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Her Honour Judge Sarah Bradley | |
|---|---|
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| Judge of the District Court of Queensland | |
| Assumed office 25 March 1999 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 10 March 1956 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education | University of Queensland |
| Occupation | Judge, lawyer |
Sarah Bradley AO (born 10 March 1956) is an Australian jurist, who has been a judge of the District Court of Queensland since 25 March 1999, and a judge of the Children's Court of Queensland.
Legal Officer in Prosecution Section of Solicitor-General’s Office, Brisbane July 1978 to November 1979.
Employed Solicitor, Mooloolaba and O’Dwyer and Murphy, Solicitors (subsequently O’Dwyer and Bradley), Woodridge November 1979 to August 1981. August 1982 to June 1984
Partner in firm, O’Dwyer and Bradley, Solicitors July 1984 to March 1990
Part-time Member of the Misconduct Tribunals within the Criminal Justice Commission of Queensland August 1990 to August 1993
Chair or co-chair of Mediation Conferences for Legal Aid Office (Qld) February 1991 to June 1993
Stipendiary Magistrate - Rockhampton August 1993 to November 1995
Stipendiary Magistrate - Townsville December 1995 to March 1999
Member of District Court Judges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Committee since 2000 Member of the council of James Cook University since 2002. President of Australian Association of Women Judges since 2006.
Judge Bradley attracted criticism in 2007 when it was widely reported in the Australian media that three adults and six teenagers who gang raped a 10-year-old girl escaped jail. She did not record convictions against six teenagers and gave suspended sentences to the three others over the 2005 gang rape at the indigenous Aurukun community on Cape York. Three others were given suspended sentences.
The girl had "probably agreed" to have sex with the nine, Judge Bradley said during her sentencing remarks. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his disgust at Bradley's decision, but refused to prevent such abuses occurring again. [1]
In 2013 Bradley controversially refused a prosecution request for an adjournment when an alleged rape victim left the court before completing her testimony. Two days later the accused was alleged to have raped, stabbed and tortured the same victim. [2]
The Sydney gang rapes were a series of gang rape attacks committed by a group of up to 14 youths led by Bilal Skaf against Australian women and teenage girls as young as 14, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia across several days in 2000. The crimes, described as ethnically motivated hate crimes by officials and commentators, were covered extensively by the news media, and prompted the passing of new laws. In 2002, the nine men convicted of the gang rapes were sentenced to a total of more than 240 years in jail. According to court transcripts, Judge Michael Finnane described the rapes as events that "you hear about or read about only in the context of wartime atrocities".
The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American male teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.
Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed is a former Labour politician and convicted sex offender of Pakistani origin. He was appointed a life peer in 1998 by the Labour Government.
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A private prosecution is a criminal proceeding initiated by an individual private citizen or private organisation instead of by a public prosecutor who represents the state. Private prosecutions are allowed in many jurisdictions under common law, but have become less frequent in modern times as most prosecutions are now handled by professional public prosecutors instead of private individuals who retain barristers.
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Nora Wall is a former Irish sister of the Sisters of Mercy who was wrongfully convicted of rape in June 1999, and served four days of a life sentence in July 1999, before her conviction was quashed. She was officially declared the victim of a miscarriage of justice in December 2005. The wrongful conviction was based on false allegations by two women in their 20s, Regina Walsh and Patricia Phelan. Walsh had a psychiatric history and Phelan had a history of making false allegations of rape prior to the event. Phelan subsequently admitted to having lied.
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The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet to investigate further claims of abuse with 19 men so far being convicted. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the police investigation. The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racial prejudice. The girls were mainly White British.
The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved a rape and fatal assault that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South Delhi. The incident took place when Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and transferred to Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she succumbed to her injuries 2 days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.
Timothy Francis Carmody is an Australian judge who was the Chief Justice of Queensland between 8 July 2014 and 1 July 2015. His previous roles include work as a police officer, barrister, Queensland Crime Commissioner, Family Court of Australia judge, and Chief Magistrate of the Magistrates Court of Queensland. He also presided over the 2013 Child Protection Commission of Inquiry.
The Keighley child sex abuse ring was a group of twelve men who committed serious sexual offences against two under-aged girls in the English town of Keighley and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire. In December 2015, they were found guilty of rape and other forms of sexual abuse by a unanimous jury verdict at Bradford Crown Court. They were sentenced in February 2016 to a total of 130 years in jail. The main victim, who had been targeted by ten of the men, was aged between 13 and 14 at the time of the attacks between 2011 and 2012.
Walter Sofronoff is an Australian jurist and lawyer who served as the President of the Queensland Court of Appeal (2017–2022) and as the Solicitor-General of Queensland from 2005 to 2014.
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Howard Charles Fraser Riddle. is a retired British judge who was the Senior District Judge for England and Wales. He was appointed to that office in 2010.
