Julian Knight has requested a relevant new nonfiction book published by Melbourne University Press on 17th September 2024.  It’s entitled ‘Warrior Soldier Brigand – Institutional Abuse within the Australian Defence Force‘, written by two researching professors.

Professor Ben Wadham PhD, an Army Infantry veteran himself, specialises in Sociology at Flinders University in Adelaide.  Professor James Connor, PhD, lectures ADF Cadets in the School of Business at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.  Their respective bios are briefly outlined at the opening of this book.

One can readily recognise why Mr Knight would be interested in such a book.  In fact, Mr Knight is included in mention within this book at pages 44, and 77-78.  So his ‘Knighthood‘ movement have despatched him a copy for Christmas reading.

Here are those relevant extracts, and we recommend anyone connected with ADF, past present and future read this cover to cover.  By the way, a ‘brigand’ typically means “a bandit, especially one of a band of robbers in mountain or forest regions.”  [SOURCE: ^https://www.dictionary.com/browse/brigand].  So, think notorious Australian colonial bushranger, Ned Kelly, and Lieutenant Breaker Morant who shot the Boer enemy in a revenge killing.   However, “the earliest kind of brigand wasn’t an outlaw, however — he was a foot soldier in a legitimate army, from the Italian brigante, “trooper, skirmisher, or foot soldier.”  [SOURCE:  ^https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/brigand#:~:text=The%20earliest%20kind%20of%20brigand,synonyms%3A%20bandit].

Julian Knight, immediately prior to his acceptance into RMC Duntroon, served as an Australian Army Reservist Trooper in the 4th/19th Prince of Wales’s Light Horse Regiment (1985-87).

Whilst at Duntroon (1987) in a revenge pre-emptive strike, Staff Cadet Knight at a Canberran nightclub, stabbed his superior Kokoda (training) Company, CO (cadet) Philip Reed, in retaliation for Reed’s co-ordinated and direct bastardising abuse towards Knight.  Thus Knight committed a crime like a brigand (yet he was never convicted of the stabbing by the ACT judiciary).  Then immediately after Duntroon, Knight notoriously committed the 1987 Hoddle Street Shooting Spree in a psychotic rage attack against society.  1987 had been a tumultuous year for Knight.  ‘Brigand’ is thus a apt term in his ADF context.

WARRIOR SOLDIER BRIGAND  at p.44

‘The nature of military abuse is such that it poses moral quandaries for the Defence member. The circumstances are mostly about inclu­sion and exclusion , as well as in-group and out-group dynamics that might force the ADF member to choose between being a victim or an offender. Anthony, who served as a signaller in the Navy between 1977 and 1983, admitted that he was dragged into being an abuser himself, to escape being the victim of violence: ‘I had taken part in blanket bashings and things like that, which is behaviour that’s-it’s really not me but you just- that’s the Lord of the Flies, so you just get drawn along in that.’

Frank spoke of the institutional nature of bastardisation: ‘… a kind of a complicity-a condoning of.-or an agitation from the staff for the soldiers to work it out, the recruits to work it out, so there was a lot of infighting and soldiers doing stupid things, like blanket bashing.’

Such tribalism is situated in a context where the norms and limits around alcohol-fuelled violence and authority generated scenarios for abuse and violation . This brutalisation in all cases was the beginning of significant trauma and anxiety for the victims/survivors. These accounts are littered with stories of self-harm, self-medication and suicide attempts. A Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART) sub mission was provided to the research team by Julian Knight, with his approval to discuss its contents. He described the effects of his brutalisation or bastardisation at RMC Duntroon.  He describes this as partially responsible (when summarily dismissed) for his perpetration of a mass shooting in Melbourne in 1987.  Knight’s submission was assessed but, because of the highly political character of his service, crime and incarceration, the assessment was politically ruled out of terms of reference, and the submission was suppressed.’

WARRIOR SOLDIER BRIGAND  at pp.78-79

‘Stories from Duntroon and ADFA (the institutions geographically sit side by side in the nation’s capital) have revealed histories of hazing, bastardisation and rape (including gang rapes) over decades.   This form of abuse is perhaps the most evident in the military institution.

In 2011, as a result of the overwhelming media attention to the Skype scandal, the news media was inundated with accounts from historically abused personnel. A former cadet wrote of his ongoing trauma from experiencing “a world of bullying and harassment that few outside the defence forces can imagine”.   In 1989, the former cadet’s room was broken into one night as he slept.  He was held down, beaten and anally raped. He was punished for reporting the rape of a female colleague. This veteran was interviewed by us, and we later learnt that he took his life in 2019.

Numerous other Australian soldiers have suffered this bullying and bastardisation, and their response has been to self-harm.  Others such as the Hoddle Street killer Julian Knight, a former Duntroon cadet externalised their experience of abuse and marginalisation on others taking out the effects of Fourth Class training on the civilian public. 36 Knight’s case is unusual, and we believe it requires noting in some detail not only because of his response but also because it illustrates the ADF mindset to cover up, avoid accountability and bury bad press.

In July 1987 Officer Cadet Julian Knight separated from the military.  He described himself as bleeding green, of being blessed with the warrior spirit.  Knight came from an Army family (his father was a commissioned officer), and the Army was much of what he had ever known.  Knight attracted the wrong kind of attention at RMC Duntroon.  He was gung-ho, perhaps too much so, if that is possible in a military training institution.  He quickly became identified as different.  Knight was bastardised, hounded, beaten and abused.  He became a target, and the way he responded did not help him.  Fighting back only made his tormentors more committed to their mission of hounding him out of RMC.

Knight was picked on by groups of senior cadets as he marched from one place to another, ordered to complete inane tasks, and verbally denigrated and excluded, more so than the usual traditions of Fourth Class training at RMC.  In military training, every second is accounted for, and this unwanted attention stole his time for preparation.  His performance waned.  Essential military dress items were stolen; he was forced to attend show parades until early in the morning.  He was physically attacked.  This ultimately led to an incident with other cadets and staff.  The forced  separation from the Army after only a few months cut him deeply.  The reasons it happened were a fundamental insult to his sense of self; the forced transition out of the Army with no support was clearly a risk.   Most survivors of abuse and administrative trauma internalise it and engage in self-harm, drug use, suicidal ideation or suicide. [NOTE: ‘Ideation‘ comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualization].  Many also engage in more intimate patterns of violence-towards family and acquaintances.  Knight was unusual in that he turned that anger violently outward to strangers  [society].

On 9 August 1987, Knight took a cache of firearms to busy Hoddle Street in Clifton Hill, an inner northern suburb of Melbourne, Australia.  Forty-five minutes later, six people were dead, one mortally wounded and 17 seriously injured, including two police officers.  Knight was 19 years of age when he committed the crime.  His murderous spree is inexcusable.  We must, however, question the role his bastardisation played in his violence, and consequently the culpability of the Army, so that what Knight did might be prevented from hap­pening again.  Knight, like so many other victims of abuse, was left with no support and a deep sense of betrayal and anger.

Knight was encouraged to remove any evidence of his bastardisation from his plea in a deal with the prosecutor. This served to protect the reputation of the Army and hide one of the causal factors in the massacre.’

[History repeats.  This bloke was a bully at Duntroon.  There is a fourth primary ‘pillar’ (or rather undermining pitfall) at RMC Duntroon that shapes the patterns of abuse in the Australian Defence Force.  It’s Negative Leadership.]

The book is available in paperback from the publisher’s bookshop.

GoTo this link:  ^https://www.mup.com.au/search?query=warrior+soldier+brigand