''WE WERE AT OUR WITS END,'' HIS FATHER, TERRY WARING, SAYS. ''WE KNEW THAT PATRICK HADN'T DONE IT, BUT THE POLICE HAD ALREADY MADE UP THEIR MINDS THAT HE WAS GUILTY.''
DESPERATE FOR HELP, THE FAMILY TURNED TO ROBIN NAPPER, AN INDEPENDENT FORENSIC INVESTIGATOR AND FORMER BRITISH DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT. NAPPER, WHO HAD WORKED FOR THE NSW POLICE FORCE FROM 1998 TO 2000 AND ADVISED BOTH STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS ON FORENSICALLY-DRIVEN POLICING, WARNED THE FAMILY THAT HE WAS ''NOT A GUN FOR HIRE''.
''ROBIN JUST SAID THAT HE WOULD REVIEW ALL THE EVIDENCE,'' TERRY WARING SAYS, ''BUT THAT IF HE THOUGHT PATRICK WAS GUILTY, HE'D SAY SO.'' WHAT NAPPER FOUND ASTOUNDED HIM. ''THE POLICE HAD BROKEN JUST ABOUT EVERY FORENSIC RULE IN THE BOOK, FROM CRIME SCENE EXAMINATION TO THE PREPARATION AND INTERPRETATION OF DNA EVIDENCE.'' PATHOLOGY RESULTS SHOWED NO SIGN OF PATRICK'S DNA IN THE INTIMATE SWABS FROM THE GIRL, AND NO SIGN OF THE GIRL IN THE INTIMATE SWABS OF PATRICK. READING THROUGH TRANSCRIPTS, NAPPER ALSO FOUND THAT THE GIRL HAD REPEATEDLY CHANGED HER STORY, SOMETHING POLICE NEVER BOTHERED TO QUESTION. ''I JUST COULDN'T BELIEVE THEY WERE GOING AHEAD WITH THE TRIAL......
WARING'S ORDEAL IS THE SUBJECT OF AN AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY, EVERY FAMILY'S NIGHTMARE, WHICH SCREENS THIS WEDNESDAY ON SBS. BUT IT IS ONLY ONE OF THE MANY CELEBRATED CASES IN WHICH NAPPER HAS PROVED INSTRUMENTAL, FROM THE 2004 OVERTURNING OF THE MICKELBERG BROTHERS' WRONGFUL CONVICTION IN THE PERTH MINT SWINDLE, TO THE 2009 ACQUITTAL OF GRAHAM STAFFORD, WHO WAS WRONGFULLY CONVICTED OF MURDERING A 13-YEAR-OLD QUEENSLAND SCHOOLGIRL, LEANNE HOLLAND, IN 1991. SINCE 2003, THE 58-YEAR-OLD HAS HELPED REVERSE NO LESS THAN SIX WRONGFUL MURDER CONVICTIONS AND TWO WRONGFUL RAPE ALLEGATIONS, AND IN 2005 WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RELEASE OF AN AUSTRALIAN FROM DEATH ROW OVERSEAS.
REPORTER TIM ELLIOT: THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD;
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BACKGROUND: Graham Stuart Stafford was a sheet metal worker from Goodna, near Ipswich, Queensland who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of twelve-year-old Leanne Sarah Holland. Leanne Holland, the younger sister of Stafford's former partner, Melissa Holland, was murdered in September 1991. Her viciously mutilated body was found three days after she was reported missing in nearby Redbank Plains. It is possible she was also sexually interfered with and tortured with a cigarette lighter. Stafford appealed to the Queensland Court of Appeal, but this appeal was rejected on 25 August 1992. In 1997, the Queensland Court of Appeal re-examined the case after Stafford lodged an application for pardon with the State Governor on the basis of evidence gathered by private detective, Graeme Crowley. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal again by a two-to-one majority on the grounds that there was still enough evidence to convict. Two applications for special leave to the High Court of Australia subsequently failed. Stafford was released in June 2006 after serving over 14 years in prison. Stafford, who was born in England and does not have Australian citizenship despite having migrated to Australia in 1969, faced deportation in November 2006. Some people, including Professor Paul Wilson of Bond University believe that Stafford is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Queensland Attorney-General, Kerry Shine, has agreed to closely consider any request on Stafford's behalf concerning a petition to clear him of the murder conviction. In April 2008, the Queensland Attorney-General referred the case to the Court of Appeal for a very rare second appeal for pardon. On December 24, 2009 the Court of Appeal overturned Graham Stafford's conviction and ordered a retrial by a 2-1 majority. The dissenting judge wanted an immediate acquittal...WIKIPEDIA informs us that: "A Brisbane Sunday Mail examination of the police investigation revealed that an Ipswich computer store worker provided information to the police about a man who had entered the store on the same day as Leanne's body was dumped in nearby bushland. The worker claimed that the man had been behaving in a peculiar manner and had blood stains on his hands and trousers when he entered the store. Furthermore, reports of Leanne having been seen alive on the day after the police allege she was murdered were ignored. A report of a vehicle other than Stafford's being sighted near the body was also ignored. Forensic scientist, Angela van Daal, gave evidence at trial that helped convict Stafford of the murder. She has since stated that the blood identified as Leanne's could have come from another family member. Although the frequency of the blood type matching anyone in the general population was only about one percent, the frequency among relatives is as high as 25 percent. Around the time of the murder, Leanne's brother Craig had slashed his hand in a pub fight and had bled freely in the family home. It has also been revealed that another twelve-year-old girl was murdered less than one kilometre away from where Leanne Holland lived within thirteen days of Leanne's murder. The man who was charged with the second murder had been known to Leanne. Furthermore, daughters of a police informant in the Leanne Holland case have come forward claiming their father sexually abused them at the murder site, burnt them with cigarette lighters and showed them crime scene photographs of Leanne's body."
