-With AAP
1. Student speaks out after alleged assaulted by ex-boyfriend over Instagram photo.
A student has shared shocking audio of the abuse she allegedly endured when her millionaire then-boyfriend assaulted her for posting a revealing Instagram photo.
Melissa Gentz, 22, an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Florida had been dating Erick Bentz, 25, for three months before he allegedly beat her on September 23.
This week, Gentz shared photos of her with a large cut across her forehead, bloodshot eyes and bruising across the left side of her face.
She claimed Bentz was furious after he saw a photo of her wearing a black spaghetti strap top on Instagram.
She told police he threw her to the floor, kicked her in the face and began to strangle her with his legs, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
He then allegedly pulled out chunks of her hair and threw her around, before striking her in the forehead with a bottle.
Gentz claimed she recorded the audio for part of the night, which hears her crying while her Bretz yells at her.
“You do not accept the man who has more dominance than you,” he said according to an audio translation from the Daily Mail. “You do not accept, you think you’re the man of the relationship. But you’re not, you’re a woman, you see, you have to accept that!”
The day after Bretz was arrested, Gentz reposted her initial Instagram snap, writing her ex-boyfriend deleted it without her seeing.
“He said that women with boyfriends could not have photos ‘showing breasts’ on Instagram.
“He said that I needed to accept my reality because I was the woman of the relationship.”
Bretz’s father owns one of Brazil’s largest food-shopping chains, and the family is deemed one of the nation’s wealthiest.
Bretz was released after posting his $60,000 bail and surrendering his passport. In a statement to the Daily Mail, his lawyer claimed Gentz had created “fake news”.
His billionaire family said they will sue Gentz for slander. They claim he was trying to defend himself from an aggressive girlfriend.
If this post brings up any issues for you, please 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service.
2. The panicked phone call that revealed the Dreamworld horror.
The panicked voice saying there was a “raft in the conveyor” of the Thunder River Rapids ride was Dreamworld employee Nigel Irwin’s first indication something disastrous had happened at the theme park.
Mr Irwin was manning the Gold Coast park’s communication hub on October 25, 2016 when he received a call about a medical emergency on the 30-year-old ride.
On Tuesday, he provided an account of his experience to an inquest into the deaths of Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi at the Southport Coroners Court.
The four visitors died when the ride malfunctioned and two rafts collided.
Mr Irwin told the inquest he simply heard a panicked voice say “I’ve got a raft in the conveyor”.
Only when he looked at CCTV footage and saw a raft on its side did Mr Irwin realise something serious had occurred.
When first aid officers told him to call an ambulance and they had at least one person who was unconscious and “turning blue”, Mr Irwin was the man to call triple zero.
As he made the call, Mr Irwin upgraded the emergency to a “222 emergency” – the park’s most serious emergency code.
“It basically means we have something terrible going on,” Mr Irwin said in a statement to police that was shown to the inquest.
Mr Irwin said everyone had acted as swiftly as they could.
“Unfortunately there was just nothing we could do when we got there,” he told the inquest.
The inquest also heard from ex-senior ride operator Stephen Buss, who was terminated by Dreamworld after an incident in November 2014 when two rafts containing visitors collided on the ride’s conveyor belt.
CCTV footage of the incident was played in the inquest, showing the two rafts colliding and bumping before the conveyor shut down. No one was harmed in the 2014 incident.
Earlier, the inquest heard an external engineer had issued a certificate saying the ride was “mechanically and structurally safe to use” just days before the tragedy occurred.
3. More than a thousand protesters descended on the Sydney Opera House.
More than a thousand protesters shined torchlights on the Sydney Opera House in outrage against the promotion of a multi-million dollar horse race on the icon’s sails.
Protesters, including Australian singer Jimmy Barnes, armed with smartphones and torches attempted to disrupt the projection of the barrier draw for The Everest onto the Opera House shells on Tuesday night.
Among the chanting protesters was eight-year-old Kick McKinnon who was sitting on her father’s shoulders chanting “sails not for sale”.
