- Kate Hagan
- May 15, 2009
A SUPREME Court judge has attacked a father convicted of killing his three children for using a compensation application by their mother as a "public relations exercise" to protest his innocence.
Justice Philip Cummins has ordered Robert Farquharson to pay $225,000 to Cindy Gambino, for her "profound, deep and long-lasting grief" at losing her three boys at the hands of her ex-husband. The amount comprises $75,000 for each child.
Mrs Gambino may receive only $66,000, which is Farquharson's only asset, because he is serving three life sentences with no minimum term.
Farquharson, 39, was found guilty in 2007 of murdering sons Jai, 10, Tyler, 7, and Bailey, 2, by driving them into a Winchelsea dam on Father's Day, 2005.
The prosecution case was that Farquharson planned the killings in revenge against his former wife, Cindy Gambino, for finding a new man and making his life difficult financially.
Farquharson, who has lodged an appeal against his convictions and sentence, claimed he suffered a coughing fit and blacked out, resulting in his car veering off the road and into a dam.
Justice Cummins, who also presided over Farquharson's trial in 2007 over the killings, said yesterday that Farquharson's instruction to his lawyer to say at the compensation hearing that he maintained his innocence was inappropriate.
"There was only one person alive who had direct knowledge of the children's deaths — Mr Farquharson.
"In court, Mr Farquharson could have 'maintained his innocence' by giving evidence. He did not do so.
"What he did was require the prosecution to prove the charges. In those circumstances, thereafter to assert that he 'maintains his innocence' is inappropriate, and undermines the right to silence.
"Mr Farquharson's criminal trial and Mrs Gambino's compensation application are (court) proceedings, not public relations exercises."
Mrs Gambino, who did not appear in court yesterday, had believed Farquharson's protestations of innocence, Justice Cummins said.
"Anyone would want to. No one would want to believe the alternative. Least of all the woman who had married him and who bore the three children to him."
Justice Cummins said that nobody in court who had heard "the solemn delivery of the three verdicts" could forget Mrs Gambino's cries of desolation. She collapsed and had to be carried from the court.
"Her cries were of more than anguish. They were of desolation beyond anguish.
"Mrs Gambino had to face her darkest fears. (She) is truly a victim of these terrible crimes. She was intended by Mr Farquharson to be so. Mrs Gambino's odyssey from belief to desolation is a constituent of her grief and suffering."
Justice Cummins' judgement follows an application by Mrs Gambino for compensation for pain and suffering under the Sentencing Act. She has previously received undisclosed damages for psychiatric injury from the Transport Accident Commission.
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