Andrew Nolch, a vandal who defaced a public memorial for murdered comedian Eurydice Dixon, has lost an appeal against his jail term.
Nolch, a men’s right activist and host of the Indie Scientologist podcast, defaced the memorial area near where the budding comedian’s body was found with a 25-metre penis. He was found guilty of criminal damage and sentenced over the vandalism back in 2018.
Nolch was initially spared a prison sentence by Magistrate Olivia Trumble, who sentenced him to an 18-month community corrections order in which he was required to complete 200 hours of community service.
He was soon jailed for breaching a community correction order by failing to take part in the community service, and making trips to the Philippines and Thailand.
As The Age reports, the 30-year-old challenged the five-month jail term on Thursday, but the Court of Appeal refused his bid to appeal within hours of the hearing. He was handed a five-month term.
Justice Mark Weinberg told defence counsel Julien Lowy that at his initial conviction in 2018 Nolch should have “thanked his lucky stars” but that instead, he did something “utterly stupid” by appealing against his conviction.
Jeremy Dixon — the father of Eurydice— penned an affidavit, expressing that Nolch’s prison term caused him distress. Emphasising that as he didn’t want his daughter’s tarnished by “unnecessary imprisonment with the evil consequences that may follow”.
“I do not want the applicant’s imprisonment to be part of my daughter’s story and legacy. I want good things to stem from her life,” Mr Dixon wrote.
Dixon went on to express that he lacked sympathy for Nolch. And that the criminal damage, whilst “repulsive”, was ultimately “graffiti on grass” and a jail term seemed excessive.
“I wanted to see if it could make the news,” Nolch told police when interviewed back in 2019. “I wanted … just to see the dick on the screen, I just thought that’d be funny.”
He also reportedly told police he wanted to “annoy the feminists”.