Thomas Sewell, a prominent neo-Nazi leader, has dodged prison after a Melbourne court found him guilty of threatening a police officer and his wife, instead ordering him to complete community service for the intimidation charges.
Sewell, 32, fronted the Melbourne Magistrates Court in person while on remand for unrelated offences, finding himself on the wrong side of three counts of intimidation and two counts of breaching personal safety intervention orders. The charges came after he targeted a police officer and the officer’s wife with threats to “dox” them by releasing their personal details and wedding photos on a far-right podcast last October and November.
“I’m working out how to dox him because those doxing laws haven’t come into effect yet,” Sewell said on the podcast. “Like his wedding photos, we’ve got it all downloaded, he’s a fucking idiot,” he continued.
The court heard deeply personal testimony from the officer and his wife. The officer said he felt “highly anxious” thinking about his family’s safety, per 9News. His wife expressed that she was “really intimidated and threatened,” adding, “I felt like we were in danger.”
Despite Sewell’s claims that he was holding police to account and exercising “freedom of communication”, Magistrate Michelle Hodgson didn’t buy it. She found Sewell had “sought to weaponise personal information, personal insult and public exposure to instil fear” in the pair.
As Hodgson put it: “Police officers are frontline forces of the law, if they are intimidated… the justice system itself is undermined. Threats to dox can expose family, friends and home life… once online, it’s virtually impossible to contain”.
Sewell’s offences could have landed him in jail for up to ten years, but Magistrate Hodgson judged that a community work order was sufficient. He’ll need to complete 200 hours of unpaid work over the next 18 months, but only after being released from remand for a separate matter involving an alleged attack on Camp Sovereignty, an Indigenous protest site in Melbourne’s Kings Domain.
Sewell represented himself for the duration of the contested hearing — a process that stretched for more than a week. The trial saw lively courtroom scenes, including Sewell branding police “professional liars” and arguing he was being “politically persecuted by Victoria Police”, though most of these defences were thrown out by the magistrate.
While the court proceedings were still underway, police arrested a 20-year-old man from Sewell’s far-right group outside the courthouse on charges related to the August 31 Camp Sovereignty incident.
Sewell remains on remand for his alleged role in the attack on Camp Sovereignty, with more court dates locked in later this year.
Lead image: Getty Images
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