December 9, 2025 • 17 mins
Our mastheads have discovered that a number of sex offenders have committed crimes - in our communities - after serving their time in prison.
And here’s the thing. They committed these crimes while under a “supervision order”. This little known order, issued by a court, is meant to keep a “ring fence” around these known offenders, to keep tabs on them and monitor their movement. But it has also served to keep crimes by these violent predators largely hidden, due to a veil of secrecy created by legislation that protects them.
Today, senior reporter Chris Vedelago, on the failure of these secrecy laws. And the vexed issue of whether the anonymity protection of known sex offenders should be removed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is morning edition I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Wednesday,
December 10th. Our mastheads have discovered that a number of
sex offenders have committed crimes in our communities after serving
their time in prison. And here's the thing. They committed
(00:24):
these crimes while under a supervision order. This little known
order issued by a court is meant to keep a
ring fence around these known offenders, to keep tabs on
them and monitor their movement. But it has also served
to keep crimes by these violent predators largely hidden due
to a veil of secrecy created by legislation that protects them. Today,
(00:48):
senior reporter Chris Vedelago on the failure of these secrecy
laws and the vexed issue of whether the anonymity protection
of known sex offenders should be removed.
S2 (01:01):
So, Chris, you have just written about these relatively mysterious
and little known supervision orders. So can you just start
by telling us what these are?
S3 (01:09):
So basically what happens is someone who commits a sex
crime and is convicted of that crime, they do like
tests on them assessments, and they determine this person is
a continuing risk to the community. So after they get
out of prison, basically a judge orders them to go
under a supervision order, which basically limits where they can go,
what they can do, where they can live, um, and
attaches conditions like you have to wear a GPS bracelet
(01:32):
or an alcohol detection bracelet if they've got alcohol and
drug problems. It's basically to create a ring fence around
these people to try to ensure they don't just disappear
in the community and offend again and their controversial orders,
because the people have been convicted, they've finished their sentence,
but the justice system is still inside their life.
S2 (01:50):
Okay. Well, we're going to get into that a little
bit later. But first off, can you just tell me
how many people are actually on these orders in Victoria
and do they actually exist in other states or territories.
S3 (01:59):
At any given time, in any year? There's somewhere between
about 120 and 130, in Victoria. People like this who
are considered enough of a risk that they need to
be watched. This system, this post sentence system, exists pretty
much in every state and territory in various incarnations. They're
not all the same, but the intention of each one
is to ensure that these people aren't allowed to go
(02:20):
down the slippery slope to offending again without intervention.
S2 (02:23):
Okay, now this is a pretty dark story that you've
just covered. It's the kind of material that can really
sort of make you look behind your back as you're
walking down the street, right? So why did you even
want to look into this?
S3 (02:34):
Look, I've been reporting about sex offender system in Victoria
for a long time, and it's really hard to get
a handle on because the legislation, the various pieces of
it that Serious Offenders Act, which I wrote about in
this story or the sex Offenders Register, are shrouded in secrecy.
A lot of the times it's basic stats and information
about these systems are not made publicly available. They're wrapped
(02:57):
in a cloak of secrecy. And I started to see
various places, problems with it. There was offending going on
that wasn't being reported because we weren't able to report it.
Names were being redacted, so we didn't know who these
people were yet. What brought me to this particular case
was about a year ago, Victoria Police put out a
(03:17):
media release saying, this man, Theo Briggs, is on the run.
He's a registered sex offender. He's on a supervision order,
you know, asking the public if you see this man
along with a photo they published, please report it. Three
days later, they emailed us and said, look, he's been captured.
Please remove all the material about his escape that you've published.
I thought, wow, that's this. This must be what, the
(03:38):
third or fourth one this year. Who is this guy?
And I googled him and I saw his history. And
then he just kind of disappeared into the court system.
And then about a year later, I see his name
pop up on a list and he's pleading guilty. And
I thought, wow. And attached to it was a list
of 50 odd other charges that he'd racked up. And
I thought, what is this? So I went to court
(04:00):
and that's how the process started.
S2 (04:04):
Okay, now we're going to get into this man's particular case.
And it is a disturbing one in just a moment.
