分类： society

High-profile Australian sports and entertainment agent Ralph Carr, 66, whose full legal name is Ralph Carnovale-Carra, is currently fighting his recent rape conviction, with his legal team arguing before the court that the jury’s guilty verdict represents a clear miscarriage of justice.

Last month, a jury at Victoria’s County Court found Carr guilty of two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault against a woman in her 20s. The trial heard that the pair, who had known each other previously, met in early 2023 to discuss potential job openings at Carr’s company, Ralph Carr Management. After a night of drinking and cocaine use, the alleged assault took place at Carr’s home.

This week, Carr returned to court as his defence team launched a formal application to stay his sentencing proceedings until his appeal against the conviction is finalized. Defence barrister Dermot Dann KC, who has 35 years of experience working as a trial lawyer, told the court this marked the first time he had ever applied for a sentence stay in a rape case. Calling the conviction the clearest miscarriage of justice he had encountered in his decades-long career, Dann emphasized that the legal team made no apologies for launching the appeal or the stay application. “We have a man who maintains his innocence… a man who is going through hell in prison,” Dann told the court, adding that anyone who reviewed the victim’s testimony would be deeply concerned and uncomfortable with the guilty verdicts.

Dann outlined multiple trial irregularities he argues leave the jury’s verdict unsafe and open to overturn by the Court of Appeal. Key among his criticisms are what he calls significant inconsistencies across the victim’s multiple accounts of the incident. These include conflicting descriptions of the body positions during the assaults, the duration of the rapes, and what Dann labels “recent inventions” – additional allegations that Carr masturbated in front of the victim and apologized after the attack, claims that did not appear in earlier testimony. He also noted unaddressed discrepancies between the victim’s evidence and testimony from other witnesses, as well as gaps in the prosecution’s handling of objective evidence in the case.

Another key piece of exculpatory evidence Dann highlighted is a text message Carr sent to the victim the day after the alleged incident. In the message, Carr asks the victim “what happened” and notes that police had contacted him to respond to a disturbance report at his West Melbourne residence. Dann stressed that prosecutors have not attempted to frame the message as incriminating conduct, leaving it as clear evidence of Carr’s lack of awareness of any criminal act.

The defence also brought forward evidence from Carr’s psychiatrist, Jacqueline Rakov, who testified that the 66-year-old’s mental health has deteriorated severely during his three weeks in custody, with Carr describing his experience as “living in hell.”

Dann argued that there is a reasonable prospect the Court of Appeal will rule the guilty verdict cannot stand, making this exactly the case where the court’s power to stay sentencing should be exercised.

Prosecutors pushed back against the application, with Crown prosecutor Matthew Fisher telling the court the prosecution side is deeply concerned by Dann’s arguments. Fisher suggested that Dann’s strong public statements may be an attempt to garner media attention rather than present a substantive legal argument. Presiding Judge Frank Gucciardo also pushed back on Dann’s remarks, noting that the barrister’s strong personal opinion may be overstating the defence’s position and questioned whether such commentary was appropriate in court.

The appeal hearing is ongoing, with no ruling on the stay application delivered as of yet.

Less than three weeks after Brazil’s national data regulator ordered the US-based messaging platform Discord to restrict live broadcasting functions over systemic failures to protect minors, the company has confirmed it has fully complied with the government mandate, cutting off Brazilian users’ access to livestreaming, screen sharing and video calling as of Monday. The regulatory action was triggered by the horrific suicide of a 13-year-old girl in a small central-western Brazilian town, where a group of users allegedly goaded the teen into ending her own life during a live broadcast.

According to Brazilian law enforcement details, the coordinated abuse unfolded over 45 minutes: the group first pressured the girl to harm an animal, and when she refused to complete the act, they turned their coercion toward convincing her to die by suicide. In the aftermath of her death, Brazilian authorities have arrested six people linked to the incident—five teenagers, including one just 14 years old, and one adult. A senior law enforcement official described the incident as a “real-life horror show”, laying bare the severe dangers of unmoderated harmful content on social and messaging platforms.

Brazil’s National Data Protection Agency (ANPD) issued the suspension order on August 12, arguing that Discord had repeatedly failed to implement adequate safeguards to prevent minors from being targeted with violence, harassment, and incitement to self-harm and suicide on its platform. The regulator gave the company until Monday night to implement the restrictions, and Discord co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy confirmed compliance in an official blog post. “We’re complying with the order and working with the ANPD in good faith, which means that screen sharing and video calls will be unavailable for Brazilian users starting now,” Vishnevskiy wrote.

In his statement, Vishnevskiy pushed back on the claim that Discord was solely responsible for the tragedy, noting that the “coordinated sadistic harm campaign…was carried out across multiple platforms.” He added that the company has already removed the private invitation-only group at the center of the case and is actively working to reverse the restrictions as quickly as possible while updating platform safety measures for teen users. “We are working hard to restore access to these important features as quickly as possible,” he wrote, adding that the company is committed “to make Discord safer for teens.” Brazilian users will retain access to core platform functions including direct messaging and audio calls while the suspension is in place.

