Free Killing Time by Andrew Fraser

the same judge who sentenced me years later, Judge Leo Hart.
    Peter Dupas was born in Sydney on 6 July 1953, the youngest of three children. His parents moved to Melbourne while he was still a baby. At fifteen years of age, Dupas first manifested his violent disposition towards women when, on 3 October 1968, he visited unannounced the house next door to where he was living in Melbourne’s Mount Waverley and asked the single mother whether he could borrow a kitchen knife as little Peter was helping peel the vegies for the evening’s dinner. Not surprisingly, Dupas’s first victim thought “What a nice boy, he is helping his mum.” Julie went to the kitchen and gave him a knife, whereupon Dupas, without warning, attacked Julie and started stabbing her over and over. He knocked her to the ground and ended up on top of her. Dupas then started crying, saying “I can’t stop, I can’t stop.” This was an extraordinary outburst from such a young offender and he was duly sentenced in the Children’s Court to eighteen months’ probation and sent to a psychiatric hospital for examination.
    Note the obvious power of this attack when a fifteen-year-old boy easily overpowers a grown woman. This attack was a precursor of things to come. Every alarm bell in creation should have been ringing in that Children’s Court, even back then.
    You will love this: have a guess how many times Dupas saw the psychiatrist for psychiatric evaluation after such an extraordinary, unannounced, gratuitous and violent assault. Once! Yes, he saw a psychiatrist once. That was the extent of his supervision over eighteen months while subject to a probation order.
    For many years, as a defence lawyer, when I couldn’t avoid it, I appeared in the Children’s Court. The attitude of the magistrates in the Children’s Court is one of benevolence. Time and again little Johnny reappears before the Court having offended again, and once again the child is released on a bond to be of good behaviour for a given period of time, notwithstanding the fact that they have often breached a previous bond or bonds. In extreme cases, the young offender is placed on probation. Probation, while it is ordered to be supervised, is in fact unsupervised. By definition, probation is supervised; but such is the state of the system that probation is nothing more than window dressing.
    I should know. I have experienced the joys of supervision by the parole board personally and can say that parole has done absolutely nothing for me and on occasions has actually placed impediments in the way of my rehabilitation. Here are a couple of examples. When Court in the Middle was published, it was arranged for me to be interviewed on Enough Rope on the ABC, the highest rating TV interview show in the country. To be interviewed I had to travel to Sydney. I should say the ticket was paid for by my publishers and I was to be travelling up and back on the same day with my manager and a publicist.
    I was told, to my amazement, that my request to travel would probably be denied. I was staggered. This was the launch of my new life. On my next visit I told my parole officer that I would certainly sell more books if permission to travel was refused. Why? “Because I will pillory you in the media.” To which came the reply, “But it won’t be my decision.” I replied: “You will be the one conveying the decision to me.” About an hour later I was telephoned and told I was allowed to travel.
    The second and more surprising example was when I applied for a state government clearance to work with children. I had been working with a Melbourne charity, Open Family, speaking in schools to kids about the dangers of drug use and how drugs can bring anyone down. One would have thought that these talks were of enormous relevance to kids and of real community benefit, so an application was made for a clearance. I attended Parole and my