If only this were fiction.
How can it be that a model citizen of impeccable character in his late 70s is convicted of 18 nasty sexual and physical abuse offences alleged to have occurred in the 1960s – half a century in the past – simply on the say-so of five late middle aged women who were then juvenile delinquent inmates at an institution? Who complained simultaneously but had never before mentioned any of it to anyone.
Because if you are named in the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, you are presumed guilty. Evil. The legal process is just a formality …
That is what happened to Noel Greenaway, now in his mid 80s, sentenced (in 2020) to 20 years jail.
Urban traces the Greenaway family’s nightmare from the phone call that alerted Noel that he would be named – the next day – in that Royal Commission, through the trial and the appeal, to the day he met the ‘evil’ Noel face to face in a supermax jail.
Drawing on transcripts, diaries, personal reflections, uniformly glowing character references and painful family recollections, PRESUMPTION OF EVIL is a journey into one man’s hell.
