Director of Public Prosecutions v Clifford Grant (a pseudonym)
[2023] VCC 2329
•4 December 2023
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
| THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS (CTH) |
| v |
| CLIFFORD GRANT (a pseudonym) |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE MULLALY | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 20 October 2023 and 4 December 2023 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 4 December 2023 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Clifford Grant (a pseudonym) | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2023] VCC 2329 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: CRIMINAL LAW - Sentence
Catchwords: Plea – Child Abuse Material – Use Carriage Service – Possess Child Abuse Material – Produce Child Abuse Material – General Deterrence – Denunciation – Punishment – - Protection of the Community – Gravity – High Moral Culpability – Imprisonment – Sex Offender Registration Act.
Cases Cited:DPP (Cth) v Garside [2016] VSCA 74; Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169; Chenhall v The Queen [2021] VSCA 175; Gregory (a pseudonym) v The Queen [2017] VSCA 151; DPP v Dalgleish (a pseudonym) [2017] 349 CLR 37; DPP v Swingler [2017] VSCA 305.
Sentence: Global Total Effective Sentence (Federal and State) is 6 years 6 months imprisonment with a minimum of 4 years 4 months (for both Federal and State offences) before being eligible for parole.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Commonwealth | Mr M. Wilson | Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr C. Edwards | J S Law |
HIS HONOUR:
1
Clifford Grant,[1] on 8 July 2022 the Australian Federal Police executed a search warrant at your home. The police were acting on information from the
Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation.
[1] A pseudonym.
2The information was that you had been transmitting child abuse material via an online chat website based in the United States of America. The police were searching for evidence of your possession and transmitting of child abuse material. Police seized your computer with an attached USB. A separate portable hard drive, a digital camera and a laptop computer. A preliminary examination of the computer and the USB undertaken on site identified that you had child abuse material. The various computer items in the camera were later more fully examined. What was found was astonishing in the level of depravity. What was revealed on your computer equipment was child pornography and child cruelty at the very serious end of the spectrum.
3In your own words, when you were first asked by the police at your home about the nature of the content on your computers you said, ‘Whatever you could think of, I've probably got most of it’. A detailed analysis undertaken by the police has been distilled to written descriptions which are contained in the prosecution opening tendered on the plea. To properly protect as many people involved in this case as possible from vicarious trauma, the whole summary was not read out aloud by the prosecutor. I have considered it all in my assessment of the gravity of your crimes. I will refer in broad terms to what was set out in the prosecution opening, so that the reasons why I have concluded yours is a very grave example of the crimes you committed are made clear.
4In making my assessment of the gravity of your crimes, the possession, production and transmission of child abuse material, I am guided by the principles often referred to articulated by our Court of Appeal in Garside.[2] These principles and further principles that have developed since Garside in various appellate courts in the Commonwealth, especially relating to the permanency of the internet, meaning exploited of image, images remain available for many, many years. Those principles can be summarised as follows:
[2]DPP (Cth) v Garside [2016] VSCA 74.
a. The objective seriousness of the offending is ordinarily determined by reference to factors including:
i.the nature and content of the material, the age of the children and the gravity of the sexual activity depicted including the extent of cruelty or physical harm occasioned to the child or children involved in the material;
ii.the number of images possessed;
iii.whether the material was for the purpose of sale or further distribution;
iv.whether the offender will profit from the offence which includes payment or other material benefit such as exchange of child pornographic material;
v.the number of children depicted and thereby victimised; and
vi.the length of time for which the pornographic material was possessed. Further the principles go on.
b. General deterrence is a paramount sentencing consideration given the prevalence and ready availability of child abuse material on the internet. The relative anonymity of the internet and the difficulty of detection and the need to protect children from sexual abuse.
c. Those who possess such material whether for profit or not are more than mere passive recipients of material but are active participants in the market - this must remain at the forefront of the sentencing task in order that general deterrence in particular is given its necessary weight.
d. Because general deterrence is a primary consideration, personal mitigatory factors such as prior good character, age, prospects of rehabilitation et cetera, attract less weight than might otherwise be the case. Offending involving child abuse material occurs on an international level and is becoming increasingly prevalent with the advent and expansion of the internet as an accessible means of allowing people to access and obtain such material. There is paramount public interest objective in promoting the protection of children as the possession of child exploitation material is not a victimless crime. The possession of child abuse material creates a marker for the continued corruption and exploitation of children and children are sexually abused to supply the market.