But first of all, you know, let's just rewind there
to the beginning. You know, when you first found out
about this, because the law actually prevented you from reporting
on this particular case. So what did you do? Like
how did you eventually come to write about it and
actually name this particular violent man this reoffender?
S3 (04:25):
So basically I saw I saw that he was going
to court, you know, concluding a proceeding where he was
pleading guilty. And so I went to the county court
media team and said, I want to come to the hearing.
I'd like a link. And there was some toing and
froing with the judge about whether or not I would
get a link. And then I showed up on the
audio visual link to watch it. And basically at the
start of the proceeding, the judge almost kind of addressed
(04:46):
me and said, you know, I understand the media is
in the courtroom now. The media needs to understand under
the Serious Offenders Act, these are all things you cannot report.
So while I was free to be in the courtroom,
I couldn't do what a reporter does on a daily
basis for just about any other crime in the state
of Victoria, which is take notes and put it in
the newspaper. This person was charged with whatever. I couldn't
(05:07):
report any of that because the act said that what
was going on inside that courtroom was unreportable. And I
went to the hearing. I got offline, and then I
basically started reading the legislation, and I realized there was
actually a way I could make a special application that
might let me publish what the outcome of this matter
would be.
S2 (05:26):
Okay. Well, just take us briefly through that, because even
though you know it is a legal matter, many listeners
would think, well, why do I want to hear about this?
But you told me right before recording, this was actually
the first time that a challenge has been mounted under
this legislation in Victoria, and that even our own lawyers
at the paper were sort of thinking, wow, this is
(05:46):
going to be an uphill battle for you to get
this exception for the first time in Victoria.
S3 (05:51):
Yeah. And it's literally called the Exceptional Circumstances Test. And
in order to to get the right to publish this
or to give permission to publish this, we had to
prove we had exceptional reason to basically ask for an
order overriding the legislation. and our initial opinion was we're
never going to win this. It's worth a try, but
we're never going to win this. The test is so high,
(06:11):
and when I spoke to people at the court, they
couldn't find any record of anyone ever making an application
in Victoria under the act. Seven years on, our lawyers
couldn't find any case law on it. There was stuff
on the margins that we could kind of quote in
our favour, but no one had ever tried this before.
The system had just been ticking along in virtual silence
for seven years.
S2 (06:30):
Okay, well, then you're the first person in Victoria you've
looked under this rock, so to speak, and you won
the case against everyone's expectations. So tell us what you
have learned about Theo Briggs.
S3 (06:40):
What I found out was that basically, he's been a
criminal his entire adult life, committing very serious crimes, including
home invasions and in contravention of supervision order. In the past,
absconding from special sex offender facilities, committing assaults, weapon possession,
obtaining and holding like violent pornography, all this sort of stuff.
(07:01):
So I learned I mean, I knew most about his
previous history. What I didn't didn't know was why he
was placed at a residential rehab facility in inner Melbourne.
This is a dangerous man who's been in and out
of these special sex offender containment facilities that we have
in the state's north, right. Places that are designed to
house these guys. He's been in and out of them.
All of a sudden, in early April 2024, they decide
(07:24):
to place him inside the community at a rehab center.
And I didn't understand why he was there. And what
I subsequently found out was they approved him to go there.
For some reason, they never told us. But, um, he
leaves that facility in November and he goes on a
basically a 36 hour crime spree that included two home invasions,
stealing a car, holding an Uber driver at knifepoint, kidnapping.
(07:47):
And then he accost this woman in the park and
strangles her. And she survives. But he basically, he kidnapped
her effectively, and he attempted to strangle her. And if
it hadn't been for a gentleman in the neighborhood hearing
her scream, we don't know how it would have ended.
S2 (08:04):
And I believe a little bit more detail about this
woman's experience came out in court. Is that right? It
sounds like everyone's sort of worst nightmare.
S3 (08:13):
This woman was walking through Albert Park, you know, minding
her own business, going home, going, going shopping. I don't know,
but she stopped at a small little kiosk because it
was raining to get out of the rain. And this
man just kind of came out of came out of
nowhere and started talking to her. And she didn't really
want to engage with him. So he takes her backpack
(08:34):
and he basically says, you're going to come with me.
I've got your backpack. She walks for a little bit saying,
you know, please give it back, please give it back.
