Introduction
In 2011, when Daniel Jones first met Sarah Jane Parkinson, he was under the impression that he had finally found the woman he would spend the rest of his life with. The pair began their romance almost immediately after they were introduced to one another at the workplace in Canberra, where they both worked. Daniel and Sarah started dating after only a few brief months of dating, just as they were getting started on the process of designing their own house and making wedding plans (60 Minutes, 2019). Nevertheless, only a few days after settling into their new residence together, Daniel was given the order to appear in court for suspected assault. Daniel was arrested on numerous counts, notwithstanding his protests contrary to the authorities regarding his innocence.
Sarah, employed as an administrative secretary at a police department, had been laying the blame for bruising and other wounds on her spouse for several months before the issuance of an AVO against Daniel (Pell & Weigel, 2020). Sarah informed her enforcement pals of every ‘violent incident’ and chronicled the episodes in a journal, which she intended to submit as evidence during the trial (60 Minutes, 2019). These ‘violent incidents’ ranged from self-inflicted head trauma to a phoney cut caused by a knife. Daniel was taken into custody just a few short years after Sarah’s lying began in the first place. Sarah had contacted the police only a few hours before, reporting that her spouse had raped and violently harmed her after she had planted bogus proof to back up her allegation that he had done so. In the interim that Daniel was waiting for his hearing, he was thrown into the maximum-security jail in Goulburn for a felony he never committed.
After Daniel’s time as a corrections officer, he was sent to the protective wing of the institution, where he spent almost five months residing with sexual predators and intelligence agents. Throughout that time, he started having suicidal thoughts and contemplations. Nevertheless, after Daniel was freed from jail on bail, the lying did not stop (60 Minutes, 2019). As Sarah persisted in contacting the police to report that he had violated the terms of his bail, he was compelled to relocate to the other side of the country in Western Australia. Nevertheless, when a new investigator, Leesa Alexander, was brought in to work on the case, Sarah’s lies were ultimately exposed for what they were (Pell & Weigel, 2020). Sarah was found guilty of making a false allegation of rape and received a punishment of three years and one month in jail in January 2019.
It is thought that her motivation was to secure ownership of the home that the couple had purchased only a few weeks prior to the claims being made. In addition, it was found that Sarah had been carrying on an affair with a member of the police force. Sarah’s falsehoods, according to Magistrate Beth Campbell, “took advantage” of the severity with which rape and spousal abuse are dealt with in the legal system (60 Minutes, 2019). However, even though Daniel was eventually granted justice, the Jones family is still trying to pay off the hundreds of thousands of dollars in court-related expenses. However, to try and get back part of the money that was stolen from the family, a GoFundMe campaign was already started.
Overview
In the ACT Justice portfolio as a whole, including the ACT Police Service and the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, there were shortcomings in the systems that were in place. The following examples illustrate these shortcomings:
- Sarah Jane Parkinson welcomed the opportunities that came with being a law enforcement “family member.”
- She held the office clerk position at the New South Wales Queanbeyan police station.
- Her lover, S. White, was a law enforcement officer who worked at the Queanbeyan station in New South Wales.
- Constable White has previous experience working strategically with employees of the ACT Law enforcement and was intimately acquainted with a number of the Gungahlin homicide detectives.
- Because Sarah Jane Parkinson was a member of the larger police community, her account was believed. It was not put to the test in the same way that any other regular citizen would be, even though she changed her story multiple times. There was no tangible, clinical, or investigative proof to support her assertions.
- The help that she got from the principal detective went above and beyond the customary assistance that is offered to other claimed victims. This support included items that were bought for her on an internal police credit card in addition to regular support via messaging.
- Due to the support she received from officers of the ACT Police force, she was able to become more outspoken with her accusations and broaden the scope of her advocacy. If her first accusations had been thoroughly examined and untruthful, she would not have continued to make other complaints against members of Mr. Jones’ family and associates (Pell & Weigel, 2020). If the family had not defended themselves financially against the escalating number of allegations, they would not have suffered the costs of doing so.
- The ACT Police officers who were involved in the original cases used their authority and the capabilities of the police force to intimidate and threaten the witnesses and the close relatives of the victims. Because of this, the family was put under tremendous strain, and the fact that they had to defend themselves against these unjustified and groundless claims caused them to pay high costs (Pell & Weigel, 2020). The DPP should not have pursued the accusations against any member of the Jones family. They did not perform adequate research, which represented a severe breakdown in one of the procedure’s most important mechanisms for balance.
