Victory for framed deportee

Lying police get off Scot-free as usual

Suezanne Hayman served 3 1/2 years' jail on a drug-smuggling confession that a corrupt police officer later told the Wood royal commission was "straight fiction". The New Zealand-born woman was raising three teenage children in Sydney at the time of her arrest in 1986, but in 1992 - a year after completing much of her sentence in maximum security - the punishment continued. She was deported over the conviction of conspiracy to import heroin.

Seven years since the sham conviction was quashed and 13 years since being forced to separate from her children and grandchildren and return to New Zealand, Ms Hayman, 56, was told this week she was no longer blackbanned from returning to Australia. "It's just been horrendous, from the first step that (policeman) took," Ms Hayman said on the phone from her home at Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand.

When an Immigration Department official called on Tuesday night to give her the news, it was the final victory in a battle that separated her from her children when she was sent to Mulawa women's prison in western Sydney in 1988.

She lived for a year in Sydney after her release and met her future husband, Chris Hayman, but was deported on a 24-hour passport. "It was done very quickly and very maliciously, in front of my family and in front of my children. It came as an absolute shock," she said.

In 1995, Detective Sergeant Paul William Deaves admitted that the unsigned confession in which she had admitted to importing heroin from Thailand was a fabrication.

After the conviction was quashed in 1998, she sued the NSW and federal police over wrongful imprisonment and malicious prosecution. All she would say of the confidential settlement was that she was happy. Ms Hayman's three children and their families have all moved to live within an hour of her Kerikeri property and she has no plans to settle back in Australia, but she can now return for her stepson's wedding after Christmas. "Everything's fine now, everything's great. It's like a chain being taken off my neck," she said.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone apologised for the delay in lifting the ban.

Deaves told the Wood royal commission that police had "made our mind up" to charge her, and that the confession was "straight fiction". In exchange for his admissions, Deaves was granted immunity from prosecution.

Report here


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