Should We Feel Sorry for Corrupt Ex-Magistrate Robert Harrap and His Shonky Ex-Cop Girlfriend? No Way!

As this website has previously reported, Robert “Dodgey Bob” Harrap was jailed on 4 December 2021 for corruption offences. He was sentenced to 18 months’ jail, but only served a 12-month non-parole period.

Harrap, well known to be an incredibly arrogant jerk, had colluded with his-then SAPOL prosecutor and similarly corrupt girlfriend, Abigail “Abi” Rebecca Foulkes, to dishonestly nominate another driver for speeding offences he himself had committed.

The driver nominated by Harrap was his clerk Melanie Jane Freeman. She was convinced by Harrap to throw herself under the bus so he could avoid attracting demerit points that would see him lose his license.

Harrap had also colluded with corrupt laywer Catherine Jane Moyse, daughter of disgraced drug-dealing cop Barry Moyse, to illegally “fix” a speeding fine case in favour of Moyse’s client. The late Barry Moyse was a former drug squad head who instituted the Operation Noah “dob in a dealer” campaign back in the 1980s, so he and his officers could seize other people’s drugs and resell them. Moyse was involved in marijuana cultivation, heroin, amphetamines, you name it – Moyse never met a commercially viable illegal substance he didn’t like.

His daughter appears to have inherited an ample dose of the corruption gene from her late father.

There are several aspects of this case that are especially sickening.

The first is that Harrap and Foulkes both enjoyed well-paid positions of extreme privilege. As a magistrate, Harrap got paid the kind of salary most people can only dream about in order to piously sit in judgement of his fellow citizens, many of whom he arrogantly treated like contemptuous heathen.

Foulkes, as a prosecutor, also enjoyed a lavish salary, and like her dishonest boyfriend, had the power to destroy people’s lives by prosecuting them for offences they may or may not have committed.

They were both dishonest criminals who egregiously betrayed the extreme level of trust and privilege bestowed upon them.

Their relationship also highlights what a complete farce the Australian legal system is. It is indisputably a monumental conflict of interest when a magistrate, who gets paid exorbitant sums of money to be an impartial arbiter of justice, is in fact romantically involved with a police officer.

What hope does someone fighting police charges have when the magistrate presiding over their case is screwing a cop?

Yet no-one inside the legal system apparently had an issue with this glaring conflict of interest.

Harrap was clearly a bad driver with little regard for the road rules he unforgivingly enforced on others. We have it on good authority that he was an especially nasty, sarcastic jerk towards people defending themselves against traffic fines issued by his revenue-raising buddies at SAPOL.

Yet there he was, speeding to his heart’s content, then corruptly colluding with his shonky police girlfriend to avoid demerit points by fraudulently claiming someone else was driving his car at the time.

The other especially pathetic thing about Harrap and Foulkes is they were not misguided twenty-somethings when they committed their disgraceful corruption offences. Harrap was 61 years old at the time of sentencing, while Foulkes was 48.

Despite being in a relationship with Foulkes, sleazeball Harrap was also making lewd and inappropriate comments towards his clerk Melanie Jane Freeman, so that she would take the rap for his speeding fine. These comments had “sexual overtones” and were “particularly egregious”, said Judge Paul Slattery.

Despite her blatant betrayal of public trust, the corrupt Foulkes was spared jail.

Harrap was released in late 2021, and is now shacked up with his former partner-in-crime, Foulkes. The duo recently spoke to The Advertiser about how life was coming along after being outed as corrupt grubs.

It makes for some rather cringeworthy reading.

“Bob Harrap,” claims The Advertiser, “has come full circle.”

“Once on a $300,000 annual salary,” The Advertiser continues, “Mr Harrap now earns $45/hour – less than $90,000 a year.”

Well cry us a river. Despite all the government propaganda about “full employment” the reality is there are many decent, honest, conscientious people in their 50s and beyond who never betrayed the public trust, yet can’t find work. Many of these people have qualifications and ample life experience, but have learned, despite all pretensions to the contrary, that ageism is alive and well. These people would love a job paying “only” $45 an hour, but struggle to get interviews for jobs paying half that amount.

