Case 313: Keith Hibbins

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Speaker 1 April 25, 1999 had been a leisurely Sunday for 47-year-old David Campbell and his partner of 15 years, 45-year-old Keith Hibbons.

Speaker 1 The pair lived in the inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood in a house they designed together.

Speaker 1 Keith was an architect while David was a landscaper and they'd combined their skills to create the home of their dreams.

Speaker 1 The two typically spent their weekends lounging at home or catching up with friends at the pub, but they'd decided to take advantage of the autumn weather and spend a day in the country.

Speaker 1 After visiting waterfalls and wineries in the Yarra Valley town of Marysville, They drove back to the city with a nice bottle of red wine.

Speaker 1 On the way home to cook dinner, David remembered they were out of olive oil. They'd need to get cash out to buy some.

Speaker 1 The ATM they usually frequented was located on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne's CBD, just outside of the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute.

Speaker 1 This was on the corner of Lansdowne Street and St Andrews Place, a park-lined thoroughfare just a few minutes from the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground. known as the MCG.

Speaker 1 It was usually easy to find a parking spot, but it was busier busier than usual on account of it being Anzac Day.

Speaker 1 Technically, the national public holiday signified an annual day of remembrance for Australians and New Zealanders who had served a war.

Speaker 1 But for Melbourneians, it also marked the annual Australian Rules football match between two of the state's most popular footy teams, Collingwood and Essendon.

Speaker 1 The game had been held earlier at the MCG and had drawn a crowd of around 73,000 spectators.

Speaker 1 Given the lingering football traffic, there were no available car spaces near the ATM.

Speaker 1 Instead, Keith and David parked further down Lansdowne Street and took a longer walk.

Speaker 1 After getting cash out at the ATM, they decided to walk back to their car through the Fitzroy Gardens, a 64-acre urban green space filled with tree-lined pathways, an ornamental lake, and a mock Tudor village.

Speaker 1 By this point, it was around 7pm.

Speaker 1 The brushtail possums came out at night and David and Keith enjoyed watching them.

Speaker 1 As the couple made their way through the park, two young men suddenly raced towards them.

Speaker 1 One of them asked aggressively,

Speaker 1 Hey, you blokes, have you seen two blokes running through here or hiding in here?

Speaker 1 The young men told Keith and David that a woman had just been raped in the gardens and they were looking for the offenders.

Speaker 1 David could smell that the men reeked of alcohol.

Speaker 1 In unison, he and Keith offered to call the police, but the men replied that they'd already done so.

Speaker 1 David asked them what the rapists looked like.

Speaker 1 The taller of the two men replied angrily, We don't know.

Speaker 1 The younger men became increasingly hostile.

Speaker 1 David began to sense that trouble was brewing. Keith asked the men why they were being so aggressive when he and David were happy to offer their help.

Speaker 1 But inside, the couple had their suspicions.

Speaker 1 From the 1970s to the early 2000s, Sydney earned an undesirable reputation as the gay bashing capital of Australia.

Speaker 1 For many years, gay men were targeted by gangs for nothing more than their sexuality.

Speaker 1 These beatings were considered by many to be a form of sport, and the perpetrators often bragged about their crimes.

Speaker 1 In 2018, the New South Wales government launched a landmark special commission of inquiry into these historical hate crimes and found that over those four decades, an average of 20 gay men reported being bashed every single day.

Speaker 1 As many as 88 gay men were murdered during that time. Many of these deaths were framed to look like suicides.

Speaker 1 Sydney wasn't the only Australian city troubled by these violent hate crimes.

Speaker 1 Throughout the early 1990s, it was reported by The Age newspaper that on average, a gay person was murdered in Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs every two to three months.

Speaker 1 Offenders sought victims at toilet blocks and public parks known to be frequented by gay men seeking casual sex.

Speaker 1 Bashings at one regional toilet block became so commonplace that authorities recommended it be demolished altogether.

Speaker 1 To protect one another, gay men created a warning system by writing the number plates of known bashers on the walls of gay beats.

Speaker 1 Victims were often reluctant to report the crimes, making the statistics unclear. But for members of the LGBTQIA plus community, the threat of violence was an everyday reality.

Speaker 1 Keith Hibbins and David Campbell were openly gay and presented themselves as such, often walking around arm in arm.

Speaker 1 As David later told author Steve Dow,

Speaker 1 Most people know that we're gay without our ever having to say it.