And he basically starts cursing at her and threatening her
and says, don't run, don't scream. I don't want to
hurt you. Don't do those things. And she runs and
she screams and he grabs her and he punches her
in the shoulder. He puts her on the ground and
he basically puts his hands around her throat and she's
(08:56):
begging him to stop. And at that point he stops.
They get up and they're walking. He's basically saying, you're
coming with me. And they walk to a certain point.
And this man that had heard the screams was wandering
the park found them, and Briggs basically said, all right, well,
you go with this guy, he'll take you back to
his car. And then he he runs off and he disappears.
(09:17):
For another, I think it was another 12 or 14
hours before he's seen in a residential street, a few
suburbs over knocking on people's doors randomly early in the morning,
and someone calls 000 and the police grab him. But
none of that, none of none of that sequence of
events we were able to know until this court application
was successful.
S2 (09:43):
We'll be right back. Okay, now that's scary enough. But
as you have just reported, Theo Briggs is actually just
one of 25 offenders who've been convicted of committing serious
sex crimes and violent acts while under the supervision orders
(10:05):
since 2018. So what do we know about those cases?
S3 (10:08):
Very, very little. Very little. I've got six other applications
for people I suspect have committed serious violence or serious
sex crimes while on supervision orders. We but we really
don't know because most of the time these people are
given pseudonyms and their information is never published by the judge.
They have several. There's several reasons in the legislation why
(10:31):
this secrecy has to exist this way. Some of it
is about the protection of the victims. Although in the
state of Victoria we can't report the identities of sex
crime victims anyways. But mostly it has to do with
ensuring the best possible chance of rehabilitation for these offenders.
And the idea that your identities are kept secret and
their their crimes are kept secret. Therefore, they'll be more
(10:53):
likely to engage with rehabilitation. But the reality is, while
the supervision system helps stop offenders from committing crimes, it's
not foolproof. And it needs a hard look at the
way it is working. Because 25 people that were supposed
to be being watched by government agencies, intimately watched, went
(11:13):
on to commit a serious crime. And those crimes have
victims and their crimes not just talking like they went
off and smoked some meth. Like, these are serious sex
and violence crimes that these people committed, and they were
supposed to be being watched by the government.
S2 (11:28):
Okay. So you've walked us through this argument that, you know,
there's a necessity to keep these people their identities a secret.
It's going to hurt their chances of being rehabilitated. Foremost
amongst those reasons. What did Theo Briggs's defense team argue?
S3 (11:41):
Oh, they basically said that Theo's safety and welfare in
prison would be placed in jeopardy if it was widely
known that he'd committed sex crimes in the past, which
the judge didn't agree with as a substantial enough argument
to defeat what we were trying to do. His secondary
argument was that us being able to publish this would
(12:04):
basically hurt Briggs's family's and friends, their feelings, their reputation,
what have you, which the judge didn't accept either. I mean,
it's the defense lawyer had a lot to say about
the way media reports on sex crimes, and none of
it was was favorable that we specialize. We do this,
you know, we make a spectacle of it. I don't
(12:25):
believe that's the case in the way that The Age
reports this stuff. And clearly, the judge found there was
a public interest in doing what we did and the
feedback we've gotten inside and outside the system from the public,
from people connected to the judiciary and connected to the
justice system has been overwhelmingly positive.
S2 (12:43):
Okay. Now I'm just going to be devil's advocate here
for just a moment and ask you, you know, couldn't
it be argued that these guys have or women, if
that's the case, have served their time? Yes, they are
on an order because the state says that they're a
safety risk, but they've served their prison sentence. They should
be due their anonymity.
S3 (13:01):
Look, lots of lots of, um, like Liberty Victoria type
people make that argument and, look, there's something to be
looked into there, but at the same time, we have
to balance. It's a balancing act, right? And and people
I've interviewed have said it's a balancing act. Understanding the
risk these people pose versus the importance of protecting the public. Um,
the system in this form has has not been challenged constitutionally.
(13:26):
And any kind of challenges that have kind of fallen
by the wayside, like the system exists for a reason.
And it's it's pretty much accepted that this has to
be done, and these people can't be left to their
own devices. It's no longer feasible because they they reoffend.
Some of them, it's a minority of them seriously reoffend.
