Women shout abuse at defendant

Press, 17 November 1981, Page 7

Women shout abuse at defendant

Four women who shouted abuse at a man charged with a sex offence were described as being “of pretty limited intelligence and perception”' by Judge Frampton in the District Court yesterday. When the Judge said he did not intend charging them with contempt of court there were derisive comments from the four and some of their supporters in the public gallery. The women — Christine Valerie Young, Kathleen Anne Hamilton, Pauline Anne Hampton and Colleen Joy Johanssen — were told by the Judg£ that the sort of action they took yesterday morning often produced the opposite to the desired result.

He said the defendant, aged 56, who appeared in the

morning facing charges of indecently assaulting one girl, aged eight, and another, aged nine, had not yet pleaded. “I have no idea of his degree of guilt or innocence but your behaviour earlier today could well generate sympathy for him,” said the Judge.

On reflection, he said, to lay charges of contempt would achieve nothing. The defendant, who was further remanded on bail without plea to November 23, was granted interim suppression of his name. It was then that the four women began shouting allegations and abuse at the man. The Judge told the police escort to hold the women in custody until the end of the main list.

One of the four women had to be escorted from the courtroom last week after a similar outburst against a man charged with the attempted rape of a young girl in a rural Canterbury township.

When the court resumed in the afternoon a group of about 15 women carrying protest banners, including one suggesting that all men were potential rapists, stood outside the District Court, chanting. After tolerating the noise and the banners held at the courtroom windows for a brief time, the Judge told Inspector M. E. Griebel and several other police officers to move the chanting protesters on to entertain a lunch-time crowd elsewhere.