Women justices

Press, 14 December 1977, Page 18

Women justices

SYDNEYSIDE With

Janet Parr

One of the main arguments advanced against appointing women as Crown prosecutors has been that they should not be exposed to the detailed evidence of rape and murder trials. It was not a view he shared, said Mr Walker the NSW Attorney-General when announcing the appointment of the first woman in the state. And while those who have had reservations about such appointments no doubt still hold to their ooinions, the selection of Miss Jane Matthews to serve as NSW’s first woman Crown prosecutor has still been widely approved. One commentator remarked that if a woman decided to take up a career in criminology she would be well aware of all that the job implied. Miss Matthews’ qualifications, said Mr Walker, would enable her to fill the role as well as anyone. She is counsel assisting the present Royal Commission into Prisons and before that she played a prominent part in the Royal Commission on

Human Relationships as counsel assisting the chairman of that inquiry, Justice Elizabeth Evatt. Miss Matthews is the wife of Mr Justice John Wootten, who is chairman of the NSW Law Reform Commission. They have two homes, one in Sydney

and one in Kangaroo Valley, which lies behind the South coast town of Nowra where they breed quarter horses on a 240acre farm. Miss Matthews’ appointment is the second major step forward that women have taken recently within the NSW legal system. Mrs Helen Larcombe had earlier been named as the first woman stipendiary Magistrate in the state to be appointed permanently to a children’s court. There are 91 stipendiary magistrates in NSW. Three of them are women — Mrs Larcombe, Mrs

Margaret Sleeman and Miss Suzanne Schreiner. It was about 1860 that fulltime paid magistrates first presided over courts of petty sessions dealing with minor offences. Like other magistrates Mrs Larcombe served a kind of “apprenticeship” working in various courts to learn court procedures and office routines. She has two years experience as a stipendiary Magistrate on the KogarahSutherland circuit in Sydney and has been a solicitor in private practice for more than 10 years. Her new appointment is to Minda children’s court in another Sydney suburb, Lidcombe, and she will also preside for two days each week at Wollongong children’s court. She has a lot of faith, she says, in modern methods of dealing with child offenders. Mrs Larcombe who is in her late thirties and the mother of three teen-age children herself says she thinks that changing moral attitudes have made it hard for parents to lay down rigid rules for children.