Racing writer Bruce ‘Snowy’ Clark is one of life’s great conundrums.
Clark is a hugely talented wordsmith when he is on song and trying – which is about one week in ten – but his ability is subsumed by his lack of objectivity, and his slavish devotion to crafting stories that keep him in the good books with the rich and powerful in racing, at the expense of objectivity and the telling of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
His gushing tribute to Caloundra trainer Mick Mair in the latest edition of his weekly Racenet column is the perfect example.
Snowy gives us a journey through Mick’s life, and all the characters who have been of assistance to him at some stage of his underwhelming career of unfulfilled potential, and one day might be again, are there. Gerry, Singo, their mates Tony Wildman, Tommy Raudonikis and Roy Thompson, Paul Cave, Lee Freedman – they’re all there.
Only one person is missing.
The un-named teenage girl that Mick Mair was accused of sexually abusing in that former Little Mountain home and training centre of Mair’s that Clark quotes him as saying he misses so much. The one he lost half of in a divorce settlement with the ex. Snowy doesn’t mention that girl at all, just like he doesn’t tell the reader exactly why Mair got divorced and lost Little Mountain.
Let us fill in the missing pieces for you.
About 8 years ago Mair was charged with sexually assaulting the teenager in the home he shared with his then ever loving wife.
An audio recording taken by a Caloundra police officer when they came across the alleged victim about 5am on the day of the alleged incident was played to the court. The court heard the other officer in attendance and the alleged victim did not know he was recording.
The victim – who was walking along a street in the wee hours of the morning – could be heard sobbing on the recording, and then detailing to two male officers an assault she said had occurred shortly before police were called to assist
She could be heard in the recording saying Mair had touched her inside her pants.
The police asked her if she told him to stop.
“I was really scared,” she replied.
Mair was charged with sexual assault and subsequently committed to stand trial before a jury in 2016.
At the trial a Queensland Health forensic scientist gave evidence that DNA in the girl’s underwear contained matches to three people: Mair, the woman who had done the washing, and the teenage girl.
The case looked open and shut, until Mair’s clever defence lawyer exposed a problem that drove a wedge through it.
It was shift change time at the police station when the traumatised teenage girl who had been up all night was brought in to the station at 5.45am to provide a written statement about the sexual assault that she had verbally related to the attending officers at the scene. Those officers clocked off per this roster – there was no overtime in the budget – and another officer who had just started work took the sit down statement.
But there was a problem.
The verbal statement had been taken by one of the paired up officers at the scene, and doing his job as he was supposed to, he had compiled the incident report. That report was copied and pasted by the new officer who had started work at shift change time, after he had questioned the victim and confirmed that the details matched. Why reinvent the wheel if it was still round?
There was something that neither of the officers knew though, or did the teenage victim.
The other policeman at the original scene – the one who didn’t take the statement – had secretly recorded what the young victim had said on the road she was wandering out of her mind with distress at 5.00am when they found her. And the details didn’t match. Not in any material respect, just in relation to the timing (a matter of quarters of an hour), and as to how many hands the then 67 year-old Mick Mair had put down her pants.
It was nothing, just the slightly scattered recollections of a distraught teenager who had just been raped – and let’s be honest, sexual assault IS rape – by a man old enough to be her grandfather, and who she treated like one. But is was enough to spare Mick Mair the rod.
Mair was never acquitted of his alleged crime. It was a hung jury, meaning that the 12 good human beings sitting in judgement on another could not unanimously agree that the old horse trainer was secretly a sick pervert who preyed upon young women under his employ, and his care and control. It wasn’t that he wasn’t guilty, it was the idiot copper who’d secretly taped her on the road put his recordings into the records, and they were disclosed to the defence.
After the hung jury verdict the DPP declared that it was going to re-try Mair, but it lied. The whole thing to do with the police officer illegally taping the discussion was too damning for the case, and too embarrassing to police and the prosecution They dropped the charge, and Mick Mair walked free. It didn’t mean that he was innocent then though, and it doesn’t now. On the balance of probabilities, he is as guilty as sin.
Bruce Clark has been a journalist since at least the days when I was a Grade 10 schoolboy doing work experience with the QLD Stewards and sitting in their room watching the Fine Cotton fiasco unfold.
That was in 1984, when I was fourteen, and Snowy the racing writer beloved of all the young female racegoers was marching around the track in his designer dark grey suits and shiny patent leather shoes, wearing flash black sunnies and clutching his binoculars in one hand and a racebook and a gold pen in the other.
He was one of my heroes. Woe betide me.
Clark has been around long enough to know that Mair wasn’t innocent. If he doesn’t realise that he’s not a journo’s arsehole.
He is, but perhaps he isn’t too.
Any man who glorifies rapists is only one thing, no matter what they write, say or do.
That one thing?
The same thing as every man with semblance of power who acts as an apologist for rape.
Bruce Clark has done the wrong thing here.
It needs to be set right.
Editor’s note – In an earlier version of this story I did a wrong thing too by using an expletive in the title and at the end to describe Clark. The word was used for shock effect and as an attempt at juxtaposition, but should not have been. I apologise to Bruce Clark, and to any reader offended by the use of the word. Sometimes it would be useful to have an editor to put a brake on an author’s wild edges. This was one of those occasions.
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A SEXUAL assault charge against Sunshine Coast horse trainer Michael James Mair has been dropped by prosecutors.
A legal officer for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions told Maroochydore District Court on Monday the Crown would not be proceeding with the charge.
Mr Mair, 67, had previously pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting an adult teenage woman at a Little Mountain home in June 2013.
A jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict when the charge went to trial in Maroochydore District Court in August.
Crown Prosecutor Greg Cummings indicated at the time the Crown would try again to prosecute Mr Mair on the charge.
However the stance of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has since changed, resulting in the charge being discontinued.
