Voir Dire, Part 5: How Many Lies Can the AFP Tell, Using Only Consonants?

A yacht in Freemantle, WA, Photo: AFP

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Dear Gumshoe Readers, When the AFP arrested Russell Pridgeon and Patrick O’Dea and Mrs Cling Peaches on 17 October 2018, the number of officers in tow was 20, plus an equal number of media people.  I assume the journo’s (not including, say, Dee McLachlan) were given the script before the arrest.

I mean, why not? Are there any rules about that sort of thing? More importantly, are there any rules about whether the media can state false facts? And if they were given those false facts by the AFP (Australian Federal Police, sort of like FBI), is the AFP accountable? What if the lies did real harm?

I gather from the 2023 book by Russell Pridgeon, that he was told he couldn’t speak out in his own defense (such as by saying “Hey, Pants on Fire, Everybody”). I don’t understand this. I seem to recall Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which he spoke his mind, sans Suppression Orders, and it was widely published.

Well  Old Russell did write a letter to his colleagues — we printed it here at Gumshoe in 2019. It’s here . I’ll just quote one bit:

“On 30 May 2018 I [Pridgeon] wrote to the Minister of Child Safety in Queensland advising her that:

…”when I was able find safe accommodation for them I sheltered them in a safe house in my locality from about Easter 2014 for more than a year. This was one of the greatest privileges of my life to be able to help these children escape the horrific abuse inflicted upon them by fiends, and enabled by Rogue Judges, lawyers and Policemen who actively hid the truth, ignored evidence, and facilitated child rape, effectively trafficking these children to paedophiles.”

Blah blah blah. (That’s 5 moths before the dramatic swoop-down arrest.)  But today I found another writing by Russell which is so lovely you’ve got to hear it.  Recall that the AFP said he was part of a syndicate and that he was getting his yacht ready to abduct children to New Zealand or Zimbabwe. As syndicates, do. I suppose.

(The late Trish Fotheringham told me she had to help an actual syndicate lure children onto a ship in Canada in 1972, when she was age 12, and very mind-controlled. By the way, Tish said that the men on board, in navy-type uniform, were Chinese.)

So now sit back and listen to the factaroonies: Why the yacht was in Perth, why Russell had one at all, and where he was planning to take it.

The Yacht. By Russell Pridgeon

“The ‘Courier Mail’ told its readers the yacht was to be used to transport abducted children from Freemantle to Tasmania and then on to New Zealand or South Africa. I have no doubt this was concocted to have people believe I was a wealthy lout looking to have my way with children while alone with them at sea. …

So let me state the facts regarding the yacht:  After being in Grafton for 18 years I realised that I had not had a serious holiday while I had been there. I was tired to my soul and longed for a break. After talking to a friend, my ambition to sail around the world was reawakened and as retirement was approaching, I determined to get a yacht again.

I have always been interested in sailing. As a 12-year-old I built a sailing boat from plans from Popular Mechanics. [Shite!] I learned to sail on Matopos Dam outside Bulawayo, in a friend’s Enterprise dinghy. Later I sailed Fireballs. At university I sailed Hobie-16’s on False Bay Cape Town, and Lasers.

In my final year at medical school I bought a Windsurfer and sailed on lakes and the sea and crewed on keelboats sailing out of the Royal Cape Yacht Club. Friends had ‘Muira’s’ and ‘Peterson 33’s’ and I helped one of them fix his ‘Colin Archer’ yacht up for a trip to Europe.

I developed a passion for the idea of sailing around the world and looked at the possibility of building my own yacht to do this.  As a junior doctor I saved my salary and laid down the hull and deck of a H30 design by L Francis Herreshof, into which I poured my salary during the hyperinflation of the early 1980s in South Africa. Inflation increased faster than I could earn the money to build the boat, and eventually after 6-7 years of boat building, completing the yacht slipped out of reach and I gave up on the idea when I decided to move to NZ.

“I was badly burned by the experience in South Africa and intense work pressure forced me to put my yacht-dream on hold while I lived and worked in NZ and then Australia. I however chartered catamarans in the Whitsundays for two holidays and enjoyed trying to relearn what I had forgotten.

“I was captivated by the ‘Hans Christian 36’, a very seaworthy design, and one was for sale in Freemantle. It required a lot of work to do all the deferred maintenance. So I bought a very run-down boat that I fixed up, and actually really enjoyed doing it.  I also did Radio and Sailing exams and practical RYA courses while I was there. A dear relative flew to join me, and we did a RYA sailing course together.

“I replaced the standing rigging, the sails and fitted a ‘Cap Horn’ wind vane. There was a huge amount of work to be done. I did it, and did it well, and when it was finished, I knew I had a yacht that would take me anywhere.

“A very old friend asked if he could join me on my proposed trip back to the East coast. I planned to sail into the Southern Ocean and pass south of Tasmania, before travelling north to NSW. It would have been an epic trip, and not for the faint-hearted. I didn’t realise how ill he was and was relieved when he pulled out.

Shortly before I was due to head out, I discovered I did not have enough power in my left hand to pull down the sails – the hand was weakened from a nasty wrist fracture a few years previously.

“Insofar as refitting the yacht, I had always wanted to do a circumnavigation around Australia. My major ambition remains to sail the four Capes. I suppose I wanted to do what my great-grandfather had done when he sailed around Cape Horn, and of course as a youngster I was inspired by Francis Chichester’s exploits and the books by Bernard Moitessier and David Lewis. If I had not got into so much trouble, I was planning to eventually leave Australia but that all changed when I was sued for defamation.

“I never sailed the yacht to Coffs Harbour. Instead I laid the yacht up in Fremantle and went home to think about this and earn some more money. Cassie was arrested at this time and events overtook me after I was jailed. Once I was arrested, on strict bail, I was prohibited from leaving NSW and unable to get to Fremantle to care for the boat. I then had to sell the boat to pay legal fees and to avoid the ongoing marina fees. Sadly I had no option but to leave my dream behind.

“By this time I had lost everything; my standing, my reputation, my livelihood, the profession I loved, and faced 40 years in jail. Selling the yacht was a real wrench, the loss of a lifelong dream, a lot of invested money, and the cherry on the top of a bad situation.”