|
The Press
January 22, 2000
Coming out of the dark turning his life around
Christchurch lawyer Robbie Davidson has stepped out from the
shadows. He has left behind a dark history of crime, drug use, and a troubled
upbringing. Only by accepting his past has he been able to build a future.
Michael Rentoul reports.
Robbie Davidson has addressed more than a few judges in his time — and
not just since he joined the Bar.
These days, when he appears, tattoos no longer adorn his face.
Before the Bar beckoned, Robbie Davidson, 48, was a bikie, freezing worker,
and railways engine driver. He came from a "good family", but left
school at 15 with no formal qualifications.
He is no stranger to politics, having spent 20 years in the union movement.
His father was a local-body politician, and a close friend of Norman Kirk's;
and his partner — soon to be wife ‑ is Christchurch East MP Lianne
Dalziel.
As a practising lawyer, he has the unusual distinction of holding a criminal
record. Whereas once he lied about his convictions (when travelling abroad),
as a member of the Bar he now owns up.
"People like to think there's some hope for people who go completely off
the rails," he says.
In his case such hope is well placed. But acceptance has been hard won.
Davidson's life is an archetypal story of a working-class lad in 1950s Christchurch: violent,
and full of secrets. "I saw huge violence," he says. "Violence
was a solution to everything."
Davidson was beaten by his father, mother, teachers, and the police — nothing
out of the ordinary for the 50s.
His father, John Fisher (Jack) Davidson, emigrated from Britain in
the 1930s with his wife, and worked as a mill foreman. He was a respected
figure in both Labour Party and local-body circles: political old hands, such
as city councillor David Close, recall him fondly.
He also had an eye for young women. Again, nothing unusual.
But one such affair, with a 17-year-old woman, a ward of the State who was
living with Robbie's grandmother, had a devastating outcome: Robbie was born
illegitimate and was secretly adopted back into his father's family.
Robbie grew up with his father's wife, a woman who posed as his mother but
who, he believes, secretly resented him.
As family tensions spilled over, this hot-head from Woolston took out his
frustrations on the police. They responded with a rough-house form of justice
that did nothing to tackle the source of Robbie's alienation.
Over a period of just three years before 1970 he was convicted of disorderly
behaviour, burglary, wilful damage, breach of probation, and insulting
language.
The welfare, probation, and school officials who intervened all knew of
Robbie's shaky start but - in deference to his parent - said nothing.
A report from the Department of Education's child welfare division, dated
1967, remarks almost casually that Robbie was adopted. "Caution:
Davidson does not know that he is an adoptive child," someone scrawled across
it.
Such was the code of silence surrounding a shadowy birth. In adoption
matters, the balance of rights was skewed in the birth parents' favour.
Davidson did not discover the truth behind his upbringing until 1983, when
his birth mother called him out of the blue just 18 months before his father
died.
The revelation that he was born illegitimate and adopted unearthed a family
shame. Davidson says the discovery rocked his adult world. "It is
outrageous that, from the moment they are born, people can be labelled
illegitimate. I think my admittance to the Bar was symbolic. The law was
forced to recognise my legitimacy — something that was taken from me at
birth."
Eight years of psychotherapy followed as Davidson tried to come to terms with
tumultuous events that had shaped his life.
His therapist, Brian Jones, speaks highly of Davidson: "He began as an
angry, depressed anti-social personality who felt lonely and alienated from
society, but who had a vague idea that somewhere there was a better life.
"His is the greatest change I have ever seen in a patient," Dr
Jones wrote in 1992.
But Davidson's quest for that "better life" has been long and
tortuous, and his efforts to shake off old family ghosts were frustrated by
fate and history's determination to repeat itself.
In the early 1990s - as Davidson tried to make something of his lacklustre
hand - he was falsely accused of child abuse.
Davidson was studying
law at the University
of Canterbury, when a PhD
student in sociology accused him of sex abuse by association.
Until 1986, Davidson had been married to the head of the Civic childcare
centre, Gaye Davidson. One of her employees, Peter Ellis, was convicted of
abusing children there.
Davidson had minimal contact with the creche, but that fact was beside the
point — he was once married to its head, so that made him guilty.
"The episode brought back horrible memories," says Davidson.
"Many years before, my father himself had been accused of child
abuse."
Davidson believes those allegations were as false as the ones he was forced
to defend. But they left a deep scar: Robbie Davidson was only 10 when the
abuse allegations were levelled against his father, and Robbie became a
social pariah.
Friends shunned him; kids around the neighbourhood taunted him.
Almost 30 years on, as the
PhD student (whom Davidson has asked us not to name) spread his malicious
claims around the university campus, Davidson's reputation again came under a
dark, impenetrable cloud.
