Huseyin v Secretary to Department of Justice and Community Safety

SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA
COURT OF APPEAL

S EAPCR 2023 0251

SERAFETTIN HUSEYIN	Appellant
v
THE SECRETARY TO THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY SAFETY	Respondent

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JUDGES:	PRIEST and KAYE JJA
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	10 February 2025
DATE OF JUDGMENT:	14 February 2025
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VSCA 6
JUDGMENT APPEALED FROM:	Secretary to the Department of Justice and Community Safety v Huseyin [2022] VCC 1820

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PUBLIC LAW – Appeal – Supervision orders under the Serious Offenders Act 2018 – Whether supervision order should be revoked – Appeal amounts to collateral attack on conviction – Application for an extension of time to file notice of appeal refused.

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Counsel
Appellant:		Unrepresented
Respondent:		Mr OP Holdenson KC
Solicitors
Appellant:
Respondent:	Victorian Government Solicitor

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PRIEST JA
KAYE JA:

By a notice dated 29 March 2022, the Secretary to the Department of Justice and Community Safety (‘the Secretary’) made an application to the County Court under s 13 of the Serious Offenders Act 2018 (‘the Act’) for a supervision order against Serafettin Huseyin, the appellant.
On 26 July 2022, in the County Court, Judge Brookes, being satisfied that the appellant is an ‘eligible offender’ who ‘poses, or after release from custody will pose, an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violence offence’, made the supervision order sought by the Secretary under s 13 of the Act (‘the supervision order’).
By a notice of appeal filed on 28 December 2023 (‘the notice’) — some five months out of time[1] — the appellant seeks, pursuant to s 115(1)(a) of the Act, to appeal against the supervision order.[2] He also seeks an extension of time to file the notice pursuant to s 118(2) of the Act.
[1]See s 118(1)(a) of the Act.
[2]Although the appellant’s hand-written notice named Judge Brookes as respondent, the proper respondent is the Secretary.
As set out in the notice, the appellant’s ‘grounds’ are as follows:
The authorities cheated my wife regarding compensation and disability support pensioner case, about that the case getting very big. The authorities cheated me in the kindergarten as well as the case on me hitting my wife.
I want to expose the corruption, lies, deceit from 1978 by authorities and I want my supervision order to be revoked.
The supervision order was made in the following circumstances.
On 21 March 2014, Judge Saccardo sentenced the appellant in the County Court to a total effective sentence of nine years and six months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of seven years, for intentionally causing serious injury (declaring a period of 505 days’ pre-sentence detention). That sentence of imprisonment expired on 22 April 2022.
The offending that resulted in the sentence imposed by Judge Saccardo occurred on 1 November 2012, when the appellant struck his wife in the head at least three times with a steel hatchet while she slept, the attack ceasing only when the couple’s son intervened. As a result of the attack, the appellant’s wife suffered a depressed fracture of the cheekbone, and seven wounds to the left side of the back of her head. She required hospitalisation, internal and external stapling, and surgery to drain pooled blood. Judge Saccardo considered the attack to be premeditated, and found that the appellant intended to permanently scar his wife’s face.
Some years earlier, on 16 February 1990, following a nine day trial in the County Court in which a jury found the appellant guilty of a host of offences, Judge O’Shea had sentenced the appellant to a total effective sentence of 21 years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 18 years, for extremely disturbing offending, including: intentionally causing serious injury (five counts); kidnapping (four counts); reckless conduct endangering life (four counts); false imprisonment (23 counts); making a threat to kill (one count); and aggravated burglary (one count). On 2 August 1990, the Court of Criminal Appeal refused applications by the appellant for leave to appeal against conviction and sentence.[3]
[3]R v Huseyin (Unreported, 2 August 1990, Vic, Court of Criminal Appeal).
The offending for which Judge O’Shea sentenced the appellant — and in respect of which the Court of Criminal Appeal subsequently refused him leave to appeal — occurred in the morning of 9 May 1989, when the appellant, armed with an imitation revolver and a tomahawk, entered a kindergarten in Hawthorn, where 20 children, the director, assistant director and a mother of one of the children, were present. The appellant ordered the children to be gathered in the kitchen area, and for police and media to be contacted. When one of the adults told the children to run for the door, the appellant was able to catch the last four. The appellant then detained the four children in a toilet block for a period of seven hours, pouring petrol over them and threatening to kill them whilst holding matches. As a result of his actions, the children suffered serious chemical burns, and required hospitalisation.[4]
[4]See ibid, in which the circumstances of the offending are more fully described in the reasons for judgment of Kaye J.
Not quite two years after it was made, the supervision order was confirmed by the County Court. Hence, on 28 May 2024, upon a review of the supervision order under s 99 of the Act, Judge Purcell made an order pursuant to s 106 of the Act, that order being amended pursuant to the ‘slip rule’ on 30 May 2024. The terms of the order made on 30 May 2024 included the following:
THE COURT IS SATISFIED that the eligible offender SERAFETTIN HUSEYIN still poses, or after release from custody will pose, an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violence offence as defined in the Act if a Supervision Order is not in effect and SERAFETTIN HUSEYIN is in the community.