e. Offending involving child abuse material is difficult to detect given the anonymity provided by the internet. Further, offending involving child abuse material carries a risk of the material being seen or required by persons susceptible to act in the manner described or depicted. Offending involving child abuse material is not mitigated by the fact that the offender did not profit from the offending or was not involved in the distribution or sale of the material. Rather the precedence of these features would aggravate the offending.
f. And finally the nature of the internet means that the images may be published and stored around the world for many years. The longevity of such materials is akin to re-victimising the abused children as the victims not only have to endure the abuse that occurred in producing such material but must live with the consequences of their images being swapped, traded and accessed potentially indefinitely.
5The Court of Appeal in Garside say,
A sentence involving a term of immediate imprisonment will ordinarily be expected for offending involving child abuse material.[3]
[3] Ibid, [62].
6
As to the nature and content of the child abuse material you possess, I first turn to the age of the children involved. Put simply, they were so very young. Many
pre-school aged with majority estimated to be between two or three and up to
10 years old. You told police you sought out and enjoyed material that depicted abuse of children in this lowest cohort. There can be no doubt you knew what you were downloading involved the very young. As some of the titles of the videos included the word 'baby'. Secondly, as to the abusive behaviour and acts depicted. There are all manner of brutal anal, vaginal and oral penetrations of the very young victims mainly by adult men. There were multiple images and videos of children being callously and brutally raped. The use of the term rape is not just my description, you downloaded and stored one video with the accurate but heartbreaking title, 'Hard baby rape'.
7In addition, you sought out and watched, downloaded and kept video images of very young children being tied up or bound and restrained while being penetrated or tormented. The children were seen in pain and in fear. The violence and depravity involved penetrations of children with objects. There was material depicting children forced to engage in sexual activity with other equally young children. Describing even briefly what you sought out, kept and traded leads to an obvious conclusion – that being that what you were doing was at the outer levels of child abuse material crimes. Ordinary members of our community would be in disbelief that someone like you could watch and thereby encourage such abhorrent and depraved images depicting such cruelty.
8I pause to acknowledge and commend the police officers who have to actually watch and classify this type of depraved material. They are exposed to simply soul destroying images that are hard or impossible to unsee. Their work is invaluable. Often police and emergency workers confront a violent or unpredictable incident on the streets for instance, and display bravery, in my view this police work in front of computers, watching child abuse material, requires daily displays of courage and bravery to persevere knowing that they ultimately be a personal cost.
9In your case the police had to watch and examine your child abuse collection of 1,115 images with 11 being duplicates. And 243 videos that you stored. The videos were of lengths ranging from seven seconds to seven minutes. In all, you had five hours and 22 minutes of child abuse material videos. While there are sadly cases that have come before the courts where the amount of images and videos possessed by an offender are much larger with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of images, the volume of the material you had at the time of the raid is an important factor, but not determinative of gravity.
10
I need to put the number of images you had in context with what you said to the police about your behaviour. You told police that you had been viewing and collecting child abuse material for between eight to ten years. I pause to make clear, my sentence is for the crimes you have pleaded guilty to, no more and no less. The timeframe for Charge 1 is from June 2020 to the day of the raid in
June 2022. The reference to your behaviour over an extended period merely gives context to just how embedded you were in child abuse material. You said to the police you obtained material from a chat website two to three times a week.
11Your obsession was not merely you alone in your home clicking on and downloading what you happened to come across. Rather you engage regularly with other depraved men in online chat groups. You said you would go on a chat website and 'trade' child abuse material with other like-minded users. This trading of horrid depictions of child rape and abuse adds to the gravity of your crimes.
12The authorities in this area spoke of it being an aggravating factor if the offender sold or had a commercial element in the child abuse crimes. Broad development of the internet may have outlived that particular feature. Profit flows from websites having views without a viewer having to send their own money by payment or subscription to the website entrepreneurs. Thus, the transfer of child abuse material and the expansion of the child abuse industry occurs without a direct financial transaction. The fact you traded images with others in your chat group did not depend on money changing hands. This is merely the absence of an aggravating feature that may itself be a fading phenomena.
