VIEWPOINT FROM AUSTRALIA

They call this justice

The Victorian community has reason to be very angry over the treatment of mentally disabled Peter Greening. Mr Greening, 51, has been discarded by the state while his mother's killers are cosseted at taxpayers' expense. Mr Greening saw two teenage thugs torture, sexually assault and kill his mother, Marie Zidan, at their Seaford home in October 2000. She was her son's sole carer after he suffered brain damage in a near-drowning. Mrs Zidan fought to keep her son out of an institution, but since her death he has been shunted around – first to a hospital with psychotics and drug addicts and finally a nursing home with elderly people. His sister has tried to get the Government to find him home-style accommodation with 24-hour care. Instead, she says, he has been "dumped and forgotten".

And while Mr Greening languishes in the bureaucratic too-hard basket, taxpayers are spending an outrageous $250,000 a year to keep the sadistic killers in juvenile detention with big-screen television, table tennis, computer games and a daily swim. They pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and will be released in October next year having served only about six years.

Mr Greening is another victim of the justice system's distorted priorities that put concern for killers ahead of victims. He is also a victim of the Government's inexcusable indifference.

22 February 2005

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12327273%255E24218,00.html

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