Speaker 1 They were all too aware of the looming threat of violence, with David alone having been the victim of at least four gay bashings in the past.

Speaker 1 There was a particular area within the Fitzroy Gardens that was known to be a hangout for gay men.

Speaker 1 Therefore, when they were approached by two young men who were acting overtly aggressive towards them, David and Keith were immediately suspicious of their story that they were trying to catch a rapist.

Speaker 1 Instead, David thought they might have been gay bashers.

Speaker 1 He exchanged a knowing look with Keith, who said,

Speaker 1 We've got to get out of here. Run.

Speaker 1 David and Keith took off towards Lansdowne Street. The other two men started chasing them.
As they ran past the light pole, David's foot became caught on its concrete base and he tripped over.

Speaker 1 He tried to pull himself back up, but before before he managed to do so, something made contact with his mouth and nose.

Speaker 1 He couldn't tell if it was a fist or a foot.

Speaker 1 David was then pushed face first into the ground where the men struck him numerous times in the legs, hips and face. He heard one of them say,

Speaker 1 I'm going to fucking kill you.

Speaker 1 Keith saw what was happening and rushed back to help. Leave him alone, he demanded.
This brief distraction gave David the opportunity to get up and run away.

Speaker 1 With a surge of adrenaline, he continued bolting towards the safety of Lansdowne Street. He could feel that one of the attackers was hot on his heels.

Speaker 1 Once they reached the street, David sideswiped straight into the oncoming traffic. He ran into the middle of the road, desperately waving his arms in an attempt to flag someone down.

Speaker 1 By the time he got to St. Andrew's Lane on the other side, the attacker was gone.

Speaker 1 A married couple named Paul and Michelle Rogers pulled over.

Speaker 1 Somebody help us, please, David pleaded. I've been bashed.

Speaker 1 Keith didn't take the straight path out of the gardens. Instead, he ran at an angle into the darkness, with the taller of the two attackers pursuing him.

Speaker 1 An accident years earlier left Keith with a broken arm and a leg, which had been screwed back together.

Speaker 1 As a result, he wasn't particularly agile and ran in a way described as being like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 1 Keith pushed onwards until he emerged from the gardens further north up Lansdowne Street.

Speaker 1 From the seventh floor of the nearby Peter McCallum Cancer Institute, a woman peered out of a window and noticed what was unfolding on the street below.

Speaker 1 Keith Hibbins was pinned up against a car while the two younger men were, quote, punching the the crap out of him.

Speaker 1 From the woman's view, it looked like the attackers had restrained Keith by the shoulders and were beating him with their fists and elbows.

Speaker 1 She thought they must have administered at least 20 blows, describing one of the men as, a bloody animal, savage.

Speaker 1 At no point did she see Keith fight back.

Speaker 1 At street level, a passerby heard Keith screaming for help and saw the attack unfolding. As the two men continued to beat Keith, they were also heard verbally abusing him.

Speaker 1 The passer-by called for an ambulance, panic in his voice as he told the operator, They're getting stuck into someone up here. Make it quick.

Speaker 1 Within minutes, Keith Hibbins fell to the ground, unconscious. Meanwhile, around the corner, David Campbell stood outside the entrance of the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute.

Speaker 1 The couple he'd flagged down, Paul and Michelle Rogers, were doing their best to console him as he explained what he and his partner had just been through.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, the two attackers came running towards them.

Speaker 1 David immediately fled into the medical center, while Paul Rogers did his best to block the men from entering.

Speaker 1 Paul and Michelle could smell alcohol on the men's breath and noted that they were slurring their words as they heatedly tried to talk over one another.

Speaker 1 They aggressively tried to push Paul out of the way to get to David, yelling that a woman had been raped in the park. One of the men asked rhetorically,

Speaker 1 What would you do if you approached two guys, told them that, and they ran off?

Speaker 1 He told Michelle that she was protecting a rapist.

Speaker 1 Michelle said that David was gay and he wasn't responsible. One of the men replied, he would say that, wouldn't he? While the other sneered, likely story.

Speaker 1 The two offenders returned to the spot where Keith Hibbins lay unconscious in the street and waited for the police to arrive.

Speaker 1 They presented themselves to the officers immediately, identifying themselves as 27-year-old John Whiteside and 23-year-old Christian Peter Debar.

Speaker 1 Whiteside and Adeba outright admitted they were responsible for the beating. As far as they were concerned, they were just doing their civic duty.

