Court Reporter

by Jamelle Wells

  The witness said that Reeves, whom she was trusting with her life, leaned over her just before she went under the anaesthetic and said, ‘I’m going to take your clitoris, too.’

  When she woke up she was in horrific pain and her labia and clitoris were gone.

  Caroline DeWaegeneire, then fifty-eight, told the court she never would have consented to the removal of her genitals.

  A theatre nurse gave evidence at his trial that when she remarked to Reeves that he was removing a drastic amount of tissue during the surgery, he replied that it was to stop the cancer spreading. The nurse said, when she commented on him removing Caroline DeWaegeneire’s clitoris Graeme Reeves replied that her husband was dead so it didn’t matter.

  At his criminal trials, Reeves was on bail and came into the Downing Centre court complex early each morning.2 He then sat reading paperbacks in the foyer while waiting for the court doors to open, often just metres from where Caroline DeWaegeneire was sitting.

  One day I sat opposite him and noticed he was reading American crime writer and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reich’s novel Bones to Ashes.

  Another day he was reading a book I couldn’t see the title of, but I saw the author’s name Martin Innes and wondered if it was the Martin Innes who writes about detective work, investigating murders and the reaction to crime and social control.

  It must have been so hard for Caroline DeWaegeneire to be near Graeme Reeves, knowing how he had harmed her. In the witness box she was highly articulate, revealing how the unnecessary surgery he performed on her affected her life.

  Lorraine Long from the Medical Errors Action Group, who became an advocate for Reeves’ previous patients, worked tirelessly for their cause, and she came to court each day to support the witness.

  ‘I’ve got boxes and boxes of evidence,’ she told police when she first turned up at their door on behalf of some of the victims.

  Ms Long said that many of the women who complained about this doctor found it hard to get legal representation but that he seemed to have no problem getting legal aid.3

  She was devastated when the New South Wales Attorney-General at the time, Greg Smith, announced there was insufficient evidence to pursue at least more than sixty additional charges against Reeves.

  In November 2013 the charges were withdrawn.4 Police who worked on this case said they thought many of Reeves’ alleged victims in the small New South Wales south coast towns he worked in, pulled out of pursuing charges against him because of the personal humiliation they feared if it all went public.

  They said some of the women had been traumatised and for years were too embarrassed to tell even their family and friends about what Reeves had done to them.

  Lorraine Long said she was approached by husbands who told her their wives had been left with permanent physical and mental damage and weren’t strong enough to go to the police because they feared it would cause them further anguish. She said it had even broken marriages, because at first many of the men did not believe that a doctor, someone who was meant to be a trusted professional, could have done what he did.

  The big blow to everyone involved in this story was when Graeme Reeves eventually had his minimum two and a half year jail sentence cut by six months due to his health issues. It was one of those complicated court cases where the DPP at first won an appeal against the leniency of his original sentence so it was increased by eighteen months.

  The High Court then overturned that decision due to Reeves’ deteriorating health and the case was sent back to the Court of Criminal Appeal to reconsider the sentence which was cut by six months.

  So Graeme Reeves went free after serving just a short stint in jail.

  I felt so sorry for his victims.

  The panel of appeal judges said his chronic kidney disease had deteriorated in custody due to treatment delays and said he would get better treatment outside jail.

  They also noted that since Reeves had been jailed, he had finished his Masters degree in Medicine and Human Genetics.5

  In 2017, in a separate case, Graeme Reeves stood trial for the manslaughter of another patient, thirty-eight year old Kerry Ann McAllister, who died from septicaemia just days after giving birth at The Hills Private Hospital in the Sydney suburb of Baulkham Hills in 1996.

  It was a judge-alone trial and Reeves was found not guilty.

  Kerry McAllister had symptoms including fatigue and severe joint pain, for which she was given morphine. She also had a high temperature. Graeme Reeves diagnosed her as having a virus rather than a bacterial infection, but the judge said it was possible that she had both.

