Notorious paedophile and ‘sex witch’ moves three doors from Melbourne primary school

By Megan Palin
news.com.au
April 4, 2017

https://goo.gl/tclOLM

Convicted paedophile and self-professed ‘sex witch’ Robin Fletcher.

Convicted paedophile Robin Fletcher in Melbourne, November 2015.

Robin Fletcher (left) — a convicted sex witch — attending a suburban 'church' in Alphington. Photo by Jason Edwards

Notorious child sex offender Robin Angus Fletcher’s new home is about 100 metres from Le Page Primary School, in Cheltenham, Seven News reports.

The majority of residents living on the street are reportedly young families.

Fletcher, 60, was working as a drug abuse and sexual guidance youth counsellor, when he used hypnotism and mind-altering techniques to abuse two 15-year-old girls in the 1990s.

The Wiccan also told the young girls it was necessary to fulfil their destiny as “high priestesses of the dark covenant” and forced them into sex work.

He was jailed in 1998 and released in 2006, but lived under supervision orders for the next decade at Corella Place, otherwise known as the notorious ‘village of the damned’ for sex offenders.

Fletcher, who is legally blind, was released last month and is now free to roam the community.

“I don’t feel safe at all,” Cheltenham resident Lorrina Layuni told Seven News.

“This is the way they walk to school. This is the way they go to play at the park.”

Victorian authorities applied to renew the supervision orders just before they expired in 2016.

In February this year, Supreme Court Justice Phillip Priest ruled that despite Fletcher’s “repellent” offences, he did not pose, according to the law, an unacceptable risk to the community.

The Department of Justice went to the Court of Appeal, arguing Justice Priest was “plainly wrong” in concluding there was no unacceptable risk.

But the Court of Appeal upheld the Supreme Court decision last month. It found it was well open to the judge, on the evidence before him, to reach his conclusion.

Court of Appeal President Justice Chris Maxwell, Justice Robert Redlich and Justice David Beach acknowledged the consequences of any child sex offence would be harmful.

But they said the department’s position went “well beyond what the legislature provided for when it introduced the regime of post-sentence detention and supervision”.

Backyard church owner and archbishop Chearle Bugge supported the paedophile and said he was “deserving of a second chance”. She last month told the Herald Sun she had “no concerns whatsoever” about Fletcher.

“We’ve known him for about 40 years and he’s never hurt us. It’s all a lot of rubbish,” Ms Bugge said.

“He comes to our service every Sunday, and teaches theology once a month to the people interested. He’s a highly intellectual and intelligent man and he has certificates in every religion on earth.”