The incident has reignited fierce public and political debate over online platform regulation in Brazil, where authorities have ramped up efforts to protect children and crack down on harmful digital content in recent months. Rosangela da Silva, wife of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called for a full permanent shutdown of the platform, urging “the judiciary to remove this horrible network from the Internet.” Meanwhile, many Brazilian users have expressed anger over the broad suspension of services, framing the action as an overreach by regulators. “Here in Brazil they allow mobile phones in prisons. This Discord case is a big joke,” one user wrote on social media in response to the restriction.

Prior to this incident, Brazil had already passed new regulations requiring digital platforms to link the accounts of all users under 16 to parental accounts and implement mandatory age verification to protect minors online. The country’s Supreme Court has also led high-profile efforts to crack down on disinformation and harmful content, a campaign that has drawn fierce criticism from right-wing groups both in Brazil and abroad. Discord, which counts more than 150 million active monthly users and over 90 million active daily users globally, has previously said it was disappointed by ANPD’s order and rejects the regulator’s characterization of its platform’s safety record.

The head of the University of Cambridge has publicly denounced what he calls a “racist feeding frenzy” targeting late Black academic Jason Arday, following the professor’s sudden death last week at the age of 41 amid swirling plagiarism accusations. The tragedy has sparked nationwide outrage, with vigils scheduled in London and Cambridge, growing calls for a public inquiry into the media harassment Arday faced, and heightened scrutiny over the university’s handling of the allegations against him.

Arday made history in 2023 when he became the youngest Black professor ever appointed to Cambridge’s faculty, taking on the role of Professor of Sociology of Education at the globally renowned UK institution. His appointment was cut short on August 5, when he resigned in the wake of public claims that he had plagiarized sections of his doctoral thesis and exaggerated parts of his personal academic background, claims that ignited a ferocious media firestorm.

In his public resignation statement, Arday wrote that he had “reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure”, confirming the relentless pressure that had been placed on him in the weeks before his death. A week after stepping down, Arday was found dead, and a formal cause of death has not yet been released to the public.

On Monday, Cambridge Chancellor Chris Smith spoke publicly about the controversy, acknowledging that any formal allegations against an academic require rigorous, thorough investigation, but emphasizing that the public response to the claims had crossed into unacceptable territory. He stated that the academic community was right to “refuse to join in a racist feeding frenzy over a particular academic”, a comment widely understood to refer to Arday, even without a direct naming.

Arday’s family has already spoken out against what they describe as a “campaign of sustained abuse” that targeted the professor from the moment of his high-profile appointment in 2023. Anti-racism advocacy group Stand Up To Racism has organized two vigils to honor Arday’s legacy: the first will be held Monday evening at London’s Trafalgar Square under the banner “Stand against racist witch hunts”, with a second rally scheduled later the same evening in Cambridge.

Political leaders have also weighed in on the tragedy: UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who is an alumnus of Cambridge University, described Arday’s death as “a tragedy on so many levels.” Prominent public figures from across the political spectrum have echoed concerns about racist motivation in the scrutiny Arday faced. Right-wing opposition MP James Cleverly, whose mother was born in Sierra Leone, told the BBC Monday that it is “quite possible” that some of the scrutiny of Arday was driven by racism. Cleverly also added that the situation would never have escalated to this point if senior university leadership across the sector, not just at Cambridge, had completed the robust background checks and due diligence required for any senior academic appointment.

Public support for Arday’s family has surged in the days following his death. An online fundraising page launched by racial equality campaigner Patrick Vernon to support Arday’s next of kin had raised more than £163,000 ($218,000) by Monday afternoon. Separately, a petition organized by advocacy group Good Law Project calling for an immediate public inquiry into the media coverage of Arday had collected more than 83,000 signatures by Monday, with signatories including veteran MP Diane Abbott and Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

The petition, addressed to Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Arts Minister Lisa Nandy, argues that Arday’s death was “the direct, foreseeable and foreseen result of press harassment” that came after two weeks of relentless, invasive scrutiny. The document also stresses that “racism lay at the heart of this story”, adding that “To be Black and a public figure is now enough to make you a target.” Downing Street has so far declined to confirm whether the UK government will move forward with the requested inquiry.

Cambridge University itself is facing growing questions over its own handling of the allegations and its treatment of Arday throughout the controversy. Last week, shortly before Arday’s death was announced, Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice launched an internal investigation into the circumstances of Arday’s appointment and his tenure at the university. Former students of Arday have also launched a tribute project, creating a website titled “Everything Good About Jason Arday” that invites people to share personal memories of the professor, pushing back against what they call the “single reductionist narrative” being circulated about a man they describe as the kindest person they knew.