Speaker 1 A woman had been raped and they had apprehended the culprits.

Speaker 1 Air conditioning technician John Whiteside was operating on little sleep when a friend picked him up to go to the Anzac Day footie match at the MCG.

Speaker 1 An avid sports fan, Whiteside had stayed up late watching the World Cup cricket on television.

Speaker 1 Still, he managed to get ready in time to have a few drinks at a pub around the corner from the ground before the match kicked off.

Speaker 1 It was there that Whiteside and his mate met up with some mutual friends, one of whom was Christian Dieber, a recent economics graduate who worked in the accounts department of a security guard company.

Speaker 1 The group headed to the game together where they had a few more drinks before returning to the pub after watching Essendon beat Collingwood by eight points.

Speaker 1 Keen to carry on, they decided to head further into the city for more drinks before calling it a night.

Speaker 1 At around 7pm, the group of six began walking down Wellington Parade along the southern perimeter of the Fitzroy Gardens.

Speaker 1 There, they came across a young woman who was slumped on the ground, crying hysterically.

Speaker 1 She was barefoot and wearing just one sock, while the strap of her singler top had slipped off her shoulder.

Speaker 1 The group approached to see if she was was okay, but as they did so, she yelled, Are you going to rape me too?

Speaker 1 In an apparent state of panic, she threw her wallet at them, saying,

Speaker 1 just take it and leave me alone.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside, Christian Deeber and their group of friends didn't know what to do. One of them gave the woman his jacket.
before Whiteside draped his Collingwood scarf around her neck.

Speaker 1 A jogger came over and told the group he'd run past the woman earlier and heard her arguing with two men.

Speaker 1 While the group had discussed what to do, the woman continued to sob uncontrollably.

Speaker 1 They opened her wallet to check if she had any ID and learned that she was 23-year-old Evgenia Sionis.

Speaker 1 The group offered to hail her a taxi, but Evgenia said no. She wanted the police instead.

Speaker 1 A member of the group called emergency services, requesting both the police and an ambulance. Evgenia continued crying.

Speaker 1 One of the men asked her if she'd been raped, but she didn't give a clear answer. They pressed on, asking if she'd been sexually assaulted.
She said, yes, she had been assaulted by two men.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside and Christian Dieber didn't wait around to hear more. With the police and paramedics on the way to tender to Evgenya, they set out on a mission of their own.

Speaker 1 To find the men responsible.

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Speaker 1 After arriving on the scene to find Keith Hibbens unconscious and battered on the street, Police took Whiteside and Deeber into custody.

Speaker 1 Both of them cooperated fully with all procedures and had no hesitation in giving their version of events.

Speaker 1 Their recollections matched each other's, but differed significantly to David Campbell's and other witnesses who'd watched the attack unfold.

Speaker 1 Both Whiteside and Deba said they were shocked upon finding Evgenia Sionis.

Speaker 1 Whiteside described her as being so frightened that it was scary.

Speaker 1 Someone close to him had been raped and this prompted an emotional reaction.

Speaker 1 While he admitted he probably should have just waited for the police with the rest of his group, his thought process at the time was that the safest thing to do was to look around for the offenders.

Speaker 1 Whiteside and Deba claimed that they weren't aggressive when they approached Keith Hibbins and David Campbell to ask if they'd seen anyone running past.

Speaker 1 Deeba recalled,

Speaker 1 We were as calm and rational as you can get.

Speaker 1 It was only when Keith and and David started acting nervously and decided to sprint away that Whiteside and Deeber suspected they were responsible for the rape.

Speaker 1 Whiteside told the police,

Speaker 1 The two gentlemen just acted very, very strange, and when they started to run off, that wasn't a good look. It looked like they did it.

Speaker 1 Neither John Whiteside nor Christian Deba mentioned attacking David Campbell after he tripped over or threatening to kill him.

Speaker 1 Deba said he just simply grabbed to David and asked why he was running away. When David took off again, Deeba said he chased him for a while before giving up.

Speaker 1 He looked up Lansdowne Street and saw that Whiteside had caught Keith.

Speaker 1 Deba told the police.

Speaker 1 I thought I'd help with Johnny because I was dead set convinced that they knew something about this girl getting raped.

Speaker 1 Johnny was just trying to hold him, so I came up and just said, listen mate, just fucking stay there and wait for the police.

