Delays lead to reduction in child sex abuse sentence

A man convicted of sexually abusing a young girl over several years has had his sentence reduced because of long delays in his trial and sentencing, which led him to being under curfew and on an electronic monitor for more than four years.

The man, who was arrested in 2020, had been found guilty in a judge-alone trial in 2023 by Justice Michael Wood, who later died, leading partially to the delay in sentencing.

The court had heard that the man had abused the girl over a period of five years, from when she was 7 years old until she was 12. Wood had found him guilty of indecent assault and gross indecency.

Justice Marlene Carter, who delivered the sentence on Tuesday, described the delays in bringing the case to trial and to sentencing as “egregious”, and the fact that the defendant had to wear the monitor for so long as “onerous”.

With discounts for the delays and other considerations, the man’s prison sentence is one year and three months.

The court has ordered media houses not to name the 43-year-old defendant.

Carter noted that a social inquiry report had indicated the man continued to maintain his innocence, and that he had “forgiven” the victim for making what he claimed to be false accusations.

No victim impact report was received in relation to the child, because the Department of Children and Family Services had determined it would be too traumatic for the girl to undergo another interview about the abuse, Carter said.

The judge noted that the man had lost his job as a result of the case.

She handed down a three-year custodial sentence for the gross indecency charge, to run concurrently with the sentence for indecent assault.

She then passed a five-and-a-half-year sentence in relation to the indecent assault charge, but discounted 15 months for the delays in the case and another six months for the defendant’s “personal circumstances”, which include no previous convictions. This brought the sentence to three years and nine months.

The judge then discounted another two-and-a-half years for time the man had spent under curfew while on an electronic monitor, so it appears the total length of his prison sentence is one year and three months, though Carter did not specify an exact sentence after giving her calculations.

She noted that he had been subject to curfew and monitoring since his bail conditions were first set in November 2020. Part of those conditions over some of the period since then involved 24-hour curfews during school breaks and weekends.

The judge said she had calculated that between 16 Nov. 2020 and 30 March 2022, the defendant had spent 499 days under curfew — for which she would give a 75% discount towards his sentence — and from 1 April 2022 to now, he had spent 1,044 days under curfew, and said she would give 50% for those. This adds up to a discount of 896 days, or just under two-and-a-half years.

Carter said a full written sentencing judgment would be made available later.