- Despite being informed by Justice Refshauge that the DPP’s case was in grave danger, the District Public Prosecutor (DPP) continued to pursue the prosecution of the faulty case. Even after Ms. Parkinson’s accusations of rape were found to be false and even after a foundation for conviction was being formed against her, the DPP continued to prosecute claims against Mr. Jones and his family. It was not until December 2014 and January 2015 that the charges were eventually withdrawn. If the DPP had responded more quickly to withdraw the accusations, the parents would not have been required to pay any significant additional fees.
- The new Director of the ACT Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) conducted a forensic assessment of the case, which determined that there was no proof to sustain the 32 accusations and the subsequent conviction.
- As a result of the circumstances surrounding this case, officials from the ACT Government were reluctant to take legal liability. As a direct result of this reluctance, parties involved in the process were looking for someone else to place the blame on. Even though there is no requirement for a formal acknowledgement of culpability, an Act of Grace payment will give reparation to the Jones family and, as a result, some measure of natural justice.
Case Linkages
There are multiple reasons why it is beneficial for a law enforcement officer assessing an assault to examine any other sex assaults perpetrated by the offender. This would help the police department(s) better use their constrained capacity (Solomon et al., 2020). In order to avoid duplicating efforts, investigators can work together to solve cases instead of pursuing them separately. When information and evidence from multiple crime scenes are pooled together, it may be possible to identify and apprehend the culprit more quickly or build a stronger case against them.
If the victims of multiple crimes experience the same crime, it is often easy to identify the culprit. The identification method, nevertheless, can be more complicated if the suspect is a complete mystery to the victim. There are some crimes where there is no forensic proof to identify the culprit, but concrete evidence, such as Fingerprinting, can be employed to link atrocities done by an unknown suspect (Solomon et al., 2020). Case linking can be helpful in such circumstances. Case linkage is a method for determining whether or not two or more crimes share a common suspect based on the suspect’s behavioral similarities between the crimes. Similar offenses can be grouped to constitute a “series.” In other words, a single offender is likely responsible for all of these offenses because of the perpetrator’s consistent pattern of criminal behavior across the offences.
In addition to being helpful for investigations, evidence showing a criminal is likely to have perpetrated a collection, or succession, of crimes, can also be submitted as analogous factual evidence in judicial procedures. Criminal profilers and police personnel are the usual go-to for case linking (Solomon et al., 2020). The term “linkage analysis,” “correlational analysis,” and even “case analysis” all refer to this method of analyzing behaviour. Most commonly, it has been associated with crimes against strangers, such as homicide and rape.
In the case of Sarah Jane Parkinson, there are no linkages between the alleged crimes and any other crimes, especially considering that her spouse, Dan, has no criminal record (60 Minutes, 2019). However, from the background stories about Sarah, the detectives can link her falsehoods. As a child, Sarah made a similar accusation when she said that her best friend’s father had sexually assaulted her (Pell & Weigel, 2020). What she did was a criminal act, even though she was a child at the time. Juvenile delinquency is a reliable predictor of adult criminality (Solomon et al., 2020). Her characterization as a pathological liar can be seen in both cases – the case against Dan and the allegations against her friend’s father.
Motivations from the Feminist Theory of Crime
The problem of gender disparity is a problem shared by feminist viewpoints, which highlight the reality that men are predominantly responsible for committing crimes. Daly (2018) points out that some feminist criminologists, including Elizabeth Stanko (1985), have given special consideration to the issue of male aggression against women, and they have attempted to explain it is happening by referring to broader frameworks of subjugation in addition to gender-based standards pertaining “acceptable” masculine and feminine behaviour. Hegemonic masculinity is a notion that is utilized by feminist viewpoints in order to explicate the maleness of wrongdoing (Renzetti, 2018).
Hegemonic masculinity is defined as the collection of concepts, values, characterizations, and ways of dealing with ‘being male,’ broadly understood as the dominant role in feminist theory within a societal structure at a particular point in time (Daly, 2018). In today’s modern Western civilization, the hegemonic or dominant form of manhood is exhibited through having paid job (possibly becoming the ‘breadwinner’ in the family), being heterosexual, and placing women in a subordinate position. According to the research of criminology professor James W. Messerschmidt (1993), there are specific groups of men who “do masculinity” or show their masculine identity through the conduct of criminal acts, as cited by Daly (2018).
In the case of Sarah Jane Parkinson, it is evident that she relied on various possibilities and exploited some embedded vulnerabilities, such as the traditional view that men are more inclined to be violent and to commit crimes such as assault. The reality that she used her position as a woman to convince her colleagues that her man was responsible for the crimes highlights the feminist perspectives. In the video by 60 Minutes Australia (2019), the family members and Dan point out that whatever Sarah said to the authorities was taken as gospel truth. Also important to note is that the targets of her crimes were all men. She manipulated the police authorities into believing that her victims were the perpetrators. Again, she relied on the assumption that men will always be considered more violent and likely to commit crimes compared to women. Her first victim was her friend’s father, followed by her fiancé Dan, and his father, Ian.