Speaker 1 According to Deeba, Keith yelled some violent things back at them, at one point threatening, I'm gonna kill you, you daubber, which was a colloquial term for an informant.

Speaker 1 Deeba said their aim was simply to keep Keith in place until the police arrived, but he resisted. prompting Deeba and Whiteside to throw a few punches.

Speaker 1 Deeber claimed they hadn't hit Keith that hard and that the real injury must have been caused when he knocked his head on the ground. He told the police,

Speaker 1 I am a security guard, so I know you can use reasonable force to make a lawful arrest. My objective wasn't to hurt him, but what else can you do? I didn't have handcuffs or anything like that.

Speaker 1 I thought you could use a bit of force to make a citizen's arrest.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside contradicted his friend slightly, saying it was Deba who dive-tackled Keith on the street before Whiteside stepped in.

Speaker 1 He claimed that he grabbed Keith, who tried to take a swing at him.

Speaker 1 Whiteside said he then hit Keith a couple of times in the jaw, four at the most, but they were only short, sharp hits and not enough to knock him out. Whiteside explained,

Speaker 1 I was chucking the swings basically in self-defense. I was shaking him, saying, what's going on? How come you're running away? You obviously know something.

Speaker 1 According to Whiteside, he and Keith started to wrestle and Keith began to overpower him. That's when Deba stepped in and hit Keith, rendering him unconscious.

Speaker 1 Both men firmly denied that Keith had been hit upwards of 20 times, as the witness watching from upstairs had described.

Speaker 1 They both showed genuine remorse for their actions, explaining they were completely out of character. Background checks supported this.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside and Christian Dieber came from solid homes in good areas and were close with their families. Both were well educated, employed in respectable fields, and involved in community sports.

Speaker 1 Neither had any history of violence or any form of criminal record.

Speaker 1 Christian Dieber apologised profusely to the police, saying it was never their intention to cause any serious harm or bash someone for no reason. John Whiteside told detectives,

Speaker 1 I'm guilty for hitting him, but I mean, he chucked the first one. If this guy's got hurt, I'd be the first bloke to say sorry.
But it's just the way they came across. It was very sus.

Speaker 1 In hindsight, Whiteside said that while they just wanted to help, their decision to pursue Evgenya's rapists was probably the stupidest idea he'd ever had.

Speaker 1 I'm not a thug, Whiteside explained. What's happened is a mistake, and that's basically all I can put it down to.
I'm sorry what happened to that bloke, and I mean it 100%.

Speaker 1 I didn't mean to hurt him, and I don't think Christian meant to hurt him. If we had stayed in the pub for another half an hour, none of this would have happened.

Speaker 1 I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 1 Keith Hibbins had been rushed to St. Vincent's Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.
He'd sustained serious injuries to his head, neck, chest and arms, resulting in brain damage.

Speaker 1 Keith was put on life support but doctors were hopeful that he'd recover.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside and Christian Dieber were both subsequently charged with intentionally causing serious injury.

Speaker 1 While all this had been unfolding, paramedics had arrived on the scene near the Fitzroy Gardens and found Evgenia Sionis curled up in the fetal position, crying, why me?

Speaker 1 She'd been reluctant to tell them much, but once at the hospital, she admitted to a doctor that she'd been raped.

Speaker 1 It was two days before Evgenia gave her first statement to police from the rape squad.

Speaker 1 She recalled that she'd been walking through the gardens when a man grabbed her from behind and forced her into the back of his ute.

Speaker 1 He managed to pull her pants down without unzipping them, at which point Evgenya said she could feel his semi-erect penis between her upper thighs.

Speaker 1 She broke free before there was any penetration and managed to provide a decent description of the offender.

Speaker 1 He looked to be around 28 to 30 years old and spoke with a deep voice. His hair was short, dark and straight, styled in a a single length.
In her statement, Virginia said,

Speaker 1 All I could think of was, why me?

Speaker 1 While police investigated the rape, Keith Hibbins remained unconscious and fighting for his life.

Speaker 1 His partner David stayed by his side, willing him to wake up.

Speaker 1 For David, life without Keith was impossible to imagine. The two had met by complete chance 15 years earlier.

Speaker 1 David had waved at Keith across a crowded pub, having mistaken him for someone else, and they ended up talking all night.

Speaker 1 Keith was a country kid, having grown up in the northwest Victorian town of Marybrough.

Speaker 1 He eventually moved to Melbourne to study architecture, where he dated a few women before coming out as gay.

