Grace Tame wins fight against paedophiles who can no longer hide their assets in superannuation to avoid paying compensation to victims
- Grace Tame praised recent news legal loopholes will be closed for paedophiles
- Paedophiles will soon no longer be able to hid assets in their superannuation
- Ms Tame said they used method to avoid paying compensation to their victims
Grace Tame has celebrated the announcement that paedophiles will soon no longer be able to hide their assets in their super to avoid paying compensation to victims after she started a campaign to change the law.
Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones announced last Friday that changes would be made to the Bankruptcy Act and Superannuation Legislation next year.
Ms Tame said some wealthy paedophiles had been making use of several legal loopholes to get out of court orders to pay survivors.
Grace Tame has celebrated the announcement that paedophiles will soon no longer be able to hide their assets in their super to avoid paying compensation to victims
Ms Tame said some wealthy paedophiles had been making use of several legal loopholes to get out of court orders to pay survivors
She said they hid their assets in their superannuation so they could appear ‘cash poor’, declare bankruptcy, and not pay compensation.
Ms Tame said bringing in the changes would hand power back to the victims and save taxpayers who were forced to pick up the bill.
‘Earlier this year, The Grace Tame Foundation teamed up with The Carly Foundation, Fighters Against Child Abuse Australia, and Andrew Carpenter of Webster Lawyers to create a federal law reform campaign called Super for Survivors, aimed at closing these two legal loopholes,’ she explained.
‘In June, our coalition took the proposal to Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones, and last Friday the minister announced changes to the Bankruptcy Act and Superannuation Legislation will be implemented within the first six months of 2023.’
‘While this is a huge win, it reminds us that child sexual abuse isn’t just a physical crime, and can persist long after the contact offending stops,’ she wrote in an opinion piece for WA Today.
‘It is systemic and often perpetrated by well-resourced, highly intelligent networking offenders who are masters of psychological torture.’
Ms Tame labelled the ability to hide assets in super and declare bankruptcy as two examples of ‘systems of abuse’ used by paedophiles to prolong trauma to victims.
‘Preventing convicted paedophiles from hiding assets in superannuation and declaring bankruptcy are laudable victories which close two gaps,’ she wrote.
Ms Tame had previously slammed convicted paedophile John Wayne Millwood who declared bankruptcy and managed to avoid paying court-ordered compensation.
Millwood abused ZAB over a period of six years in the 1980s and was jailed for four years in 2016 before he was paroled in 2019.
Ms Tame had previously slammed convicted paedophile John Wayne Millwood who declared bankruptcy and managed to avoid paying court-ordered compensation
He was ordered by the court to pay a record $5,313,500 in damages in December 2021 – but the final figure has since risen because of interest.
In August, Ms Tame blasted him for failing to pay a single cent.
Millwood owned $4m in shares in the company Realba Investments which owned properties in which his Sonic Healthcare operated in Launceston and Hobart.
Those shares have since been transferred to a company called Mazus Holdings, which is owned by Milsone Pty Ltd, whose sole director is Millwood’s daughter, Sarah Kate Millwood.
Millwood also owned a building at 159-161 St John Street, Launceston, worth about $2.5m, which was sold to Milsone and then onsold.
Shares have been divested to Ms Millwood, to the paedophile’s former partner Sonia Ann Finlay and a share in a beach house was ‘gifted’ to her son, Duncan Thomas Alexander Finlay.
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