What happened?
MATTHEW: Well, I was sent to jail for sex crimes. That was back in 2019. But the allegations were made in 2017. And basically, since the allegations were made, my family life was zero. I was completely ostracised from the family, both my own immediate family, my wife and my three children, as well as my mother and father and cousins, and the whole lot, basically all...
Because they found out that you are...
A sexual offender. Yes, that was... The whole scenario... just even from the accusations. So, before it even went to court and all that sort of stuff, there was all this...
If I may ask, was it related to children?
Yeah.
Pedophilia.
So, it's not 100 proc. There are different scales and so forth in that scenario, but mine would have been on the lesser scale of things. It was computer-based... (but) Once the mod is flung, it's stuck for good. You’re instantly dealing with people's perceptions of that particular...
And anger and fear.
And the taboo around that particular type of crime is just so stuck in people's heads. There is no way of even trying to convince people to change their thoughts.
But how would you like them to change?
Just understand that there are different depth levels to that type of crime. That's not just that you are instantly a bad person, that you've done, you know, you've done the worst of the worst, that's not the case. There are different levels of the crime and the different reasons for people doing different things. So, whether it's stems from their background, in sexual violence, or whether it's other traumas in their lives that have sent them in those paths. So yeah, it's not as clear-cut as people's perceptions make it out to be.
So this is what you wanted your family members to know?
Yeah. I mean, for me personally. It was difficult to make any sort of contact with my family once those allegations were made.
You have a wife...
Yes, wife and three children. Though they were young at the time, they were eight, nine and 10, I think. For me, I was I separated myself from the family, not because of the court system or anything like that made me but because they had to live with their lives. And they didn't need me with all my troubles on top of it...
Like that, they're going to be potentially stigmatised...
Yes. Yeah, they were going to be impacted. Yeah, it was my choice to move away and separate myself from the family because I knew they were going to be impacted. They still had to live in the same community; they still had to live and go to the same schools. So the bullying, they were copying with a little bit of bullying themselves. So the sooner I got out of the scenario and away from them, the better it would be for them.
And you deliver the news by yourself. So, you were arrested?
Yeah, it was arrested and charged, and then it takes years to go through the court system.
You didn't challenge this accusation?
No. I just let it go through the court system. But like I said, once the mud is flung, you know, it goes throughout the community very quickly.
Do you think there is any way to avoid this? This is Tasmania; people know each other...
Yeah... this is it. It’s so small. Yeah, I mean, I've had the same trouble when it comes to looking for work. You know, nothing to do with the family whatsoever, but just been looking for work, even not in the same community. But in the Hobart area. As soon as I look for a job, and they do a bit of checking around this, someone knows someone who knows me, and then you lose your job. So, it's very difficult to maintain the job.
So how did this start once you got there, a moment when you were arrested and in the hands of the criminal justice system? How did they treat you?
Very rough.
Can you explain how rough?
It depends on - which officer you are getting. It is the police here, the police themselves, they again, they they're humans, they have their own perception. Again, I did not fully know the depths of what I did and all that sort of stuff. They jumped to their own conclusions. Simple little things like you know, they put you in the back of the paddy wagon. And driving back to the cop shop, they'll find every speed bump on the way, and they'll take the back streets and throw you around in corners and things like that. Because there are no seat belts in the paddy wagon, you get slammed up against the sides—just little things like that. And when you get to the cells, you'll be stripped and searched. And then they'll take your clothes away, and you won't get them back for half an hour or something like that. So you're sitting there naked, or you don't get any medications or things like that.
Did you need some medication?
Oh, yeah.
What kind?
Antidepressants.
So, you were on antidepressants at that time?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Little things, just little things that they can do to make your life difficult.
So, everyone is trying to ‘contribute’ a little bit...
Yeah, whatever they can within their own restrictions.
With their own definition of justice...