I mean, the group that monitors these, the government agency
(13:48):
that monitors them in Victoria is called the Post-sentence authority. Now,
they say recidivism for serious offenses is about 2%, which
is a really strong figure. But at the same time,
we're not talking about people jaywalking. The recidivism, the crimes
that they go on to commit is very serious. As
Theo Briggs's rampage, for lack of a better word, through
Saint Kilda and elsewhere a year ago. Goes to show.
S2 (14:12):
So, Chris, is there an argument to be made that
should people who have been convicted of violent crimes such
as these, who then re-offend while they're on these supervision orders,
should they simply not be granted their anonymity? Like, might
that be where the line should be drawn in future?
S3 (14:27):
It could be. And what we're hoping is that this
order that we obtain from the judge on Friday will
help that that the next time that this goes up
to court, we can go in there with this order
and say, look, we would like this person's name, or
we would like to be able to publish the details
of this person's offending. Here's here's the precedent, effectively, because
it's been shown there's a public interest to this. And
(14:49):
I'm very interested to see what comes out of the
six cases that I've asked for, because I suspect some
of them might not be too serious and others might
be very concerning.
S4 (15:00):
And I have to ask you.
S2 (15:01):
About something that you mentioned to me just before recording,
and you've been reporting for about 18 years, and you
told me that this win on Friday is probably the
most important date you've had as a journalist. Why?
S3 (15:15):
Oh, because you got to reveal information that public needed
to know and it's been so hard to get at.
Like I've mentioned, I've been trying to report on this
space a long time, and there's just so many dark
corners to it. So to have a win like this,
it felt really good. Like I was it felt like
I was I was adding adding something like, look, a
lot of the reporting I do is about the underworld.
(15:36):
It's very interesting. It's exciting, but it's not particularly consequential.
This I found to be very important. And the response
that we've gotten from members of the public who didn't
know about the system or have concerns about this, but
they aren't being articulated like, that's why I think it's important.
And because it started conversations inside the justice system and
(15:59):
the government about this system, because so many people don't
know that it exists or don't know how it operates.
S2 (16:10):
Well, Chris, we're so lucky that you have dug into this.
It's certainly something I had never heard about before. So
thank you so much for your time.
S3 (16:19):
Thank you.
S2 (16:26):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers,
with technical assistance by Cormac Lally. Our executive producer is
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(16:48):
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the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is morning edition I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Wednesday,
December 10th. Our mastheads have discovered that a number of
sex offenders have committed crimes in our communities after serving
their time in prison. And here's the thing. They committed
(00:24):
these crimes while under a supervision order. This little known
order issued by a court is meant to keep a
ring fence around these known offenders, to keep tabs on
them and monitor their movement. But it has also served
to keep crimes by these violent predators largely hidden due
to a veil of secrecy created by legislation that protects them. Today,
(00:48):
senior reporter Chris Vedelago on the failure of these secrecy
laws and the vexed issue of whether the anonymity protection
of known sex offenders should be removed.
S2 (01:01):
So, Chris, you have just written about these relatively mysterious
and little known supervision orders. So can you just start
by telling us what these are?
S3 (01:09):
So basically what happens is someone who commits a sex
crime and is convicted of that crime, they do like
tests on them assessments, and they determine this person is
a continuing risk to the community. So after they get
out of prison, basically a judge orders them to go
under a supervision order, which basically limits where they can go,
what they can do, where they can live, um, and
attaches conditions like you have to wear a GPS bracelet
(01:32):
or an alcohol detection bracelet if they've got alcohol and
drug problems. It's basically to create a ring fence around
these people to try to ensure they don't just disappear
in the community and offend again and their controversial orders,
because the people have been convicted, they've finished their sentence,
but the justice system is still inside their life.
S2 (01:50):
Okay. Well, we're going to get into that a little
bit later. But first off, can you just tell me
how many people are actually on these orders in Victoria
and do they actually exist in other states or territories.
S3 (01:59):
At any given time, in any year? There's somewhere between
about 120 and 130, in Victoria. People like this who
are considered enough of a risk that they need to
be watched. This system, this post sentence system, exists pretty
much in every state and territory in various incarnations. They're
not all the same, but the intention of each one
is to ensure that these people aren't allowed to go
(02:20):
down the slippery slope to offending again without intervention.
