Melbourne, Australia – A Jewish man has settled claims against the State Government and Victoria Police resulting from his racial abuse by members of a country football team.
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Menachem Vorchheimer was smiling outside the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after the settlements were announced before the tribunal’s vice-president, Judge Marilyn Harbison.
But Mr Vorchheimer and his counsel, Robert Richter, QC, said outside court they could not comment. They said a media conference was expected within days involving all the relevant parties.
Mr Vorchheimer took the civil action as a result of an anti-Semitic attack on him in October 2006 while he was walking to a synagogue with his two children in St Kilda.
Last year, two men were fined and one of them convicted over the attack, in which Mr Vorchheimer was called a “f—ing Jew”. A magistrate was told that Mr Vorchheimer’s sabbath hat and yarmulke were snatched from his head, and he was “smacked” in the face by an unidentified occupant of the bus carrying the football team.
Judge Harbison commended the settlement. She said the cases brought by Mr Vorchheimer, and applications made by the Government bodies, would have been difficult to hear and decide.