Free Killing Time by Andrew Fraser Page B

fighting, the coppers would get hold of him and (quote) “give them a good foot up the arse and send them home”. If that had happened to me as a young kid, I would not have gone home and told my old man what I had been up to in a million years. I wouldn’t have done it because Dad’s very first question would have been: What were you doing to deserve a foot in the arse from the coppers? Instead, what this senior officer told me was that the kids go home and say “I have been assaulted by the police” and the parents immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and think they have a problem with the police. They don’t stop and take stock of what the child has been up to in order to earn that foot in the arse. Rather, these days, by making an allegation of police brutality the kid slips off the hook without being dealt with properly. Such is the idiotic state of our society.
    On 10 March 1972, young Peter Dupas was caught peeping at a woman through the window of her Oakleigh home. He already had a conviction for stabbing another woman multiple times and in such horrific circumstances, so it would have been reasonable to assume that he might have been planning to behave in that way again. He received a fifty dollar fine.
    What happens next is illustrative of my argument that people like Dupas should be dealt with swiftly and early. On 5 November 1973, he rapes a woman in Mitcham at knifepoint and threatens her baby. No one in their right mind would threaten a child but it’s indicative of the type of person Dupas is.
    Ten days later, Dupas is questioned again by police after frightening a twelve-year-old girl by following her and repeatedly staring at her. This staring aspect raises its head again and again in his behaviour and is one of the reasons he could be identified as being at Fawkner Cemetery on the day of the murder of Mersina Halvagis. It is a cold, calculating, unblinking stare that I have personally witnessed on a number of occasions and let me tell you, even for a bloke it is very unnerving indeed!
    A mere fifteen days later, on 30 November 1973, Dupas is charged with the rape and in addition also cops charges of house breaking, stealing and house breaking with intent to commit a felony. This warped kid has become a one-man sexually driven crime wave and is still only twenty years old. He has already chalked up three different sets of sexually related offences. The alarm bells should have been well and truly ringing by now, but the powers that be appear to suffer industrial deafness!
    Then, still not twenty-one, and while on bail for all of the other offences committed in November 1973, Dupas is remanded to a psychiatric hospital for peeping at young girls showering in a toilet block at Rosebud beach. He is fined the princely sum of $140 for an attempt to commit a felony and offensive behaviour.
    How long did Dupas spend in that psychiatric hospital? One day! By the time he has spent his one day in a psychiatric hospital he has committed no fewer than five sexually violent offences or sexual offences. He is remanded in custody at that stage for the previous bail-related offences but he has still only spent one day in psychiatric care. It appears that he did not receive any other psychiatric counselling or treatment during that period yet his violent sexual behaviour was far from normal.
    The long arm of the law finally catches up Dupas on 30 September 1974, just after his twenty-first birthday and he is jailed for nine years with a minimum of five.
    Dupas completed his five-year minimum for the 1973 rape and was released on 4 September 1979. With the remainder of his nine-year term to be served on parole, he was subject to Parole Board supervision for the outstanding four years. This meant that they were supposed to look after him and assist with his re-integration into the community and with his rehabilitation.
    Every red light possible should have been flashing when Dupas was released.