All Fall Down (22 page)

‘As Terry Lewis said to me, if the Labor Party thinks we can just grab a bloke and charge him, they don’t know the legitimate processes.’

The Christmas Card

With only weeks until Christmas, Commissioner Lewis was caught up in his usual whirl of official functions and corporate cocktail parties. Some were more elaborate than others. On Saturday 8 December, for example, he and wife Hazel hopped aboard an Ansett 767 and flew to Hamilton Island as guests of tycoon Keith Williams. Way back in January 1977, Williams had hosted Lewis and the Bjelke-Petersen family on his yacht moored in the Southport Broadwater, not far from his Sea World resort. Now Lewis was back for the stage one opening of Williams’ ambitious resort in the Whitsundays.

‘Nice room, 126,’ Lewis recorded. ‘Then in mini-bus on tour of inspection, to be huge building programme. Seafood buffet dinner. Official opening by Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen … Entertainment by Chris Kirby, ventriloquist [whose dummy, it transpired, was also named Terry], Island dancers and Peter Allen until 11.30 p.m.’

The next morning at breakfast in the Dolphin Room, Williams discussed with Lewis the need for police to be based on the island, particularly water police. Lewis then had a confidential meeting with Bill Glasson, who’d also made the trip, and the Premier. This was a matter of the gravest concern.

Since the Moore scandal had erupted, the rumour-mill within the force had gone into overdrive. Indeed, someone in the force had dared to commit to Queensland Police stationery a raft of allegations about Lewis, Moore and others for the benefit of the Labor Party.

Somehow, this damning gossip had made its way into Glasson’s office. The allegations were explosive. They involved homosexuality, paedophilia, perverting the course of justice, bribery, cover-ups and tampering with police evidence. The typed accusations were posed as a series of questions.

The document began: ‘FURTHER QUESTIONS FOR POLICE MINISTER GLASSON 28/11/84.’

The first query centred on a standard Christmas card sent by Commissioner Lewis to Paul John Breslin in late 1983 when the latter headed up his Prisoners Aid Society shelter for young offenders. ‘In view of the enclosed Xmas card,’ the document asked, ‘what exactly is the relationship between Breslin and Mr Lewis? This card was seized by police on 19/1/1984 in Dunmore Terrace raid.’

And another: ‘On Tuesday, April 24 this year, did the Commissioner at the request of [a homosexual police officer] … attend a function at an inner-city hotel that was a gathering of gays known as The Society of Friends? Did Mr Lewis give Mr Breslin a lift to this gathering in the Commissioner’s departmental Statesman Caprice?

‘Was a Family Court judge, a Supreme Court judge, two Magistrates and a number of senior and junior police present among the 150 men present? Did the Commissioner not tell them that what they did in their own bedrooms was their own business?’

The document further alleged that Lewis had given Breslin a police headquarters photo identification card, allowing him 24-hour access to the building. It then looked at the investigation by Detective Sergeant Peter Gallagher into Breslin and his alleged assault of a teenager in his Dunmore Terrace unit in January 1984. ‘Is it true that in the current investigation of Breslin by … Gallagher … items of evidence have been stolen or are missing? … Are the executive of The Society of Friends so powerful that Det. Sgt. Gallagher actually had to take exhibits home with him each night to prevent their being stolen/tampered with?’

Gallagher confirms that he made sure he kept close the controversial photographs found in Breslin’s Dunmore Terrace unit during the police raid in January 1984. ‘I used to post the photographs away, send them over to Darwin and return address to me and I’d send them out to Cairns, I’d send them to Sydney, I’d send them to Perth, any bloody where. Just so as I wouldn’t have them in my possession,’ says Gallagher. ‘They tried to order me to give them in and I said no, no, no, I can’t, I haven’t got them with me, I haven’t got them on me.

‘So anyway, the next thing I had to go down and see Bill Glasson …’

Lewis strongly denied the gossip. He wrote in his diary: ‘On Sat[urday], saw Premier re inform. on Christmas card to Breslin, and other allegations re lift in car, permission to drive Police cars, meeting Breslin etc. all false except Christmas Card. Hon. Glasson present re same matter.’

