Mission & Justice

Ashleigh Wilson; 16/5/08

The family of Sydney student Lauren Huxley wants the carpenter who attacked her to “burn in hell” after he was found guilty yesterday of brutally bashing the young woman and leaving her todie. After hearing six weeks of evidence and deliberating for just three hours, a NSW Supreme Court jury found Robert Black Farmer guilty of three offences, including attempted murder, over the attack on November 9, 2005. Ms Huxley, now 21, was left clinging to life after Farmer savagely bashed her and doused her with petrol at her home in the northwest Sydney suburb of Northmead.

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On Behalf Of Graeme Ferguson; 7/5/08; Kevin Toomey OP

Peter Murnane OP became parish priest of St Benedicts shortly after I went to St David’s. I came to appreciate him as one of the most Christ-like priests I have met. Peter has the capacity to act in highly creative ways to ensure that the Gospel is demonstrated in life.

He planted - with others - a city garden on waste land on the edge of the Auckland motorway. With the Dominican nuns in St Benedicts, he had created an entire wall of the church property painted by graffitti artists who were being hounded by the city authorities. (more…)

Bellinda Kontominas; 6/5/08

The man accused of attempting to kill Lauren Huxley has faced a gruelling series of accusations about his alleged involvement in the attack. Cross-examined in the Supreme Court yesterday, Robert Black Farmer, 39, denied entering the Huxley home through a back door that had been left open. “The dogs barked and Lauren Huxley saw you,” the prosecutor, Christopher Maxwell, QC, said. “She got frightened and left that room. “She went into the main bedroom and tried to use the telephone and you followed her and pulled it out of the socket.”

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David Eames; 2/5/08

Religious radicals who attacked the top-secret Waihopai spy base more likely hampered New Zealand’s ability to drive a hard bargain at the trade table than crippled the US ability to wage war, says one intelligence expert. Peter Cozens, head of Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, says the mysterious Marlborough base is used strictly to collect and analyse information - often of “a political, trade and diplomatic nature” - for the New Zealand Government. Members of the Anzac Ploughshares movement infiltrated the base in an early-morning raid on Wednesday.

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2/5/08

Charges of sabotage will not be laid against three protesters accused of damaging a protective dome over a satellite dish at the Waihopai spy base, police confirmed today. Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 67, along with farmer Samuel Land, 24, and organic gardener Adrian Leason, 42, were arrested after allegedly breaking into the Marlborough base early on Wednesday morning. The group, calling themselves the Anzac Ploughshares, said they had broken into the spy base to protest against the war on terror. They were charged with intentional damage and entering a building with the intent to commit a crime.

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Geesche Jacobsen; 3/5/08

Robert Black Farmer denies he hurt Lauren Huxley, even claiming he had never met her. On the afternoon the 18-year-old TAFE student was attacked in her Northmead home, he says he was at a nearby bowling club, drinking beer and losing $900 on poker machines. The Supreme Court was told the club no longer had CCTV footage or sign-in books for November 9, 2005, the day in question. The court has heard Ms Huxley got off a bus near her home shortly after 2pm that afternoon. Farmer said he was at home that morning with his girlfriend before going to the Northmead Bowling Club about 2.30pm, where he stayed for about two hours.

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Jarrod Booker; 1/5/08

A Catholic priest who took in and kept tabs on freed Algerian asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui is one of three people charged with inflicting an embarrassing blow to a top-secret spy base. Dominican friar Peter Murnane joined organic gardener Adrian Leason and Hokianga farmer Sam Land in yesterday’s early-morning raid on the Waihopai satellite communications interception station, near Blenheim. They used sickles to puncture one of two 30m rubber balloons that protect radar aerials from the weather. Prime Minister Helen Clark called the raid “a senseless act of vandalism”, and the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) ordered an urgent investigation into the base’s security.

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They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation; and there shall be no more training for war. Isaiah 2/4 This morning, 30 April 2008, we entered the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim. Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes. At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes - these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.

See: http://ploughshares.org.nz/

18/4/08

When Lauren Huxley was discharged from intensive care she was so badly injured she was immobile, and a full recovery remains unlikely, a court has been told. Ms Huxley, 21, suffered multiple skull fractures and was on life support for 23 days after being bashed with a pair of metal fibro cutters at her home in Northmead in November 2005. The marketing student, who was 18 at the time, was left to burn in a pool of petrol after her attacker set the house alight. Robert Black Farmer, 39, a construction worker, of Northmead, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for attempted murder and arson. Ms Huxley’s rehabilitation doctor, Joseph Gurka, yesterday told the jury she was “minimally responsive” when she was discharged to Westmead Hospital’s brain injury rehabilitation unit from intensive care in December 2005.

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16/4/08

Lauren Huxley nearly died after being so severely beaten that the middle of her face was completely detached from her skull, a jury has been told. The marketing student, then 18, was bashed with a pair of metal fibro cutters and left to die in the garage of her family’s Northmead home on November 9, 2005. She was doused in petrol and the house was set alight. A Northmead man, Robert Black Farmer, 39, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court accused of her attempted murder and arson.

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