Church vandal locked up

Tuesday 29 October 2019

One of the two young men responsible for vandalising a church and writing 'religious-hate messages' and lewd comments in the guest book has been locked up after he breached his community service order for the second time.

Zak Dragun, 20, will now serve the three month youth detention sentence he was originally threatened with when he was given 120 hours of community service.

The order was made as a direct alternative to serving that time in youth detention, and was designed to have him and his co-defendant work at St John's Church to pay the community back for writing obscenities on the carpet and in the guest book, throwing coffee across the floor, and putting profanities in the suggestions box. 

Pictured: Police released CCTV of Dragun and his codefendant when they were suspected to have caused the damage at St John's. 

The incident itself took place at the start of August 2018. Dragun, or Teenager C as he was called in court, was then sentenced in February 2019.

Before the start of the summer, he was back in the Court for breaching the order. The Judge who presided over that hearing decided to deal with Dragun lightly, and did not activate the three months of youth detention - instead, he imposed a further 10 hours of community service. 

Pictured: Dragun and another teen vandalised St Johns' Church. 

Yesterday though, Dragun was back before the Magistrate's Court for breaching the order again. Judge Gary Perry was told that Dragun had received warnings about using his phone when he was meant to be working, and also had failed to turn up on more than one occasion. 

Dragun's advocate, Phoebe Cobb, pleaded with Judge Perry to once again look kindly on her client. She submitted a letter from his doctor, outlining a number of problems Dragun was dealing with which had prevented him from being able to work properly, handed up letters from his mother and his grandmother and also pointed to the 60 hours her client had successfully completed as evidence he was capable of working hard when he was able to. 

Pictured: This was Dragun's second appearance in Magistrate's Court for breaching this one CSO.

While Judge Perry took all of this into account, he said he was not going to send out a message that community service orders were not taken seriously. He has said on countless occasions that even one hour less than the prescribed amount is not enough, and breaching the order twice was not acceptable.

"You have admitted your second breach, and I have no doubt that you were told that even one hour less than what you were given would put you in that position," he said.

"A community service order doesn't change to fit you, you have to change to fit it. You knew what it entailed before you were given the sentence but you still breached it, and after the Judge generously gave you a second chance, you did it again. When people breach orders, they have to be enforced." 

Dragun's three month youth detention sentence was activated with immediate effect.

Pictured top: A CCTV image released from St John Church.