13A further and very serious aspect of this trading of child abuse material with others in the chat group arises in respect of one incident where you moved into creating child abuse material and then uploading it onto the internet for other perverted individuals to possess and further distribute. I speak here of Charge 2, the State offence of producing child abuse material. The facts of this charge and the related charges of distributing what you had produced reveal how your involvement in child abuse or in the child abuse world had come to entirely diminish or extinguish perhaps any sense of you having a moral compass. It is revealing of a quite dark aspect in your character.
14Before setting out the facts and circumstances of that crime, I return to my conclusion as to the gravity of the other charges, as I have said, are based on the factors mentioned that establish the utter dark depravity of the child abuse material that you sought out, watched, kept and traded, it is clear that your crimes are well and truly at the most serious end of the spectrum. As to your crime of producing child abuse material, I need to speak of some of your personal circumstances because bewilderingly your depravity led you to directly abusing for sexual purposes your own two-year-old granddaughter.
15You are now 67 years old. You married in 1979 in the United Kingdom. Your daughter was born in 1983 and the family migrated to Australia in 1984. Your daughter has four children, the youngest being her daughter and your granddaughter. In January 2022, you, your wife and your daughter and grandchildren rented and went to a holiday house for the summer. On one occasion you were in the bathroom assisting your two-year-old granddaughter with her toileting. You took the opportunity to take your digital camera with you into the room. You then had your own granddaughter pose on the toilet and then on the bathroom floor naked from her waist down while your photographed and videoed her genitalia. This only has to be said for your bewildering depravity to be revealed.
16But beyond this deliberate act of producing child pornography using your own granddaughter as the victim, you later in the days or weeks after the holiday, uploaded the images to the vile websites you frequented. In other words, you offered to the other paedophiles of the world pornographic images that you had made of your own granddaughter. The gravity of this offending is significantly elevated because of the profound breach of trust. You were trusted to care for your grandchild, not harm her by what you did. As the authorities emphasise, a dreadful aspect of the internet or internet-based child abuse industry is the permanence of the images once they are online.
17The child was at the time too young to fully appreciate what you were doing, much less what you planned to do. Her mother, your own daughter, was at the time that your crimes were revealed and she remains understandably distraught. You have destroyed the wider family relationships. As I have made clear, being a consumer and then part of, I'll start again. As I have made clear, being a consumer and thus part of this evil industry is serious enough and warrants harsh punishment, to take a further step into the dark realm by becoming a producer and trader of your own child pornography elevates you to a far more serious and dangerous category as a child abuse material criminal.
18Denunciation, deterrence, including to you notwithstanding your lack of prior criminal history, and protection of the community, especially children of the world from your paedophilic tendencies and actions are the proper and weighty sentencing purposes. I have mentioned already some of your personal circumstances. To elaborate, you were born and raised in Northampton in the United Kingdom. Your upbringing was supportive. Your education was straightforward as well. You moved into the workforce as an apprentice at the age of 16. You moved from mechanics to electronics in your 20s, remaining in that field until you migrated in 1984. In Australia you moved into electronic sales before moving into administration and logistics at a large multinational company.
19You became a specialist in a particular computer system utilised by that organisation. You moved onto maintenance, management and system support in the Victorian public service. You were employed full-time as a public servant when arrested and until your plea of guilty on arraignment. You have a solid work history which is to your credit. Your working life meant you well understood computers and computer systems. You and your wife live quietly in regional Victoria. Your wife moved to live with her daughter immediately upon your arrest. She is now in a retirement village. You have contributed to ensuring she has secure accommodation into the future.
20Your counsel emphasised that for most of your adult life you were a hard-working contributing member of the community with no criminal history. These aspects establishing your good character are not ignored, but the authorities make clear for crimes of this kind good character is of less weight, especially in the sentencing calculus that must necessarily give primacy to punishment, protection and deterrence. Your counsel properly conceded it was inevitable that a gaol term be imposed and then on your release he pointed out you will likely be alone. Your offending will have impact lifelong as you will be estranged at least from your daughter and grandchildren.
21While it was put by your counsel that this offending was a grave departure from your previous lawful life, prosecution pointed out that you admitted accessing serious criminal child abuse material for eight to ten years before the police arrived and arrested you. The secret abhorrent criminal lifestyle in that period can be seen as diminishing the force of any submission that you have been of good character, at least in the last decade. As to your physical health you have some of the prevalent western diseases of high cholesterol and blood sugars which are treated by medication. Your lawyers had you examined by the Medico Legal Psychologist, Ms Cidoni. I have read her report carefully.
