Cult victim in jail brawl

A CHILDHOOD victim of the Children of God religious cult who was involved in a Barwon Prison brawl has submitted to a court that a history of trauma at the hands of cult members had left him prone to acting with excessive aggression.

Joshua Cannane, 33, faced Geelong Magistrates Court for assaulting a man in the brawl and assaulting prison officers who tried to calm him down.

In the first incident, Cannane, who pleaded guilty to the reckless cause injury charges, became involved in a brawl with at least four men at the prison.

He responded to one man’s attempts to hit out at him with a ceramic mug by pulling out an improvised weapon.

Police submitted the makeshift blade was secured with a grip made of electrical tape and elastic bands.

As he adjusted the weapon so it sat between his middle and ring fingers, most of the men backed away.

One man approached Cannane, and the two were said to have displayed “aggressive body image”.

The accused attacked the man and left him with a 1cm puncture wound above his left ear and a 7cm laceration on the left side of his neck.

On the other occasion, Cannane became aggressive when a prison officer entered his cell, and punched him with a fist.

After the officer fell to the ground and hit his head, the defendant was said to have stood over him and “skipped around the room like a boxer”.

Another officer who came to assist the first man used pepper spray but Cannane was accused of swinging two extra punches, hitting another man.

When the man fell to the floor, the court heard Cannane jumped on top of him and struck him with a closed fist to the right side of the forehead.

His defence lawyer submitted his client’s upbringing in the Children of God sect, also known as the Family of Love cult, had left him traumatised.

The lawyer said the cult took children and “assaulted (them) emotionally, physically” and allowed its adult members to “do whatever they wanted to these children”.

“Because of the way he was treated in his childhood, he has learnt that the only way to react to a situation is to become aggressive,” his lawyer said.

“While we would think that response is excessive, for Cannane, given his background, it is perhaps not excessive.”

Considering his “significant disadvantaged background”, Magistrate Simon Guthrie sentenced Cannane to an additional six months behind bars.