Davidson had not been abused as a child, as his accuser averred. He was,
however, prepared to stick up for his former wife (charges against her were
dropped).
"I was distressed about the effect it was having on my two children
(from his marriage to Gaye). I had done everything in my power to ensure they
did not have to suffer from this sort of humiliation in their lives. I was
devastated when it happened."
When Davidson and his accuser
met, a tussle resulted and Davidson was charged with assault. That was
discharged, but another charge, of threatening to injure, stemming from
another meeting, stuck.
In between, one of Robbie's sons got a call at home. "You're dead,
pedophile," the caller said.
Law department head Gerry Orchard told the High Court he hoped these matters
would not count against Davidson. "The offences are of a relatively
trivial nature and are directly attributable to scurrilous and provocative
allegations," he said.
Coming as they did on top of an existing criminal record, however, they did
hamper Davidson's attempts to study law.
That earlier criminal record was in many respects a road map of Davidson's
troubled adolescence and home life. He had left high school the day he turned
15 and found work as a junior linesman for the post office - a job he lost
three years later when he was convicted of assaulting a police officer.
As a rebellious teenager he mixed with a bad lot, grew his hair too long, and
took drugs. He spent his weekends at a residential periodic detention centre
in Bristol Street.
"I hung around with borstal kingpins who taught me the ways of the
street.
"It appears to have been a form of self- abuse as I was almost always
the sole victim of my actions," Robbie Davidson says.
Officialdom agreed. "He appears to prefer the poorer elements for
company, and his appearance and actions, while in keeping with his
associates, do him no credit," a probation report said.
The Labour Party, however, provided a more welcoming home. Robbie became a
party member at 15, and was a branch secretary at 21. A reference from Norman
Kirk, which Robbie displays proudly, says Robbie was likely to go far.
Davidson, in fact, stayed out of trouble until 1982, when he was arrested for
disorderly behaviour in a Springbok tour protest.
It was after that, of
course, that his university drama came along, resulting in two new
convictions. The explosive accusations split the sociology department. To
some observers, it seemed the Robbie Davidson they knew of old had not
changed.
The District Law Society was so vexed by whether to admit him to the Bar that
it referred the matter to the High Court.
Justices Williamson and Fraser heard the matter in 1994. Davidson was sworn
in hurriedly the next day before his
university accuser had a chance to object.
As Davidson prepared to hang out his washing for the benefit of his legal
peers, he found himself asking a desk sergeant for a copy of his record. When
faced with his old nemesis, Davidson couldn't resist a little playful
baiting.
"I told this cop I needed it to get admitted to the Bar," he says.
"`Hah!' said the cop. `There's no way you'd become a cop with a record
like that ... but it doesn't stop you becoming a lawyer because all those
lawyers are a bunch of effing crooks!"'
Davidson spent the next five years with the Engineers' Union,
organising and performing in a liaison role between the union and the Labour
Party.
Now with lawyers Neville Taylor and Associates, he has been practising for 12
months. "It's a great society that is prepared to give me a break,"
he says modestly.
Taylor, a good friend, says he chose Davidson because of his past. "A
lot of firms would not have hired someone with convictions; but I think
Robbie will be the better off for it as a lawyer.
"I knew the day would come when someone asked, `Why are you employing someone
with a record?'," he says.
Meet Davidson now, and he is once again happy and settled.
He is no longer the wild man, and appears to embrace a gentler, more
sensitive side to himself. He talks often of his love for Dalziel, a Catholic
girl from a large family and also a trained lawyer: "She's so clever,
isn't she? And I love her."
The pair, who plan to get married this year, have known their own private
hell. With her political career soaring, Dalziel suffered a bout of
depression. Davidson had been there. Together, the two worked to get her
career back on track.
Even now, there are some
no-go areas between Davidson and Dalziel concerning the creche. Unlike
Christchurch MPs who want an inquiry into police handling of the matter,
Dalziel refuses to comment on the subject. Davidson does not openly agitate,
but, like his former wife Gaye, believes the police investigation was flawed.
"We just agree not to discuss it," he says frankly.
He credits his turnaround to a handful of special friends: a sympathetic
probation officer, Brian Jones, and Lianne.
Davidson has become respectable, after a fashion: he is on the board of
trustees of a union and community health centre, and of the Salisbury
Foundation, a place for recidivist jail offenders.
When Davidson and Dalziel met, through union contacts, he owned a Harley
Davidson motorbike - a hangover from his renegade, tattooed past. In the name
of togetherness, this former wild man sold it when the couple bought their
first home.
|