22
To this point I have deferred any direct analysis of your level of moral culpability. That matter is important in sentencing. There was some reference to your moral culpability in your counsel's written submissions and in the
Medico Legal Psychologist, Ms Cidoni's report tendered on your behalf.
23As to your mental health broadly, first I note there was some willingness on your part to participate in offence specific treatments, but the specialist program identified was not available in the timeframes before your plea. Your willingness to participate is nonetheless a positive sign. Your general practitioner noted your physical problems, but there was no history of any mental health problems up to when you were arrested. As I say, I have considered Ms Cidoni's report carefully. Indeed I have relied on parts of the report thus far in respect of your upbringing and personal circumstances. Testing done by Ms Cidoni established first that you are above average intelligence.
24
Also, she found that understandably given your self-caused predicament you are anxious. It seems from the test you showed signs of excessiveness and compulsiveness. You also had characteristics or answered test questions such that Ms Cidoni formed the opinion that you have aspects of autism or are on that spectrum at some level. Plainly you are high functioning given your employment history at least. As discussed with your counsel on the plea who as I said approached this issue with commendable realism. This conclusion by Ms Cidoni based on what tests she did is in the end not put forward by your counsel as an excuse. Your moral culpability is not said to be reduced by reason of any impaired mental functioning such as autism. The testing for risk for the future done by
Ms Cidoni was complicated as she explains, as most actuarial tests are based on contact offending. Your offending is, save for your granddaughter entirely internet based.
25Your offending with your granddaughter is not as most contact offences are, you were filming, not touching. The conclusion of a low risk for the future that resulted was noted by Ms Cidoni, but she indicated this outcome should be taken with caution. That seems to me to be well justified. What Ms Cidoni does not directly or did not directly diagnose was your paedophilia, that is your self-evident sexual interest in pre-pubescent children. Although in my sentencing task I am less concerned with diagnostic labels, in my view, your entrenched sexual interest in pre-pubescent children and your willingness to act on that by engaging two to three times a week with other like-minded paedophiles and your willingness to violate by filming your own granddaughter and trading the images with anyone on the chat rooms on the internet, makes your personality and your way of thinking deeply concerning with regard to pre-pubescent children.
26You are as Ms Cidoni recommended, in need of psychological help. It is hoped you follow through and get serious psychological help. Your behaviour makes protection of the community a weighty matter. For completeness, Ms Cidoni considered gaol would be hard for you because of your social awkwardness and the possibility of misreading cues. Prison is hard. And will be hard because you are a first offender at age 67 who most likely never thought that your life would come to this.
27As noted in your counsel's well considered submission, he stepped back from your - from any autism spectrum, factors operating to reduce your moral culpability. I agree with his approach. So too did the prosecutor as I understood it. In the end your moral culpability is very high. You must have known what you were doing by regularly engaging in viewing and downloading and swapping videos with the titles that I have described, you must have known that this conduct was very wrong, but you were not woken up to your own depravity when you were about to distribute your own granddaughter's child abuse images, is hard to fathom. Little more can be said other than you must be sternly punished for this behaviour which is corrosive of all values in our community. They are values our community hold dear.
28What must be reasserted is the importance of protection, not the exploitation of the vulnerable. There are other self-evident values that your behaviour undermines, such as the trust in adults within a family and the bodily integrity of every individual including very young children. Other important matters put in mitigation were your speedy indication of a plea of guilty. The value of your plea must be an augmented one, as it was made at a time when the Court of Appeal decisions in Worboyes and Chenhall still operated.[4] The fact that the criminal trial lists are improving is because of pleas like yours. The augmented benefit I speak of will be perceptible but moderate.
[4]Worboyes v The Queen [2021] VSCA 169; Chenhall v The Queen [2021] VSCA 175.
29Your plea and your admissions and cooperation with the police all go to your contrition as that word is used in the Commonwealth sentencing provisions. This helps establish that your arrest, the exposure of your dark secrets and your looming punishment are a point in your life when you will hopefully change your ways. There can be some confidence in your prospects of reform, but it is up to you and your commitment to getting help, both in and outside prison.