Breslin denies he had any form of friendship with Commissioner Lewis. ‘Never spoken to him by phone,’ says Breslin. ‘Never faxed him. Never had him call me or leave a message on my answering machine …

‘Am I alleged to have been a member of The Society of Friends? Isn’t that Quakers? That’s the only Society of Friends I know of … I’ve seen Lewis socially maybe twice. I saw him once at police HQ, a tender briefing for a new model [of Ford motor vehicle] – he was part of a selection panel.’

Girls Working

Geoff Crocker continued to run a tight ship with his brothel Pinky’s and numerous escort services, but he had to remain vigilant when it came to working girls and drugs. He had made a promise to his mother years before that he would not tolerate drugs, and in Brisbane the word soon got out that if you were a druggie – even taking prescription drugs – you needn’t bother asking Crocker for a job. ‘I’ve had a few work for me over a period of time and when I … realised they were bringing needles to work and everything … sacked on the spot, you know, they were just never reliable,’ he said later in an interview.

‘If you had ten girls working and two of them were druggies you can bet your life those eight that weren’t druggies would be there on time to start work. The druggies would turn up two hours later, you know, and then they’d go to sleep on the lounge … you couldn’t send them off on a job because they would be off their face so you just let them sleep it off …

‘There were plenty of girls popping Serepax and all that sort of shit … I thought they were worse off on that than bloody heroin. They were hopeless when they were on Serepax … falling down and things … Valium, they were always on that. You’d find most of the girls in parlours are on them.’

Crocker revealed a scene that had changed little since the days of Shirley Brifman in the 1960s, when she ruled as one of Sydney’s most famous brothel madams, her life a haze of cops, johns and prescription drugs, secured in bulk from friendly pharmacists in Potts Point. By the 1980s in Brisbane, the work – as ever – was relentless.

‘If a girl was genuinely tired and done a day shift and a night shift together – what we call a double – if it was quiet she’d go upstairs and pick a room and have a sleep,’ remembered Crocker, ‘and if it got busy, she’d be woken up and used again.

‘If she’d made good money on the previous shift and there was three girls still handling the flow, we wouldn’t wake her up, we’d let her sleep all night until it was time to go home, so we tried to be very fair with the girls, but you’d have to have her there in case you got that busy you needed her.’

Crocker was also sensitive to family holidays like Christmas. ‘Every year Christmas time comes and the girls have got no family here in Brisbane – they’re from down south or up north or wherever,’ Crocker said. ‘Our house was open to them at Christmas time for the Christmas dinner and all that, and my family would all be there and all the working girls would be there and we’d have a great Christmas party and you get a bit of grog in them and so on and so forth and they’d sit down and start pouring out their ex-life to you …

‘A big percentage of the girls had been tampered with by their step-fathers and real fathers … and it actually shocked me to know how many of the girls had carnal knowledge and [were] abused by their parents. A big percentage of them … were interfered with.’

Drugs, though, were his bugbear. He once found one of his staff at Pinky’s overdosed in a car parked near the brothel. ‘Julie and I walked out to the car and she [the employee] was in the car stretched out across the front seat with a belt around her arm and a needle lying beside it,’ Crocker recalled. ‘She’d overdosed. God only knows how long she’d been there for.

‘… I never touched the car because as soon as I saw the belt and the needle on her … she could be dead … I didn’t know. Julie said to me, “Oh, you better get her up to the hospital or something.” And I said, “I don’t want to touch the bitch. I hope she’s friggin dead.” That’s the words I used, and I said, she’s never coming back on these premises again.

‘Now, Julie would have arranged for one of our drivers or someone … to take her off to the hospital … but I didn’t touch her or her car or anything. When I saw that, I wanted nothing more to do with her.’

Male to Male

During the height of the scandal over former policeman and TV star David Moore, two journalists over in the red-brick headquarters of the
Courier-Mail
at 41 Campbell Street, Bowen Hills, began a unique investigation. Senior journalist Tony Koch, and a junior, Matthew Fynes-Clinton, started looking into the world of male brothels in Brisbane. They were also interested in child pornography and prostitution.