Speaker 1 At six feet tall, he was known to be a bit of a party animal who loved the nightlife. Even though David considered himself more of a homebody, he was instantly drawn to Keith.

Speaker 1 Their connection was immediate, and it wasn't long before they'd moved in together and started building a shared life.

Speaker 1 In recent years, Keith had slowed his partying ways.

Speaker 1 The couple's weekend routine typically consisted of watching movies at their renovated Edwardian home that Keith had redesigned and a trip to the pub.

Speaker 1 The doctors and police reassured David that Keith was going to be okay, but as the days ticked by, he still hadn't regained consciousness.

Speaker 1 By Thursday, May 6, 1999, 11 days had passed since the attack.

Speaker 1 David was away from the hospital when he got a call saying it was time to come and say his final goodbye.

Speaker 1 He made it there in time for Keith to die in his arms.

Speaker 1 An autopsy confirmed Keith's cause of death to be blunt head trauma, which resulted in dissection of the left vertebral artery and caused a fatal brain bleed.

Speaker 1 Not only was this news a tragedy for Keith's loved ones, it also changed things for John Whiteside and Christian Dieber.

Speaker 1 With Keith having passed away as a result of the attack, the charges against them were upgraded to murder.

Speaker 1 While those involved struggled to come to terms with these developments, there was still the question of who was responsible for the sexual assault against Evgenia Sionis.

Speaker 1 Weeks passed and no arrests were made.

Speaker 1 Then, one month after the attack, Evigenia made a shocking revelation.

Speaker 1 On Antac Day of 1999, Evgenia woke up at her boyfriend's place and started the day by smoking cannabis.

Speaker 1 The couple lounged around in bed for a while before deciding to go rollerblading in the beachside suburb of St. Kilda.

Speaker 1 After a short jaunt around the foreshore, they stopped in at the nearby Esplanade Hotel.

Speaker 1 It was 11.30am when Evgenia ordered her first drink for the day, a bourbon and coke.

Speaker 1 She had three more drinks in quick succession and the booze kept flowing from there.

Speaker 1 Evgenia and her boyfriend Tony spent the day hopping from one St. Kilda pub to the next.

Speaker 1 By nightfall, Evigenia's head was spinning. She was so drunk that she was staggering on her feet.
She and Tony got into his car and began driving towards the CBD.

Speaker 1 Evigenia wanted to go to another pub, but Tony felt she was already too drunk and they should call it a night.

Speaker 1 As they approached the Fitzroy Gardens, an argument broke out between them. Evigenia became furious.

Speaker 1 When Tony stopped at a red light, she she jumped out of the car, saying she wanted to go for a walk and get some fresh air.

Speaker 1 Tony drove onto the grassy verge and urged her to get back in, but Evgenia refused. Frustrated by the whole situation, Tony drove off, leaving her in the cold with no shoes or jumper.

Speaker 1 Stumbling around to the park, Evgenia began to cry. She collapsed onto the grass, sobbing until a group of passers-by approached.
When they asked if she'd have been raped, she spontaneously said yes.

Speaker 1 Everything she'd have said from that point on was a lie.

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Speaker 1 With Evgenia Sionis admitting she'd made the whole rape story up, it added a whole new level of confusion to an already complex case.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside and Christian Dieber maintained they had no idea that Keith Hibbins and David Campbell were gay, and that they'd only pursued them in an attempt to perform a citizen's arrest.

Speaker 1 But that in itself prompted some heated debates. The level of violence inflicted on Keith went well beyond an attempt to restrain him.

Speaker 1 Many believed that even if the men's pursuit began with honourable intentions, it quickly escalated into something else entirely.

Speaker 1 To some investigators, the ferocity of the attack was more in line with the vigilante justice.

Speaker 1 In the eyes of the law, vigilantism was to be punished, not only to uphold the law, but to deter others from similar behaviour.

Speaker 1 Complicating matters further was the fact that both John Whiteside and Christian Dieber maintained they were only acting in self-defense.

Speaker 1 They'd both attempted to diminish their own involvement by placing the blame on Keith Hibbons himself.

Speaker 1 Whiteside said that Keith had struck him first and he was simply fighting back, while Deba claimed he'd only gotten involved after seeing that his friend was having trouble subduing Keith, who threatened to kill them.

Speaker 1 While both Whiteside and Deba continued to express sincere remorse for their actions, they entered not guilty pleas.

