Priests save jailed refugee

‘Polite and well-behaved’ orphan avoids deportation

TWO Hobart priests have helped save a young Vietnamese man from deportation after a fall from grace took him from a job as Glenorchy church gardener to an interstate druggrowing racket — and ultimately to jail.

The “polite and well-behaved” Catholic orphan, who is serving a minimum 14month prison stint in Melbourne, became involved as a “small cog in a commercial drug enterprise” after racking up a massive gambling debt.

The 25-year-old arrived in Australia by boat in 2013 and was detained at the Pontville Immigration Detention Centre before working at St John’s Church garden — at Dominic College — and caring for the parish rector while the priest recovered from a shoulder injury.

Things began unravelling for the youth, whose name is prohibited from publication, when he moved to Sydney and developed a gambling addiction, amassing $60,000.

He then moved to Melbourne, and in a bid to pay off his mounting debts he got involved in a crop-sitting enterprise in which he was promised $200 a day to “water plants”.

But that enterprise landed him in jail last year after he pleaded guilty to cultivating narcotic plants in a commercial quantity.

According to a newly published a debt of Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision, the youth had been granted a bridging visa after having his application for a protection visa refused — a matter he is currently appealing.

His bridging visa was cancelled last year after he was deemed to have failed the character test because he had received a jail sentence of longer than 12 months.

Glenorchy priest Reverend

Father Lawrence Moate told the tribunal the youth was a person of honesty, high standards, and was unlikely to reoffend.

Father Moate said he had arranged somewhere for the youth to live, in a hostel run by the Salesian order, and with the family of an Anglican priest.

Reverend Christina Campton also went in to bat for the youth before the tribunal, saying his offending “was out of character and driven by the need for money for sustenance”.

Tribunal senior member Don Morris said the youth hadn’t been given a “slice” of the proceeds and only “meagre” rewards, was not a major player in the crop house’s setup, and noted new visa arrivals were often targeted by drug dealers.

The tribunal granted the youth’s application due to his strong ties in Australia, agreeing he deserved a “fresh start” back in Tasmania.