Sarah Huggett is an Australian lawyer and judge who is the first female Chief Judge of theDistrict Court of New South Wales.
Sarah Huggett was born inMoree, one of eight children and the daughter of a police officer.[1][2] She has a BA fromMacquarie University and graduated from theUniversity of Sydney with first class honours in law in 1991.[1] Huggett completed a Master of Laws in 1995.[1][3]
Huggett worked for theOffice of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 1993, including time on exchange in theUnited Kingdom with theCrown Prosecution Service.[1][3] She was appointed aCrown prosecutor in 2001.[1] Huggett was an adjunct professor atLoyola Law School is Los Angeles in 2009.[1]
Huggett was appointed to theDistrict Court of New South Wales in October 2012, working on the Criminal Trial Bench for twelve years.[1][4] She oversaw a number of complex criminal cases, including many child sexual abuses cases.[5] She was one of the judges on the court's Walama List, a trial of alternative sentencing procedures seeking to reduceIndigenous Australian incarceration.[1][2] She was the Court's representative on the Consent Monitoring and Advisory Group Meeting and Chair of the Child Sexual Offence Evidence Program Steering Committee.[6][4][5] She has said that lengthy sentences for sexual offences are "designed to punish the offender, denounce their conduct, protect the community and recognise the harm done to the victims".[7][8]
Huggett was appointed to thestate Supreme Court in November 2023.[1][9] She was appointed Chief Judge of the District Court of NSW byAttorney GeneralMichael Daley in April 2024, the first woman to hold the position.[1][4]
Huggett was instructing solicitor to the DPP in the prosecution ofIvan Milat.[1][2] She presided over thejudge-only trial of convicted murdererChris Dawson for carnal knowledge of a student in 2023.[2][6][10] She imposed a maximum sentence of 32 years imprisonment on formerMasterChef Australia contestant Paul Frost for child sexual offences.[11] In 2023, she acquitted Sri Lankan cricketerDanushka Gunathilaka of rape through the act ofstealthing in another judge alone trial.[12]
Huggett has two children.[3]