S2 (02:23):
Okay, now this is a pretty dark story that you've
just covered. It's the kind of material that can really
sort of make you look behind your back as you're
walking down the street, right? So why did you even
want to look into this?
S3 (02:34):
Look, I've been reporting about sex offender system in Victoria
for a long time, and it's really hard to get
a handle on because the legislation, the various pieces of
it that Serious Offenders Act, which I wrote about in
this story or the sex Offenders Register, are shrouded in secrecy.
A lot of the times it's basic stats and information
about these systems are not made publicly available. They're wrapped
(02:57):
in a cloak of secrecy. And I started to see
various places, problems with it. There was offending going on
that wasn't being reported because we weren't able to report it.
Names were being redacted, so we didn't know who these
people were yet. What brought me to this particular case
was about a year ago, Victoria Police put out a
(03:17):
media release saying, this man, Theo Briggs, is on the run.
He's a registered sex offender. He's on a supervision order,
you know, asking the public if you see this man
along with a photo they published, please report it. Three
days later, they emailed us and said, look, he's been captured.
Please remove all the material about his escape that you've published.
I thought, wow, that's this. This must be what, the
(03:38):
third or fourth one this year. Who is this guy?
And I googled him and I saw his history. And
then he just kind of disappeared into the court system.
And then about a year later, I see his name
pop up on a list and he's pleading guilty. And
I thought, wow. And attached to it was a list
of 50 odd other charges that he'd racked up. And
I thought, what is this? So I went to court
(04:00):
and that's how the process started.
S2 (04:04):
Okay, now we're going to get into this man's particular case.
And it is a disturbing one in just a moment.
But first of all, you know, let's just rewind there
to the beginning. You know, when you first found out
about this, because the law actually prevented you from reporting
on this particular case. So what did you do? Like
how did you eventually come to write about it and
actually name this particular violent man this reoffender?
S3 (04:25):
So basically I saw I saw that he was going
to court, you know, concluding a proceeding where he was
pleading guilty. And so I went to the county court
media team and said, I want to come to the hearing.
I'd like a link. And there was some toing and
froing with the judge about whether or not I would
get a link. And then I showed up on the
audio visual link to watch it. And basically at the
start of the proceeding, the judge almost kind of addressed
(04:46):
me and said, you know, I understand the media is
in the courtroom now. The media needs to understand under
the Serious Offenders Act, these are all things you cannot report.
So while I was free to be in the courtroom,
I couldn't do what a reporter does on a daily
basis for just about any other crime in the state
of Victoria, which is take notes and put it in
the newspaper. This person was charged with whatever. I couldn't
(05:07):
report any of that because the act said that what
was going on inside that courtroom was unreportable. And I
went to the hearing. I got offline, and then I
basically started reading the legislation, and I realized there was
actually a way I could make a special application that
might let me publish what the outcome of this matter
would be.
S2 (05:26):
Okay. Well, just take us briefly through that, because even
though you know it is a legal matter, many listeners
would think, well, why do I want to hear about this?
But you told me right before recording, this was actually
the first time that a challenge has been mounted under
this legislation in Victoria, and that even our own lawyers
at the paper were sort of thinking, wow, this is
(05:46):
going to be an uphill battle for you to get
this exception for the first time in Victoria.
S3 (05:51):
Yeah. And it's literally called the Exceptional Circumstances Test. And
in order to to get the right to publish this
or to give permission to publish this, we had to
prove we had exceptional reason to basically ask for an
order overriding the legislation. and our initial opinion was we're
never going to win this. It's worth a try, but
we're never going to win this. The test is so high,
(06:11):
and when I spoke to people at the court, they
couldn't find any record of anyone ever making an application
in Victoria under the act. Seven years on, our lawyers
couldn't find any case law on it. There was stuff
on the margins that we could kind of quote in
our favour, but no one had ever tried this before.
The system had just been ticking along in virtual silence
for seven years.
S2 (06:30):
Okay, well, then you're the first person in Victoria you've
looked under this rock, so to speak, and you won
the case against everyone's expectations. So tell us what you
have learned about Theo Briggs.
