Mother fears son’s stabber will go free15th

August 2006, 15:45 WST

The mother of a bouncer who was stabbed outside a Joondalup pub says she is appalled that his teenage attacker is likely to get off with a slap on the wrist, accusing the boy of scheming and lying.

In a bizarre case, the Turkishborn teenager has avoided having his case heard in an adult court by convincing a magistrate he was only 17 at the time of the stabbing, despite his Australian passport and WA driver’s licence showing he was 19.

Mimi, the bouncer’s mother, said she held little hope of the teenager receiving the jail term she says he deserves when he is sentenced in the Children’s Court next month and she is calling for a thorough investigation into the matter. “If he gets away with it, it just makes a mockery of the whole system,” she said.

The teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, stabbed Mimi’s son in the stomach and bystander Keith Lowrie in his leg and shoulder outside the Grand Boulevard Tavern on January 29 last year. Mimi’s son, who has three young children, required surgery to a damaged liver and spent several weeks off work. Mr Lowrie received a total of 38 stitches. Police charged the teenager as an adult after the stabbings because Australian records showed he was born in 1985 — making him 19.

But after a trip to Turkey last year, the teenager produced documents and testimony from his mother to convince Children’s Court Magistrate Tim Schwass that he was born in 1987 — making him 17.

The teenager pleaded guilty in Perth Children’s Court last month to one count each of grievous bodily harm and unlawful wounding and is due to be sentenced on September 1.

Mimi says the notion that the teenager and his family suddenly realised he was 17 after he was charged is ridiculous. “The mother has just said: ‘whoops, I do remember he was born two years later than what I actually said, sorry’, and the court just accepts it,” Mimi said. Mimi says that if the teenager really is 17, he and his family must have lied to Federal authorities about his age when they came to Australia in the 1990s and the teenager had therefore been driving and attending licensed premises underage.

“He should be charged one way or the other,” Mimi said. “If he gets off by the courts, then all the other things at least should be taken up by the police.”

But Mimi has not been encouraged by the response from authorities. The Immigration Department has investigated the matter and says it found no evidence of fraudulent behaviour. Police have not laid any new charges and a spokesman said that any future charges would be dependent on the evidence available.

Mimi plans to write to Premier Alan Carpenter and Attorney-General Jim McGinty to call for an investigation into the matter.
Ryan Pedler
from The West Australian