Speaker 1 As their trial date loomed closer, the proceedings were assigned to Justice Philip Cummins, a revered judge with a reputation for being particularly tough on violent crimes.

Speaker 1 For David Campbell, this was welcome news. Ever since Keith's death, he'd struggled to come to terms with what had happened.

Speaker 1 In the days after Keith passed, David was so distraught that he'd been put on suicide watch.

Speaker 1 He'd built his entire life around Keith, and a friend commented,

Speaker 1 It will be very, very hard for David to pick up the pieces and go on.

Speaker 1 As the months passed by, David became socially isolated and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression.

Speaker 1 Speaking about David's condition, his psychologist remarked,

Speaker 1 In all my years of working, I have not witnessed such excruciating suffering in a bereaved person.

Speaker 1 That pain only worsened when word got out that the defence team intended to discredit David's evidence by claiming he had a phobia of being beaten up, which prompted him to run from the offenders, even though they showed no aggression.

Speaker 1 In the words of the defence, David's account should be viewed with doubt given he had been, quote,

Speaker 1 very distressed, depressed, and hysterical.

Speaker 1 David believed that Whiteside and Deba genuinely went looking for a rapist, but after failing to find what they were looking for, they had to direct their anger and adrenaline somewhere.

Speaker 1 He told author Steve Dow that when they spotted two obviously gay men, it gave them a target.

Speaker 1 This was a theory shared by others, including a senior Victorian judge who spoke to Steve Dow on the condition of anonymity.

Speaker 1 He agreed with David Campbell that it had been a gay bashing and that Whiteside and Deba had then tried to, quote, white-knight themselves as vigilantes, knowing they'd get a lesser penalty.

Speaker 1 The trial was scheduled to commence in June 2000, 14 months after the attack.

Speaker 1 All those involved hoped that the truth would come out in court, but just days before the starting date, there was an unexpected announcement.

Speaker 1 John Whiteside and Christian Dieber had agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Speaker 1 While this would spare everyone a possibly lengthy trial and the two defendants still faced a significant jail sentence, it also meant they wouldn't have to give evidence.

Speaker 1 David Campbell was devastated, viewing the decision as, quote,

Speaker 1 an enormous breach of trust and a travesty of justice.

Speaker 1 At the sentencing hearing, the lead prosecutor said that it was reasonable for John Whiteside and Christian Dieber to believe Evgenia Sionis' claims of rape, but it was just as reasonable that Keith Hibbins and David Campbell believed they were being targeted by gay bashers.

Speaker 1 The problem therein lied in the ferocity of the assault against Keith.

Speaker 1 The prosecutor put forward that the level of violence indicated a desire to punish Keith, saying that Whiteside and Adeba were overcome with a sense of righteousness.

Speaker 1 He therefore stated that the crime should be considered a serious example of manslaughter and punished accordingly.

Speaker 1 At the time, the maximum amount for manslaughter was 20 years imprisonment.

Speaker 1 Lawyers for the defense pointed out that Evgenia Sionis played a significant role in Keith's death while downplaying the extent of Whiteside and Deeba's behaviour.

Speaker 1 Even though both men had admitted that they'd been drinking throughout the entire day of the attack, they denied being drunk.

Speaker 1 Their lawyers called into question evidence given by the witness who viewed the attack from the seventh floor of the nearby Peter McCallum Cancer Institute.

Speaker 1 She said Whiteside and Deba had hit Keith at least 20 times, while Keith's autopsy found only six to eight injuries on his head and neck.

Speaker 1 They also called David Campbell's evidence into question. refuting his claim that Whiteside and Deba had threatened to kill him.

Speaker 1 Whiteside's lawyer said his client was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, at which point the judge cut him off, saying,

Speaker 1 No one forced him to chase the poor deceased man and to bash him.

Speaker 1 Both defense lawyers highlighted the otherwise good character and clean criminal record of their clients, both of whom admitted to the stupidity of their actions.

Speaker 1 Whiteside's lawyer said his client was simply an overzealous citizen who overreacted and made a mistake, while Deba's lawyer described the ordeal as a tragic happening where best intentions went wrong.

Speaker 1 Justice Philip Cummins acknowledged that Whiteside and Dieber were both men of upstanding character who didn't go out looking for violence and agreed it was reasonable for them to believe Evgenyesionis' claim of rape.

