Australian actor Damien Richardson has been ordered to complete a “restorative justice” program devised by a powerful Jewish group as punishment for making a satirical gesture that resembled a Nazi salute.
The former Neighbours star, 56, was earlier this month warned by a magistrate that he risked being jailed over the gesture if he did not come up with an apology process in cooperation with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which had representatives watching the hearing at Moorabbin Magistrates Court.
Richardson appeared in the same court again on Friday where he agreed to the ECAJ’s five-point plan, which included 10 sessions of structured psychological therapy, visits to the Jewish Museum of Australia and the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, a written apology to the Australian Jewish community addressing the Nazi salute and anti-Semitism, and a day shadowing an ECAJ member.
Magistrate Justin Foster in November found Richardson guilty of performing a gesture that “clearly looked like a Nazi salute” while mocking a newspaper article that likened him to Hitler and the salute ban at a private event in Melbourne last year, even though he accepted the actor was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite.
He said on Friday he would have imposed a jail sentence if Richardson had been found to show any allegiance to Nazis or Hitler, and told the actor he had just jailed a man for leaving a Jewish person a threatening phone message, ABC News reported.
“It really is disappointing you weren’t here where I sent a person to jail for threatening a Jewish businessman, it was disgusting,” he said.
“It is important that education is extended to you in this case because I still don’t think you truly get it. Whilst you didn’t show affiliation, loyalty or obedience to Hitler, you still made a salute saying things like, ‘Are they going to fine or jail me?’ You knew it was against the law, but you still did anyway.”
Mr Foster also lectured Richardson for an X post made on November 30 which said: “A magistrate found that I did not perform a Nazi salute when mocking the gesture in rebuttal to an article in The Age vilifying me as a Nazi. However, he still found me guilty? Wtf.”
“Here I am bending over backwards to give a restorative justice outcome so that he understands what he did is offensive to the Jewish community and yet he’s still playing this sort of cutesy game online,” Mr Foster said, even though the post was made before the previous sentencing hearing.
“I accept that he’s sorry but to his fans [and] to the internet he is portraying he has been hard done by. A very stupid thing to do when sentencing is about to take place.”
After Richardson agreed to the restorative justice process Magistrate Foster recorded a conviction and placed him on a 12-month good behaviour bond, Newswire reported.
At the previous hearing Mr Foster told Richardson that if he wasn’t a Nazi or anti-Semite then he shouldn’t have any problems accepting whatever program the ECAJ came up with, and that if he didn’t agree there were “other options on the table”.
The salute offence carries a maximum penalty of 12 months’ imprisonment and a $23,000 fine, and the court heard Richardson had lost his NDIS accreditation, been publicly shamed, and targeted by far-left extremists in his own neighbourhood after being charged.
On the same day in the County Court in Melbourne, nationalist activist Jacob Hersant lost an appeal against his own Nazi salute conviction and one-month jail sentence along with a legal challenge to the laws on constitutional grounds.
Judge Simon Moglia found Mr Hersant did perform the salute, and that while the laws did burden the implied right to freedom of political communication under the constitution, they were valid as they prevented “harm”.
Mr Hersant will be re-sentenced in February, but intends to appeal his conviction to the High Court.
Header image: Left, Damien Richardson during the event. Right, Damien Richardson (Facebook).
The post Australian actor ordered to complete Jewish apology program for satirical ‘Nazi salute’ first appeared on The Noticer.
The NoticerRead More
T1