  District Court Judge Peter Zahra said, while Reeves’ failure to provide adequate treatment significantly contributed to the woman’s death, it was not criminal negligence that required criminal punishment.

  The judge said her condition was rare and diagnosing it would have been difficult.

  During Graeme Reeves’ trial, the court heard allegations that he ignored nurses’ concerns that the patient was becoming more unwell.6

  21

  Cars as weapons

  SINCE I STARTED THE court round, covering inquests and court cases arising from car-related deaths has made me a pedantic backseat driver. I make no apology for it and there are even some drivers I will no longer get in a car with.

  Like police, judges must get so annoyed seeing the same offences — road rage, drivers assaulting cyclists, drink driving, dangerous driving, speeding and people leaving their animals and children in hot cars — repeated over and over despite all the warnings.

  I’ve been shocked by the senseless acts of road rage in the cases I’ve come across. One such case involved an undertaker in a hearse chasing a female driver he had never even met, from Surry Hills to Ultimo late at night, honking his horn and swearing at her. At one point during the random attack, he swerved in front of her car forcing it on to a median strip, punched the car and tried to push it off the road.

  There was another case in February 2016, of a driver who got out of his station wagon in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west and smashed a bus window with a shovel. The bus driver had simply dropped off his last passenger and let another car go around him — a move that for some reason angered the other driver who got out and abused the bus driver before returning to his car to get the shovel from the boot, smashing the windscreen then getting back in the car and calmly driving off.

  The terrified bus driver was not injured and unluckily for the road rage offender, witnesses filmed the whole incident on their phones.

  I often get concerned by people who try to text or talk on their mobile phone and drive at the same time because I still think about an inquest I covered into a car-crash death and the words of the coroner who investigated it.

  Handing down the findings in August 2014, the Deputy State Coroner Hugh Dillon described the death of Sydney model and beautician Sarah Durazza as a ‘case study in the dangers of distractions for drivers’.

  Sarah Durazza, twenty-six, was driving at night near Narrabeen on Sydney’s northern beaches in 2013 when she answered a phone call from her boyfriend, Scott Bidder. She died from multiple injuries when her car crossed lanes and hit a tree near the Wakehurst Parkway. This was a tragic accident and the coroner found that she lost control of the vehicle during the first few seconds of the phone call.

  ‘Disturbingly, the crash was heard over the phone as it happened,’ he said.

  Expressing his sympathy to her grieving partner and her parents who were in the courtroom, coroner Dillon quoted the Greek playwright Euripides.

  ‘What greater pain can mortals bear than this — to see their children die before their eyes.’

  The coroner said, the fact that Sarah Durazza swore as she picked up the phone before the accident suggested that the act of answering it caused her to ‘take her eye off the road momentarily’.

  ‘A motor vehicle can be transformed into a deadly weapon in a moment by inattention or distraction,’ he said. />
  He recommended a review of safety at the Wakehurst Parkway but also noted that crash investigators had found that the weather was fine, the road surface was in good condition and there was nothing on the surface that would have contributed to the accident.1

  When Sarah May Ward was found guilty in March 2010 of the road-rage murder of Eli Westlake who threw cheeseballs at her car, it provided little comfort for his family.

  Outside court, Eli’s father Nigel said, ‘The notion of justice actually has very little meaning for us because the worst has already happened.

  ‘Eli is taken and nothing will bring him back. We struggle each day to come to terms with this fact.’

  Mr Westlake said the four-week trial for Sarah May Ward was harrowing.

  ‘We’ve heard all the evidence, seen the CCTV footage of the night in question and we concur with the findings of the jury, as tragic as this is not only for us, but for the family of the accused and the accused herself.

  ‘The Crown has revealed that Eli’s life was taken by a complete stranger in a savage act of brutal violence. An act laden with evil intent. An act that can only be described as disturbingly predatory in nature.’