Speaker 1 While Cummins didn't believe that the defendants purposely aimed to mislead police, he concluded that their heightened emotions had caused them to downplay the extent of their aggressive behavior and lay some of the blame on the victims.

Speaker 1 Justice Cummins said,

Speaker 1 You both ran up to the two men. You were full of anger and indignation.

Speaker 1 He pointed out that the defendants had no idea that Keith and David were a peaceable gay couple and that they didn't wait to ask.

Speaker 1 That is the risk of citizens law enforcement, the judge said. Mistakes occur.

Speaker 1 He didn't find that their actions were in line with vigilantism, as vigilante justice requires a level of premeditation.

Speaker 1 But he also rejected the defense that it was a citizen's arrest that gone awry,

Speaker 1 saying,

Speaker 1 This was not a citizen's arrest because you punished the suspect, not apprehended him.

Speaker 1 Cummins also found that their conduct wasn't in line with that of aggressive drunken sports followers. If it had been, he said their punishment would be more severe.

Speaker 1 Keith's decision to run thinking he was the target of a gay bashing was also reasonable to Justice Cummins, who remarked,

Speaker 1 The fact that his mistake was reasonable brings shame on us all. Shame that our society has been so inept for so long in eliminating violence or the risk of violence against gay people.

Speaker 1 And shame that by our failure, gay people have become inured to violence or the risk of violence against them.

Speaker 1 Addressing the two defendants, the judge concluded,

Speaker 1 Your aggressive and excessive conduct towards Mr. Hibbons is to be condemned.
It caused the death of a human being.

Speaker 1 But the categories of manslaughter range widely in culpability. Yours is in the least culpable category.

Speaker 1 Yours was the conduct of two young men of good character not looking for trouble, who truly and reasonably believed a woman had been raped, and who without reflection or premeditation sought to ensure the perpetrators did not escape before the summoned police arrived.

Speaker 1 Who then, in a rush of emotion, believing you had found the perpetrators, severely but briefly assaulted the victim.

Speaker 1 Finally, there is the rare and perverse confluence of events which channeled you towards this tragedy.

Speaker 1 The false cry of rape, your decent belief in its truth, and the socially induced fear of the victims for which we all share blame.

Speaker 1 You are, of course, responsible for your own actions. No one suggests otherwise.
But you and the victims were under a malevolent star that Anzac night.

Speaker 1 With that, Justice Cummins sentenced both John Whiteside and Christian Dieber to three years in prison.

Speaker 1 As they'd both already served six months in pre-sentence detention, he suspended the remaining two and a half years, concluding,

Speaker 1 I propose that each of you be released immediately from further custody.

Speaker 1 For many members of the public, the sentences caused outrage. At the Age newspaper, letters flooded in from people expressing disappointment at what they viewed as a miscarriage of justice.

Speaker 1 One reader called the case a potent cocktail in the current moral climate, in which male ethos equates violence with virility.

Speaker 1 She wrote,

Speaker 1 There is no place in the law for a subjective moral bias. It is irrelevant that the perpetrators appear to be respectable, intelligent young men.

Speaker 1 or that they believed themselves motivated to apprehend a rapist, or that their unfortunate victims were gay.

Speaker 1 The facts of the situation are that in a state of fury, without a single shred of evidence to justify their choice of victim, they engaged in deliberate, sustained physical violence causing grievous bodily harm to one defenseless human being and a death to another.

Speaker 1 These are the facts on which a sentence should be based. and a mere six months in remand is grossly inadequate.

Speaker 1 David Campbell agreed that the sentences were abysmal.

Speaker 1 While he didn't harbor any hatred towards John Whiteside and Christian Dieber, David told author Steve Dow that his anger was directed towards Justice Philip Cummins.

Speaker 1 He was a gay basher, David said. A verbal gay basher.

Speaker 1 I believe that if Keith had been a heterosexual male who had children, he would have thrown the weight of the law behind it.

Speaker 1 Another outraged citizen compared the outcome to a case where an Indigenous child had been jailed for 12 months for stealing pens and pointed out that drivers who cause accidental deaths receive harsher sentences.

Speaker 1 How can this be, she wrote to The Age.

Speaker 1 These men will go on with their lives now while Keith Hibbins' family, lover and friends are left to deal with their devastating loss.

Speaker 1 More than 300 people signed a petition urging the Court of Appeal to impose a tougher tougher sentence on Whiteside and Adeba.