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"As alleged rapists go, Patrick Waring was hardly your usual suspect," the Sydney Morning News story by reporter Tim Elliot published earlier today under the heading 000," begins.
"Just 15 years old, the Catholic college student from Perth had never had any trouble with police; he was a polite, well-brought-up boy from a stable, loving family," the story continues.
"And yet police claimed that on March 30, 2006, Waring had followed a teenage girl from a railway station, before dragging her into the bushes and repeatedly raping her at knifepoint. Such was the violence of the attack that the judge denied bail, remanding Waring in custody where he languished for several months, enduring regular strip searches and the occasional beating.
''We were at our wits end,'' his father, Terry Waring, says. ''We knew that Patrick hadn't done it, but the police had already made up their minds that he was guilty.''
Desperate for help, the family turned to Robin Napper, an independent forensic investigator and former British detective superintendent. Napper, who had worked for the NSW Police Force from 1998 to 2000 and advised both state and federal governments on forensically-driven policing, warned the family that he was ''not a gun for hire''.
''Robin just said that he would review all the evidence,'' Terry Waring says, ''but that if he thought Patrick was guilty, he'd say so.''
What Napper found astounded him. ''The police had broken just about every forensic rule in the book, from crime scene examination to the preparation and interpretation of DNA evidence.''
Pathology results showed no sign of Patrick's DNA in the intimate swabs from the girl, and no sign of the girl in the intimate swabs of Patrick.
Reading through transcripts, Napper also found that the girl had repeatedly changed her story, something police never bothered to question. ''I just couldn't believe they were going ahead with the trial.''
After a year in jail, Patrick was finally found not guilty (the girl later admitted to lying), a finding the Warings credit in large part to Napper.
''Robin was integral to getting Patrick out,'' Terry Waring says. ''We owe him more than we can ever repay him.''
Waring's ordeal is the subject of an award-winning documentary, Every Family's Nightmare, which screens this Wednesday on SBS. But it is only one of the many celebrated cases in which Napper has proved instrumental, from the 2004 overturning of the Mickelberg brothers' wrongful conviction in the Perth Mint swindle, to the 2009 acquittal of Graham Stafford, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering a 13-year-old Queensland schoolgirl, Leanne Holland, in 1991. Since 2003, the 58-year-old has helped reverse no less than six wrongful murder convictions and two wrongful rape allegations, and in 2005 was responsible for the release of an Australian from death row overseas.
''This individual had been wrongly accused of murder,'' Napper says. ''To this day the family want no publicity, so the case is unknown to virtually everyone. The Foreign Office and Federal Police were hopeless and gave the family no support whatsoever. We had to arrange for forensic experts to fly to the country concerned and conduct an investigation.''
To his supporters Napper is a white knight, a man ''whose ideas on police investigation are badly needed'', in the words of the criminologist Professor Paul Wilson. Martha Jabour, the founder of the Homicide Victims Support Group and a member of the NSW Sentencing Council, describes Napper as ''incredibly passionate and a brilliant investigator''.
And yet he remains a highly controversial figure, due in part to his scathing assessment of Australian policing, which he variously describes as ''lazy'', ''backward'' and ''incredibly politicised''.
One of his gripes is the inordinately high number of long-term missing persons in Australia - 1600, according to the Australian Federal Police - a figure that Napper believes masks many hidden homicides. ''Life is cheap in Australia,'' he says. ''If the police haven't got a lead in a homicide after a couple of weeks and it's not a high-profile victim, then it's described as a missing person.''
Professor Wilson agrees, as does a former NSW deputy state coroner, Carl Milovanovich: "When I retired in December 2009, there were about 350 long-term missing persons in NSW, about 5 to 10 per cent of which were highly suspicious."
