my past work experience at Legal Aid - part 3

Tuesday 13-8-2002

This week I went to Legal Aid on Tuesday instead of the normal Monday because I was going a Drug Court which doesn’t operate on Mondays. Another Drug Court operates on Mondays but I didn’t wanted to travel that far. From a previous debriefing session, I have heard that the Drug Court was very exciting so I had relatively high expectations but in the end, once again, I was somewhat disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were set a bit high!

I set off for the Drug Court at 8:45am with the administrative assistant responsible for all matters related to the Drug Courts. We travelled in one of the many company cars and I couldn’t believe how new the cars were but she told me that the cars are changed every two years or earlier if they’ve reached a certain mileage! She also told me that we were expecting the head of the city council at the Drug Court today but it didn’t make any sense because firstly, it’s outside his jurisdiction and secondly, as yet, there are no plans to set up a Drug Court in our city! In the end, I guess it didn’t really matter because the head of the city council didn’t turn up. (Perhaps he was too busy trying to prepare his press release on what he managed to achieve on his recent overseas trip with his partner which costed city council residents $50000!) Instead, we had two local politicians there.

We got to the Courthouse suburb at 9:15am but experienced difficulty finding a suitable car park. Those close to the courthouse had 2 hour time limits while further away, the car parks with 4 hour or no time limits were full so we had to park about 100 metres from the courthouse where there were some no time limit car parks available. There happened to be a cheap shoe shop beside where we parked so with 10 minutes to spare, the administative assistant decided that we should check the shop out, which we did but we came out empty handed because of time constraints but she said maybe we’ll go back later. In the end, we didn’t return because she goes to that suburb every week.

At the courthouse front desk, the administrative assistant and I waited for 10 minutes before we were attended to because there was only one officer working behind the counter. Whereas there are metal detectors in every courthouse in the city, I was shocked to find that there were no metal detectors in the suburb courthouse. Now, the reason the Drug Court was set up in that suburb in the first place was because the drug problem down there is rather serious. So, in my opinion, if they were going to have metal detectors anywhere, it would definitely be in that courthouse because drug addicts/users are more unpredictable than other criminals.

We attended the weekly progress meeting where a panel of representatives from the Mental Health Department, Department of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid and Community Corrections reported on the progress made by each participant in the rehab program in the previous week and set the agenda for the day. It was very funny because at the meeting, everyone referred to the judge by his first name.

The court officially opened at 10:30am with participants lining up dying to tell the judge what good progress they’ve made in the past week saying really positive things such as "I now have goals and I am determined to reach them and do away with all the drugs forever." Personally, I thought that more than 90% of the things the participants said were rather artificial and far from the truth. In any case, this session was extremely time consuming and pointless and a waste of resources. For one, why do we need to hear the participants personally when their progress have already been reported to the judge earlier in the morning by the panel, that also happen to be more credible!

The two local politicians tried very hard to look interested but they couldn’t fool me, it was obvious that their minds were else where. I decided to leave with the administrative assisant after she completed all work required by the duty solicitor because I’ve had enough of the Drug Court. We made it back to the office at 1pm.

Later in the afternoon, I sat in on an interview with a client (aged 68) charged with four counts of indecent treatment of a child aggravated by the facts that the girl is under 12 and is actually the granddaughter of the accused. Basically, we went through the police statements of the various witnesses. At times, I found it rather hard to keep a straight face and had to dig keep not to laugh because I found most of the stuff rather unbelievable but I couldn’t keep myself from smirking but luckily, the client didn’t notice. How would an eleven-year-old child know what g-strings and vibrators are? She even remembered that she was sexually assaulted by our client when she was 4 or 5 years old. I mean, no one really remembers anything until they reach the age of at least 7 or 8 unless, of course, if you have an IQ of at least 160, which the girl doesn’t. In fact, the girl is described by her school teacher as a slow learner. It’s rather absurd, I reckon the police made most of the girl’s story up after they found the items in our client’s home. Afterall, the audio tape of the girl’s interview was inaudible and the girl’s statement was constructed from the police officers’ recollections. What added to the dilemma was the fact that our client had selective memory. He remembered what he did before and after the alleged event, even what his granddaughter wore that day but he just couldn’t remember the few minutes that are at the point of debate. How hilarious!