S3 (06:40):
What I found out was that basically, he's been a
criminal his entire adult life, committing very serious crimes, including
home invasions and in contravention of supervision order. In the past,
absconding from special sex offender facilities, committing assaults, weapon possession,
obtaining and holding like violent pornography, all this sort of stuff.
(07:01):
So I learned I mean, I knew most about his
previous history. What I didn't didn't know was why he
was placed at a residential rehab facility in inner Melbourne.
This is a dangerous man who's been in and out
of these special sex offender containment facilities that we have
in the state's north, right. Places that are designed to
house these guys. He's been in and out of them.
All of a sudden, in early April 2024, they decide
(07:24):
to place him inside the community at a rehab center.
And I didn't understand why he was there. And what
I subsequently found out was they approved him to go there.
For some reason, they never told us. But, um, he
leaves that facility in November and he goes on a
basically a 36 hour crime spree that included two home invasions,
stealing a car, holding an Uber driver at knifepoint, kidnapping.
(07:47):
And then he accost this woman in the park and
strangles her. And she survives. But he basically, he kidnapped
her effectively, and he attempted to strangle her. And if
it hadn't been for a gentleman in the neighborhood hearing
her scream, we don't know how it would have ended.
S2 (08:04):
And I believe a little bit more detail about this
woman's experience came out in court. Is that right? It
sounds like everyone's sort of worst nightmare.
S3 (08:13):
This woman was walking through Albert Park, you know, minding
her own business, going home, going, going shopping. I don't know,
but she stopped at a small little kiosk because it
was raining to get out of the rain. And this
man just kind of came out of came out of
nowhere and started talking to her. And she didn't really
want to engage with him. So he takes her backpack
(08:34):
and he basically says, you're going to come with me.
I've got your backpack. She walks for a little bit saying,
you know, please give it back, please give it back.
And he basically starts cursing at her and threatening her
and says, don't run, don't scream. I don't want to
hurt you. Don't do those things. And she runs and
she screams and he grabs her and he punches her
in the shoulder. He puts her on the ground and
he basically puts his hands around her throat and she's
(08:56):
begging him to stop. And at that point he stops.
They get up and they're walking. He's basically saying, you're
coming with me. And they walk to a certain point.
And this man that had heard the screams was wandering
the park found them, and Briggs basically said, all right, well,
you go with this guy, he'll take you back to
his car. And then he he runs off and he disappears.
(09:17):
For another, I think it was another 12 or 14
hours before he's seen in a residential street, a few
suburbs over knocking on people's doors randomly early in the morning,
and someone calls 000 and the police grab him. But
none of that, none of none of that sequence of
events we were able to know until this court application
was successful.
S2 (09:43):
We'll be right back. Okay, now that's scary enough. But
as you have just reported, Theo Briggs is actually just
one of 25 offenders who've been convicted of committing serious
sex crimes and violent acts while under the supervision orders
(10:05):
since 2018. So what do we know about those cases?
S3 (10:08):
Very, very little. Very little. I've got six other applications
for people I suspect have committed serious violence or serious
sex crimes while on supervision orders. We but we really
don't know because most of the time these people are
given pseudonyms and their information is never published by the judge.
They have several. There's several reasons in the legislation why
(10:31):
this secrecy has to exist this way. Some of it
is about the protection of the victims. Although in the
state of Victoria we can't report the identities of sex
crime victims anyways. But mostly it has to do with
ensuring the best possible chance of rehabilitation for these offenders.
And the idea that your identities are kept secret and
their their crimes are kept secret. Therefore, they'll be more
(10:53):
likely to engage with rehabilitation. But the reality is, while
the supervision system helps stop offenders from committing crimes, it's
not foolproof. And it needs a hard look at the
way it is working. Because 25 people that were supposed
to be being watched by government agencies, intimately watched, went
(11:13):
on to commit a serious crime. And those crimes have
victims and their crimes not just talking like they went
off and smoked some meth. Like, these are serious sex
and violence crimes that these people committed, and they were
supposed to be being watched by the government.
S2 (11:28):
Okay. So you've walked us through this argument that, you know,
there's a necessity to keep these people their identities a secret.
It's going to hurt their chances of being rehabilitated. Foremost
amongst those reasons. What did Theo Briggs's defense team argue?