  The court heard that twenty-one year old Eli Westlake was walking home with his brother and friends after a night out drinking at St Leonards Tavern in Sydney’s north in 2008.

  They came face to face with a car being driven the wrong way down a one way street by then thirty-eight year old Sarah May Ward who was out buying cigarettes.

  After a verbal argument, Eli threw cheeseballs at the car.

  The prosecutor said the first time Sarah Ward drove towards Eli Westlake he jumped out of the way, so she reversed and sped towards him again using the car as a weapon. The defence case was that she did not intend to kill Eli Westlake.

  The court heard Ward had taken cannabis, ecstasy and Valium and drunk two bottles of wine before getting behind the wheel. She told police a passenger tried to take control of the steering wheel and she blamed her shoes for the way she was driving.

  The case went to trial after prosecutors refused to accept Sarah Ward’s guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

  Ward sobbed as the jury delivered its verdict on its second day of deliberations.2

  She was eventually jailed for at least eighteen years and nine months with a maximum of twenty-five years.3

  Fast forward a few years to 28 April 2017 and I was out the front of a court with two mothers who were crying.

  Leanne Shanahan and Georgina Sawyer both had children who were killed in a car crash on the Bells Line of Road near Bilpin on 20 August 2015.

  They had been in court to see the driver responsible for the crash, Jordan Scott Brown, jailed for up to six and a half years. Both women thought the sentence was an inadequate penalty for taking their children away from them.

  The twenty-one year old driver, who was on his P plates and under the influence of drugs, had failed to negotiate a sweeping right-hand bend and, after over-correcting, his 4WD crashed into a vehicle coming from the opposite direction.

  Three people died in the crash. They were his friends in the back seat: a seventeen year old boy, nineteen year old Ben Sawyer and twenty-one year old Luke Shanahan. A fourth friend, Daniel Richards, who was in the passenger seat, survived.

  Barbara McLaren, eighty-four, was driving the other car and was seriously injured. She had a stroke in hospital before being moved to a nursing home bedridden.

  Jordan Brown pled guilty to dangerous driving causing death, driving under the influence of drugs and also to causing grievous bodily harm.

  He had told police he took one ecstasy tablet about thirty-six hours before the accident. But tests found that he had such a high level of ecstasy in his system at the time of the crash, he must have taken it closer to the time of the crash before leaving a dance festival near Lithgow to drive home to Sydney’s northern beaches.

  At his sentencing hearing Brown had previously told the court that he didn’t expect the drugs to still be in his system at the time of the crash and that he couldn’t explain the high drug reading.

  ‘My mates didn’t deserve to die that way. I wish it was me who died that day,’ he said.

  In the New South Wales District Court, Judge Jeffrey McLennan sentenced him to six and a half years jail with a non-parole period of four and a half.

  As Jordan Scott Brown was sentenced, he tried not to cry and he locked his hands together. He looked so vulnerable and much younger than his twenty-one years.

  Judge McLennan said, ‘This is another case of a fine young man failing to act responsibly by consuming drugs at a dance festival and driving under their influence.’

  The judge said Jordan Brown would have had his judgment impaired after using the drug, which can cause drowsiness and fatigue.

  ‘This driving occurred on a major road,’ Judge McLennan added, noting that it put many road users at risk.4 ‘The consequences of the offender’s conduct have been immense.’

  The judge said Jordan Brown did not deserve the maximum penalty for his crimes, which could have been ten years for the dangerous driving charge and seven years for the grievous bodily harm charge. But he said there was still a high degree of moral culpability associated with Brown’s crimes.

  Judge McLennan said Jordan Scott Brown had no prior convictions and had shown genuine remorse.

  ‘It is not to be forgotten that two of his closest friends were killed in the accident as well as another young man he was friendly with.’

  The court heard Jordan Brown had good character references and strong family support.

  The judge said he was unlikely to reoffend and discounted the sentence due to his guilty plea that avoided the need for a trial.