Yeah. And different people have different perspectives. So yeah, once you've got that category on you, That's it. And there's the fact that they automatically jump to the worst conclusions. And you're that particular person. So you get treated like that.
Did you try to actually communicate with people at that stage, with the police...
I found that the more that you try to resist or retaliate or try and say something about it, the more they will make your life difficult.
So, what was your strategy?
It was easy just to throw your hands in the air and say, forget it; just do what you're going to do. You're going to do it anyway. There's nothing I can do about it. And there's no recourse for them. Who do you complain to? Who do you talk to? There's nobody because they're all intertwined.
But you have the right to have your lawyer?
Yeah, you did. But even that, it wasn't as easy as saying, oh, I want my lawyer, and he's gonna be there in 10 minutes; it could be a day before you saw your lawyer.
So, how did you find your lawyer?
I used legal aid. Like I say, it's not a simple process. Just put your hand up saying I want my lawyer, and everything stops. It just continues. And eventually, your lawyer shows up. And... they dropped information with other prisoners. They spread rumors and things like that round the place saying I've had to steer clear of this bloke is sex offender or whatever and, and then when you go out into the population, you get treated differently with the rest of the inmates and things.
So, did you receive any physical violence in Risdon?
Yeah, definitely. There's no such thing as protection in Risdon prison at all. There's segregation, but that's just some hours a day and locked down.
Were you in minimum or maximum?
I was in minimum to start with and then move to medium. And then, yeah, went back to minimum.
How long was your sentence?
The total sentence was 30 months. I did 27 months altogether. I did my entire sentence; I had three months’ worth of remission. I didn't apply for parole.
Why?
Too many restrictions on parole, and I had nowhere to go. There's no address, because my family didn't want anything to do with me. I had nowhere to turn to when I got out. So, parole for me wasn't really an option.
And it was really a clear cut with your family?
Yeah, basically, it was one day I had family, and the next day I didn't. It was a complete cut-off. They didn't want to know me at all. Yeah, I didn't get like my immediate family and my wife and my three kids. It was my choice to leave that scenario. But, like, my mother and father. They just never bothered talking to me—cousins and things like that.
Even after doing your time (in prison).
Yeah, even after doing all my time and stuff like that, there is no family...
How was your relationship with your lawyer?
The lawyer was good.
Male or female?
Male, Yeah. I was reasonably new to the whole legal system. So, I never had to fight this sort of case or anything like that before. And I didn't know any of the loop the way things worked or anything like that. And it just dragged on and on and on. And there was a lot of adjournments. The left hand is not talking to the right hand, the usual sort of thing. And it took me two years before it was finalised before actually went to jail.
So, you were on remand?
I was on bail. But being on bail...
In here in Bethlehem house?
No, I was living by myself at the time. I still had a job at that point.
Can I ask what was your job?
I was a traffic coordinator. I used to be the guy in charge of the people who the lollipops. Used to tell them where to go...
So, this job is not available for you anymore...
No, no, because they didn't know anything about what was going on. I kept it...
That would be a safe space for you.... not exposed to children...
I was in the office; there were no children or anything like that. So there was no need for them to know anything. So, I didn't tell.
Yes, so how did you psychologically cope with all of this?
I mean, I don't know where to start. The one thing is just that there's a risk to being in prison.
Yeah, you're on your own.
My depression went downhill. I drank heavily. My work suffered in the end; I ended up losing my job. Yeah, it's all gone downhill very, very badly. Mentally, it was just a crash.
Then I went to jail. Yeah. There was no more drinking.
No access to your antidepressants.
Yeah. Eventually, it took a little while to get that sorted. Their healthcare system isn't the best. Yeah, the very, very basic stuff. Very basic, very basic. It's like a 1960s holiday resort, with original dust. It's very archaic. It is a horrible, horrible system to deal with. Anything you want to get done or do is just about impossible.
