WEBVTT - Geoff Clark: Rapist, thug and thief 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.240 He was a tough, knock about politician who understood how 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:09.440 to talk to both sides of politics, liberals and labor. 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:13.400 He could appeal to people on their own terms. He 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.480 could be more of a knock about than any knock 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.439 about politician because he was. This reporter has got his 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:21.680 little notebook and he's got his little pen, and he's 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.360 standing there and he hears a clique, and he turns 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:28.240 around and there is Jeff Clark with a gun held 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:32.080 to this blog's ear. I'm Andrew Ruhle, and this is 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.080 life and Crimes Today. We're going to go back in 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:40.680 time and look at the life and crimes and alleged 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:45.239 crimes of Jeffrey Wayne Clark, the man better known as 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.760 Jeff Clark, former head of AT SICK. That would be 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:53.559 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In fact, there 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.120 is no longer an at SICK, and the reason for 0:00:56.200 --> 0:01:01.680 that is that Jeffrey Clark, Jeff Clark, disgraced himself with 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:07.240 his gross misbehavior allegedly. And I know about this because 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:09.759 I wrote a story back in two thousand and one 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:15.440 which was headlined something like Jeff Clark, Power and Rape, 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:20.000 and that story covered two or three broadsheet news pages, 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:26.560 and it detailed, among other things, how Clark had allegedly 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:31.119 raped at least four women and perhaps more. And that 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:36.800 long involved story was based legally at least on the 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:42.080 sworn statements statutory declarations of four women. They were Carol Stingle, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:47.600 Kate Heay, Joanne McGinness, who is Clark's cousin, and a 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:50.640 woman called Sharon Handley who was also some sort of 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.600 in law or some connection with the Clark's family somehow. 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:59.000 And there were other potential victims, and there were other 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.920 victims who came four forward and so on and so forth. 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.680 But the story that I did was based on the 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.640 very detailed allegations made by those four women, independently of 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:15.600 each other. In fact, I traveled around Australia to interview them. 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.200 I went to a Chuker for one, I went to 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:21.920 I think the Gold Coast or in that area the 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.920 Sunshine Coast for another, and I went to Darwin for 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.120 another one. And so they were scattered across three or 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.760 four states. And it was a story with enormous impact 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:38.480 and consequences because immediately Jeff Clark, who was then chair 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:43.519 of at SICK, was under pressure and under the pump 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:48.320 and ultimately, although he was never convicted of rape, he 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.239 was tried on one charge of rape against his cousin 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.680 Joan McGinnis, and a magistrate in his wisdom decided that 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.640 it wouldn't stand up in front of a jury and 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.320 so it was dismissed. That is not to say that 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:06.960 the accuser was not believed. I think the accusers were believed. 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:11.320 But it's hard to get convictions in sexual assault cases, 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.400 as we know from other cases we've had, of course 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.280 the George pel case and many others where a jury 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:21.160 is not going to convict probably or if there is 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.840 a conviction, it won't stand appeal, but where the jury 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.320 of public opinion is something else. Again, So who's Jeff Clark? 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:37.400 Well interesting story. Jeff Clark's mother was a girl from 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:39.400 and she was once a girl, so she was a 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:44.280 girl from Framlingham, which is an Aboriginal settlement or community 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.559 which is down in the west of Victoria near Warnablle, 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.760 and it is to the Warnable District in the Western 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.760 district what Lake Tires is to the east of the state. 0:03:55.920 --> 0:04:00.000 Lake Tires Aboriginal settlement, was where I went to school 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.080 and where my family grew up and had a lot 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.360 to do with it. For all his bluster and he's 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.480 bullying and this sort of bikey boss stuff, deep down, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.800 Jeff Clark knew from the time he was a little 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.560 boy that he was different from the rest of the 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.640 mob down at Framlingham. One of his black female cousins, 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.920 not the one he raped, he whose name is Joanne mcginner's, 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:29.120 she told me that she recalls young Clark arriving at 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:32.040 the settlement from the city as a little boy. This 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.120 is Jeff Clark as a little boy back in the fifties. 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.960 He was so embarrassed, she told me by the sandy 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.440 red hair and the blue eyes that he'd inherited from 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.400 his Glaswegian father, that he is his father was a 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:50.160 Scottish fellow from Glasgow. That to fit in with the 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:53.039 local kids at Framlingham, the little Aboriginal kids, he would 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.679 rub mud on his face. Now I have to say, 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:02.120 and I absolutely mean this serious about this. Nothing else 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:06.839 about Jeff Clark makes me sorry for him, But that does. 