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Jill Meagher

Jill Meagher

We’ve recently expressed our dismay over the release from prison in California of convicted rapist Christopher Hubbart, who had been released once before on forensic medical advice and went right back to raping. And we have related the agonizing story of college student Stephanie Schmidt, who was murdered in Pittsburg, Kansas, by a coworker who, unbeknownst to her or anyone else in the restaurant where she worked, was a paroled violent sex offender.

Now our friend and correspondent Ann Chua has brought forward the case of Jill Meagher, murdered last year in Australia by – you guessed it – a parolee with a history of violent sexual attacks.

Ms. Meagher was a 29-year-old Irish woman who worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Melbourne. Sometime after midnight on Friday/Saturday, September 21 and 22, 2012, she was walking home from a pub in the suburb of Brunswick, where she had gone with some co-workers. As soon as her husband Tom awoke and realized Jill had not returned home, he rushed out to look for her. Five days later, after being identified by Victoria Police detectives on a closed circuit surveillance recording, 41-year-old pastry cook Adrian Ernest Bayley led police to the shallow grave in Gisborne South, about 50 kilometers away, where he had buried Meagher.

This case is clearly tragic. But what is outrageous about it is that Mr. Bayley was a bad actor from the get-go. At age 19, he raped two teenagers, one a family friend. He went on to a career of violent sexual attacks on women that lasted more than two decades. He served only 22 months of his first five-year sentence and later admitted he faked his way through a prison sex offender program to earn early release. In 2000, he set out on a one-man crime spree in St. Kilda, attacking and raping five prostitutes after violently forcing himself on them.

He was on parole when he attacked, raped and strangled Jill Meagher.

This speaks for itself. But let’s let Mr. Bayley himself have the last word. I don’t often agree with predators, but in this case, whether his opinion is genuine or merely a plea for sympathy, I make an exception.

“They should have the death penalty for people like me. How many chances does a person need? They should never have let me out.”

2 Responses to It’s Not Just Here

  1. Cornerstone says:

    Lots of people on parole boards know very little about criminal behavior. And then sometimes people get on a parole board because they have an agenda. And of course, there’s often pressure to free up space. There is no excuse for someone being active on a parole board and not bothering to study the behavior and know who can and can’t possibly be rehab’d. I think the general public assumes parole boards are made up of specially trained experts, but they aren’t always, nor are many prison personnel. I think we need to set some standards.

    Maybe it’s time a couple of authors knowledgeable on the subject wrote something specifically targeting those working in the system. Yes, it’s true the body of work is already there, but maybe it takes a special guide to get most of them to read it. “A Parole Officer’s Guide to the Universe.” “Profiling and Parole for Dummies.” “Rehab: 50 Shades of Recidivism.”

  2. Tom Mininger says:

    This reminds me of what you have said in your books about how most people have a vested interest in being as honest as possible with their psychiatrist/psychologist, while predators have a vested interest in lying to their prison mental health specialists. And some prison psychiatrists just don’t understand that.

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