I wear contact lenses, and I've never owned a pair of glasses ever; I went to jail wearing contact lenses to take them out, and I can't see my hand in front of my face. It took them nine months of me pleading with the healthcare system that they've got an eye. Eventually, I had to go to the Ombudsman to get them to supply me with contact lenses because their system doesn't allow anybody who is blind or requires glasses to have any sort of eyesight treatment until they've been there for over 12 months. So, for the first 12 months, you're not entitled to see an optometrist or anything like that. So, I had no monthly disposable contact lenses that I had to sit with for nine months. If I took them out, they had nowhere for me to go; there was no way for a blind person in that jail to be. You can't have a stick.
What kind of things did you want to get done from inside?
Especially when your safety is at stake.
Exactly, you can't have a dog; you can't have a stick... the only place that would be safe for you would be in the hospital section in there. And that's not, you know, not a very good environment or in solitary. So your options are very, very limited. For anybody will, anybody really with a disability of any sort really isn't looked after in that place at all. I mean, I've seen people in there who are wheelchair-bound, and there's only one or two places that are available for them to access. Well, they can access a fair chunk of the area, that's not so bad, but for them. Yeah, but for them to actually reside, you know, like in a cell or anything like that it's very limited, there's only one or two places for them. You know, it's very restrictive. You know, and I've heard of people with hearing difficulties having troubles accessing hearing aid support, even getting basic things like batteries for hearing aids is very difficult. And me being that type of a prisoner that I was, I was definitely not on the totem pole to be, you know, I was down to the bottom of the system. Why would we look after him? He's a scum of the earth.
How does it feel?
It take a while to get used to having nothing. Having no rights, no respect, no life whatsoever, you just became a number and a puppet on a string, you become very, very numb. You basically get out of your cell in the morning; you just do the basics. If you do anything outside the basics, you attract attention. And once tension is that you attract attention, then things go wrong, There is no point asking the officers for any sort of assistance or any help or anything like that because it just doesn't come.
So, you did try, you can try.
I have tried, you know, little things even like, you know, can I get a form to access, you know, the library or form to access it because everything's done by paper to access medical help or anything like that, because you're in that particular unit, you're in the sex offender’s unit, we'll get to. Sometimes it could be two or three days before you even got a form. And then that form might not even make it where it's supposed to go. So if you've got a, you know, a medical complaint that you need to see the nurse for, for instance, it could be a week before you even get there because of all the bureaucratic nonsense that you have to drag through.
But is there, and it's probably a stupid question - is there some kind of a way that you can establish some relationship with other sex offenders because they are in a similar situation and also challenged by all sorts of...
You know, yes and no, there's still a very big hierarchy system, even in, you know, the sex offender community because there's so many different levels of offending. There's still severity of it. More severe means you are higher... (but also) if you keep to yourself and don't say anything about your crime, you get a lot more respect than someone who turns around and is cocky and sort of, I did this, I did that, you know, brag about their crime. So, the ones who brag about their crime; they even lower. But if that person who brags about their crime is a big, big, hefty, tough bloke, his current status goes up. So, for me, being a small person and not talking, I was pretty much left alone. But that can be just as bad as the other way. Because if you don't talk, people make up their own stories from bits and pieces they've heard. So, you can go from, you know, someone who's done very little in the prison system moved the baddest person there...
So you learn to live with a permanent fear?
Oh, yeah. You do the constant; you spend 90% of your time with your head on a swivel. Spinning around all the time look, watching out of your eyes. Yeah, yeah, 90% of the time, you are just watching everything because you just don't know what's going to happen. Constant anxiety, constant fear that something's going to happen. And they don't prepare you when you come out of jail for that either, like, you've got that fear that society is going to, you know, make it difficult for you. They don't prepare you when you come out how bad it can be. Even though you've, you know, you've done your time, you've served your time and all that sort of stuff. You can't go back into the same communities.
Even after doing your time, I understand that this label will stay with you.
Even though you did your time your time, you received the punishment.
Yeah.
Do you think it's going to work in terms of stopping you from offending?
