Podcast interviews of NSW couple jailed for abusing their daughter in the spotlight | Prisons
Corrective Services New South Wales is investigating how a journalist from The Australian was able to interview a man and a woman convicted of abusing their daughters for a podcast that raised questions about their crimes.
After legal restrictions were lifted last month, the victim said the podcast was extremely harmful to her mental health.
According to Corrective Services NSW, journalists are not allowed to visit inmates or interview them by phone without the department’s written permission.
Guardian Australia understands journalist Richard Guilliatt did not have permission to interview prisoners whose phone calls to him from prison were recorded. In the podcast Shadow of Doubt, their names were not given and their voices distorted to protect their identities.
“The safety of the community is a top priority for Corrective Services NSW,” a spokesperson told Guardian Australia. “Correctional Services NSW takes seriously our responsibility to protect and support victims of crime. We are reviewing the circumstances of this case, but do not comment on the conditions of individual prisoners.”
In 2023 The Australian published Guilliatt’s book. eight-episode podcast investigation It features extensive interviews with William “Rob” Gilfillan and Karen Gilfillan, who were jailed in 2016 for sexually abusing their daughter on a rural property in northern NSW.
Guilliatt began reporting on the case in 2017. The podcast claimed this could have been a “serious miscarriage of justice”.
Couple I told him: “We are innocent… these things did not happen.”
The theory was largely based on the argument that “no one notices the abuse.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Guilliatt quoted a family friend as saying in 2017. “Honestly, I can’t see that.”
Another woman, quoted in The Australian magazine, said: “I thought long and hard about this; I looked back and asked myself: ‘Could this really be true?’ “And finally I decided there was no way that was possible.”
Guilliatt revealed the theory that the victim’s claims were “based on recovered memories or ‘dissociative flashbacks'”.
The 48-year prison sentence given to the father in 2016 was approved by the criminal appeal court and in the supreme court.
An editorial in The Australian magazine in 2023 stated that the victim’s story was “clearly implausible”.
Guilliatt did not respond to a request for comment but defended him after the podcast was criticized by the victim. A series of articles on news.com.au last month.
“I take my professional responsibilities very seriously,” Guilliatt told news.com.au reporter Nina Funnell. “Efforts have been made to present a nuanced picture of this case and the many issues it raises.”
The Australian did not respond to Guardian Australia’s questions but maintained that the podcast was investigative journalism in the public interest.
“News.com.au’s report on the case includes criticism of the podcast, which interviewed the convicted pedophile and his wife and reported notes from him. [the victims’] counseling and psychiatric treatment,” he said in his editorial.
“Such criticism mischaracterizes investigative journalism in the public interest, and it would not serve the public interest to further restrict what can be reported through an already opaque justice system.
“Allegations of miscarriage of justice and concerns about the failings of our mental health system require rigorous media scrutiny.”
The Gilfillans’ names were not featured in Shadow of Doubt or other media because there were suppression orders in place until a jury ruled on a case against Rob Gilfillan in the Victorian courts.
He was found guilty of five charges of harassment against two female students while he was a physical education teacher in Gippsland in the 1980s.
The 69-year-old man, who is serving Australia’s longest prison sentence for child sexual abuse offences, will be sentenced on June 16 for crimes dating back to the 1980s.
