Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

‘According to the statements submitted by the other two passengers in the car, Jo and Ashleigh were out of sorts that night, they were fighting. Who hasn’t fought with their best friend? What were they fighting about? Jo says she thought Ashleigh didn’t want to be her friend anymore. Is this true? I don’t know. We don’t know. Did the fight contribute to the accident? We don’t know. Does any of what I’ve told you about Jo’s life explain the accident? Did any of it contribute to it? Does any of this excuse what Jo did? Not according to the law. Jo made a mistake. She shouldn’t have driven home from the party.’ Sarah paused. ‘Ashleigh, Laura, and Mani also made a mistake that night; they shouldn’t have got in the car with Jo. If all four girls had survived the accident, we’d be angry at all of them. But Ashleigh, Laura, and Mani weren’t the ones behind the wheel. They might’ve been, but Jo was the only one with a licence and she drove her friends around. She was the driver and she was responsible. It was a bad decision — the worst decision she’ll ever make, even if she lives to be a hundred. She’s pleaded guilty and is waiting to be punished. In her statement, she writes: I’ll get the punishment I deserve, but it won’t ever be enough. I hope for her sake that’s not true.

‘The accident happened at the base of the West Gate Bridge. In a couple of months’ time it will be the fortieth anniversary of the bridge’s collapse. Thirty-five men died during the construction of the bridge. On the morning of the fifteenth of October 1970, a span of the bridge was hoisted to the top, but when they put the bolts in, the span didn’t fit, didn’t line up with the adjoining span. The engineer managing that day’s work told the men to remove the bolts that were holding two spans together. It was a mistake. Bad judgement. Poor judgement. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t on drugs. He was stressed and under a great deal of pressure. The bridge was behind schedule.

‘The Royal Commission set up to investigate wrote in their report, The bridge collapsed because of acts of inefficiency and omissions by those entrusted with building a bridge. It apportioned blame to several companies, the designers, even the unions. And the engineer who was on site that day. But too late — he was one of the dead. They finished building the bridge, but not before another man died. And we drive over it. Life goes on. It’s supposed to go on. Why am I telling you about the West Gate Bridge? Because it was a tragedy. Because it could’ve been prevented. Because we’re all human and we sometimes make mistakes, and some of us have had lucky escapes, and no consequences. We think, Oh, that was close , but we thank God, if we are religious, or our lucky stars, if we aren’t, that nothing worse happened.

‘Every night people, young and old, drive home drunk. They shouldn’t, and we need to do what we can to stop them. Most of them, like Jo, think they’ll be fine: It’s only ten minutes down the road. Or they don’t think at all. When you’re young, death is something that happens to old people.

‘The collapse of the West Gate is Victoria’s worst industrial accident. Ten times more people die on our roads every year. We build bridges and tunnels and skyscrapers — projects that are dangerous and that put workers’ lives at risk. We build faster and faster cars. We allow alcohol advertising and we perpetuate a drinking culture. If we want to reduce the road toll, we need to address these problems.

‘The individual has to take responsibility for their actions. Jo has to take responsibility for her actions. The law says she’s a criminal, and so she must be punished. Prisons are awful places — of course; they shouldn’t be easy — but on the whole they don’t lead to rehabilitation, they don’t help people remake their lives. Jo doesn’t belong in prison.

‘Jo isn’t a bad person. She isn’t the sort of young woman we’d ever expect to find in a criminal court. She can make a contribution to the community, and I hope whatever sentence is handed down will lead her in that direction rather than away from it. Jo is an ordinary young woman from a working-class background. I could’ve tried to spin her story into one of drama. I could’ve made her family look dysfunctional and Jo disturbed. But though she didn’t have the advantages many of us grew up with, she’s been loved and cared for. There is no significant family drama. No dysfunctional family. She’s no delinquent. She’s an ordinary girl who was sad and lonely that night as she imagined losing her friend, as she imagined being alone, and she drank… There is no one in this room who hasn’t been lonely, felt anxious, who doesn’t understand that feeling. All human tragedy is caused by the failure of someone to understand and conquer their own flaws. If Jo had been more confident, less anxious, if she believed in her own self-worth, things may well have turned out differently, but she’s young, and most of us don’t gain power over our fears in a lifetime.

‘Your Honour, thank you for your time and attention. In your deliberations on the appropriate sentence, I urge you to consider Jo’s youth, her remorse, and the terrible damage that our prison system can do to a young woman.’

Sarah sat down; sweat was dripping down her temples. She was exhausted. Behind her, she heard sobbing — Mary or maybe even Mandy crying. In the brief moments she’d turned around during her statement, she’d noted tears on the faces of several of Ashleigh’s relatives.

For a minute there was silence. The judge made notes. No one spoke.

‘In my experience,’ the judge said eventually, looking up from her notes, ‘most of the young people who end up here on culpable driving charges aren’t the sort of people one would expect to find in court. But she’s here, and I agree this is the tragedy. Her friend is dead, and Ashleigh Bassillo-White’s family have lost their daughter in an accident that should never have happened.’

She didn’t raise her voice; there was frustration, not anger, in it. Aretha Ryan was an experienced judge. She’d recently celebrated twenty years on the bench: a rare achievement for any judge, but especially a woman. The first female judge in Victoria was only appointed in the mid-1970s. By the time Aretha was appointed in 1990, there were women judges in most courts across the country, but even now they made up less than a third of all judges.

Judge Ryan leant forward, towards the bench, pushed her glasses back, and stared out across the courtroom. ‘It’s true that as a community, we’re all responsible for the alcohol abuse, for the fatalities on our roads, but letting individuals off the hook isn’t taking our responsibilities seriously; it would be negligent. Joanne Neilson, you were driving and you were drunk. That is something we can’t dismiss, no matter what other good deeds you have done or were planning to do.’

Jo heard everything and nothing. When the hearing first began, she’d forced herself to listen to the words, terrified that the judge or Sarah — though Sarah had already told her she wouldn’t have to say anything — would ask her a question, that they’d test her to make sure she was listening. But the more she concentrated on the words, on what Sarah and the other lawyer and the judge were saying, the less she heard. And then, halfway through the reading of Jane’s statement, she lost all sense … Words, individual words, fell like stones from people’s mouths. They formed hills and mountains, and they created valleys; they changed the landscape of the room, and she was lost.

‘At approximately 12.30 am on Sunday, the twentieth of September 2009, you, Joanne Neilson, along with your best friend, Ashleigh Bassillo-White, and two other friends, Mani Cruz and Laura Roberts, left the eighteenth birthday party being held at Siren’s restaurant in Williamstown. All four of you had been drinking for several hours…’