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.400 That crisis of identity for a little kid might explain 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:16.600 what turned him into a bash artist, a rapist, a misogynist, 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:21.039 and a calculating and brazen thief, not that any of 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:27.120 this sort of nature or nurture, handwringing stuff his victim's anguish. 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.880 His criminality now seems as ingrained as that sneer that 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:34.799 we see on his face at all times. I knew 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.320 men in the past. They're all dead now, but I 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:42.119 knew men who did time in Penridge. With Jeff's biological father, 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.680 Ginger Macintosh. He was a standover man, a street fighter 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.839 and an armed robber. He is a Scottish hardman who 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.880 ended up in Australia as many scaleybags did, and he 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.800 would occasionally visit Jeff and his mother Jeff's mother former 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:03.320 girlfriend of Macintosh, at Framlingham after she'd quit working the 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:08.320 streets of Fitzroy. Macintosh drove a Pontiac, which is a 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.200 large American car for those who don't know, with a 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.560 pistol in the glovebox. According to that same cousin, who 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.240 was a daughter of the well liked and respected Framlingham elder, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.159 the late Banjo Clark, was Banjo Clark's daughter, one of 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.800 many who told me that story, and she was an 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:31.159 eyewitness to the Pontiac, the gun, the whole muzzle, and 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:35.000 they're all related somehow to Jeff Clark. Was an interesting 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.719 job for me to do a profile of Jeff Clark. 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:41.919 To be asked to do a profile of Jeff Clark 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:45.039 in two thousand and one, and I think I was 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:49.159 asked to do it because various people at the newspaper 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:54.159 where I then worked had heard unsavory rumors, gossip and 0:06:54.240 --> 0:07:00.279 allegations about Jeff Clark, quite detailed allegations, and it was 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:03.800 considered a very hard story to do because he was 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:08.760 the darling of the sort of intellectual left and the 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.800 Greens and the Labor Party and so on and so on, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:16.680 and so it was tricky for a lot of people 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.400 to get their head around that story. And they knew 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.680 about it, and they knew that he was a bad 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.080 who did bad things, but they didn't really have the 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:29.560 stomach for the writing of the story. And I was 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:31.600 asked to have a look at him. I had no 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.800 real preconceptions about Jeff Clark. I went to the Western 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.720 District to Warnablee and I spoke to people and I 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.000 just asked them, you know, do you know Jeff Clark. 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:42.760 Did you know him when he was a kid? You know, 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.400 what was he like? Did he play footy, Did he 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.560 play cricket? Did he do this? Do that? The things 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.760 that you ask about almost anybody that you're trying to profile, 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.520 you find out who they are, who they know, and 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:56.280 what they used to do, and you're fishing sort of 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.880 for the anecdotes that illustrate somebody's character. And to me, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.560 it didn't matter really what his character was or wasn't. 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.559 It was just another story to write. But the more 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:12.280 I asked and the more people I spoke to, the 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.720 more bad things they told me, and the more I knew, 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.720 and the more I followed it, the more bad things 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.160 other people told me. And so after a few days 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.200 of this, I realized that when I went back to 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.120 my city office back in two thousand and one, that 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:33.480 this was a story that was taking on a very 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:38.880 dark and nasty edge. That the stories about Jeff Clark 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:44.680 were well founded. It wasn't just one loose allegation of 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.960 rape that had been thrown out by a court. There 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.520 were multiple allegations from multiple people who were by this 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.720 stage scattered all over Australia and who did not necessarily 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.679 know each other or certainly not know each other in 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.400 any sort of cohesive way. And so I came back 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:06.840 with a notebook full of tough stuff, and this caused 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:10.000 very long faces at the paper where I then worked, 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.520 because many people there had invested a lot of time 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:18.440 and effort and affection and love and professional interest in 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:23.000 the rise and rise of Aboriginal politics in general, and 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.800 Jeff Clark in particular, because he was a tough, articulate, 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:33.000 capable Aboriginal politician. To get to be chair of at SICK, 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.200 he didn't have to get a lot of votes, So 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:37.760 I have to say that you could become the chair 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.880 of at SICK with a handful of votes, which he 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:45.360 was easily able to organize. But having got there, he 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.920 was one tough hombre. He knew a lot about how 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.680 to be a barnyard politician. He was a tough, knock 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.240 about politician who understood how to talk to both sides 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:00.160 of politics, liberals and labor. He could appeal to who 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.000 people on their own terms. He could be more of 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:05.840 a knock about than any knock about politician because he was. 