   HOW the Australian media had covered the Julian Moti saga |  |
In December 2011, the Australia media reported: THE High Court has halted Australia's prosecution on child sex charges of former Solomon Islands attorney-general Julian Moti. Ordering a stay of charges against Mr Moti, the full bench of the High Court ruled he had been illegally deported from the Solomon Islands in December 2007. “Further prosecution of the charges would be an abuse of process because of the role that Australian officials [played] in Mr Moti being deported to Australia,” said a summary of today's judgment. Mr Moti, an Australian citizen, was charged in 2008 with seven counts of engaging in sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16 years whilst in Vanuatu during the 1990s. In today's majority ruling, the High Court found there was an abuse of process because Australian officials facilitated Mr Moti's deportation from the Solomon Islands to Australia in 2007 knowing that it was, at that time, unlawful under Solomon Islands law. The High Court also ruled that a financial deal the Australian Federal Police struck with the alleged victim and her family was not an abuse of process...The decision opens the [Australian] government to a compensation claim from Mr Moti and ends the controversial five-year effort to bring him to trial, under sex tourism laws, for the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl in Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