Speaker 1 The president of the Crime Victim Support Association commented to the press,

Speaker 1 It was inexcusable that two fit young men could bash a gay guy to death, then walk free.

Speaker 1 Then you hear that someone who held up a bank with a gun, didn't shoot anyone, and got a little bit of money, got eight years in jail. The whole system is a joke.

Speaker 1 The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against the sentences on the ground that they were manifestly inadequate.

Speaker 1 The DPP believed that the judge had downplayed the gravity of the offence by depicting it as an almost inevitable consequence of an unfolding tragedy, when the actions of Whiteside and Deba went well beyond those of well-motivated citizens.

Speaker 1 The appeal was considered by a panel of three judges in the Supreme Court, with one concluding,

Speaker 1 The viciousness of the assault and its lack of foundation smacks far more of a desire to avenge and punish by two persons disinhibited by liquor consumed than it does of misguided chivalry

Speaker 1 it seems to me that no matter which way one tries to justify or explain the facts found by the judge the conclusion remains inescapable that a decent life has been taken because the two respondents hitherto of good repute, decided to take the law into their own hands and become, without proper justification, the judges and punishers of the deceased.

Speaker 1 Whatever good intentions may have existed when they chose to remove themselves from their own group and enter the gardens, those intentions had dissolved by the time they aggressively confronted Hibbons and Campbell.

Speaker 1 Thereafter, their good intentions were replaced by an unjustified desire to catch and punish.

Speaker 1 Any suggestion that they were acting as citizens concerned for the rights of the distressed woman became little more than a pale excuse for their unlawful conduct.

Speaker 1 The other judges agreed. They ordered that John Whiteside and Christian Deba's sentences be quashed and that they both be sent back to jail for six years, eligible for parole after four.

Speaker 1 As the sentences were delivered, loved ones of Whiteside and Adeba began to cry.

Speaker 1 While David Campbell felt the new decision recognised Keith as a valued member of the community, it pained him that others were losing people they loved.

Speaker 1 Although the outcome gave him some sense of justice, David told the age,

Speaker 1 nobody won.

Speaker 1 The circumstances surrounding Keith Hibbon's tragic death and the subsequent proceedings prompted many ongoing questions within legal circles and the LGBTQIA plus community.

Speaker 1 Among these questions was what role did Evgenya Sionis' story play?

Speaker 1 For her false rape claim, Evgenia was convicted of making a false report to police. When asked in court why she lied about the attack, she responded, I cannot answer that question.

Speaker 1 When it was put to her that her actions led to two men being charged for murdering an innocent man, Evgenya said,

Speaker 1 I have been punished already for that. I didn't go and tell them to do that.

Speaker 1 She was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, which the judge allowed her to serve by way of an intensive correction order.

Speaker 1 Another prevailing question was whether or not the attack on Keith could be considered a hate crime.

Speaker 1 The same year that Whiteside and Adiba were sentenced, the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby released a report titled Enough is Enough, which found that over the past five years, 66% of LGBTQIA plus people had experienced an assault or harassment in a public place.

Speaker 1 As one concerned citizen wrote to The Age,

Speaker 1 We may never know whether the two killers were motivated by homophobia or not.

Speaker 1 But the fact that when approached by two agitated young men, Keith Hibbins and David Campbell's first instinct was to run, indicates the level of fear that many gay, lesbian, and transgender people experience daily.

Speaker 1 Whiteside and Deba served their time and moulded back into the community.

Speaker 1 Neither has ever spoken publicly about the case.

Speaker 1 David refused to carry hatred for either of the men who killed his life partner.

Speaker 1 For him, one of the hardest things to comprehend was why Keith came back to rescue him instead of running towards the light and safety of Lansdowne Street.

Speaker 1 In recognition of this courageous act, the Royal Humane Society of Australasia posthumously awarded Keith Hibbons with a medal for bravery.

Speaker 1 Years before Keith Hibbons was killed, a friend of David's gave him a wooden photo frame as a gift.

Speaker 1 While Keith was busy working on an architectural project one day, David snapped a candid photo of him and put it in the frame.

Speaker 1 He hid the frame away and didn't come across it again until after Keith's death.

Speaker 1 David told author Steve Dow,

Speaker 1 I never had worn pajamas in my life,

Speaker 1 but now I wear pajamas and I stick this photo down my pajama top when I go to sleep at night. I talk to it then and I talk to it in the morning, and I kiss it.

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