Shane Cuthbert Graduates Law from CQU

Youth Justice advocate Shane Cuthbert officially graduates law in 2024.
As someone with limited schooling, having obtained no year 10 or 12 High School certificates, it is quite the accomplishment.
Consider also, the many hurdles, challenges and barriers he has faced over the years. When he was age 4, he remembers being left out in the cold to fend for himself and his 3 year old brother, his alcoholic father had passed out, and without any bedding or furniture, he had only a doormat to keep them warm.
He remembers that the doormat wasn’t big enough to cover the both of them and so he would place it over his three year old brother and hed cuddle him as tightly as he could.
Raised by a single mum, who struggled to provide for two young boys had a temper and could be quite abusive at times.
He remembers being in kindergarten, having to prepare his own lunches, iron his own clothes and walk himself to school. He and his brother had to wash and wipe up each night but they were so tiny they couldn’t reach the sink, she bought them a stool.
He remembers his little brother dropping a dish one night and getting belted because he broke the glass. He couldn’t reach the sink and this stuff was just too heavy for him.
Similarly, they were ironing their school uniforms one morning and his little brother dropped it on the carpet burning a huge hole in it, they both got belted.
They both remember being belted so reglualry and so severely the mother stopped buying wooden spoons because they would all end up broken, she bought steell ones that would end up bent and in the end she used plastic ladles as they could handle the beatings without breaking easily.
They remember that their mother would do a fortnightly shop and the food was meant to last the fortnight. They were always so hungry they would break into the fridge and cupboards to take what they could and when they were caught they were belted for being hungry.
His uncle lost his life in a horrific truck accident and his cousins, in and out of juvenile detention would sometimes stay with them, that’s when the molestation and sexual assaults started but he didn’t tell anyone.
He was bullied at school, so severely that he was on one occasion hospitalised for having his arm broken in the play ground, a coumpound fracture that needed surgery, he spent weeks in hospital recovering.
Just 9 years old, he became addicted to morphine.
When he returned to school, fed up with the bullying, he took a pocket knife to school and although he didn’t hurt anyone, he confronted his bullies and was sent to a psychiatric hospital for children.
The first time he was kicked out of home he was about 12 or 13 and because his mum felt bad putting him on the streets, what she did may have been even worse.
She kicked him into a sunroom attached to the house, a room made from tin sheeting and flyscreens that was hot in summer and cold in winter. The doors to the house were locked and every night, this boy had to watch through the windows as his mother and siblings sad down at the dinner table for dinner while he sat outside in the cold, living underneath a pool table.
It is this psychological trauma that causes him the most pain today.
No surprises that this young person had issues with drinking and drug issues, no surprise he ended up in prison.
As a young person in prison he was placed into a cell with a convicted rapist and a man remanded in custody for the manslaughter of his own three month old child. This man began making this young person his bitch. He was regularly assaulted and shortly before being released was one night sexually assaulted with a prison knife.
Then, in 2018 he was released from prison and put on a bus here to Cairns.
Shane thanks Councillor and Former MP Rob Pyne for supporting him during his campaign and encouraging him to find a seat at the table where decisions affecting Cairns residents, Queenslanders and Australians are made, Former Magistrate Pat O'Shane (who once sentenced him as a young person for supporting him through his law journey and attending his graduation.
Psychologist Jeff Nelson for believing in him and helping him turn his life around in and outside of prison and Russell Manser, a child sexual abuse advocate who encouraged Shane to start sharing his story in the hopes that it will help others.

[@cairnstropicalgardening]

Well done Shane!

[@shanecuthbertofficial]

Thanks again for all your support Rob!