  One of the strangest court cases involving a driving matter I’ve covered, was that of the former Federal Court Judge Marcus Einfeld who in March 2009 was jailed for at least two years for perjury and perverting the course of justice over a $77 speeding fine.

  Marcus Einfeld was seventy at the time and became Australia’s first former Federal Court judge to be jailed. He had been not only a Federal Court judge, but also a Supreme Court judge in several states, a UNICEF Ambassador, a president of the Human Rights Commission and an advocate for many causes.

  In 2006 his silver Lexus was caught by a speed camera travelling at 60 km/h in a 50 km/h zone in Mosman. He then made a sworn statement that his friend, a visiting American academic Teresa Brennan, was driving the car. It was later revealed that she had in fact died three years before the speeding offence.

  After pleading guilty, Einfeld was not only sent to jail but also struck off the roll of legal practitioners, stripped of his Queen’s Counsel commission and of his Order of Australia award. It was a humiliating fall from grace for someone who had been well respected in the community for his humanitarian work.

  Sentencing him in March 2009, Justice Bruce James said Marcus Einfeld’s behaviour was deliberate and pre-meditated to avoid demerit points. Some in court thought the minimum two-year custodial sentence was harsh. They were expecting him to get off lightly with a sentence of around six months.

  Justice James said he had taken a number of things into account including Marcus Einfeld’s humanitarian work, his good-character references, his age and health problems and the fact that he had no prior criminal record. But the judge said that given his career and experience, Marcus Einfeld must have fully appreciated the gravity of lying to police.

  Marcus Einfeld had even referred to his mother in his police statement. He claimed that after he lent the car to Teresa Brennan, whom he said was visiting Australia, his mother replied, ‘Are you nuts? I’ve told you not to lend the car, even to the kids.’

  It’s not often that you see a former Federal Court judge sitting down in the dock of a court, and the day Marcus Einfeld was sentenced, the public gallery was full — mostly with his supporters.

  With bloodshot eyes he walked around the public gallery greeting m
any of them before taking his seat, and with a shaky hand sending a last text message. During the two-hour judgment, however, he mostly sat with his eyes closed. When his sentence was handed down, he was asked by the judge if he understood it and he then stumbled and grabbed a rail to try to steady himself. Some of his supporters ran over and hugged and kissed him. One gave him a jelly bean before he handed his wallet and phone to court officers and was taken away.

  The man who used to preside over some of the highest courts in Australia left the Supreme Court complex in Phillip Street that day in a prison van.5

  In May 2010 Marcus Einfeld appealed against the sentence claiming that he had long-term bipolar disorder that was undiagnosed and untreated when he was sentenced.

  A psychiatrist who visited him in jail said he had symptoms of ‘hypomania’, with grandiose ideas about his altruistic pursuits. The psychiatrist said people with hypomania were prone to careless errors of judgment and recklessness.

  The full bench of the Supreme Court granted Marcus Einfeld leave to appeal. One of the appeal judges said he would have cut the sentence by six months but the other two judges would not have changed it, so the appeal was dismissed. Their judgment rejected some of the psychiatric evidence presented at his appeal. It upheld an assessment of the seriousness of his offence based on his status as a barrister and former judge of a superior court.

  ‘The ability of such conduct to strike at public confidence in the integrity of the system of justice was properly given significant weight,’ the judgment said.6

  When Marcus Einfeld got out of jail, he told reporters that hundreds of people, whom he mostly didn’t know, had sent him books, letters and crossword puzzles to help him pass the time.

  In a bizarre subplot to this story, a court case unfolded where a fifty-six year old woman called Angela Liati came forward to try to protect Marcus Einfeld by telling his lawyers and police that she was in his car with a friend called ‘Theahresa Brennan’ the day it was caught speeding.

  It was never really clear how Angela Liati knew Marcus Einfeld — or if in fact if she had ever met him at all. She was eventually found to have made a false police statement to try to pervert the course of justice.