The 86 year old Noel Greenaway will be eligible for parole in five years. If he is still alive. For now, he is in a maximum security cell, convicted of sexual assaults against five teenagers – when he was in his 30s. The only evidence against him was testimony given by them - now middle aged women then youngsters at the Parramatta Training School for Girls.
Their testimony is in sharp contrast to numerous character references presented to the court prior to sentencing that paint a picture of a man of high moral principles, who was never heard to raise his voice or swear.
He is in prison because if you are named in the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, you are presumed guilty. Evil.
From being so named to later being tried and found guilty is the process of guilt by accusation which does away with the presumption of innocence and the need to prove allegations beyond reasonable doubt. Child sex abuse is today’s crimen exceptum – a crime so exceptional that the established rules of justice need not be applied to it.
In his latest book, author Andrew L. Urban traces the Greenaway family’s nightmare from the phone call that alerted Noel that he would be named – the next day - in that Royal Commission, through the 2019 trial and the appeal, to the day he met the ‘evil’ Noel face to face in a supermax jail.
Drawing on transcripts, diaries, personal reflections and painful family recollections, PRESUMPTION OF EVIL is a journey into one man’s hell.
- Presumption of Evil, published by wrongfulconvictionsreport.org, is available on Amazon Kindle, $11.99 - http://tiny.cc/7ffzwz
- Media copies (digital) available on request: