A troubled former child star has told a court about the “helplessness and despair” he feels under a crushing financial management order as he sought bail for allegedly assaulting a flatmate. Felix Dean, 27, represented himself without a lawyer before the NSW Supreme Court on Friday afternoon when he argued that his sole “criminogenic risk factor” was an order imposed in 2019 restricting access to his cash. “It appears to people who have an interest in this case .
.. that I’m just another child star who has hit the drugs and my life’s just carked it,” the former Home and Away actor told Justice Tim Faulkner from a cell in Lithgow prison.
Dean said that despite being homeless as a child, he had done well in the HSC and had been able to learn his lines for television. But he said his human rights had been stripped by the financial management order imposed after being given an undisclosed sum as compensation for past trauma. “It just makes me sad that I’ve been left in such a state of helplessness and despair because of this financial management order.
” Currently, on only $150 per week, he said he needed to be free so he could talk to a lawyer about removing these restrictions before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The order had “clearly been a detriment” to the child star, the court was told. “I want to change the narrative by representing myself today,” Dean said.
In a rapid-fire speech which Justice Faulkner often had to interrupt just t.
