Julian Knight rightly sued the Australian Army’s Royal Military College at Duntroon in the ACT Supreme Court for Duntroon’s military abuse of him over six months as a junior staff cadet in 1987.
Knight argued that it was the abuse he suffered at Duntroon that led him to such a psychotic state as to commit the Hoddle Street Shootings within weeks of Duntroon dumping him on the street, destroying his lifelong military career, and that Duntroon therefore be accountable and responsible to pay him compensation for the extreme physical and psychological abuse he sustainained for six months solid at Duntroon under the ACT Criminal Injuries Compensation Act.
Duntroon Commandant Major General Murray Blake (right) complicitly oversaw all training and bastardisation of selected Army Officer staff cadets (1987-1990) – indeed he chose them on the Selection Board.
Since the Royal Military College is wholly a military training organisation of the Australian Army, which in turn the Army is wholly a part of The Commonwealth of Australia, Knight legally sued The Commonwealth of Australia (aka The Crown).
This legal suit was instigated long after his Army service and training at Duntroon and also long after him committing the Hoddle Street Shootings just weeks out of Duntroon. Julian instigated legal action against Duntroon was triggered by the schedule expiry of his incarceration sentence being Thursday 14th May 2014 that came and went.
Julian Knight:
“With time off for industrial action (by prison staff at Port Phillip Prison [management outsourced by the Victorian Government to London-based firm G4S]), emergencies and good behaviour my release date was actually 8 May 2014!”
But his promised release was not honoured by the Victorian Government. Politically, the Victorian Liberal Napthine Government in 2014 unilaterally passed targeted legislation to specifically prevent Julian Knight from being released from custody ever.
Premier Napthine politically rushed through legislation severely restricting the circumstances in which the Adult Parole Board could grant Knight release. Under Victorian Premier Denis Napthine’s hate Bill, it stipulates that Knight (and only Knight) is to remain behind bars until he is dead or so incapacitated he is no longer a risk to the community. Napthine’s hate bill was pure vindictiveness, political undermining of the judiciary, a flagrant breach of prisoner human rights and akin to Dikensian law straight out of Communist China.
Knight was 19 years old in August 1987 when he gunned down seven people and injured 19 during a shooting massacre in the Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill. The former junior staff cadet at the Royal Military College in Canberra armed himself with three guns and 200 rounds of ammunition for the 45-minute rampage. Knight pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder and 46 attempted murders. What was in his head besides 13 pots of beer that afternoon?
Ahead of Knight’s sentencing in 1988, Duntroon legal representatives negotiated a plea bargain with Knight’s legal counsel for Knight not to raise in court not to expose Duntroon’s bastardisation persecution of Knight over the half year he had endured as a Staff Cadet at Duntroon in the first half of 1987 – the toxic prelude to his Hoddle Street Shootings. In return the Crown would not contest the sentencing of Knight to a 27 year non-parole concurrent term of imprisonment.
Once the Victorian authorities backflipped on the Crown’s 1988 plea bargain, Knight no longer feels bound by the plea bargain now his parole has been blocked.
So in June 2014 he launched legal action against the Commonwealth over alleged abuse he suffered as a cadet at Duntroon, filing papers in the ACT Supreme Court claiming damages for personal injury. Julian requested an interstate transfer from Victioria to the ACT’s Alexander Maconochie Centre Knight while he tries to sue the Commonwealth over the abuse he suffered as a cadet at Duntroon.
Once in Canberra, he could then reapply for parole-free of the Victorian legislation. However, this was denied by Victorian Corrections Minister Edward O’Donohue. Cleverly, Knight asked the ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell and the Office of ACT Director of Public Prosecutions to reinstate charges against him in relation to the stabbing of a fellow Duntroon staff cadet (Kokoda 1st Class Staff Cadet Philip Mongo Reed) at Canberra nightclub ‘The Private Bin’ back in May 1987.
Duntroon’s Kokoda Company 1st Class Staff Cadet Philip Mongo Reed who was appointed Cadet Under Officer (CUO) Jan-Jul 1987 avcting as a cadet sergeant major in charge of all the Kokoda company cadets whilst in barracks. In Julian Knight’s experience, Mongo was Kokoda Company’s head bastardiser.
Philip John Reed (preferred the nickname ‘Mongo’ after the boofhead in the 1974 US western film ‘Blazing Saddles’). Reed was at Duntroon a 1st Class Cadet and CSM of Kokoda Company during Julian Knight’s training tenure.
“Philip ‘Mongo’ Reed (b.1964) had been a Brisbane Grammar School bully boarder from 1978-1983, who then attended the new ADFA (1984-86) and then attended Duntroon for 18 months from January 1986-87.
Brisbane Grammar School motto (Latin) = ‘Nothing Without Work’
Graduating from Duntroon in July 1987, Reed was assigned to the Army Infantry Corps in which he trained for over a decade until 1999, when just before his active peacekeeping deployment with 2RAR as part of the Australian Army’s leadership role of International Force for East Timor, he left the Army.
That would be like training as a Blackhawk pilot for 12 years and then leaving the Army just before we deployed to Afghanistan. I suspect he got thrown out.” – worked for nothing, or just self-indulgence work for self ego?