30Prosecution submitted that in your interview you say you were not interested in the material, but you had it and traded it so as to stimulate conversations with others online. Also, you denied initially taking your own pornographic photographs until you were confronted with those of your granddaughter. Prosecution submitted that in light of these aspects of the interview there was no little genuine expressions of remorse for the poor child victims brutalised on the videos and images that you so readily consumed. Thus, the prosecution say beyond your plea there is not a lot to show you are genuinely remorseful. I consider there is some force in this submission, but as I have indicated as this matter moved on, from your arrest and interview towards the inevitability of punishment, you have it seems gained some insights.
31
There is now a basis to see some level of remorse or contrition and consequentially prospects of reform. Another aspect I must consider is here there are five offences. Some do by their conduct overlap. The presumption in sentencing for Commonwealth sex offences is one where there is statutory intervention requiring cumulation. As was discussed with counsel for the
Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions a degree of concurrency is well justified in your particular case. What I must consider pursuant to the Commonwealth and state legislation is the maximum term for these offences.
32
For the Commonwealth offences is 15 years' imprisonment. For the State offence of producing child abuse material it is 10 years. Maximum terms are important guideposts, however I must not undervalue the gravity of these crimes and the maximum terms that attach because these crimes are not contact offences. The Parliament has made clear for the very worst child abuse material offences,
15 years' imprisonment is the maximum available. I am not for a moment saying that yours is properly categorised as the worst that can be imagined, but there must be proper consideration of penalties that apply for serious examples of these crimes, as I consider your crimes to be.
33In other words, in my assessment of other cases I do note there is a conglomeration of all sentences in the low number of years, with little differentiation for the graduations where serious examples are present. The Court of Appeal spoke of these concepts with respect to drug offences in Gregory v The Queen.[5] I am not as a sentencing judge authorised I consider to make statements of sentencing principles as the Court of Appeal did in Gregory,[6] and to an extent the High Court did in Dalgliesh.[7] Rather I have regard to, as I must the maximum terms. I also have regard to the table of other cases provided by counsel, but they are not precedence. What I must in the end do is ensure that in the exercise of individualised sentencing that in considering all aspects of the offending, that I apply proper consideration and weight to the guiding principles set out in Garside and the other like appellate decisions and give proper regard to the maximum terms fixed by our Parliament.[8]
[5]Gregory (a pseudonym) v The Queen [2017] VSCA 151.
[6] Ibid.
[7]DPP v Dalgleish (a pseudonym) [2017] 349 CLR 37.
[8]DPP (Cth) v Garside [2016] VSCA 74.
34I also must ensure as I have that all aspects of you as the offender are given proper weight. Also, I must give consideration to other policy or important policy matters such as the value of the plea. This is as I understand it how to follow the pathway of individualised sentencing. In my undertaking of that synthesis, I have come to the conclusion that a significant sentence of imprisonment is the only proper sentence to impose. The sentence must be in my view beyond what would allow in respect of the Commonwealth offences an order for a reconnaissance release. I will allow for a period of parole, but as I noted during the plea hearing that decision as to if and when you are released on parole is not for the courts.
35The structuring of sentences involving Commonwealth offences and State offences remains overly complex. I have revisited the appellate authorities such as Swingler and the methods of construction of sentences that are suggested. I am also grateful to the prosecutor for his submissions in this regard.[9] I have determined that I will impose a sentence for the State offence, Charge 2 that enables me not to impose a separate State non-parole period. I will then impose stated Commonwealth sentences to achieve some level of cumulation, before fixing a non-parole period for the Commonwealth offences.
[9]DPP v Swingler [2017] VSCA 305.
36The process is at times hard to follow, thus I will state what I intend to achieve as to the total effective sentence with a non-parole period which is the minimum time in prison that justice requires for you as the offender for the crimes that you committed.
37The sentence is six years and six months with a non-parole period of four years and four months. I note that you have served 45 days in prison thus far, and this period will be declared. Having been reckoned will be declared and entered into the records of the court as part of the sentence that I have just - that I will impose.
38Thus, doing the best I can for producing child abuse material, Charge 2, the sentence that I impose, the State sentence, is two years which will commence immediately.
39For Charge 1, which was the use carriage service to access child abuse material over the two-year period, the sentence is four years.
40For Charge 3, producing child abuse material through a carriage service, 12 months.
41Charge 4, using a carriage service to transmit, 18 months.
42And Charge 5, possession of the child abuse material as was found in July of 2022, two years.
