Spent Nearly 1000 Days In Prison For A Crime He Did Not Commit

60-year-old Frederick Martens was tried and convicted by an Australian court for the 2001 sexual assault of a 14 year-old girl in Papua New Guinea. Last week, a court of appeals in Queensland, Australia set aside that conviction, finding there was insufficient evidence to support the charges of child sex tourism of  which he was convicted in 2006.

Martens had been the head of a flying doctor service in Papua New Guinea.  The case against him had been based on the timing of the assault.  Martens claimed he was flying at the time the incident occurred, but was told by the Australian Federal Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions that no official flight records existed to prove his innocence. When he was released on bond, he was not allowed to leave Australia to travel to Papua New Guinea to conduct his own investigation.

But the Brisbane Times reports that, in fact, the records did exist, and were produced when Martens' wife went to the PNG to request them in person.

Now, Martens is suing the Australian government for an undisclosed amount of compensation for his incarceration, and has asked that federal laws be changed to prevent a similar incident from occurring again. Mr Martens' attorney Chris Rose said it was unjust that "anybody can accuse anybody of having sex with somebody overseas and the AFP can take away your passport".

But Martens says he can never be made whole from the incident. "(I)t has cost me the life of my daughter Stephanie, who died at six months old from malaria because I was unable to travel and secure her paperwork to bring her back to Australia for treatment," he said.

FMI: www.fedcourt.gov.au