This order confirms the Supervision Order made on 26 July 2022 and varies, adds to or removes conditions of that order pursuant to section 106 of the Act.
The current expiry date of the supervision order is 25 July 2025.
It is plain that the appellant’s putative appeal cannot succeed. A selection of the appellant’s ‘submissions’ in his written case — a number of which were repeated in his oral submissions — are sufficient to make so much clear. Thus, for example, the appellant submitted:
The Judges, Judge Brookes, Dr Russell Pratt^[[5]] and other corrupt authorities tried to cover up the racism they have done and they wrote bad things about me. I am appealing my Supervision Order because I am not guilty.
[5]Dr Russ Pratt is a Forensic and Counselling Psychologist who provided a Detention and Supervision Assessment Report dated 20 December 2021, and an Addendum Report dated 29 June 2022, relied upon by the Secretary in support of the application for the supervision order.
During the trials of 1990 and 2013 and in my appeal on August 02, 1990, I informed Honourable Judge Brookes with my documents dated June 21, 2022, that I was the victim of corruption, wrongdoings and injustices committed by the authorities … The Supervision order decision made by Judge Brookes is not the right decision.
…
I arrested four children in the kindergarten so that the public would hear about years of discrimination, corruption, dirty tricks, lies conducted by doctors, lawyers (Social Security department), Centrelink, politicians, etc., during my wife’s compensation and disability support pension cases and that the authorities could take my wife’s compensation case to the court. I did nothing to the children and the ladies who were in the kindergarten. I was going to pour some gasoline on the floor so that no one would attack me, and while I was pouring some gasoline on the floor, one of the children hit my arm, the gasoline can fell from my hand to the ground, rolled on the floor and poured a lot of gasoline on the floor.
…
In February 1990, during a trial in the County Court, officials convicted me using corruption, dirty tricks, etc.
I am not guilty. On August 2, 1990. There was no justice for me in my appeal in the Supreme Court.
…
… Although I was innocent, I was imprisoned for 14 years at first, then 9.5 years for the second time, etc.
I appealed the 1990 County Court trial verdict, but I did not appeal the 2013-2014 County Court verdicts, as there was no justice in the Supreme Court for me. …
I am not guilty. I want the Court of Appeal to review my Supervision Order and Appeal my case. …
Two main themes permeated the appellant’s notice and his submissions. First (and foremost), the appellant seeks to have the supervision order set aside because he claims to be not guilty of both the 1989 and the 2012 offending. Secondly, the appellant feels aggrieved about his wife’s inability to obtain compensation with respect to medical treatment that she received in 1978, the appellant believing that treatment to have been negligent.[6] That inability, the appellant contends, is borne of corruption.
[6]See R v Huseyin (Unreported, 2 August 1990, Vic, Court of Criminal Appeal), in which the circumstances surrounding the claims for compensation are set out in the reasons for judgment of Kaye J.
The nature of an appeal under s 96 of the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009 (now repealed), which was in materially similar — although not identical — terms to s 115 of the Act, was considered by this Court in Nigro.[7] The Court held that the section conferred a right to appeal by way of rehearing upon the evidence before the County Court and any additional evidence admitted pursuant to the specific powers contained in the Act.[8] Subject to the admission of new evidence, House[9] principles applied both to the ultimate decision as to whether to make a supervision order and as to the terms on which such an order should be made. On the other hand, the test to be applied on an appeal ground directed to the County Court’s determination with respect to ‘unacceptable risk’ was simply whether it was plainly wrong or wholly erroneous.[10] In the absence of specific error or an otherwise plainly wrong decision this Court is not required to carry out its own assessment of unacceptable risk.[11]
[7]Nigro v Secretary to the Department of Justice (2013) 41 VR 359 (Redlich, Osborn and Priest JJA) (‘Nigro’).
[8]Ibid 370 [37].
[9]House v The King (1936) 55 CLR 499.
[10]Nigro, 376 [55], 377 [64].
[11]Ibid 376 [57].
Noting that the appellant has not lodged an appeal against the order of 30 May 2024 confirming the supervision order, the appeal in this Court against the supervision order must fail. As we have said, the main contention in the appellant’s case is that the supervision order should be set aside because he is not guilty. An insuperable obstacle standing in the way of that contention is that the appellant’s challenge to his convictions was conclusively determined by the orders made by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 2 August 1990, when that court refused his applications for leave to appeal against his conviction and sentence. The present appeal amounts to an impermissible collateral attack on those convictions, and is accordingly not a valid basis upon which to impugn the supervision order.
As to the appellant’s second principal contention — the inability of the appellant’s wife to obtain compensation for negligent medical treatment because of corruption — it is plain that, even if it were established, that contention could not lead to the revocation of the supervision order.
Since, for the foregoing reasons, an appeal based on the current grounds could not succeed, it would be futile to grant an extension of time within which to file a notice of appeal. The application under s 118(2) of the Act for an extension of time will be refused.

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[2025] VSCA 6

14 February 2025