Former Australian Olympic swim coach Scott Volkers is fighting to have historic sex charges against him dropped.
Volkers launched an appeal in a Brisbane Court yesterday.
The New Limited papers, the Courier Mail and The Australian carried the stories on the court hearings in their pages today.
Volkers had been charged with five counts of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 16 – allegedly occurring in Brisbane in 1984 and 1987.
The prosecution was discontinued in 2002 and The Courier Mail has reported that Volkers’ lawyers “were again trying to get the case thrown out of court yesterday, after Volkers was recharged in 2017.”
“During a pre-trial hearing in the Brisbane District Court yesterday, Judge David Reid was told the 2017 decision to re-charge Volkers with the same child-sex offences was unfair, in part due to the delay since 2002,” reported the Courier Mail.
The Australian reported that Judge Reid was told that 20 statements made in defence of Volkers by witnesses in 2002 had been lost by the Department of Public Prosecutions.
The DPP said it was in the public interest to continue with prosecution and the case had a reasonable prospect of success.
Defence barrister Phillip Boulten SC argued for a permanent stay of proceedings because of the “unacceptable unfairness” of the current prosecution.
A decision on the stay of proceedings will be handed down at a later date.