Strange news from another star
Guilty: the journalist who interviewed a prisoner
By Martin Hirst in Brisbane
Despite the fact that she didn't record the interview or even take notes, freelance journalist and film-maker Anne Delaney has been found guilty of conducting an illegal interview with a Queensland prisoner.
The Brisbane magistrates' court found she had breached the archaic Section 100 of the Queensland Corrective Services Act that forbids prisoners from giving interviews without the express permission of the jail superintendent, and yesterday she was sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond with no conviction.
As previously reported in Crikey, Delaney's legal team was challenging the law and arguing that it was breach of the implied Constitutional right to free speech. It also emerged during the trial that the Queensland Corrective Services department had set up Delaney. Two police detectives were waiting for her in the jail and she was arrested without warning after being allowed to spend about half an hour with the prisoner.
In April this year, Delaney was researching a story about the case of prisoner Louise MacPhee, who had been convicted of killing one of her children. Delaney had read about the case, and believed MacPhee might have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Prior to visiting MacPhee, Delaney had enquired about the protocols for filming in the jail and this appears to have alerted Corrective Services about her visit. At no stage was Delaney told that visiting MacPhee might breach the Act and she was not warned that her actions could constitute an offence. Friends of Delaney who observed the case closely believe she was the victim in a clear case of entrapment by Corrective Services.
Speaking to Crikey at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing on Thursday afternoon, an obviously disappointed Delaney said she was personally “gutted” by the decision and that her faith in the Queensland legal system was shattered.
Delaney says the law against interviewing prisoners is preventing the public from knowing what is going on inside Queensland's notoriously closed and punitive prison system.
Delaney is considering her options and is receiving strong encouragement from her friends and supporters to mount an appeal and a further challenge to the constitutionality of the law.
Delaney's friends told Crikey that the magistrate appeared not to properly understand the constitutional issues and that the prosecution case was poorly handled.
MEAA Federal Secretary Chris Warren says that while the journalists' union is delighted that the sentence is light in the Delaney case, it is a “terrible decision, based on a terrible law.” Warren says the MEAA is calling on the Queensland Government to repeal Section 100 of the Corrective Services Act to bring the state into line with the rest of the country. “This law is unique to Queensland and Anne's defence raised some serious constitutional issues that the magistrate appears to have ignored,” Warren told Crikey. The MEAA believes the ban on talking to Queensland prisoners is a serious block to political debate. Warren says the union will consider backing a High Court challenge and continuing its campaign against the gag law.
"AN Australian study has cast doubt on the commonly held view that pornography shows women as nothing more than sex objects. . . .
"They noted such things as who initiated the sex, whose pleasure was paid attention to, whether people in the videos got to speak about what they wanted during sex and whose perspective the videos were presented from.
'We were surprised at just how active and in control the women were in these videos,' Prof McKee said today.
'This study suggests that mainstream pornography in Australia doesn't represent women as sex objects, it shows them as active sexual agents.'
Just call me Rosie, says gynaecologist who wants to be a woman
By NADINE WILLIAMS
24dec05
ONE of Adelaide's top gynaecologists, Dr Robert Jones, is to change gender and become a woman named Rosie.
Smartly dressed in a Perri Cutten trouser suit and tasteful heels, Dr Jones says she has never identified with men. She attended the Memorial Hospital Christmas breakfast at Regatta's Restaurant yesterday, dressed in public as a woman.
"There was no reaction at all; I walked in there like everybody else," says Dr Jones, who recently celebrated her 67th birthday, as a woman.
"To my surprise it appeared to be unreserved acceptance, but there may be some adverse reaction."
Dr Jones, who has worked in Adelaide as a man since 1989 and runs the Adelaide Menopause Clinic from Kermode St, says her greatest fear is to "end up completely isolated".
She has explained the situation to her patients and most seem to have accepted the decision, although a few will not return.
"I have actually been Rosie all my life," says Dr Jones.
"I am pink in my head and blue in my body. I learned how to be a bloke, to behave like a man, from my peers."
The divorced father of two says the saddest part of the move has been the reaction of a daughter who lives in London.
"My daughter in Perth has accepted my decision, but my other daughter is grieving the loss of her father and that her son is going to lose his only grandad," she says. Her long-term relationship has also been "severely strained".
"Robert" has been a cross-dresser all his adult life and started taking hormones under an endocrinologist four years ago, socialising as "Rosie" for the past year.
The decision to proceed with the physical change was triggered by the death of Dr Jones's brother, Brian.
"I spoke to him for two hours a night to assist him through his fears and I got to thinking how complete his life had been," she says.
"He had lived a full man's man life and I thought of my own life being full of interest but incomplete. I thought 'I am going to round out my life, fulfil myself as a person, even if I die in the process'."
"I am Rosie all the time. It is the same person. Over the years I have been living a lie.
"My dearest hope is that my relationship will survive because I love her dearly."