Yeah, It's not the same as you are a car thief... your records are always going to be the, but it's not the same as if you're a car thief, you go in there, you do your time, you come out people forget about that...You go in there for a sexual offence.
People don't forget about that. It stays.
Oh, certainly. Because you know, the ramifications. I've seen the ramifications of my actions. And you certainly don't want to repeat that again.
So people will say, okay, so that works.
Yes, but it destroys you in the process, even if it does. It destroys everything about you...
So, what would be the better way of doing it?
Crocky. Because each crime is so unique. And each person is unique. I don't see one particular thing fitting the mould. But they have a new direction program for six offenders in jail. And that's a very regimented, laid out course that they do. And you know, you go once a week, and you do all these bits and pieces for this rehabilitation and things.
And you did it?
Yes, I did the course. Yeah.
So they are giving you some kind of a software of how to avoid (offending int he future).
Yeah, they're giving you the same tools and things like that. But like I say, every crime is unique, and every person is unique. And this course is structured in a certain way. So it doesn't necessarily fit everybody. So it doesn't necessarily become effective for everyone.
So that's your case, it's going to be ineffective in your case...
It would, parts of it. Yes, but not the entire thing. No. I've received more help since I've been out of jail.
What kind of help?
Particularly with Bethlehem House. There's 24-hour counseling. There's help not just for my offending but for drug and alcohol offending, which is a contributor. We have a doctor who comes here; we have all sorts of different services available to us that sort of mitigate a few of our issues. For me, there's a bit of PTSD from being in jail, hanging around large crowds, and things like that. Having to deal with large organizations like Centrelink and things like that, these guys can intervene and help out with that. So they take a bit of the pressure off you. There's no judgment here. And you're safe here. There's a lot of security here. So that takes a good (..) of stress, or you can relax a bit. So it's a lot better environment.
But what did you learn from this program? I remember from my (university) unit called Working With Offenders there was a one-woman, and she had an experience with working inside with sex offenders.(in a prison) and she briefly described how to help, how to actually equip people like you with information, how to not expose yourself to the places where you can get actually triggered...(by the presence of children).
Yeah, it doesn't.
Is it something that is helpful – to not to go to certain places?
Yeah, look, yeah. But they don't necessarily teach you, you know, they don't tell you, oh, look, you can't go to this place, you can't go to that place. They don't tell you those things. But they, they, they put it in your head that you need to protect yourself. So, it's not a case of you can't go to the local swimming pool. It's a case of if you go to the swimming pool, is someone going to say something? You know, so you've got to look at yourself and say, well, that's not an environment for me. It's not because I'm going there. And you're not going there to offend or anything like that. I want to go there to swim. But if I go there, is someone going to turn around and say that I was too close to children? So, it's all about rethinking.
Are children actually safe in your environment?
Yeah, I have no issues. I haven’t done anything, you know, sexual towards children or anything like that, you know, that's not in my, my radar at all. My crime was a computer-based crime.
Child exploitation...
Yeah, Child Exploitation material. So, it was never really known. So, they just know me as a sex offender. And then they have that perception that you know, I've done these terrible things. But trying to explain to people that, you know, computer-based and physical in my mind, at the time, were two different things. And I couldn't, in my mind, see the difference, you know, see that, you know, they were interlinked. And, you know, we've worked on that for years. And now, I understand what I did now. But obviously, people's perceptions will always be there.
Do you think in the future you're going to try to reach out to your own children? Three of your children?
Yeah, now that they're getting older, and they're moving on with their own lives and away from the community, and they can make their own decisions? I hope to make contact with them and get back into some sort of relationship.
Do you know anything about how they were coping?
No, not particularly No.
So, is there a restraining order...