Behavioural Theory of Crime
The assumption behind this notion is that individuals acquire new behaviours due to their life experiences (Akers & Jennings, 2019). Behavioural theory mainly concentrates on the notion that people build their conduct depending on the response their behaviour obtains from those surrounding them (Hübert & Little, 2020). This idea is fundamental to the notion that individuals learn their behaviour depending on the reactions of those around them. This is an example of conditioning, in which a behaviour is learnt and then perpetuated by either positive or negative reinforcement.
Therefore, if an individual is in the presence of others who accept and even encourage criminal activity – particularly a person in a position of authority – then it is likely that they will keep engaging in similar behaviour themselves (Hübert & Little, 2020). For instance, social learning researcher Albert Bandura contends that people are not given the natural propensity to behave aggressively. Instead, he proposes that people learn how to behave violently by studying the actions of others. In most cases, this originates from the following three places: the family, the encounters one has in their environment, and the mainstream press.
Sarah Parkison seems to have developed behaviours moulded by the forces defining her environment. For instance, she realized that her pathological lying behaviour would cause rewards, such as having the house and property to herself once her husband was incarcerated. Additionally, she found herself in an environment that supported her wicked acts. She was associated with people in authority, such as police detectives and constables, and even had an intimate affair with one of them. These compounding factors enabled her to pathologically manipulate the system into doing what she wanted. To this extent, behavioural theory can be used to explain her motivations for the crimes.
Psychoanalytic Theory of Explaining Criminal Motivations
It is possible that a study of premeditated murder conducted in 1911 was the first step toward developing psychoanalytic criminology (Costello, 2018). To further support his theory, Freud wrote Criminality from a Sense of Guilt in 1916, arguing that many offenders were motivated by underlying guilt that foreshadowed the offence and led to a demand for retribution (Tambling, 2018). Still, other theories emphasize that criminal behaviour is an outward manifestation of internalized guilt and that offenders actively wish to be apprehended and penalized to contemplate this shame. The underlying premise of this idea is that everyone has suppressed impulses and drives from their primitive past.
In addition, everyone has some dishonesty inside of them. Nevertheless, these proclivities are tempered by socialization. If a youngster is not appropriately groomed, he or she may develop a personality disorder that leads to the internalization or externalization of antisocial tendencies. When focused within, they cause neurosis, but when directed outside, they lead to criminal behaviour (Mercan, 2020). The Criminal, the Judge and the Public, written by Franz Alexander and Hugo Staub in 1929, was another essential addition (Ruberg, 2021).
They differentiated between the typical offender, who deserved punishment, and the neurotic offender, who should be given therapy instead. Some perpetrators deliberately seek retribution in order to experience their subconscious guilt. In contrast, others deliberately seek to avoid retribution to demonstrate that their guilt sentiments are unwarranted, as Mercan (2020) noted. He also believed that most offenders were ordinary people instead of just neurotics, emphasizing that crime was a judicial rather than psychological term.
The background story offered by 60 Minutes Australia (2019) strongly points us toward the conclusion that the actions by Sarah Parkinson were a result of her suppressed and underlying guilt. Sarah committed a juvenile offence that foreshadowed the crimes against her husband, Dan. In her formative years, she had falsely accused her best friend’s father of sexual assault and rape. However, the man had not committed any such wrongdoing. According to Pell and Weigel (2020), this situation is mirrored in the case involving her husband, Dan. According to the psychoanalytic approach, the guilt she repressed after the incident involving her friend’s father led her to commit the later crimes, leading to her incarceration.
Conclusion
The motivations for Sarah’s crime have much to do with their socialization. She has no friends, which raises questions regarding her social skills and competence. It leads to a complex personality and behaviour that leads her to commit crimes, such as falsely accusing people of heinous crimes. However, the psychoanalytic theory is the most effective approach to understanding Sarah’s motivations. They have much to do with her unconfronted guilt, the repressed feelings of regret for the crimes from her past. Her accusation of her friend’s father of rape in her younger years sufficiently foreshadows her crime against her spouse, Dan.
References
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60 Minutes. (2019). Innocent man sent to jail for rape by his fiancé. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYH992ynhdU
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Hübert, R., & Little, A. T. (2020, February). A Behavioral Theory of Discrimination in Policing. In SPSA Conference. https://ryanhubert. com/working papers/behavioural-policing.
Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2019). The social learning theory of crime and deviance. In Handbook on crime and deviance (pp. 113-129). Springer, Cham.
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