Below is what Derryn Hinch said in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on June 21 to Magistrate Charles Rozencwagj.

COURT CONVICTIONS:

"Your honour, if I can take you to the list of my prior convictions which was handed up at the last hearing.

I’ll admit that, on the surface, it is a pretty grim record of contempt of court and publishing material likely to identify victims of sexual assault. It looks like the work of a real cowboy thumbing his nose at the court. Almost seems to be a pattern.

And the latest convictions add to that image.

With your permission I would like to go to that list and start at the bottom. There’s a reason for this and I don’t want to waste your time. I want to explain how some of these breaches were inadvertent.

The Supreme Court, May 28 1986. Two convictions for contempt of court.

For that I was sentenced to 42 days imprisonment and fined $25,000.

If you go up the page to the next Supreme Court mention, with the date December 11, 1986. I actually lost the appeal against conviction 2-1 but my appeal on sentence was allowed and the penalty was reduced to 28 days jail and a $15,000 fine. I think I got a third off for the 2-1 verdict.

The following year I was granted special leave to the High Court which ultimately rejected my appeal and I served 12 days in Pentridge and Morwell Prisons.

This all involved what has become known as the ‘Glennon case’.

I won’t rehash all the details. But briefly: A Catholic priest named Michael Glennon who already had served one year in jail for raping a ten-year-old girl was still practising as a priest. Not only that but he was running a martial arts school for young boys and weekend camps for teenagers at Lancefield where he was often the only adult present.

Glennon was facing more sex charges against children and I asked how can this man still be a priest and still running a kids’ camp? I did name his prior conviction on radio. But Police mention priors in Magistrate’s Court often when opposing bail. At the time I was depicted as reckless but people did not know that I had approached the Premier, the Attorney-General, the Police Minister and the Catholic Church.  I was told to leave it to the courts but this was urgent and that wouldn’t alert any parent to the dangers their children faced at Glennon’s karate school or at the Lancefield camp.

[In fact, more crimes against children were committed there and Glennon is still in jail.]

I believed then and believe now that if I stopped one parent from sending one vulnerable child into Glennon’s web then I did the right thing. And I paid for it.

Your honour, if you go to the second last item on that list. The Melbourne Magistrate’s Court case, August 15, 1986.  I was convicted of publishing matter likely to identify a sex victim. I was found guilty and given a Community Based Order to perform 250 hours of community service.

If you go further up the page to the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court matter dated  August 3^rd 1988 you will notice that applies to the same case and the Community Based Order was varied and the community service reduced to 150 hours which I served.

So those two entries are the one case. This involved a rape in marriage case which I refer to in my career rundown which has been submitted to the court.

With respect to that case I still do not believe I identified a victim of a sex crime. I am well aware of Section 4 of the Crimes Act. I would not willingly add to a victim’s suffering. I feel strongly about this.

Many times I have suppressed the identity of a sex offender because publication could identify the victim. Suppressed the name of a father, step-father, brother or even teacher.

I also believe I am probably the only journalist in Melbourne who deliberately, because of her age, has never mentioned the name of the so-called St Kilda Schoolgirl on 3AW or on my website.

My Name Them and Shame Them petition while calling for a ban on suppressing sex offenders names specifically says ‘unless such identification will also identify a victim.’

In this case, a County Court judge ruled that a man could not be convicted of raping his estranged wife under a British law more than 300 years old. The man was not even convicted of assault.

The Judge then suppressed all matters before the court. I did not name the victim, did not name her husband but I named the judge. My belief was that his name was not ‘before the court’. He was the court. I was also influenced by a House of Lords ruling during the IRA violence in Britain that five Justices of the Peace could not suppress their own names in court proceedings even if for their own protection.

To protect the victim, I did not mention whether the hearing was in the County Court, Supreme Court or Federal Court. Did not even mention Melbourne. Just said ‘a Victorian Judge’.

[The judge ruled that a determined person could have heard his name, gone to the court lists in The Age from a week earlier, matched him to the County Court and looked for a case where ‘Smith v Smith’]

The next case, near the top of the page is Melbourne Magistrate’s Court, February 4^th, 1991. This concerned the HINCH television program which I was hosting on the Seven Network.

Again I faced two charges: Publish picture of a child in a sexual case and publish matter likely to identify a sex victim.

The background is this: I was not only the host but the Executive Producer of the HINCH program. One of my reporters had a story on a rape victim with her permission and her parents’ cooperation. The reporter was given a photo of the victim by a Victorian Police contact. It was not authorised by Police Command and criminal charges were laid against me as Executive Producer.

I was fined $500 on each charge. With respect I would point out that the small fine reflects the circumstances of the case.

And finally, Your Honour, a matter in the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court, April 19, 1996. Again, publish matter likely to identify a sex victim.

This stemmed from an edition of the HINCH television program which had then moved to the Ten Network.