S3 (11:41):
Oh, they basically said that Theo's safety and welfare in
prison would be placed in jeopardy if it was widely
known that he'd committed sex crimes in the past, which
the judge didn't agree with as a substantial enough argument
to defeat what we were trying to do. His secondary
argument was that us being able to publish this would
(12:04):
basically hurt Briggs's family's and friends, their feelings, their reputation,
what have you, which the judge didn't accept either. I mean,
it's the defense lawyer had a lot to say about
the way media reports on sex crimes, and none of
it was was favorable that we specialize. We do this,
you know, we make a spectacle of it. I don't
(12:25):
believe that's the case in the way that The Age
reports this stuff. And clearly, the judge found there was
a public interest in doing what we did and the
feedback we've gotten inside and outside the system from the public,
from people connected to the judiciary and connected to the
justice system has been overwhelmingly positive.
S2 (12:43):
Okay. Now I'm just going to be devil's advocate here
for just a moment and ask you, you know, couldn't
it be argued that these guys have or women, if
that's the case, have served their time? Yes, they are
on an order because the state says that they're a
safety risk, but they've served their prison sentence. They should
be due their anonymity.
S3 (13:01):
Look, lots of lots of, um, like Liberty Victoria type
people make that argument and, look, there's something to be
looked into there, but at the same time, we have
to balance. It's a balancing act, right? And and people
I've interviewed have said it's a balancing act. Understanding the
risk these people pose versus the importance of protecting the public. Um,
the system in this form has has not been challenged constitutionally.
(13:26):
And any kind of challenges that have kind of fallen
by the wayside, like the system exists for a reason.
And it's it's pretty much accepted that this has to
be done, and these people can't be left to their
own devices. It's no longer feasible because they they reoffend.
Some of them, it's a minority of them seriously reoffend.
I mean, the group that monitors these, the government agency
(13:48):
that monitors them in Victoria is called the Post-sentence authority. Now,
they say recidivism for serious offenses is about 2%, which
is a really strong figure. But at the same time,
we're not talking about people jaywalking. The recidivism, the crimes
that they go on to commit is very serious. As
Theo Briggs's rampage, for lack of a better word, through
Saint Kilda and elsewhere a year ago. Goes to show.
S2 (14:12):
So, Chris, is there an argument to be made that
should people who have been convicted of violent crimes such
as these, who then re-offend while they're on these supervision orders,
should they simply not be granted their anonymity? Like, might
that be where the line should be drawn in future?
S3 (14:27):
It could be. And what we're hoping is that this
order that we obtain from the judge on Friday will
help that that the next time that this goes up
to court, we can go in there with this order
and say, look, we would like this person's name, or
we would like to be able to publish the details
of this person's offending. Here's here's the precedent, effectively, because
it's been shown there's a public interest to this. And
(14:49):
I'm very interested to see what comes out of the
six cases that I've asked for, because I suspect some
of them might not be too serious and others might
be very concerning.
S4 (15:00):
And I have to ask you.
S2 (15:01):
About something that you mentioned to me just before recording,
and you've been reporting for about 18 years, and you
told me that this win on Friday is probably the
most important date you've had as a journalist. Why?
S3 (15:15):
Oh, because you got to reveal information that public needed
to know and it's been so hard to get at.
Like I've mentioned, I've been trying to report on this
space a long time, and there's just so many dark
corners to it. So to have a win like this,
it felt really good. Like I was it felt like
I was I was adding adding something like, look, a
lot of the reporting I do is about the underworld.
(15:36):
It's very interesting. It's exciting, but it's not particularly consequential.
This I found to be very important. And the response
that we've gotten from members of the public who didn't
know about the system or have concerns about this, but
they aren't being articulated like, that's why I think it's important.
And because it started conversations inside the justice system and
(15:59):
the government about this system, because so many people don't
know that it exists or don't know how it operates.
S2 (16:10):
Well, Chris, we're so lucky that you have dug into this.
It's certainly something I had never heard about before. So
thank you so much for your time.
S3 (16:19):
Thank you.
S2 (16:26):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers,
with technical assistance by Cormac Lally. Our executive producer is
Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To
listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow
the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen
to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to
(16:48):
support independent journalism, visit the page or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And
to stay up to date, sign up to our Morning
Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
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