2007-11-16

Cricketer Bob Holland on child sex charges?

This doesn't look good:
A 61-year-old man has been refused bail after police laid an additional 67 child sex charges against him relating to seven more male and female victims aged between two and 16 at the time of the alleged offences.

Robert Holland, from West Toronto in New South Wales Hunter region, is now facing a total of 115 charges against 12 victims but police expect to lay more charges.

The extra charges, laid by Lake Macquarie detectives in Newcastle Local Court yesterday, relate to offences allegedly committed between 1957 and 2001.

The charges include sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, committing an act of indecency and buggery.

Magistrate Richard Wakely refused an application for bail, citing concern for the welfare of the community.

The case was adjourned to December 12.
There is nothing in this report about whether this is the same Robert Holland who played for Australia in the mid 1980s. Yet there are two reasons this might the case;

  1. When Bob Holland played for Australia, he was based in Newcastle at the time. He probably remained in the Hunter Valley after retirement. West Toronto is in the Hunter Valley region.
  2. The Robert Holland who was arrested was described as being 61 years old. According to Bob Holland's cricinfo page, he is 61 years old.
Of course, none of this proves that it is the same Bob Holland, but, you have to admit, it looks bad.

Update:
I've just contacted the Sydney Morning Herald. They think it is a good lead. More soon.

Update 2:
SMH contacted me. It WAS NOT Bob Holland the cricketer. That's good news.

3 comments:

Terry said...

Hi,
Its not cricketer Bob Holland on charges. It is Robert Holland, whom I have met in court and who passed away his week c.26/8/2009.

Have you considered deteting this blog post ... for the cricketer's sake ???

Regards, Terry

Neil Cameron (One Salient Oversight) said...

Only rarely do I delete blog posts. Besides, I updated the post and made it very, very clear that it wasn't the cricketer.

Unknown said...

Yeah this is pretty messed up. He received an OAM today and when googling his name this comes up on the first page. Poor taste to leave it up as many people will take the headline they first see as fact without checking to see the note at the bottom of your blog post.