The Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART) was an Australian body established to help people who claimed to have suffered physical or sexual abuse, harassment or bullying in the Australian Defence Force before 11 April 2011.
The Taskforce worked from 26 November 2012 until 30 June 2016. It considered 2,439 complaints and found 1,751 to be within its scope and plausible. The Taskforce was headed by Len Roberts-Smith, assisted by Robert Cornall, Susan Halliday and Rudi Lammers, with Robyn Kruk acting as Reparation Payments Assessor.
Julian Knight was abused considerably whilst serving as a Officer Staff Cadet in the Australian Defence Force training at the Army’s Royal Military College at Duntroon January to June 1987. Under the terms of the Defence Reparations Scheme, Mr Knight was entirely entitled to receive the maximum reparation payment of $50,000.
Mr Knight lodged his Application for Reparation to the DART on 26 November 2013. See copy below.
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In addition, Mr Knight included with his application evidence of 95 pages in his witnessed document ‘Personal Account’ along with an additional 13 attachments, also dated 26 November 2013.
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In Mr Knights application, he had fully complied with all the existing terms and conditions for a maximum reparation payment
This was the DART’s response to Mr Knight’s application. It was almost two years later dated 13 January 2015.
The D.A.R.T. 2015 ‘Assessment Note’ of Defence Abuse of Knight in 1987
However, Mr Knight was not responded to by the DART until 20 May 2016 when the DART Executive Director Kirsty Windeyer wrote to Mr Knight rejecting his application. This is a copy of that rejection letter:
So, once again political prejudice comes to bare and ministerial interference in the justice process set up by the very same government, in Mr Knight’s unique case. The federal government changed the rules mid-way through its assessment of Mr Knight’s claim.
Mr Knight’s case was delayed and delayed. His was not communicated for years by DART, which was in breach of DART’s terms of reference for assessing claims to it under the Defence Reparations Scheme. This is despite the psychological damage that such victims of ADF abuse had faced, aka the very clients of the DART.
Such political and governmental prejudice has plagued Mr Knight since his abuse at Duntroon, where as an elite officer cadet and an employee of the Australian Government (the Commonwealth of Australia), that government allowed such abuse to prevail institutionally over decades, whilst it turned a blind eye.
Then in the years 2013-2016 whilst Mr Knight was awaiting the DART’s decision, the Victorian Napthine Government in 2014 overruled the Judiciary’s 1988 decision that Mr Knight be eligible for parole in 2014, by passing uniquely targeted legislation that cancelled parole and imposed indefinite detention Act of Parliament upon Mr Knight.
Further details about Mr Knight’s KNIGHT Abuse Claim to DART are to follow on this webpage.