Don't Make a Fuss by Wendy Davis

Author:Wendy Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

On 20 March 2019, Justice Hall handed down his decisions on the admissibility of the prosecution’s propensity evidence, and on the defence’s application to have the matters heard in two separate trials. Edwards appeared by video link, and members of the victims’ families were in the courtroom. Unlike the previous hearing, the proceedings were not streamed live, but the news reports were comprehensive and almost instantaneous once the hearing was over. I was astounded to read that there would be 580 witnesses appearing for the prosecution, and I wondered about the magnitude of the work involved in collecting, collating and presenting so much evidence.

There would be one trial only. The Huntingdale evidence, which included the sightings of a man breaking into houses and stealing and wearing women’s clothing, would not be admissible in relation to the three murder allegations. Justice Hall also ruled that the extreme pornography was not sufficiently relevant to the trial to be included. All the other evidence, including that relating to the Huntingdale assault, the Hollywood Hospital attack, the Karrakatta rape and the Telstra living witnesses, were admissible to all the charges. It appeared that I would be one of the 580 witnesses required to give evidence.

I’d had little time to think about the implications of this development for me, when Brad Hollingsworth called. He wanted to confirm that I was following the proceedings, and that I was aware that this meant that I would now definitely be required to give evidence. Because the prosecution’s vast body of evidence was to be presented in chronological order, he anticipated that the Hollywood Hospital evidence would be presented around the end of August or beginning of September, and he explained that Carmel Barbagallo would ideally like to meet with me prior to my appearance to discuss the evidence and the procedure. I told him that Tim and I were intending to come to Perth for a month, to make it easier to attend all the relevant trial proceedings, and that we would take the opportunity to visit and stay with friends and family. Brad seemed happy with this arrangement, which we agreed to firm up in the next month or so.

In the days following the March hearing, further media reports from the West revealed more bits of the huge jigsaw that the prosecution was trying to piece together in its mammoth undertaking to prove Bradley Edwards guilty of the Claremont killings. Reports on 21 March 2019 stated that Edwards had been ordered to attend a year-long, sex-offenders treatment program more than five years before the Claremont killings. This puzzled me. Had there been another charge in or around 1990? Had he committed another offence that had prompted the court to order treatment for sex offending? Reading further, it became clear that he had been placed in the program after he had attacked me. This was the first I had heard of this, and none of it made any sense to me. At the time of the attack, I

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