– Julian Knight [13-Dec-2020]
30th May 1987 would be less than three months before his forced resignation from Duntroon in July 1987 and the Hoddle Street Shootings just weeks later on 9th August 1987. At the time of the shooting, Knight had been on bail from the ACT Magistrates Court.
Knight told police he had his nose broken in an earlier fight with Mongo, who had ordered he remained in barracks for the night. He then knifed the man behind the ear before handing himself in to police minutes later. Knight was charged with malicious wounding, assault, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm as a result of the incident. Knight has undertaken to plead guilty to the charges provided he is extradited from Victoria to the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC).
Politically, the case was dropped in the mid-1990s, so with no charges against Knight in the ACT, there is no basis to consider his extradition to the capital.
ACT Corrections Minister Shane Rattenbury said he had received no application from his Victorian counterpart to transfer Knight to the AMC.
Rattenbury:
“The cross-jurisdictional legislation requirements mean that such an application must first be put to the relevant minister in the jurisdiction in which a detainee is held and then, if agreed by that minister, forwarded to the minister in the receiving jurisdiction for consideration.”
Knight would have been eligible for parole in May if not for the introduction of tough new laws by the Victorian government to ensure he stayed behind bars until he is dead or so incapacitated he is no risk to the community.
Mr Crowe presented Knight with documents from his original trial, in which Knight instructed his solicitors to enter a plea of guilty in light of his plea bargain for a minimum sentence of 27 years. Knight said it was explained to him at the time he should not make mention of the alleged abuse at Duntroon, for risk of the prosecution turning against him and the plea.
Knight told the court the original plea bargain stopped him from mentioning alleged abuse he suffered at the Royal Military College, Duntroon in Canberra. Duntroon lawyers threatened Knight back in 1988 that:
“if you ever want to see the light of day … we have to give an undertaking we won’t raise the issue of bastardisation”.
Knight said he would never have taken the plea if he had not thought he would have a chance of parole. He now argues that with no prospect of parole, he was now not bound by that plea.
So the Supreme Court of Victoria documents state that Knight suffered personal injury as a result of employer negligence (Duntroon). Knight alleges he was assaulted by other cadets on three occasions during his time at the Royal Military College as an Army Officer Cadet at Duntroon , as follows:
February 1987: Knight states that he was deliberately punched with force in the stomach twice by SCDT William YATES (CSC 5148) while in his company barracks and ordered by Kokoda Company senior cadets to participate in a bastardization horseplay notoriously referred to in Duntroon barracks indoctrination as “leaps and jumps”
March 1987: Knight was assaulted by a number of other senior cadets of Kapyong Company outside his Kokoda Company barracks on campus during another instance of bastardisation involving inappropriate violent use of fire hoses
May 1987: Knight suffered bruising, a broken nose, and damaged ligaments in his left wrist after a fight with three Kokoda Company senior staff cadets at the Private Bin nightclub in Civic [Cadet CSM Philip ‘Mongo’ REED (CSC 4592), Cadet Lance Corporal Colin C. THORP (CSC 5133) and Robert C. HAMBURGER (CSC 4548)].
Knight’s civil claim in June 2014 read:
“The defendant had a common law duty to safeguard the plaintiff’s health and safety while undergoing training as a staff cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. The Commonwealth of Australia, as the ultimate employer of the plaintiff and all other staff cadets and Australian Regular Army personnel at [Duntroon] during the relevant times, is vicariously liable for the actions of those employees. The defendant failed to exercise adequate supervision of its employees with respect to the assimilation and induction of the plaintiff as a staff cadet at [Duntroon].”
Knight told the court the Hoddle Street massacre never would have happened had it not been for his treatment at Duntroon.
By November 2014 the ACT Supreme Court permitted to serve legal papers on two former defence force members he alleges abused him when he was at Duntroon – Colin THORP and Philip REED. Knight assured the court he bore no grudges against his fellow former cadets. He is seeking to sue the Commonwealth over alleged assaults while he was a cadet at Duntroon in the same year as the Hoddle Street massacre. He alleges some incidents took place at the Defence training college in Canberra, while another happened outside the Private Bin nightclub, also in Canberra.
Knight cross-examines fellow army cadets, notably Philip Mongo Reed, Knight had confronted and stabbed back in May 1987, shortly before the shooting spree. Knight accused Reed of bullying, intimidation and assault. The court would not allow Knight to get addresses for four other former cadets. It heard defence could not locate one of them and the Commonwealth had accepted “vicarious liability” for the behaviour of the others. All the cadets Knight could identify as being involved had left the defence force, the court heard.
But Supreme court master David Mossop said it appeared the alleged assaults were “relatively minor” and happened a long time ago. He told Knight to make sure he served the two former cadets with “coherent” legal documents. In the end Master Mossop decided that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to hear Knight’s arguments, and agreed with the ACT Government that it is only the Magistrates Court that could deal with the matter.
Knight said he would consider dropping damage claims against the Commonwealth if transferred to the ACT. However, in December 2014, ACT Supreme Court Master David Mossop dismissed his application for compensation.