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:10.600 He was a former very good footballer, not good enough 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:16.559 to have played at the highest level necessarily, but well 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.000 known to those who did. And he went over to 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.280 South Australia and I think to the west of Perth 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:27.679 and played professional football. He was also better than average boxer. 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.200 He could fight like a thrashing machine. He was genuinely 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.480 tough and he was genuinely feared by a lot of people, 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.520 not only his own people who he dominated effortlessly, but 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:41.800 a lot of people down in the west of Victoria 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.000 where he lived and grew up, were basically nervous of 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.400 him and now nervous of him personally because he was 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:52.679 a tough guy. He was brutal, he was aggressive, he 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:55.880 was a standover man. And also there was a darker 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.920 edge to him than all those things. There were those 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.840 who said, if you get in Jeff's way, or you 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.000 oppose him or criticize him, you run into bad luck. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.400 Your house might burn down, or your car might burn 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.800 or your hay sheds or you know, one family I 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.640 said that he and his mate's sister steal that family 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.439 sheep and things like that. So he had on the side, 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:24.480 essentially a little crime gang of people who would do 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:27.960 what he suggested. And if he didn't want to actually 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.280 get his own hands dirty, he had a few people 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.079 around him who would. And these were guys that had 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:38.480 criminal records and were pretty bad dudes. And so this 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:41.559 is the story that I wrote in two thousand and 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.560 a month Jeff Clark, head of ad Sick, a man 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.760 who's was then earning on the public purse, a big 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:50.960 salary in the mid two hundredths I think was two 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.720 hundred and fifty thousand, which nearly quarter of a century ago, 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.960 was the sort of money paid to a state premier, 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.199 and not a hell of a lot less than perhaps 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.559 the prime minister was on or a cabinet minister was on. 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:13.400 So there was a very heavyweight Aboriginal politician who was 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.120 dutchess by both sides of politics, who knew his way 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:21.559 around Australian politics and also used to have four ways overseas. 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.280 He'd go to Canada and the United States and New 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:29.040 Zealand and elsewhere, sort of riding the wave, the first 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:33.520 wave of the sort of post colonial trend in identity 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.800 politics of indigenous peoples, which is in itself a pretty 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.839 good thing. But I think it's fair to say that 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:43.600 Jeff Clark used a lot of those things to his 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:47.360 own ends. And we can say those things now because 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.920 it has become more and more apparent over the years 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.480 over the intervening years that Jeff Clerk was a bad 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.640 dude who did bad stuff, and he did a variety 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.679 of bad stuff. It's worth pointing out that although accused 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:06.760 by four different women in one block of multiple rapes, 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:11.480 that he denied the rapes, but he never ever sued 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:13.880 over it. He said he was going to go to 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.120 the Press Council, which would cost nothing, of course, and 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:20.080 complain about the story. He never did. He did wing 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:24.719 and wine to a shrinking number of sympathetic journalists, reporters 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:29.480 and the odd author, but their numbers gradually crumbled away. 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.480 There was initially a ground swell of support for him 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.960 from the sort of do gooder intellectual left, let's say. 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.040 In fact, people such as the head of the Civil 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:44.560 Liberties Union in Victoria, who was a prominent barrister and 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.320 others were very vocal for a while about it. The 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:53.120 Clerk expose that was attacked by the people I've just 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.920 described and all their fellow travelers, including you know, people 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:01.720 I worked with at different times, gan as a neutral 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:06.440 profile of a powerful political figure, a figure who was 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:12.120 then highly paid, an influential and part of an institution 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:17.600 that had a lot of influence with politicians on both sides, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:22.400 with governments. This man who pretended to represent them was 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:28.280 actually exploiting and robbing his own constituents in a position 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.440 that he'd nailed down with the votes of a handful 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.760 of people. This was absolute Tammany Hall stuff, right down 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.480 to the bribes, the guns, and the violence. By that 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:42.760 Tammany Hall, I'm referring to the bad old days in 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:48.040 New York when crooks and crooked politicians and gangsters and 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:52.560 all sorts of people could run New York by the 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.240 influence they wielded at the town hall known as Tammany Hall. 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.240 The fact is, I have to say that guns and 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:06.600 violence always appealed to Clark. When a Warnable Standard reporter. 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.320 Warnable Standard is a newspaper still published in Warnable years ago. 