Weeks earlier, both journalists had met with Opposition Police Spokesman Wayne Goss in the Grosvenor Hotel, on the riverside corner of George and Ann streets. The Grosvenor had long been the watering hole for the legal profession, given its proximity to the law courts. It was also a favourite of the police. Goss had an interesting document to show them. It was the two-page list of damning allegations compiled anonymously that had so interested Police Minister Glasson in relation to his Police Commissioner and Paul John Breslin.

At the bottom of the document a question was posed: ‘Is it true that during a recent police undercover operation observing the operation of a male brothel, known as Brett’s Boys, of 206 Kelvin Grove Road, Kelvin Grove, both Messrs (X) and (Y) were observed making late-night visits to the premises?’

The unnamed men were allegedly both members of state parliament. If true, the allegations could floor the government.

Escort agency owner and operator Geoff Crocker would later reveal in an interview that he had once had discussions about the male sex worker industry with Hector Hapeta. ‘I was led to believe Hector was involved with Brett’s Boys and to this day I reckon he was, because I remember a conversation with him once that there was big money in male massage … and I said to him: “How would you know, have you got one?”

‘[He said,] “Yes, I’m a partner in Brett’s Boys”.’

Crocker delineated, through his own escort business, that there seemed to be a demand for male prostitution: ‘Quite a few guys rang up a lot of my escort agencies wanting a job to do male-to-male stuff and I’ve always told the receptionist not to entertain the thought of even talking to them on the phone, we don’t want to know about it, and some of them got really dirty and said, you know, it was male, what do you call it [discrimination] …’

On Monday 10 December the
Courier-Mail
ran the first part of its investigation into male brothels and paedophilia under the headline: THE MEN OF EVIL WHO PREY ON CHILDREN.

The article claimed there were at least four male brothels operating and advertising openly in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The report detailed how ‘respectable’ men would pick up boys – the bulk of them aged between 14 and 18 – from pinball parlours and the streets. They were then taken to motels and homes for ‘pornographic photos and homosexual activity’.

In the case of male brothels, the young prostitutes would often be flown in from other states but locals were also recruited. One of the brothels the report targeted was Brett’s Boys. Another was the House of Praetorian at 1/86 Rialto Street, Greenslopes.

The journalists interviewed ten prostitutes and were told that the main drug supplier to street kids and the gay community was ‘Mick’ of Inala, who they claim was protected by corrupt police.

‘Most Brisbane brothels, male and female, are owned and operated by a man known as “Hector”,’ the report said. ‘Hector has operated the brothels in Brisbane since 1974. Most are massage parlours in Fortitude Valley. Prostitutes employed in the Hector chain say he is notorious for reneging on payments to his staff.’

The story went into detail about the high incidence of children selling barbiturates on the street, and how the pornographic photography of boys in homosexual acts was done for profit.

On page three, the investigation continued with another story by Koch on the notorious paedophile Clarence Osborne, 61, who supposedly gassed himself to death in 1979 after he came to the attention of police. Koch, as part of his enquiries, spoke to gay men at the Hacienda Hotel in the Valley, who told him the media had exaggerated the recent paedophile ring allegations. ‘The boys are willing, and even though they might be 14 or so in years, in the “street” sense they are older than you or me,’ one man said. ‘They are never forced, and more often are the aggressors.’

On the day of the shocking newspaper report, Commissioner Lewis went and saw his minister, Bill Glasson, about ‘Breslin matters’. Later that evening he would attend Parliament House for Glasson’s Christmas party.

The following morning the
Courier-Mail
reported that the Police Complaints Tribunal, by now under the control of Judge Eric Pratt, would investigate whether police were involved in child sex and child pornography. Pratt’s inquiry would be held in camera.

Glasson said he had asked Lewis to investigate the newspaper allegations and report back within three days. ‘If the allegations are true, it would be of concern to every parent in Queensland,’ Glasson stated. ‘And as for a male brothel operating opposite a school [Kelvin Grove Junior], if that is true it is of grave concern … I cannot understand that it has not surfaced before.’