The prosecution for raping a young tradie continues to spring up within the Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions amid claims it disobeyed its own guidelines.
Daily Mail Australia revealed last month that Phoenix Cooper believed he had fallen victim to the ‘MeToo movement’ that had gone mad after Victoria Police and prosecutors pushed their case against him.
Last week, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd, QC, published an extraordinary defense of his case against the 25-year-old after a Melbourne newspaper claimed the prosecution had proceeded on the basis of ‘clearly weak evidence’.
Phoenix Cooper was falsely accused of drugging and raping a woman he had just dated at a trendy pub. The woman’s law students describe him as ‘random’
Phoenix Cooper was forced to hire expensive attorney Philip Dunn, QC (right) to defend himself before the Supreme Court of Victoria
Kerri Judd, QC, launched an extraordinary defense of the decision to sue a young tradie over rape allegations the alleged victim could not remember
“It is not the OPP’s role to establish guilt or innocence. It is the OPP’s role to review the evidence in the case and determine whether it passes the prosecution test – that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction; and that the prosecution is in the public interest,” the statement read.
‘This determination is made after a good and complete analysis of the evidence by both an OPP lawyer and a public prosecutor. Then it justly became a matter for a jury to determine whether Mr. Cooper was guilty or not guilty.”
The Victoria Police Department has launched an investigation into Mr Cooper’s prosecution, and the Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission is also said to be investigating the case.
For eight months, the investigating officer was convinced that Mr. Cooper had drugged his alleged victim, who claimed she could not remember having sex with him.
But when the results were negative, he was charged anyway.
On May 6, Cooper was found not guilty of raping the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, by a jury of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Cooper claimed to be the victim of a “one-sided” investigation.
“The (police) spent hours with (the woman) and her classmates, but only 30 minutes with me. It’s like they decided I was guilty,” he said.
Walk of Shame: Phoenix Cooper was chased down the road and photographed after being falsely accused of raping a drunken law student, who was convinced by her friends that he had done something wrong. Cooper is pictured with Melasecca Kelly Zayler’s lawyer Zyg Zayler
In the statement, Ms Judd noted that “a magistrate made the decision to have Mr Cooper tried” and that the newspaper article’s allegations about crime victims “were disappointing and inconsistent with community values and sentiment.” ‘.
“We know that it is often very difficult for victims of sexual offenses to come forward with these kinds of allegations. To see this kind of comment after a case has been tried by a jury must be very disappointing for victims.’
Ms Judd denied the reported allegations that Mr Cooper’s legal team withheld information during the trial and claimed he had every opportunity to argue for the case to be dropped when it first appeared in court.
“At no point during the trial did Mr. Cooper’s legal team claim that he had no case to answer or that the case should be adjourned for abuse of process,” she wrote.
One of Australia’s leading legal minds, who declined to be named, told the Daily Mail Australia that Victoria’s OPP had huge internal problems after the failed prosecution of Cardinal George Pell.
On April 7, 2020, the Supreme Court upheld Cardinal Pell’s appeal against the conviction and acquitted him of five sex crimes.
One decision was made before the full court, which found that there was “a significant chance that an innocent person would have been convicted because the evidence shows no guilt.”
Cardinal George Pell arrives at the County Court in Melbourne in 2019.
“They’re a little nervous for another reason because they insisted on suing Pell. That went through the system and the Supreme Court found seven-zero that there was no evidence,” the legal expert told the Daily Mail Australia.
“The consequence for the OPP, which insisted on going ahead, is that they charged him in a case where the Supreme Court said there was no evidence. That has some similarities (with Mr. Cooper).’
The expert claimed that the OPP seemed more interested in making deals with female perpetrators and conducting rape trials against men.
“They seemed to have broken their rules (in this case) that there must be a reasonable prospect of conviction,” he said.
Mr Cooper told Daily Mail Australia that he hoped no one else would have to endure what he had.
‘Why hasn’t anyone stopped this? Why has it gone this far? Imagine if you had a son and your son was in a situation like this? Or a buddy? Or a brother? It can happen to anyone,” he said after his acquittal in May.
Cooper believes he accidentally became involved in the “MeToo movement” – a social movement against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture, in which people share their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment.
“Look, don’t get me wrong, I believe in the MeToo movement. But this is wrong. This is not rape in any world. There are guys who go through this every day and who could spend years in prison who can’t afford proper legal support and end up in jail on thin, flimsy charges,” he said.
Mr Cooper, who was represented by Melbourne top QC Philip Dunn, said his defense cost over $200,000.