not the first time a judge has made a scathing comment against someone, but I think he took a step to really show the gravity of the offending. It’s one of those comments where it’s going to sit with members of the community forever because they’ll feel that courts will take this seriously when all we hear from media is when offenders get lenient sentences”, Carpenter told News.com.au. “Something like this really shows that the judge really took into consideration and immediately rejected the offender’s submission”.
Carpenter pointed out the strength of the message in Haddrick’s call for a five-minute sit-down.
“This was a message sent by the court simply saying that if you think five minutes isn’t a long time, let’s sit down and see how uncomfortable five minutes can be. Five minutes for the victim-survivor would’ve felt like an eternity. It showed to him, this is how much damage a person can do in five minutes”, Carpenter told News.com.au.
Actor and advocate Madeleine West chimed in to say that Haddrick “deserves a medal or a round of applause or an Order of Australia”.
“Finally a judge here in Australia that is willing to call out this crime for what it is and what it looks like”, West said in a video posted this morning, a snippet of which was published by News.com.au.
Commenters on Carpenter’s and West’s videos called Haddrick a “protector” and a “real man”, and said there needed to be “more judges like this”, per snippets published by News.com.au.
The child sex offender in question received an 18-month jail sentence with six months in actual custody. He will become eligible for parole in January, News.com.au reported.
