Far-Right Extremist Thomas Sewell Sentenced to Community Service for Threatening Police Officer

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A neo-Nazi leader has been ordered to perform community service for threatening a police officer and his spouse.

Thomas Sewell, aged 32, was found guilty on Friday of three counts of intimidating a law enforcement officer and his spouse, involving targeted threats to reveal their personal details.

Sewell threatened to “dox” a police officer and his wife on podcasts in October and November of the previous year, making threats to disclose personal information and wedding images.

“I’m working out how to dox him because those doxing laws haven’t come into effect yet,” he told a podcast.

“Like his wedding photos, we’ve got it all downloaded, he’s a f***ing idiot.”

The police officer gave evidence about feeling “highly anxious” over his and his family’s safety.

The officer’s wife said she felt “really intimidated and threatened” in a statement to the court.

“I felt like we were in danger,” she said.

Sewell argued that he was ensuring police accountability by exercising his implied “freedom of communication” on public matters when discussing the officer and his family.

But magistrate Michelle Hodgson rejected these arguments, finding he had targeted the officer’s private life.

The magistrate found he had “sought to weaponise personal information, personal insult and public exposure to instil fear” in the officer and his wife.

His offending was “objectively very serious”, she said as she shut down Sewell’s claim it was at the lower end.

“Police officers form the frontline of law enforcement; if they are deterred from performing their duties due to threats of exposure, humiliation, or retaliation, it undermines the justice system itself,” she stated in court.

“A threat to dox can expose family, friends and home life, it uses technology to make private information available to a potentially hostile audience.

“Once online, it’s virtually impossible to contain.”

She said the maximum term of 10 years in prison for the offending, or two years if heard in the magistrates court, reflected the offending involved “a high degree of harm and trauma”.

However, Hodgson decided not to hand Sewell any prison time.

She ordered he complete 200 hours of community work over 18 months, which will commence once he is released from custody for the separate offending.

Sewell had self-represented in a contested hearing over the charges, which ran for more than a week.

On day two of the hearing, September 2, he was arrested outside the court over an alleged attack on an Indigenous protest site, known as Camp Sovereignty, and taken into custody.

Hodgson found him guilty of intimidating a police officer and his wife earlier on Friday, as well as two counts of breaching personal safety orders.

He was found not guilty of two other contraventions of those orders, and of failing to comply with a police direction to hand over passwords to his devices.

After the hearing broke for lunch, police were seen arresting a member of Sewell’s neo-Nazi group.

Victoria Police later confirmed a 20-year-old Yea man was arrested outside the court on William Street over Sewell and his group’s alleged attack on Camp Sovereignty on August 31.