Scathing billboard parked outside Sydney elite school after ex-student who punched woman avoids conviction

The truck was parked outside Knox Grammar School in Sydney last weekend. Photo / Ovira via NCA NewsWire

A billboard truck with the message "you will not silence our pain" was parked outside a Sydney private school after a judge quashed a man's conviction for punching a woman and calling her a "sl*t".

Knox Grammar graduate Nick Drummond successfully appealed against his conviction in the NSW District Court this month, after the judge noted he had an "unhappy year" and did not have a criminal record.

He remains on a good behaviour bond previously imposed by a magistrate at Hornsby Local Court.

The 20-year-old told the young woman to "put her tits away", snatched her phone out of hand when she tried to take a picture of him, and knocked her to the ground with a right fist to her face, Judge Robert Sutherland said

The incident happened during a drunk night out in Sydney's upper north shore last December, in the course of which Drummond also punched a male bystander in the head, the appeal judgment says.

While recounting Drummond's actions, Judge Sutherland referenced both the perpetrator's former school and the dress the female victim was wearing.

The message read "you will not silence our pain". Photo / Ovira via NCA NewsWire

"In due course he made a lewd and completely inappropriate remark to a young lady, who he did not know, but whose dress, by virtue of what is attributed to him, might have been perceived by a 20 year-old former student from Knox to be provocative," Judge Sutherland said in his judgment.

The judge's words outraged women's health entrepreneur Alice Williams, who decided to park the billboard truck outside the AU$34,000-a-year ($35,366) boys' school last weekend.

"I don't think there's any outfit a woman could wear that would provoke a male to punch her in the face," Ms Williams told NCA NewsWire.

"It's 2021 – why is there even a mention of what the woman was wearing?"

Williams, who founded the brand Ovira, said she was moved to take a stand in support of the woman.

The truck bearing the message was parked outside Knox last weekend, as well as outside the District Court.

"As a brand, we're privileged to have a platform and a community to drive this sort of advocacy," Ms Williams said.

"Cases like this are extremely upsetting and a product of the way we constantly dismiss women's pain."

The court was told Drummond walked past the woman at the Greengate Hotel in Killara when he made the comment about her dress.

The woman later walked up to him at the bar and demanded he apologise, to which he responded by telling her to "f*** off".

Nick Drummond avoided having his conviction recorded. Photo / Ovira via NCA NewsWire

After the pub closed, both Drummond and the woman separately went to the Orchard Hotel in Chatswood.

At the Orchard, the woman, in what the judge described as a "provocative" action, tried to take a picture of Drummond.

Drummond responded by snatching the phone out of the woman's hand, which led to a "tug of war" before he "stomped" on the phone outside the pub, destroying it.

Pub staff tried to throw Drummond out, which led to an altercation during which the male bystander was punched, the judge said.

"There was a physical interaction of a kind which is almost notorious," Judge Sutherland said.

"And in the process of being physically ejected from the hotel, for reasons which are frankly beyond proper understanding, he threw a punch to a bystander in the hotel, who he did not know, and who on the material before me had done nothing to provoke or invite being the recipient of a punch."

Outside the pub, the woman ran up to Drummond and confronted him. Drummond "turned around and hit her in the face with a right fist, knocking her to the ground", the judge said.

Judge Sutherland described Drummond as becoming "overcome emotionally" afterwards.

Explaining his reasoning for why Drummond shouldn't have a conviction recorded, Judge Sutherland said he'd had a "particularly unhappy and unfortunate 2020" which led him to "go out with his mates and (have) a skinful".

"The matters that had influenced him at that stage were, in no necessary order of priority, the break-up of a relationship with his girlfriend, surgery undertaken by his father, the death of a family dog, and a dropping out of the course that he was undertaking at university," the judge said.

He added the incident should be seen as a "one-off".

"It occurred, as so often is the case, against a background of the inordinate consumption of alcohol and in circumstances where his loose tongue and loose thoughts commenced the entire interaction, after making an inappropriate comment to a young lady who was a complete stranger to him," Judge Sutherland said.