Nothing to do with Justice: the Di Fingleton story - Diane Fingleton

[Jane B]

 

I remember hearing about Queensland's Chief Stipendiary Magistrate being charged with a crimminal offence on the news in 2002 and then later that she had been found guilty and sentenced to one year imprisonment and after appeal imprisoned for 6 months. I remember the footage of her being hustled into a police van and then thought nothing much else about her or her predicament until just recently when I picked up and read Nothing to Do with Justice: the Di Fingleton story.

Wow what a story! This book started by Di Fingleton while she was imprisoned in the Wacol Women's Prison, really resonated with me especially in terms of how badly she was treated by the very system she had been a part of and had worked so hard to try to reform. It is hard to imagine now how she must have felt to have been charged and found guilty and especially imprisoned over what essentially was a workplace dispute. Her eventual appeal to the High Court in 2005 was upheld and the judges unanimously found that 'she should not have been investigated, charged, convicted or sentenced."

Di's story smacks of the latent misogyny that still resides in the Australian psyche regarding women who succeed and the delight that is taken through the media in bringing them down. Di Fingleton is a gutsy women who even though she has been through hell and back has not been embittered by her experience. I take my hat off to her and wish her well in her retirement.