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:16.600 A reporter working for that paper many years ago went 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:21.160 to Framlingham to do a story about Jeff Clark's gang 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.840 illegally pinching firewood in the state forest to sell. They 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.480 were just pinching, would to sell it for cash. This 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:32.080 reporter has got his little notebook and he's got his 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.360 little pen, and he's standing there and he hears a click, 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:38.800 and he turns around and there is Jeff Clark with 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:44.240 a gun held to this bloke's ear. Now he was terrified. 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:46.560 He's staring down the barrel of a gun. We all 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:51.680 would be. And Clark is cloating, and Clark says, you're 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.760 going to write a nice story, aren't you. And the 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:58.640 reporter nodded and quietly backed away and went back to 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:02.400 warnable and probably wrote a very tame story. Now that 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.320 happened way back, way back. That'd be the late seventies, 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:11.520 early eighties. But when the same reporter, by this time 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:15.600 no longer a young country reporter, but a senior sub 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:18.560 editor on Melbourne newspapers. And I worked with this guy 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:22.680 and I knew him well when in two thousand and one, 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:28.280 so this is maybe twenty years later, he was urged 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:33.560 to write that story to outline what had happened to him. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:39.640 He refused, not because it wasn't true, but because it 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:45.360 was He was still scared that Jeff Clark would reach 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:50.400 out and hurt him. This is a chief sub editor 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:55.360 on a Melbourne newspaper who lived in a Melbourne suburb 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:58.720 was still scared in the year two thousand and one 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:04.000 that Jeff Clark would do him some harm. He wasn't alone. 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.600 Nearly everyone I spoke to about Clark down in Western 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:11.560 Victoria back in those days was nervous of him, and 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:16.720 guns weren't all. As I've mentioned before, they feared that 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.240 their houses, or their farms, or their sheds or their 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:27.760 fences would be burned out. Jeff Clark loved firepower, not 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.200 just a pistol in the glove box. Like his father, 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.880 the Glaswegient. He once tried to bring back an illegal 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.399 automatic military rifle. I think it was an AK forty 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.480 seven from memory, and if it wasn't an AK forty seven, 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:46.400 it was the American equivalent them sixteen anti personnel high firepower, 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.680 highly illegal in Australia for ordinary shooters. He was bringing 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.520 it back from North America, I think it was, and 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:58.600 he got angry when customs confiscated in Darwin. Like too 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.399 many thugs the world over, Jeff Clark posed as a 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:07.840 freedom fighter, but in truth he was a bandit. As 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:12.120 the years went on, it appeared that Jeff Clark's fingerprints 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:16.960 appeared in things other than rape cases. In two thousand 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.359 and seven, it was finally decided by a civil court 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:25.000 a civil court in an action brought by one of 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:28.919 his victims Carol Stingle, who was very a simple woman 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.560 that I really liked and got on well with. She 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.160 bravely brought a civil action against Clark, suing him for 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:39.040 the pack rape of her when she was a teenager. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.639 That Clark and others other people that he led had 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.800 all raped her, she said, And in fact the civil 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:50.000 court upheld her action and said that she had been raped, 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:53.679 and she was awarded a sum of money which Clark 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.800 was meant to pay her. Clark claimed at the time that, 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:58.680 you know, he was a victim of all sorts of 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:03.000 terrible things. He was the victim of entrench racism. And 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.000 where would he get the sort of money. It wasn't 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.120 a lot of money either, he said, you know, where 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:08.720 would he get the sort of money to pay out 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.119 that this alleged victim, And so on and so forth. 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:14.960 He forgot conveniently that even at that stage he owned 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.760 various properties, either in his own name or in the 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.480 names of proxies, and so there was no doubt had 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:24.439 he wanted to put his hand on money, he could, 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.440 And indeed, in subsequent years he did put his hand 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.120 on quite a lot of money. He put his hand 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.480 on money that wasn't actually his. He put his hands 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.640 on money that belonged to various aboriginal bodies that he 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:41.400 had access to. Despite the fact that he was notionally 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:46.960 in disgrace, through his connections his family, his very dominant family, 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:51.320 he was able to exert control, actual control or proxy 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:58.040 control over aboriginal bodies that had access to taxpayers money. 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:01.639 And so over the years Jeff Clark and one of 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:06.040 his sons at least was able to and actually his 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.040 wife was charged with some of these offenses, but the 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:13.480 charges against so were later dropped. I note I suspect 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:17.200 because it was felt that she might have been acting 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.680 under his influence and perhaps it was better to stick 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:25.440 with charges against him and one of their sons, who 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:29.320 was a pretty smart cookie. These are not ignorant people. 