No, there's nothing there to stop me from making contact. I have tried to make contact with my ex-partner. But she basically says that you know, the kids don't want to know anything. So, sort of, you know, I don't really want to push the issue too much. I mean, that yeah, like I say, there's nothing stopping me from going back to the house or anything like that. I own the house. There's nothing really stopping me from doing it. But apart from me, you know, not wanting to do it. And disturbing their lives.
Did you agree to divorce?
No, we're not divorced. Everything is just sitting there.
Sitting there in limbo...
We just got a sort of a mutual agreement that the house... that we won't do anything with selling the house off until the kids have moved on. So, the kids have at least got a roof over their heads and till such time as they don't want to be there anymore. And then then we'll sell the house.
So, at the moment, you're here, you feel safe...
Safe, yes. There's no time limitation for you to be a resident of this place. Did you manage to find a job?
Yep. That was a truck driver, but recently I lost my job. But yeah, I was a truck driver for seven or eight months.
How?
I crushed the truck. Yeah, just because of, you know, normal driving. Accident. Yeah.
Not on drugs or anything?
That was just a normal part of that particular type of job.
But they fired you.
Yeah.
Why?
I am chasing them at the moment through fair work and stuff like that. So, it's a small company, family-owned. So, one truck down is quite a big thing for them.
So, in general, there is a kind of option for you to find employment?
I can find employment, but it is incredibly difficult. As soon as you go, like I've had plenty of job interviews, like some of the larger companies like toll or T&T, you know, big delivery companies, but they generally run a police check. As soon as they run a police check, a new record comes up and says that they know what exactly it was, then their perceptions kicks. We can't have that sort of person working for us.
So, if you are in between jobs because it's really difficult to find one, then you can go on Centrelink?
Yeah. So, it is possible to actually survive.
Just, yeah.
Because here you don't have to pay?
We pay 85% of our Centrelink benefit.
So, Centrelink or salary...
So, you still have to pay to be here.
What about food?
We get fed and stuff like that here.
So it is all-inclusive, all included.
So yeah, it's quite high. The amount of money that we pay, like 85% of whatever you earn. But you do get board. You get, you know, power, water, food...
And the location is nice.
Yeah, in the middle of Hobart.
I think what happened for me when I left jail, even after serving all that time, and because I left jail not going on parole, they released me straight into homelessness. There is no setup or no support for anybody leaving jail. Well, unless you're going on parole, if you go on parole, then you've got to be paroled to an address. And then you've got, you know, your parole officer and all that sort of support. But if you're not going on parole, there is really nothing you basically kicked out the door and see, see you later.
How did you manage to put yourself in here?
I ended up living in my car for three months...
Winter or summer?
That was in summer. And I was out at Flint House, which is another emergency accommodation place. And then eventually they moved me into here. But it took nearly 12 months before I ended up here. And you end up going back to some pretty bad habits, you're not going back to your alcohol problems. And it's so easy to reoffend again when you're you know, you got nothing to control you. You know you've got no support network; you've got no family to turn to... Yeah, there was no support network there. Say when you come out of jail, there was just nothing. You weren't prepared for the world. Even I was only in there for 27 months, we had COVID in the middle of all that. So you come out and you're in a completely different world. Post, you know, post COVID. The whole world was completely different.
Especially at the beginning.
Yeah, we had masks, and all that to deal with it was, you know, The whole society had pretty much changed.
Did you manage to find some friends?
Because a lot of the people that are here are former prisoners, there is still a bit of a hierarchical system. But here is a 'don't ask, don't tell'. People know that. Yes, I'm a sex offender. But they don't ask questions. Because one of the big things with this place is, if you start bullying, you're out the door. So it's good in that fashion for me. And you know, you can have conversations with people and stuff like that. It's fine. But not in-depth conversations or anything like that. They just go by how you, you know, who won the football and that sort of thing? That's, yeah.
Do you have any kind of psychological help to someone to help you to somehow reinvent your life around all those events?
Yeah.
To find some social space for yourself... for you to be part of?
