KEY POINTS:
Curiously, I cannot join the chorus for the prosecution of Tony Veitch. Curiously, because normally I'm consumed with revulsion at reports of violence on a woman and no torment seems too much for the most unmanly of crimes.
But this time something stops me clamouring for criminal punishment.
And I don't think I'm alone. The second day Veitch was on the front page I heard people outside the news industry saying, enough. He has paid a price.
"It sounds like a pretty serious assault," I said in our defence, but that sounded lame even to me. The assault must have been serious if the reported consequences were true, but the jumpy little broadcaster had paid a serious price: a six-figure sum to the victim and now he would pay with his career.
Isn't that justice?
This is the question that makes the Veitch case interesting and important, I think: Must crime always be punished in a public court or can justice be done privately between those involved?
Obviously there has to be some reservations about private justice. The people concerned need to be equally capable of upholding their human rights and the injured person needs to have the free choice of public or private recourse.
It seems to me the three police detectives investigating the Veitch case should have just one issue to resolve: Was his former partner under any sort of duress when she agreed to the financial settlement?
It doesn't sound like it. When she decided to do something about the incident she went to the police but did not proceed to lay a formal complaint at that stage. Instead, her lawyers went to Veitch seeking compensation.
They must gave agreed on a figure, reportedly $170,000, and she reportedly agreed to keep everything confidential.
Women's Refuge, and many others baying for criminal charges, probably do not regard duress as the decisive issue. This sort of crime, they seem to be saying, is not open to voluntary private settlements.
Domestic violence, they point out, is committed by rich men as well as poor and no offender should be able to escape the usual penalties simply because he may be able to pay off his victim and keep his reputation intact, probably to offend again.
But that view leaves no room for a woman with power. It treats all victims of a male assault as though they were cowering wives incapable of exacting their own form of justice from the brute. Most victims of domestic violence undoubtedly need the state to do justice for them, but not all. Not this one probably.
She is a businesswoman. She made a decision, a deal. Only she and Veitch know precisely what happened between them and neither has chosen to tell us. Believe me, she has been pursued for her story. Her silence for the past fortnight speaks for her strength, good sense and dignity.
She decided, quite a long time after the event, to get what she could for an injury that nothing she had said or done could possibly have justified. Quite reasonable she must have decided a large sum of money was more valuable to her than her former partner's possible conviction.
Perhaps, despite everything, she didn't want to ruin him. Or perhaps she was advised how Veitch could be seen in a judge's eyes: young, talented, remorseful, with no previous convictions and a job in the public eye.
Advocates of public justice seem to think it sterner than private retribution. It might not be. Veitch might well have been ordered to take a course of anger management and pay some compensation, considerably less than her lawyers could negotiate.
If he had been convicted at all, it could have brought a sentence of community service.
And since he stood to lose far more from publicity than justice considered necessary, quite likely he would have been granted name suppression. It is too late for that now.
Considering all that has happened, Veitch might wish he had gone to court. Newspapers can ignore a private confidentiality agreement but not a judicial suppression order.
Somebody has decided that Veitch didn't deserve confidentiality, and that may be true. The problem with private justice is that it is private.
Criminal law is concerned with behaviour that breaks our basic civil codes of dealing with each other. We have a collective interest in its exposure and correction. Whoever broke Veitch's confidentiality agreement has served the public interest sufficiently.
The only purpose in pursuing the crime beyond this point is that it might tell us more about what happened. I am as curious as the next person but I don't really need to know. Nothing we might hear could justify the action he appears to have conceded in the court of public opinion.
Now that the police are investigating, the woman has made a formal complaint and public justice might proceed. But if the former couple want to keep their personal dispute private, justice should permit them and I think we should be content.
