“Believe All Women” Trumps Children’s Justice

As I write this, the headlines are still on the front page of MSN:

That one is The Guardian, who are predictably outraged on behalf of an indigenous offender. But what is fascinating is that the top prosecutor is a woman: generally, women succeeding in male fields such as law are supported not criticised.

The ABC’s headline was what we would expect from our ‘progressive’ national broadcaster::

That’s more like it - “attack on powerful woman condemned!”! But they forget to mention the Indigenous child offender at the heart of the issue.

The report is about confidentiality breaches regarding a child offender. That’s a serious issue. It’s not quite as straightforward as it sounds - sometimes these confidentiality issues mean offenders get anonymity to protect their victims, precisely when we want to know who those offenders are. And sometimes it means victims can’t tell their own stories. There is nuance, but it is generally child-centered nuance. At least in theory.

In practice, it means a lot of women who do terrible things to children remain anonymous. You will notice that the various men who are being focussed on for sexual abuse in the childcare industry have been named. So they should be.

Predators should not be protected by these laws, but we err on behalf of the children. That at least is understandable.

Before we look at how this report addresses - or ignores - child confidentiality, let’s quickly recap the issue at hand.

In October 2025 the NSW Parliament established an inquiry that this week tabled a report titled, Identity Protections for Proceedings Involving Children. The terms of reference of the inquiry are blessedly brief and essentially look at existing protections for children (Section 15A of the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987), reporting mechanisms for breaches, and any breaches in the last two years. The committee members were 3 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 Green, and the Chair, the head of the Shooters Fishers and Farmers party.

Obviously, there was a catalyst for the inquiry. In 2024, Ben Fordham on 2GB (Sydney talkback radio with a populist / conservative leaning) reported that an Aboriginal boy - 17 at the time of offending - was offered the opportunity to give a “welcome to country” to the court in Taree where he was about to be sentenced for breaking and entering the homes of a 78 year old woman and 82 year old woman, and sexually touching them. Here is a contemporary account: ultimately the boy performed an acknowledgment of country.

The District Court Judge in Taree, Penelope Wass, had alerted both the ODPP and the boy’s solicitor that the “Welcome to Country” would happen and claimed nobody objected. Fordham is reported as having said, “NSW legal figures had told him they had never seen anything like it and were “shaking their heads”.”

Fordham’s coverage elevated a regional public proceeding into state-wide, then national, discourse and the backlash followed party lines from certain perspectives. The Right-leaning shadow attorney general condemned this, taking aim at the Labor government, saying:

“The idea that a prisoner in the dock would be elevated to a de facto officer of the court and perform a ceremony on behalf of the court is not something that I’ve ever heard of and seems to me to be entirely inappropriate.

“It’s a privilege to perform something like that. It should not be offered to someone who is a criminal who’s pleaded guilty and is about to be sentenced — and then to top it all off at the end, the judge says look if you’d like to come back and do it again in the future.”

On the Left, the Greens condemned the breach of confidentiality, saying:

“The circumstances that have led to the identification of a First Nations child, due to an unauthorised disclosure, also known as a ‘leak’ from the ODPP to 2GB, are incredibly confronting and indicate a problem that needs to be fixed.”

SBS provide a Left-leaning coverage here that includes the demand by Judge Wass that the DPP Sally Dowling have her “employment reviewed”.

With elements of both the Left and Right going after Sally Dowling, her appearances before the Committee were described as “tense”, clashing with some committee members and questioning the validity of the proceedings.

But she had defenders - much of the legal establishment. Incensed that a DPP, an independent office holder, should face obviously political interference, this article tells us in the headline, “Top Prosecutors Nationwide Back NSW DPP Sally Dowling”. When the report was ultimately released, the Labor Attorney-General Michael Daley rejected it and said he would not be holding an inquiry to “review her employment” (ie sack her) as recommended, saying it was the worst report he had ever seen.

What is not in dispute is that the Office of the DPP absolutely

Sally Dowling’s claimed response was to internally sanction the person who provided those details to 2GB, her media manager, Sally Killoran, and distance herself from the leak, despite having been present in the meeting where Killoran discussed leaking the information with an external media advisor, who recommended 2GB rather than the (populist / conservative) Daily Telegraph. A senior ODPP lawyer was also present.

Dowling’s excuse is that she was too busy “reading emails and text messages about other ODPP matters during the meeting.” The media manager said she believed she was authorised to proceed and did so, but does not say Dowling explicitly authorised her.

It is also interesting to note that the senior lawyer at the meeting was reported to have gone on sick leave shortly after being told that he would be summonsed, and the external media advisor avoided being summonsed altogether. Killoran herself, after giving evidence once, failed to respond to a request that she provide her notes from the meeting and then went on sick leave.

NSW Police did in fact also investigate the leak, and sought to interview Dowling about it. She is reported to have refused to give them a statement.

Dowling’s excuse for why she was not aware of the discussion to leak during the meeting is hard to fathom. The meeting was about that very issue and Dowling had a tense history with the judge. The report, understandably, rejected Dowling’s claim.

Getting back to the report, the findings were appropriately child-centered. As the Guardian puts it:

[the report] found there was “no genuine public interest” in the office of the director of public prosecutions (ODPP) “proactively and surreptitiously” pitching the story. It found the action had risked identifying the child involved, and would “most likely constitute a breach of the prosecution guidelines”.