Not so much a social circle yet. But I'm, I've got access to the drug and alcohol counsellors here that I'm using. I've got a social counsellor that I'm using, plus a caseworker. And we're progressing with quite a few different things.
Are you making plans for the future?
Yeah, definitely making plans for the future, like, you know, eventually moving on from this place into my own place, and then, you know, reintegrating myself into the community.
Do you think you'll stay in Tassie?
Oh, yeah, I'll stay in Tassie because my children are here. So. Yeah.
So you are hoping at some stage, they will grow up, and you will somehow...
To have some sort of relationship with them - yeah. Well, not necessarily describe everything. But if they want to know or let them know if they don't want...
Describing them...
So, you want to make yourself available for them...
Yeah. If they want to know, I'll tell them if I don't. Well, then. Fair enough.
So, what kind of father were you before?
I'd say hands-on. I'd take the kids to school; we'd go to the park would do all those sorts of things. You know, home life was fine. Yeah, pretty normal. I would suggest.
So, you had the connection.
Yeah, definitely.
So they will you think they will remember that?
Oh, yeah. They'll remember that. Yeah.
So, what do you do? If you think about it? What do you think they're going through? What happened to their way of thinking about you?
I am not sure. It depends on what, you know, their mother said, you know, it's occurred or, you know, the rumours that they've heard and things like that.
And the other level is your parents...
Yeah. No contact with them...
(The employment is an issue) like when people do the police check with a job interview or something like that. As soon as they see that police check. Let's see. You never hear from him ever again. Yeah, that's, there's nothing you can do about that. Yeah, same thing. Same thing. They've, you know, they've made their mind up, they've made their decision. And that's it. I never hear from him again.
And there's nothing in jail that really, that they put in place to stop you or rehabilitate you. If you can put up with jail in general work over crap that they throw at you and you come out the other side, there is nothing stopping you from going back and doing it again. There is, you know, if you're that way inclined, then yeah, you could do it. There's nothing stopping you.
So, it's just not really an effective system...
It's a warehouse. You go in there for your time, and at the end of it, they dust you off and throw you back out again.
But it costs a lot of money.
Oh, yeah. I bet a quarter of a million dollars for the time that I was in there. And that's what did what came out of that at the end of it, a broken person?
Do you consider yourself as a broken person?
Yeah.
How old are you?
40. Yeah, I've still got another 40 years roughly to go. And yeah, it's gonna take me probably 30 or 40 of those years to actually become a normal person again. I've got to restart absolutely everything.
You do go out capable of being in a social public space and being anonymous?
Yeah. I can go out I can go to the pub or something like that and remain anonymous. But you know, I certainly don't go out there and create friends or anything like that. Anyway, that's gonna make me vulnerable. I certainly don't do that.
So, you are actually afraid of your own safety?
That's it? Yeah. Always. Even when you go down to the shopping center or something like that, you're scared of what's going to happen. You just gotta have peace of pre think everything. Yeah, if my children weren't here, I would be on the mainland somewhere else, trying to restart my life over there. Because it'd be easier, I wouldn't have the social stigma as much because Tasmania is so small. Everybody knows everybody. You know, it's very difficult. If I was a lot younger, when my crime was committed, it might be a different story, I'd might be able to restart. But because I was mid 30s, I'd already had a fair, fair few fingers in a lot of pies like a young I'd had quite a few jobs and was known in different circles and things like that. You know, I was involved in community events and community activities and things like that. So yeah, people knew me.
But did anyone from your community reach out?
Oh, no.
Not a single person.
No, I have lost all my friends, all that sort of stuff. All gone. All gone.
I even like going back to the same community, which is down in the Huon Valley. It feels horrible. Like, I can't go into a shop or something down in the Huon Valley because I might run into someone who knows me. And it get treated like a scum of the earth again. I have experienced that just I've been in a shopping centre, and someone's called me out and called me all the names under the sun in the middle of a shopping centre. And that was simply someone that I knew him from my past. So that makes it difficult.