Teenager standing trial for murdering her step father who she states sexually abused her

A horrible story - In Australia a 19 year old girl on trial for murdering her step father she states sexually abused her from aged 14. The night she killed him she reports that he had demanded oral sex of her. Whilst he was abusing her he was also recording the abuse and capturing his abuse, his torture and rape of her.

The prosecution are saying that because she dismembered his body and then went out with a man that her step father banned her from seeing, that the murder was pre mediatated. She probably should of reported the killing and maybe dismembering was not a good idea, however look at what she is facing - being tried for murdering her abuser, when she was acting in self defence.

Andrea Dworkin said ".......they stand there in jail for us; for all women who survived, for all women who got away without ever having to pull the trigger; without ever having the trigger pulled on us..."

Read the article here http://www.news.%20com.au/adelaiden%20ow/story/%200,22606,24909535%20-5005962,%2000.html

Teen to stand trial over stepdad's murder
Article from: AAP
By Kim Stephens
January 13, 2009 08:11pm
A VICTORIAN teenager has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of her stepfather who allegedly took nearly 10,000 pornographic pictures of her in four years.The Shepparton Magistrates' Court was told that on March 13 last year, the stepdaughter shot the 34-year-old in the back of the head to put an end to daily sexual abuse that began when she was 14. The man's dismembered torso was unearthed in a shallow grave in the backyard of their Mooroopna home on April 9 and further remains were discovered two days later at a campsite nearby at Old Toolamba, in Victoria's north.

The teenager, now 19, has pleaded not guilty to murder. Her defence barrister Peter Chadwick told the court on the night of his death, the woman's stepfather ordered the accused to go to a shed at the back of their home where he demanded she perform oral sex on him. Mr Chadwick told the court when the teenager declined, citing a sore throat, the stepfather removed a shotgun from his gun cabinet, loaded it and asked her to rethink her answer. After she performed the act, she moved behind him and seeing the loaded shotgun lying on the ground, picked it up and fired it at the back of his head.

Mr Chadwick said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told police her motive for her actions was so "she wouldn't have to do it again". Under cross-examination, Victoria Police homicide squad Detective Senior Constable Barry Gray said soon after the teenager was charged, police seized a series of still and video pornographic images the deceased had taken of her, which he had stored in the shed. He agreed while there were many pictures of the pair engaged in sexual activity, "by far the large majority were of just the accused". He agreed that among the images was one of the accused tied to a chair with cable ties and towels. Det Sen Const Gray said the images dated from January 2004 until February 2008 and constituted child pornography.

Mr Chadwick told Magistrate Ian von Einem the images cast no doubt on the girl's claims of sustained sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. "It has been videoed, photographed and is clear for all to see," he said. "He had used the images to blackmail her into submission. Asked by police what she thought would have happened if she hadn't killed him, she said she probably would have killed herself because she could not keep living the way she was." But Crown prosecutor Mark Gamble said the teenager's dismembering of the body and attempts to cover up the murder, along with forming a relationship with a man her stepfather had banned her from seeing three days after his death, could be construed as something other than self-defence. "She shot him so she didn't have to do it again ... a jury could form the view, albeit against a background of abuse, it was not committed in self-defence, " he said. The accused was ordered to appear at a directions hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court on January 27.

Child-rape prosecutor suspended

December 11, 2007 - 9:19PM
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The prosecutor at the centre of the case in which six attackers escaped jail time for the gang rape of a 10-year-old in far-north Queensland has been stood aside, pending an investigation.
Queensland Attorney-General Kerry Shine tonight said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions would investigate the conduct of Steve Carter, the senior legal officer responsible for Cape York matters in the DPP's Cairns chambers.
Court transcripts released today showed Mr Carter had described the 2006 incident as "childish experimentation" and consensual "in a general sense".
The child - who cannot be named - was gang-raped at the age of seven in Aurukun on Cape York in 2002, and was later put into foster care with a non-indigenous family in Cairns.
However, child safety officers in April 2006 returned her to Aurukun, where she was raped again at the age of 10.
Premier Anna Bligh today admitted the Child Safety Department had failed the girl.
"I think it is very important to understand, and I don't resile from the fact for one moment, the system clearly failed this little girl," Ms Bligh told reporters.
But she said the government took immediate action by disciplining the officers involved, moving the child, and improving child safety processes.
Ms Bligh could not give a reason for the officers' decision to return the girl to Aurukun, but said it should never have happened.
Cairns-based District Court judge Sarah Bradley did not record convictions against six teenage attackers and gave three others aged 17, 18 and 26 suspended sentences over the 2006 rape.
The state government is appealing the sentences and has ordered a review of around 75 sexual assault cases in Cape York over the past two years.
One senior child safety officer has been sacked and two others suspended for 12 months on full pay over the incident, but the two suspended officers are appealing the decision.
The girl is now in the care of the Child Safety Department away from Aurukun.
While the Director of Public Prosecutions Leanne Clare declined to comment, her office today released transcripts of the court case.
They revealed that during the case, Mr Carter described the incident - in which the girl contracted a sexually transmitted disease - as "consensual sex".
"To the extent I can't say it was consensual in the legal sense, but in the other - in the general sense, the non-legal sense - yes, it was," Mr Carter told the court.
Mr Carter said the sex had been prearranged and the males had not forced themselves on the girl.
"... they're very naughty for doing what they're doing but it's really, in this case, it was a form of childish experimentation, rather than one child being prevailed upon by another," he said.
Mr Carter also told the court such incidents were not out of character in small, remote communities.
" ... children, females, have got to be - deserve - the same protection under the law in an Aboriginal or an indigenous community as they do in any other community," Mr Carter said.
"But sometimes things happen in a small community when children get together."
Hetty Johnston, founder of Bravehearts, said a judicial inquiry was needed.
"The prosecutor is there to defend the rights of the victims - that man is standing behind the wrong desk," Ms Johnston told AAP.
"This girl's life has been screwed up by a combination of the (child safety) department and the DPP."
AAP