DRUG CHARGES THROWN OUT

CHARGES against a woman whose Marangaroo house was a well-known
hang-out for heroin addicts have been thrown out on a
technicality.

Magistrate Jeremy Packington ruled yesterday there was insufficient
evidence to prove that 40-year-old Fay Wilson permitted her Redcliffe
Avenue home to be used for the purposes of prohibited drugs.

People went to Wilson's house and used drugs while visiting her but
she did not supply the drugs and did not organise or supervise the
drug taking, the magistrate said. He ordered the prosecution to pay
Wilson's costs of $2150.

Wilson is in custody awaiting sentence after being convicted by a
District Court jury last month of stealing from two men who picked her
up in local bars and of administering a stupefying drug to one of them.

Those offences occurred in 1997 when she was working as a prostitute
to pay for her heroin addiction.

Last year, the Ministry of Housing got a court order to evict Wilson
from the Marangaroo house after The West Australian exposed
drug-taking and drug sales at the house in July.

In Perth Magistrate's Court yesterday, Wilson denied a charge under
the Misuse of Drugs Act that, between January and August last year,
she knowingly permitted the premises at Redcliffe Avenue to be used
for the purpose of prohibited drugs. A police raid on August 27 found
seven syringes - one showed traces of heroin and three showed traces
of amphetamines.

In an interview with detectives, Wilson said that the needles did not
belong to her because she had been off heroin for six weeks. She
suggested the needles had been left behind by visitors to her home.

"I have had a lot of visitors lately," she said. "I don't usually have
so many heroin users in my house." Wilson said that one woman who was
staying with her had used heroin daily.

Asked why people used heroin in her home, she replied: "Because they
keep coming over and I feel sorry for them."

Giving his ruling, Mr Packington said he was satisfied that an
unspecified number of people had used prohibited drugs on the premises
on an unspecified number of occasions. Wilson had knowledge of what
was happening.

But the wording of the charge was that she "permitted the premises to
be used", he said.

"There is a difference between a person going to a house and, while
there because that person has a habit of using a drug, doing so and,
on the other hand, a person going to a house specifically for the
purpose of using a prohibited drug," he said.

The prosecution had failed to show she had knowledge of the purpose of
people's visits, she did not supply the drugs and there was no
evidence of any commercial arrangement between Wilson and her visitors.

It was a reasonable inference that the woman who used heroin daily
when staying with Wilson would have used heroin once a day wherever
she was, the magistrate said.