Decision to deport Batemans Bay convicted sex offender would 'tear family apart', lawyer says
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The deportation of a convicted sex offender who has lived in Australia for 50 years would "tear his family apart", the man's lawyer says.
Key Points
- David Degning is facing deportation to the UK after living here for 50 years
- More than 2,500 people signed a petition to keep him in Australia
- They did not know he is a convicted sex offender
David Degning is currently being held in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre awaiting deportation to the United Kingdom.
The grandfather from Batemans Bay on the NSW south coast had been the subject of a community campaign supporting him.
More than 2,500 people signed a petition to keep him in the country before it was revealed that in 2013 he was convicted and given a 17-month suspended sentence for having sexual intercourse with a person with a cognitive impairment.
That information — along with the fact that he was also charged with attempting to have sexual intercourse with a person with a cognitive impairment — had been subject to a suppression order.
Mr Degning's lawyer Stephen Blanks said he was unsure whether members of the public would withdraw their support for his client since the revelations about his previous convictions had come to light.
Mr Degning, who has lived in Australia since he was a child, is due to be deported under section 501 of the Migration Act which allows a foreign national's visa to be revoked if the holder is not considered to be of good character.
He is appealing his deportation in the Federal Court.
"Remember this man is married, he has children, he has grandchildren, all of whom are established in Batemans Bay," Mr Blanks said.
"The Minister's decision would be tearing a family apart."
"Obviously, there is a great deal of embarrassment that now has to be faced up to — and of course the public is entitled to know the full circumstances of his background and what the [Home Affairs] Minister [Peter Dutton] is doing to him and his family," said Mr Blanks, who is also president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.
"Remember, we're talking about an offence that occurred in 2009, it wasn't prosecuted until 2013."
Mr Blanks said when Mr Degning made the decision to plead guilty, deportation policies were different.
"He may have made a different decision and defended the charge if he'd known that the Minister would punish him by deporting him," he said.
"There are more than 2,500 people in Batemans Bay who either know [Mr Degning directly] or know of [him] and are prepared to say that the Minister making a decision to tear an Australian family apart is wrong."
Minister punishing people twice
Mr Blank said that by deporting people who had committed a crime, Mr Dutton was punishing people "after they've been dealt with by the judicial system".
"The Australian attitude is you commit a crime, you do the time," he said.
"He committed the crime, he was convicted for it, he was sentenced for it.
"He didn't serve any time in jail for that crime because the judge said there was no need to do so.
"It is a legal technicality that the length of jail sentence which was never served can be used by the Minister as the trigger for the deportation."
Mr Blanks said his client would fight to have deportation order removed, but was hopeful the Home Affairs Minister would see that he had overstepped the mark.
He said he hoped the legal proceedings would be heard in the next few months.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, sexual-offences, community-and-society, immigration, batemans-bay-2536, nsw
