Sex Crimes, Cover-Ups and Conspiracy Theories

In 2009, the media reported that a Tasmanian independent politician, Terry Martin, was arrested for having sex with a 12-year-old girl. The girl was advertised as ‘Angela 18, new in town’ and sold by her mother and a man, Gary Devine, to between 100 and 200 men over four weeks. While the two who sold the child were jailed, all but one of the men who allegedly paid to have sex with her escaped arrest. This was because Tasmanian law at the time provided a defence of ‘mistake as to age’ allowing the accused to argue they had a mistaken but reasonable belief that the child was 18-years-old: after all, she was advertised in the local newspaper. Outrage erupted about why so many escaped convictions, including allegations of institutional cover-up and ‘rumours that well‐known figures such as lawyers, politicians and high-profile sportsmen might be among the suspects’ (Neales 2010).