Victim-survivors tell of 'devastating' impact of court delays

A phone call from a Tasmania Police detective 11 years ago put Max* on a path he was not planning to go down.

The detective told him allegations of child sexual abuse had been made against a former Hobart teacher, and that his name had come up during the investigation as an alleged victim.

Max said he "wasn't ready to do anything at that precise moment in time", but the contact set off a "chain of events".

Several years passed after that first phone call, and Max was again contacted by police who asked him to make a statement.

Initially, he did not want to.

"But then overnight I realised … I've got to tell my story, and so I went back the next day and gave a four-hour interview,"

he said.

That interview was part of the case that ultimately convicted Keith Athol Bates-Willie.

In August last year, a Supreme Court jury in Hobart found Bates guilty of raping and indecently assaulting a number of students between the late 1970s and the early 2000s.

In November he was sentenced to 21 years in jail.

Long road to trial

When Max and his wife, Lauren*, were told the case against Bates would go to trial, they expected that to happen within about a year.

"It just kept getting pushed out and pushed out," Max said.

He said his whole life was on hold.

"When you are preparing to bare your soul to everybody, the amount of stress and the anxiety [is huge] and it affects you in your everyday life."

"It was affecting my work performance, and it was affecting my sleep, it was affecting my relationship with my son and with my wife and … it started to bring back quite horrific memories and stuff that I'd walled off for quite a long period of time."

Lauren saw first hand the damage the experience did to Max.

"Max became a little bit introverted and the sadness and stressors manifested themselves in alcohol abuse and some self-harm, and in turn his relationship with our son suffered and [his relationship] with me," she said.

"Every time a delay occurred, Max would have a few more drinks."

Lauren said she "became more of a carer than a partner".

Max also had a serious health issue after the trial finished and is now unable to work.

Max is now facing a new delay, this time in the civil court as be pursues a claim against the state for damages, which had to wait until the criminal case was over.

He filed a statement of claim with the Supreme Court in August, alleging the state breached its duty of care to him while he was a high school student and that it was vicariously liable for the abuse perpetrated by Bates.

"Now we're in this 'when are we going to get a date set' and there seems to be no urgency," Max said.

Other victim-survivors speak out

Another victim of Bates, Simon*, said he made his first complaint against him in March 2014.

"Throughout this uncertain time I experienced intense anxiety, frustration and fear that the investigation would be abandoned," Simon said.

"I still can't relax because the abuse keeps coming back every day in panic attacks, nightmares and flashbacks — there is no chance of relief until the civil case is complete."

Wayne*, also a victim of Bates, said the time the criminal case took was "absolutely devastating".

"Justice delayed is justice denied. No truer word was spoke,"

he said.

"From 2015 to 2025 … the things that happened in that time frame, like my mother died, my kids grew up, any hope that I had of putting this behind me … if I had known it would take this long I would never have taken [part] in this."

Criminal court backlogs not a new issue

Chief justices of the Supreme Court have repeatedly raised the issue of case backlogs over the years.

The final report in a state government-commissioned review on the topic by barrister Lloyd Babb SC was given to Attorney-General Guy Barnett in June this year.

"Tasmania's current criminal justice process habitually pushes out the time frames for resolutions in criminal matters, often causing cases to remain in the system far longer than they need to," Mr Babb wrote.

The government supported, either fully or in principle, 19 of Mr Babb's 20 recommendations.

"Demand in the criminal justice system continues to grow, cases are becoming more complex, and pressures at one point in the system can create delays elsewhere," Attorney-General Guy Barnett wrote in the government's response to the review.

The state government said it had undertaken and continued to work on "significant reforms to ensure greater access to justice, including the work that is underway at the moment to address court backlogs and implement the recommendations of the Babb Review".

This included funding for an acting judge for the 2025–27 financial years.

"We acknowledge there is still more work to do and we are working with stakeholders, including the court, to deliver faster access to justice for all Tasmanians," a government spokesperson said.

Civil case workload has 'increased exponentially'

Lawyer Angela Sdrinis said while there had been a focus on improving delays in criminal matters, "not much has been said about how to improve the delays on the civil side".

In the Supreme Court's annual report for the 2024–25 financial year, Chief Justice Christopher Shanahan wrote:

"The continuing emphasis on allocating judicial resources to criminal work has had an impact on the court's capacity to discharge its obligations in its civil jurisdiction."

He said 243 civil cases, or 26 per cent of the court's civil work, were older than two years.

Ms Sdrinis said the court did "a great job with limited resources", but called on the government to provide the court with more resourcing to meet its growing caseload.

She said the court's civil workload had "increased exponentially" since the Tasmanian government abolished the time period for child sexual abuse survivors to make civil court claims.

"I estimate that our firm alone has filed around 100 writs and no doubt other firms will have filed similar numbers,"

she said.

Ms Sdrinis said better case management could give victim-survivors certainty and keep solicitors on both sides "on their toes".

"In Tasmania we won't be given a trial date until all of the interlocutory steps are complete, and the interlocutory steps are those steps in a court proceeding where basically the preparation is done.

"In Victoria and in other jurisdictions … a claimant, as soon as they file their proceeding in the court, is given dates for all of the interlocutory steps and a trial date at the same time."

But, Ms Sdrinis said, "the case flow management only works if you've got the people on the ground in the court who can ensure that those processes are available and so it does come back to resources every time".