Bill Spedding to be paid $1.5 million after NSW loses appeal
A man maliciously pursued by police as a suspect in the disappearance of William Tyrrell will be paid $1.5 million after a failed appeal by the State of NSW.
Tradesman Bill Spedding was awarded the mammoth amount in December last year after police accused him of historical child sexual abuse in 2015 to pressure him to give evidence about the three-year-old’s whereabouts.
This strategy, created by then inspector Gary Jubelin, consisted of “concocted and false” allegations against Spedding for a collateral purpose, NSW Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison said last December in awarding the $1.5 million.
Today, as a nervous Spedding watched on in the NSW Court of Appeal, a panel of three judges upheld Justice Harrison’s ruling.
In the appeal hearing in June, the washing machine repairman said the approach by police had destroyed his life and that a large sum in compensation was warranted.
The State of NSW argued that while the three police officers who pursued Spedding were named in his lawsuit, no one in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which ran the doomed child sexual abuse case in the courts, was identified.
This meant Justice Harrison had erred in ordering the $1.5 million in damages because it was impossible to tell whether anyone in the ODPP had also acted maliciously towards Spedding or had colluded with police, the state submitted.
With police unable to find that Spedding had anything to do with William’s 2014 disappearance, they have not formally charged anyone else in the nine years since.
In June, a police leak alleged that William’s foster mother had been recommended for prosecution by the ODPP.
Police alleged the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, might have disposed of William’s body following a fatal accident at a property in Kendall, on the NSW mid-north coast.
No charges have been brought and the foster mother has always denied having anything to do with William’s disappearance.