…The 4-3 majority on the committee report found that Dowling gave false evidence, including “claiming she only discovered in December 2025 the story had been pitched by the [ODPP], despite having sat in the meeting where pitching the story to 2GB was decided upon”.

And yet, Labor and Greens members of the committee dissented from the report, which only got through because one Labor person, Stephen Lawrence, backed the report but also wrote a dissent saying it was not strong enough.

And this is where we can start to look into the gender issues.

Because despite being critical of the leaking of an Aboriginal young person’s name, the Labor and Greens MLCs who dissented accepted that Sally Dowling herself was not to blame for what happened on her watch.

Their logic? Because she said so.

The Guardian reports that Attorney-General Daley said:

“The report makes findings that are unsupported by the evidence. It reaches conclusions that are contrary to sworn testimony. It treats mere suspicion and speculation as fact,” he said.

While the ABC reports that Greens MLC Sue Higginson said:

“The report’s unfounded and biased findings against the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ms Sally Dowling SC, are both irresponsible and incredible.”

“The report discards sworn testimony and relies on confected evidence and inference to assume guilt on the part of the director, pointing towards a foregone conclusion on the part of some Committee members.”

All this, I believe, can simply be summed up as: the committee grilled Sally Dowling, she said she didn’t know, and they didn’t believe her and reported she gave false evidence.

The dissenters did believe her, and were scandalised.

Because, apparently, we should believe all women.

Higgonson’s claims that it was a “foregone conclusion’ point to earlier issues. When the various other state DPPs and similar office holders voiced their support, they were backed by Geoffrey Watson SC, who wrote in the Herald that “the committee would be better renamed the “Committee for a Hatchet Job on Women””. Watson tells us a bit about the history of conflict between Dowling and Wass - because Wass’ 68-page testimony to the committee details a long history of conflict between the two women.

And yes, the ABC identifies this as a feud between women:

In hearings, Judge Wass told the committee Ms Dowling’s leak was meant to defame her, during an ongoing professional dispute between the two women.

What should be an investigation into the leaking of a young person’s confidential information by the ODPP becomes everything but - the history of a personal squabble between two women in influential positions, and then claims that people are only looking at them because they are women.

Misogyny either way. The media love that.

And the media’s coverage incorrectly questions the report’s ultimate direction. The ABC claimed that:

The inquiry into “Identity protections for proceedings involving children” was called in October last year, but the committee has focused almost solely on the leaking of the story to 2GB.

The Guardian said the same thing: so did the Herald here. This is inaccurate. The leaking of the story was the reason for the inquiry, and it was consistent with section 1c of the terms of reference to focus on it. Sections 1a and 1b - inquire into existing protections and mechanisms for breaches - are matters for research, not hearings, and are covered on pages 13-27 of the final report. The hearings - the most time-consuming, and most scandalous elements of the inquiry - were always going to be the largest element, but written submissions from the Aboriginal Legal Service detailed other breaches,

The other reason we are led to believe there is misogyny afoot is because Sally Dowling has previously faced criticism for the ODPP pursuing sexual assault prosecutions that had little chance of success and were often just thrown out - after the accused men had already paid financial and personal costs. The criticism came from no less than five district court judges. Bettina Arndt covered this when it occurred here: the subsequent inquiry a year later is reported on here.

The Guardian tells us Wass was one of those judges:

Wass, who has been among district court judges who have criticised the ODPP’s handling of sexual assault prosecutions under Dowling’s tenure, said the alleged leak was “designed to embarrass and defame me and to undermine the independence of a district court judge with whom the ODPP has had issue”.

Dowling responded by demanding that Wass recuse herself from certain sexual assault trials: details here regarding an historic child abuse case.

Getting back to the report, it at least gives 4 paragraphs (3.24-3.27) to the impact on the young person - a violent offender, to be sure - saying:

Judge Wass expressed concern that ‘those responsible for the disclosure were willing to risk the wellbeing of a vulnerable Indigenous child for no proper or justifiable reason, certainly none that has been explained’.

Of the eight findings:

Finding 3 acknowledges that the leak allows the identification of the young person not by name but “through a ‘jigsaw’ of information”, the very words the Greens used when calling for the report.

Finding 4 says there was no public interest in this.

Finding 5 says it was done to hurt Judge Wass, despite the risk to the young person and to “public confidence and the administration of justice”

Finding 6 says the DPP falsely denied her involvement.

And finding 7 says she did not cooperate sufficiently with the “various attempts to establish the facts”.

These are damning. And it was everything the left-leaning politicians asked for: a senior public office had violated an indigenous youth’s rights and needed to be held accountable. But because a woman was criticised, they dissented, attacked the report, attacked the committee, and the media followed suit.

And this is where we end up: two women continuing a protracted feud, a report claiming one gave false evidence to cover her involvement in a leak that attacked the other, the Government and Greens attacking the report because we must “believe all women”, and the young person whose rights were criminally violated by that leak, forgotten by the media.

I’ll give the last word to the Labor MLC who broke ranks to support the report. He said:

“This report reveals a failure to properly administer media comment guidelines and the improper use of information. Public confidence in the ODPP needs to be restored and protected.”

If you regularly enjoy my work, I’d love to welcome you as a paid subscriber. Your membership helps fund the research and writing behind every article.

If a subscription isn’t for you, but you’d still like to support independent, evidence-based writing, you’re very welcome to buy me a coffee instead.

Buy Me A Coffee!

Every article represents many hours of research, reading, fact-checking and writing. Thank you for reading—and for helping make the next article possible.