Former Shire employee gaoled
This morning, in the District Court in Perth, Judge Gillian Braddock
sentenced former Shire of York depot worker Christian Tarou Chadwick to three-and-a-half years imprisonment for aggravated
burglary.
He also received an additional 18 months for assault.
For pleading guilty—eventually—and saving the State the trouble and
expense of a trial, Christian’s penalty was discounted by 15%.
The sentences will be served concurrently, with a non-parole period of
21 months.
In case readers have forgotten, Christian, while employed by the Shire,
was allegedly responsible for a campaign of bullying that resulted in the
departure of two of his colleagues and ensuing compensation payouts amounting
to about $100,000.
Protected as he was by his friendship with a former deputy CEO, he had
no difficulty in hanging on to his own job for several years—until the current
administration, having dispensed with her services, succeeded last year in
dispensing with his.
See my article The Untouchables
posted 23 November 2015 (http://shireofyork6302realvoice.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/the-untouchables.html).
Mitigation
The judge expressed surprise that Christian had spent no time in
custody since being charged more than two years ago with invading a private
dwelling where a children’s birthday party was in progress and breaking the
male householder’s collarbone with an axe handle.
(No doubt her surprise was compounded by the knowledge that Christian faces
a further charge of breaching the conditions of his bail. He is scheduled to appear on that
charge in Northam Magistrate’s Court next Monday, 26 June.)
Predictably, his lawyer pleaded in mitigation that Christian had had a
terrible childhood, never knew his biological father, has drug and alcohol
‘issues’ and on release faces the threat of immediate deportation to his native
New Zealand.
That plea reflects the postmodern moral imperative that perpetrators of
violence and other habitual contributors to the sum of human misery, far from
being depraved or deranged monsters flouting society’s rules, are in fact helpless
victims of circumstances and inner compulsions beyond their control.
This supposedly gives them an irrefutable claim to our compassion and concern—a
greater claim, we are sometimes prompted to believe, than that of the folk they
subject to terror, humiliation and assault.
Judge Braddock pointed out that the question of deportation was one for
the Department of Immigration, not the court.
‘Mandz’
Christian’s partner, Amanda ‘Mandz’ Macnamara, was in court to witness
his fate.
Mandz is mother to his five children and a Facebook friend of Cr Trevor
Randell (see Notes from Underground
posted 25 May 2016 at http://shireofyork6302realvoice.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/notes-from-underground.html).
Like Christian, Mandz no longer dwells in York. A while ago, she moved with the
children to her mother’s home in Pinjarra.
Mandz has a well-deserved reputation for making her presence felt
wherever she goes.
She lived up to that reputation in court today by screaming at the
mother of Christian’s victim the immortal words ‘Are you proud of what you’ve
done to my family?’
Court security restrained her before she could take matters further and
the grandmother she screamed at left the court precinct unharmed.
Mandz has her own problems with the law. Not very long ago, while she was still living in York, the
police found illicit drugs in her car and at her home and charged her with
possession.
