The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal,effectively ending the trial before it began.
Prosecutors alleging retired teacher Helga Lam (inset) abused four men have had to apologise after calling the complainants “willing participants” in the abuse.Supplied
“Lam’s law” effectively ruled women cannot be convicted if they abused children before 1984,and has already seen another teacher who admitted to child abuse released from prison.
Lam,70,was accused of abusing four boys in the late ’70s while she worked at a school in the city’s south. She has never been convicted and has always denied wrongdoing.
She was preparing for trial in the NSW District Court when her legal team challenged the charges in NSW’s most powerful court.
The court’s judgment also noted three of the four boys were described as “willing participants in the conduct” by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP),which was prosecuting Lam.
The alleged victims,now adult men,said they were devastated Lam was released on a “loophole”.
They said it was “obscene” for the public prosecutions office to suggest the men had participated in their own alleged abuse when they were aged as young as 13 and unable to consent.
Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC apologised to one of Lam’s alleged victims on March 7 in an email marked “sensitive”.
In a statement released to theHeraldon Wednesday,Dowling’s office said it was “regrettable” that a prosecutor had used the term “willing participants” to refer to complainants.
“The use of the phrase was regrettable and was not intended to detract from the seriousness of the accused’s alleged conduct,” the statement read.
Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling SC. Nick Moir
Speaking generally,Dowling assured Lam’s accuser that no child is a willing participant in their own abuse and steps would be taken to ensure the mistake was not repeated by her prosecutors.
Lam’s accusers,who cannot be named for legal reasons,told theHeraldthey were deeply upset that their case had resulted in “Lam’s law”,which had already seen a convicted female paedophile released on bail.
Gaye Grant,77,was serving almost seven years in prison for “an unlawful sexual relationship with a child” between 1977 and 1979 in Wollongong,court documents state.
The former teacher pleaded guilty in 2022,but her legal team,citing “Lam’s law”,said her conviction was a “miscarriage of justice” because she was a woman.
The Court of Criminal Appeal released Grant on bail earlier this month until her full appeal can be heard.
“In the light of Lam,the applicant’s appeal would be most likely to succeed,” the court’s judgment concluded.
“It is clear from the sentencing judge’s judgment that,apart from the offending which led to her conviction,the applicant has been an upstanding citizen,generous with her time,including fundraising for community committee activities.”
People can only be charged under the laws that were in place at the time of the alleged crime,the ODPP noted in its statement.
Any change to the laws used to prosecute women accused of historic abuse before 1984 would require political intervention.
“It would be a matter for the legislature to consider introducing retroactive legislation to now criminalise the conduct that the ODPP sought to prosecute in this case,” the statement said.