The protest followed Racing NSW’s decision to cancel its live barrier draw for Saturday’s $13 million race, citing security risks amid ongoing public outrage.
Instead, it conducted the draw in private in the morning and beamed its results on the sails in the evening.
The decision to cancel the live draw came after broadcaster Alan Jones publicly apologised for his on-air treatment of the Opera House chief executive.
Jones had called for Louise Herron to be sacked during a testy confrontation on Friday after she ruled out allowing words or branding highlighting The Everest to be projected onto the Opera House because “it’s not a billboard”.
Jones and Premier Gladys Berejiklian faced vocal backlash after she intervened within hours of the interview to allow the horse race to be promoted on the Opera House.
More than 300,000 people have signed a petition protesting the promotion, while the NSW National Trust has questioned whether the move was legal.
Conservation director Graham Quint on Monday said the legal exemptions allowing projection onto the sails made clear they must be “non-commercial occasions of brief duration”.
When asked whether the promotion was legal, a spokesman for NSW Heritage Minister Gabrielle Upton pointed to the same exemptions they had been questioned over.
“The Opera House management has approved exemptions under the Heritage Act to make these types of decisions,” the spokesman said.
4. A Mexican couple could be responsible for the murders of 20 women.
A Mexican couple who were arrested while pushing human body parts around in a pram could be responsible for the murders of 20 women, prosecutors say.
The man had confessed to taking part in 20 murders, prosecutor Alejandro Gomez Sanchez told broadcaster Radio Formula, adding that he could be considered a “serial killer.”
The pair were arrested on Thursday in the city of Ecatepec, near Mexico City. Police found more human remains in buckets filled with cement and in a freezer at two properties linked to the couple.
They are also suspected of selling the baby of one of their victims, though the child has since been found by police. The people who bought her have also been arrested.
Sanchez said the man had expressed “joy” about the murders in his interviews with authorities.
“It’s a point of pride for him. He gave us this information wanting to appear in a photo, so that people know he’s a serial killer,” the prosecutor said.
However he said the man needed to be psychologically evaluated and that he could be exaggerating the number of murders he had committed.
So far the man had only given concrete information about 10 cases, Sanchez said.
5. Thousands more teachers would be employed under Labor’s $14 billion education plan.
Thousands of extra teachers will be employed in Australia’s public schools as part of a $14 billion, 10-year education plan if Labor wins the next federal election.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says this means funding for more than 13,000 extra teachers or 23,000 teachers aides, in the biggest investment in public schools in Australian history.
The promise comes after the coalition government stitched up a funding deal for Catholic and independent schools, which felt changes to funding models had left some of them worse off.
Labor had already promised extra funding for Catholic schools and has now detailed what it will offer to the public sector, with $3.3 billion to flow in the three years after the election, if it wins the election due by May next year.
“What matters to me and Labor is handing on a better deal to the next generation,” Mr Shorten said on Wednesday.
“That’s why I’m passionate about building an education system that gives every child in every school the best chance at life.”
As a condition of the funding, a Labor government would require state governments to invest strongly in schools and sign up to a national plan to improve them.
“Public schools teach two in three of all school students, and the overwhelming majority of Australia’s neediest children,” Mr Shorten said.
That includes 82 per cent of the poorest children, 84 per cent of indigenous children, and 74 per cent of children with disabilities.
Labor says the extra money will ensure public schools can give students more individual attention, and more help with the basics such as reading, writing, maths, and science.
The coalition government recently announced a $4.6 billion deal with Catholic and independent schools to give them extra funding, but it frustrated state governments who felt they were being short-changed.
Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said record funding federal was already going to education and he’s negotiating with the states “in good faith”.
Mr Tehan warned taxes would rise under Labor to pay for its “rehashed” education announcement, which he argued was light on detail.
“Only our government has a plan for guaranteed schools funding that is distributed fairly and according to need,” he said.
NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes has said the states would need $7 billion extra each year to catch up to the deal offered to Catholic and independent schools.
Top Comments
1. What's the bet the billionaire heir gets off scot free?
3. Good on you Sydneysiders.