43What I hope to achieve is that the Charge 2, the State sentence commences immediately. Charge 3, commences on 4 December 2025. Charge 1, commences on 4 December 2025, thus going to 4 December 2029. Charge 5 commences on 4 March 2026. And Charge 4 commences on 4 June 2029. If that brings forward as I hope it does, a sentence that sees the potential ultimately for release on the 4th, from the head sentence on 4 June 2030. That is what I see to achieve. I order in the respect of the Commonwealth offences, there be a non-parole period of four years and four months. There has been 45 days that has been served and I declare that as part of the sentence. Had you pleaded not guilty to these offences and been found guilty of them, I would have imposed a sentence of eight years with a minimum term of six.
44You are required to be entered onto and remain on the Sex Offenders Registration for a period - the rest of your life. There are significant consequences if you do not register or do not comply with requirements under the sex offences register. You will be provided with a document which will set out those requirements and it is necessary for me to indicate to you that you will be - that I provided you with that document, I sign and the fact that you have been provided with it you sign or give your oral consent on this video link that you have received the document and then I make that known to the Chief Commissioner of Police that you are required to registered under the Sex Offenders Register and remain on it for life.
45Are there any other requirements other than the recalculation of the - or a calculation of the sentence?
46MR WILSON: Your Honour, in terms of the commencement dates, on Charge 4, I think Your Honour indicated an 18 month sentence commencing 4 June 2029.
47HIS HONOUR: Yes.
48MR WILSON: That would take the head sentence through to 4 December 2030.
49HIS HONOUR: That's not my intention.
50
MR WILSON: Which is seven years from today so I believe that to achieve
Your Honour's intention it would be commencing on 4 December 2028.
51HIS HONOUR: Yes. I see that. Yes.
52MR WILSON: Charge 4.
53HIS HONOUR: I've got that written and I didn't say it, I'm so sorry.
54MR WILSON: Yes. I think we're on the same page. The only other thing in terms of the pseudonymisation aspect.
55HIS HONOUR: Yes.
56MR WILSON: I wasn't sure where we landed as to whether Your Honour had made an order that the name not be published until there be a pseudonym.
57HIS HONOUR: Yes, I've made that order.
58MR WILSON: Yes.
59HIS HONOUR: Yes. And if there are members of the press that are online, if they would come forward, turn on their camera? I think it's someone from News Corp is there? Do you understand what the order is?
60MS CARLSON: Yes, Your Honour.
61HIS HONOUR: Yes. So you would - and if you need to seek your assistance of your lawyer do that, but what's required is that you don't publish Mr Grant's name, you'll be provided ultimately with pseudonym, you can use that if you want to or describe him as a man who you can't name for legal reasons or whatever you usually do. Do you understand all that?
62MS CARLSON: Yes, Your Honour, thank you.
63HIS HONOUR: That's from beginning to end. That's for all the crimes he committed, do you understand that? Not just the ones that related to his granddaughter.
64MS CARLSON: Yes, Your Honour.
65HIS HONOUR: Thank you very much. You're free to turn off the camera. Clear enough - - -
66MR WILSON: Nothing further from me, Your Honour.
67HIS HONOUR: Yes.
68MR EDWARDS: Nothing from me, Your Honour.
69HIS HONOUR: All right. If your instructor could assist my associate with the orders and dates and things.
70MR WILSON: Certainly, Your Honour, I'd be grateful. What do we do about the child - the Sex Offenders Register, because the requirement is and I've always almost cynically described it. I've got to give a document to an accused that I sign saying I've given it to him and he signs a document saying he got it. It's got nothing to do with the consequences or anything of that client. But it's more limited in this provision. You'll get that document to him, via his instructor and I'll sign it and he'll sign it, I don't think there's anything that turns on it but I just for the life of me don't understand why the transcript doesn't cover the whole provision.
71Yes, maybe his signature's not needed, just his acknowledgment so, if there's any problem come back to us Mr Edwards, if he doesn't get it and understand it, you'll explain it to him.
72MR EDWARDS: I can indicate Your Honour, we're going to try and have a conference with him later on this week so if something arises we'll make it clear then and we'll contact Your Honour's chambers accordingly.
73HIS HONOUR: Thank you very much. Very grateful to everyone for their assistance and patience in dealing again with difficult material. I'm just going to stand down until the next matter.
74MR WILSON: May it please the court.
75HIS HONOUR: Thank you.
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