Meanwhile, two criminals who egregiously betrayed their positions of extreme trust and privilege have been rewarded with well-paying jobs.

Despite both being convicted of egregious dishonesty offences, and Harrap’s history as a sex pest, they have both been allowed to work with vulnerable people.

The reality is that, despite everything they’ve done, Harrap and Foulkes are still living lives of privilege.

The couple are now working together in the NDIS appeals team at the not-for-profit Disability Rights Advocacy Service (DRAS). Harrap is a team leader and Foulkes has a position in client services.

“I was self-entitled, arrogant,” admitted Harrap.

Well that’s an understatement. You were an absolute prick, Bob, a truly garbage human being.

“I’ve had to own that and I’ve reflected on that and I’m very pleased to leave that behaviour and that part of me further and further behind.”

“I can’t change that and I can’t change the hurt and the damage I did to others as a result of that behaviour. I can do no more than move forward.”

Just like that, Harrap expects us all to forgive and forget. “Yeah, I was an arrogant bastard, but hey, that’s in the past. Suck it up buttercups, because I’m moving forward with my $90,000 a year job!”

Not so quick, Bob. You claim you “can’t change the hurt and the damage I did to others”, but you can at least try.

You can grow a spine, ask the people you callously and unfairly belittled and humiliated in court to contact you, and meet with them and look them in the eye and sincerely apologize to them.

You can listen to their stories of how your caustic attitude and unfair convictions impacted their lives and traumatized them.

You can then ask them in person what you can do to make amends. Perhaps you can pay for their counselling, or offer monetary compensation for the lost income they’ve suffered as a result of your decisions. As a person who has enjoyed salaries ranging from $90,000 to $300,000 a year, and who apparently lives on a sprawling property with “dogs and horses”, it’s not like you’re short of a quid.

Are you prepared to reach out to people like Kym, who was viciously assaulted by SAPOL thugs? When he told you of this, your sickening reply was, “You probably deserved it.”

Really? You didn’t even want to hear his side of the story? You just automatically assumed a civilian you knew nothing about deserved to get viciously bashed by cowardly thug cops?

What kind of disgusting human being would say that to someone who was bashed by armed goons? This person was seriously injured and traumatized by the assault, then they were traumatized again when they got to court and had the sheer misfortune of appearing in front of an asshole who happened to be screwing a dodgey cop.

So again, are you prepared to reach out to these people, Harrap?

If not, we can only conclude you’re not truly repentant. You’re just “feel good” sorry, the kind of ‘sorry’ that is designed to tick boxes, not genuinely make amends.

When you’re prepared to step up and be a man for once in your life, apologize to your victims in person, and ask what you can do for them, then we’ll believe you really are a changed person.

As for Foulkes, she told The Advertiser, “It’s been hard. At the beginning, I would go to Foodland and I’d be convinced people recognised me.”

As a police prosecutor, Foulkes was part of a team that, as a matter of routine, maliciously and vexatiously prosecutes people in order to extract revenge and silence SAPOL critics and whistleblowers, or to cover up police assaults. Not content with that, she further pushed the envelope by engaging in corruption offences with her magistrate boyfriend.

But now we’re supposed to feel sorry for her because she feared people might recognize her in Foodland?

Unbelievable.

Why two convicted criminals have been given good jobs that surely could have gone to far more qualified and deserving non-criminals is beyond us. We understand that people need to start anew after serving their sentences, but allowing these two self-absorbed characters to take highly-paid jobs that could have gone to far more deserving applicants is just plain wrong.

Harrap and Foulkes had already enjoyed the luxury of privileged high-paying jobs, but flushed those positions down the toilet through no-one else’s fault but their own. They should not be rewarded for their stupidity – they should have been given lower-paying menial jobs; $45-an-hour jobs should be reserved for people who have never been corrupt sex pests and perverters of the course of justice.