Like Milovanovich, Napper believes this is in large part due to a lack of resources. But Napper also blames it on a wider failure of police leadership to embrace DNA technology, the science of which he introduced between 1998 and 2000.
''I was seconded to the NSW Police Force by [the then police commissioner] Peter Ryan to bring over modern forensic and DNA profiling techniques,'' Napper explains. ''But right from the beginning I hit a brick wall.''
Napper says he found an incredibly strong police culture that was highly resistant to change. ''It was confession-led policing, rather than forensically driven. Rather than say, 'What did we pick up from the crime scene?' they would ask 'How can we get a tap on their phone?' It was lazy.''
Even small things proved difficult. ''I couldn't even phone interstate from my office without getting approval from my supervisor. And to phone overseas, I had to fill in a written request!''
An application for an international line was submitted to the then police minister, Paul Whelan, but it took almost two years to come back. ''And even then it said 'no!' So I just had to use my private phone, itemise the calls and then get the money from petty cash.''
Napper clashed spectacularly with a fellow British secondee, Ken Seddon, who he accused of misconduct, and then Commander Clive Small. (Small told the Herald he had ''nothing pleasant to say about Napper''.) Nonetheless, by the time Napper returned to Britain, in December 2000, legislation regarding the implementation of DNA evidence had been put in place.
''But since then, it's been totally under-utilised,'' Napper says.
For instance, CrimTrac, a national database for DNA profiles, was established in July 2000; but until last year, many jurisdictions neglected to contribute to it, making it difficult, if not impossible, for investigators to cross-check suspect samples interstate.
The CrimTrac chief executive, Ben McDevitt, says the database now holds 540,078 DNA profiles, and that all jurisdictions upload profiles ''as a matter of routine''.
''That's not good enough,'' Napper says. ''To be really effective, it has to be legally mandatory for every police force to upload everything they have. Because, guess what? Serial killers travel too.''
Napper is also baffled by the reluctance to engage in investigation-led DNA screening, the first instance of which occurred in the NSW cotton town of Wee Waa in April 2000, when all males over the age of 18 were asked to volunteer a DNA sample to help police investigate the rape and bashing of a 91-year-old woman. ''That screening enabled us to find the perpetrator,'' Napper says. ''But it hasn't been used since.''
Similarly off-limits is familial DNA sampling, a common tool in British policing whereby investigators use relatives' DNA to track a suspect. ''This is illegal in Australia, which is a shame, because it's been proven to be very useful in opening up new lines of inquiry.''
The use of both mass-screenings and familial DNA is strongly opposed by civil liberties groups, one of which, Justice Action, has accused Napper of ''misrepresenting the effectiveness'' of DNA databases. Such hostility is nothing new: Napper says he is persona non grata with West Australian police. His style can also be controversial: in a 2003 letter obtained by the Herald, the West Australian Director of Public Prosecutions, Robert Cock, QC, criticised the Briton for interfering with Crown witnesses. ''Whilst there are not sufficient grounds to charge Mr Napper with a criminal offence,'' Cock wrote, ''his conduct … was improper.''
Napper remains unfazed. ''People have tried to smear me since my time with the NSW police. All I did was come out here to try and help the police catch crooks. What I found, though, was a huge resentment from Australian police who want to keep their egos intact.''"
The story can be found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/clearing-their-names-20100604-xklz.html
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BRISBANE TIMES REPORT ON UP-COMING DOCUMENTARY "EVERY FAMILY'S NIGHTMARE."
"THE assumption among Australians that our judicial system is one of the world's fairest takes a hit in this documentary about a 15-year-old Perth boy wrongly accused of rape. Without sensationalising the facts of the frighteningly recent case, the filmmakers present a clear picture of how the innocent Patrick Waring came to spend a year in juvenile detention. Fans of TV crime drama will be astounded at the shoddy forensic investigation and lack of police protocol, which resulted in this debacle. And it is horrifying to learn that these mistakes are not peculiar to the West Australian police force but indicative of a faulty national system, as British forensic scientist, Professor David Barclay, explains in embarrassing detail. The man who wrangled the truth from the terrified boy and the misleading DNA reports, Tom Percy, QC, emerges as the film's hero but its real stars are the young man's family. Parents Marie and Terry and sister Danielle give generous accounts of their year of hell, which has left them battered and broke, with no compensation or reimbursement forthcoming. Dramatic re-enactments are kept to a tasteful minimum and spliced with footage from CCTV and police interviews, allowing the story to unfold at a measured pace. While information about the rape ''victim'' is confined to the facts, the impression is that her story is a tragedy of another kind. Unsettling and all very close to home, the film lives up to its claim that what happened to the Warings could happen to anyone with the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The story can be found at:
http://m.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/every-familys-nightmare--wednesday-june-9-20100602-wyty.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
