A 14-year-old Melbourne girl who had 109 serious charges dropped after allegedly stealing multiple cars and using one to hit a cyclist is back before a children's court just two weeks later.
The teenager had all her charges dropped after her lawyer foreshadowed the use of the legal principle doli incapax, which presumes children aged 10 to 14 are too young to understand the seriousness of their offending. However, news.com.au can exclusively reveal that last Thursday she faced a magistrate again.
The young girl, who cannot be identified due to her age, is not the only member of her family facing serious charges. A relative, also unidentified, will face a children's court later this week. The 14-year-old is now facing three counts of aggravated burglary, two counts of theft of a motor vehicle, and an unlicensed driving charge. The relative is facing 58 charges, including aggravated burglary, resisting an emergency worker, burglary, theft of a motor vehicle, and unlawful assault.
Family and community speak out
Several individuals with close ties to the teenagers spoke to news.com.au about their alleged behaviour over several years. One woman said her sister was with the teen during the majority of her alleged offending over a two-and-a-half-month crime spree that resulted in 109 charges. Those charges included driving a vehicle recklessly towards a victim, placing that person in danger of death.
The woman, speaking anonymously, said the teenager appeared to enjoy the attention from her alleged offending, including claims that she Googled “Where do Jews live” and “How long is the sentence for running someone over” within three minutes of allegedly striking the cyclist on Beach Road in Brighton. “When she got out of youth detention, she did think it was funny all the posts being made about her on social media,” the woman told news.com.au.
Another woman, also speaking anonymously, said her son attended the same primary school as the girls and recalled them trying to bully his best friend. “When they were reprimanded by teachers, it just amused them. Their father, who I met briefly a couple of times, was stressed out of his wits. He mentioned he just doesn’t know how to help them. To be honest, we all felt sad for him. Neither of them cared and both of them fed off each other,” she said.
Doli incapax controversy
The children's court earlier this month heard that the teen charged with 109 offences turned 14 while in custody and had been in custody for 34 days. When the teen’s lawyer hinted at presenting a doli incapax argument, the magistrate said it was the “obvious” choice. “It’s obvious. You’re dealing with a 13-year-old,” he told the court. “The first thing that goes into your head is doli. The kids, when they get arrested, scream to police officers, ‘doli, doli’. They’re aware of it.”
A date to hear arguments for doli incapax was set for Monday, May 18, but prosecutors dropped the charges instead. The teen is not the first to benefit from doli incapax. A Melbourne boy in 2024 had 388 criminal charges struck out due to the rule. In the same year, two teenage girls, aged 12 and 13 at the time of their alleged offending, had their charges dropped after allegedly bashing two other girls in Mildura. The children's court ruled they did not understand the severity of their actions, which included punching one victim 15 times in the face in what a magistrate described as a “clearly violent episode”.
In November last year, a 13-year-old boy had seven serious charges dropped after allegedly trying to carjack a vehicle in a Melbourne driveway while a mother and baby were inside. The most prominent recent example of doli incapax in Victoria followed the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Declan Cutler in March 2022. Cutler was killed in Coburg North by a gang of teens. Police told a court among his attackers was a 13-year-old boy who allegedly stomped on Cutler’s head repeatedly while others stabbed him, and returned to stomp on the victim’s unconscious body a second time.
Supreme Court Justice Rita Incerti found in 2023 there was a “reasonable probability (the boy) did not know (his) conduct was seriously wrong in a moral sense”. The teen “cannot be found guilty of murder or the alternative charge of manslaughter”, she ruled. Speaking exclusively to news.com.au, Declan’s mother Sam Cutler said youth crime in Victoria is out of control because teens know that under the law, they are untouchable.