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:34.280 These are pretty well educated, pretty sharp blokes. They systematically 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.920 roughted these aboriginal bodies of money, and in the end 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.000 it turns out that Jeff Clark owns a royal flush 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:47.880 of properties. He owns either four or five properties, most 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:50.240 of them in Victoria, but one not at Fitzroy Crossing 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:54.040 in the Northern Territory. They are worth a considerable sum, 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.600 particularly one at Hall's gap, I believe, and the blocks 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.399 of land there and all sorts of things. Came a 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.879 time when a vary astute and hard working policeman, Detective 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:11.479 Inspector Mark Collins, decided to look deeply into Jeff Clark 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.159 and the Clark family's affairs. And as I had in 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:20.520 two thousand and one, a decade later or thereabouts, Detective 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.720 Inspector Collins found that the more he looked, the more 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:27.280 he found. To make a long story short, over a 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:33.320 number of years, he and other investigators, quite sophisticated fraud investigators, 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:37.840 were able to build a case against Jeff Clark and 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:42.040 at least one of his sons, if not other people, which, 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:46.359 to put it simply, showed that they'd been involved in roots, 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:51.360 multiple roots, lots and lots of roots, which added up 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:56.439 to something like a million dollars total. And the result 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.240 of this was that Clark and at least one of 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.640 his sons, Jeremy, were charged with all these offenses, and 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.320 they went to court and went through trials which were 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:12.439 actually suppressed. These were secret court cases in order to 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:18.200 preserve something. The law decided that as happens in Victoria, 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:23.320 we have in this state Victoria, more than double the 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.840 number of cases suppressed pro rather than any other state. 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:30.880 We're very good at it here, and almost anybody can 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:34.800 get something suppressed if they wish, and Jeff Clark clearly 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:37.840 wished to get his suppressed, and they were, and there 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:42.080 was a number of trials suppressed, and therefore the general 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.000 public knew nothing about them, apart from an initial flurry 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:50.040 of low level publicity about charges being lone. And so 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:54.720 this year twenty twenty four, we've seen those charges go 0:22:54.800 --> 0:23:00.680 through the system and Clark actually be convicted and it's 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.120 the suppressions have been lifted, and now we can all 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.240 find out as we have that convicted, over it something 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:11.400 like a million dollars worth of roots and of perjury. 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:17.160 They're saying that Jeff Clark told porkies that is untrue, 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:21.800 that is lies under oath, that he put the Bible 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:25.600 or whatever he raised in his right hand and swore 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:27.560 to tell the truth, and he did not do so. 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:33.240 Now I think it's allowable for fair opinion commentary here 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:37.480 that a judge sometimes in the near future will decide 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:45.280 what penalty Jeff Clark should suffer for these crimes. And 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:47.800 that's fair enough for a judge to have that call. 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:51.720 But I think it's fair to say that judges take 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:56.639 a dim view of two things. One is where people 0:23:56.760 --> 0:24:01.720 in positions of trust abuse that trust and steal the 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:05.360 money or the goods or the property of the poorer 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:09.000 people around them, which is what he did. And judges 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:13.879 also take a very dim view of perjury, because people 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:18.080 who perjure themselves are willing to purgure themselves undermine our 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:23.040 entire system of the rule of law. If we don't 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:28.159 have a very tough anti perjury stance, it means that 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.919 people will routinely get up in court and tell lies, 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:35.879 and at this stage of the game, very few people 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:38.520 are willing to get up in court and tell lies 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:41.479 under oath. I think some police are pretty good at 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:44.960 it in the past. The odd lawyer might give it 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:47.359 a bit of a tickle if they're willing, but I 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:49.840 don't think the general public's very good at it or 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:54.480 keen on it. Some old time crooks might have memory 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:58.840 lapses under a cross examination, but there's no doubt that 0:24:58.920 --> 0:25:03.560 Jeff Clark was charged with perjury and he's been convicted 0:25:03.640 --> 0:25:08.560 of it, and a judge at some point is going 0:25:08.600 --> 0:25:12.400 to hand down a sentence, and if there is any 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:15.760 fairness in the world, he will end up behind bars, 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:19.000 even though he is seventy two years old. There are 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:25.960 very few mitigating circumstances here. This is an intelligent man, 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:34.200 clearly a capable man, clearly a personally robust, tough man. Obviously, 0:25:35.080 --> 0:25:39.120 all those things mean that Jeff Clark is not actually 0:25:39.160 --> 0:25:43.240 a victim. Jeff Clark is a perpetrator. Jeff Clark is 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:48.280 not a sheep. Jeff Clerk is a wolf or perhaps 0:25:48.840 --> 0:25:55.560 a dinger. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a 0:25:55.600 --> 0:26:01.280 Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia is Johnty Burton. 0:26:02.119 --> 0:26:06.000 For my columns, features and more, go to Haroldson dot 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:11.560 com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For 0:26:11.720 --> 0:26:17.280 advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:22.520 com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts 0:26:22.560 --> 0:26:26.840 sold And if you want further information about this episode, 0:26:27.119 --> 0:26:29.240 links are in the description.