A seven-year-old boy had suffered terribly at the hands of two pedophiles. Both got exceedingly light sentences with one walking free on a suspended sentence.

The boy’s father came to me because he said he couldn’t explain to his son ‘how the bad man had gone unpunished’.

Before I put the father to air I had him sign a stat. dec. saying that his son understood what his father was going to talk about. I warned him not to mention his son’s name.

During the live interview the emotional father let the name slip. I was charged. The father testified that the interview had not hurt his son and that, to the contrary, it had helped because the boy felt somebody believed him and was on his side.

I was found not guilty. But, forget Double Jeopardy, the DPP appealed and second time around I was fined $2000.

I have gone into all this is some detail because, as I said at the start, on the surface it looks like a pretty grim record. The rap sheet of a person who has thumbed his nose at the courts.

That is not true. I’ll admit, the Glennon breaches, for which I was convicted, were deliberate and I went to jail for it.

I hope the other matters are construed in a different light.

VIGILANTES:

Your Honour, at the last hearing you briefly mentioned the case of a serial sex offender named Fergusson. The issue being touched on was vigilantes.

I raise it, in a sentencing context, because the prosecution at no stage has claimed that my naming of those two serial sex offenders actually caused them any harm. Did not engender vigilante behaviour. And I hope you don't use the spectre of vigilante behaviour in judging my actions.

It is true that after Dennis Fergusson was released from jail he was moved from several Queensland towns because of community protests against his presence but vigilante behaviour is a rarity here and abroad.

Fifteen years ago, in 1996, in the United States, President Clinton signed a Federal Megan’s Law requiring states to disclose to the public information about sex offenders. Many states now have government Internet sites listing the photos, crimes and current addresses of sex offenders. Hundreds of them. Information easily available to the public and there has not been a wave of vigilante violence or house burnings.

The official California site says: ‘Welcome to the California Department of Justice’s Internet website, which lists designated registered sex offenders in California’.

In Britain they have a similar law called Sarah’s Law. Officially it is the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme.

As of April this year, all 43 Police forces in England and Wales, including the Metropolitan Police, now participate in the scheme which allows parents to check if someone in contact with their child is a registered sex offender.

The scheme first started in 2008 and up to January this year there had been 878 inquiries that identified 84 registered sex offenders.

And, according to the BBC on April 3, 201, Police said the scheme’s introduction had not led to vigilante attacks which critics had feared.

Here in Australia, the public does not have access to the Sex Offenders  Register but a website called Mako lists hundreds of offenders – including, still, the two I named in breach of those Suppression Orders.

And that information in the public realm has not led to vigilante behaviour in this country.

I hope that answers any questions you may have on that issue your Honour.

SENTENCING:

I am sorry I have broken the law. I consider myself a law-abiding citizen. Your Honour, I have been campaigning on this issue for more than 25 years. I believe before too long there will be an equivalent of Megan’s Law and Sarah’s Law in this country with serial sex offenders being named.

But the law, as it stands, is the law and I have broken it. And for that I must be punished.

I have said ‘Do the crime, do the time’. And I have argued publicly against suspended sentences.

At the last hearing you mentioned one option being Home Detention.

Since then, at the request of the Department of Justice, I have spent two sessions of about four hours being assessed. I have a final evaluation at 10a.m.  next Tuesday June 28.

If that assessment is favourable, and if the Government hasn't changed the law by then, I would ask that a period of home detention be considered. And, if implemented, be imposed as quickly as possible. I'm sure you'll agree this has gone on too long. Awaiting the call for a liver transplant would not interfere with that.

If you decide a jail sentence is necessary I would ask you to release me on bail and defer it until after I have had a transplant and started to recover. [Of course, I  could die in the meantime and avoid such a sentence.]

And finally, It is my life at risk here and I am not confident, despite the evidence you have heard today, that Corrections Victoria could get me to hospital under the deadline.

I am hoping you won't take that chance. Thank you, Your Honour.

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Derryn Hinch sentencing

DERRYN HINCH: "I am under no illusions. If it hadn't been for my serious medical condition I would be in jail right now instead of writing this." Read the report Hinch wrote after his dramatic day in court on Tuesday.

'I'm not scared to go to jail'

UPDATE: Derryn Hinch has been found guilty of four charges of breaching a suppression order. One of the five charges he faced was dismissed. Read and listen to Hinch's say here by clicking the image on the right.

This is why Hinch keeps fighting

HINCH BLOG: "Now, these men, whom I have named, are evil men. Cunning, plotting rapists and pedophiles. One of them even plotted with the notorious Mr Baldy in prison about how they would run a farm with young boys as sex slaves when they got out."

Hinch 'didn't identify' pedophiles

LATEST: "On the other side the SC argued that merely naming them was enough because of the plethora of other material out there in the public domain – especially on Google – for somebody to put it all together and identify the person involved."

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