Director of Public Prosecutions v Edmondson
[2016] VCC 629
•17 May 2016
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA AT MELBOURNE CRIMINAL DIVISION | Revised (Not) Restricted Suitable for Publication |
Case No. CR-15-01950
Indictment No: F12216639
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| CHRIS EDMONDSON |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE PATRICK | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | ||
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 17May 2016 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP V Edmondson | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2016] VCC 629 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited: Sentencing Act 1991
Cases Cited:
Sentence:
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Solicitor for the Office of Public Prosecutions | |
| For the Accused |
HER HONOUR:
1 Chris Edmondson, you have pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault of a male. The maximum penalty for this offence is five years’ imprisonment.
2 The circumstances of your offending are set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening for Plea, which was tendered as Exhibit A. This offending occurred between 1 December 1976 and 31 December 1976. At that time you were 21-years-old. You are now 60-years-old. The complainant in this matter was approximately 12-years-old at the time of offending. Your family lived opposite the complainant's family in suburban Melbourne. The complainant and his brothers were friendly with your younger brother. They often came to your house to visit your younger brother and to use your family’s pool. On a number of occasions while the complainant was at your home, you put your hand down his pants briefly. The victim was confused and did not understand what you were doing while no one else was watching.
3 Charge 1 covers an occasion at your home. You led the complainant to a room under the verandah and then further under the house. You pulled the complainant's underpants down. You then lay on your back with your feet facing a front wall, with the complainant lying on top of you. You then sucked the complainant's penis. This lasted for a few minutes and neither of you said anything. The complainant was confused and did not know what to think or do.
4 Charge 2 concerns an incident not long after that first incident, when you again took the complainant under the house and lay on your back with the victim lying on top of you. Again, you sucked the complainant’s penis. Again, he did not know what to do and did not tell anybody what happened.
5 The complainant first disclosed the offending to his wife in approximately 2013, and made a statement to the police in February 2015.
6 You were interviewed by police on 9 April 2015. You said you did not recall the complainant but did recall his family. You said that if you had done what the complainant said you would have thought you would remember that. You indicated your plea of guilty to this offending at the committal mention stage.
7 You have no prior criminal history but you do have a number of subsequent convictions for sexual offending. Because of those subsequent convictions you will be sentenced as a serious sexual offender on both charges. The provisions of s.6D, s.6E and s.6F of the Sentencing Act 1991 apply. Accordingly, I must regard the protection of the community as the principal purpose of sentencing and for that purpose may impose a longer sentence than that which is proportionate to the gravity of the offences considered in the light of their objective circumstances. The prosecution is not seeking a disproportionate sentence in this matter.
8 As a consequence of a sentence previously imposed upon you, you are currently on the Sex Offender Registry for life.
9 In his Victim Impact Statement, which was tendered as Exhibit B, and read by the complainant, the complainant describes the impact that your offending has had on him. He says that it has negatively affected his confidence in himself and has made him feel withdrawn. He says that he had feelings of guilt and shame and had never spoken about the incident. He recognises that in fact he had been taken advantage of because he was a young, innocent boy. He says that he feels a sense of relief at having come forward and spoken about what happened to him so long ago.
10 A chronology was provided in Exhibit C setting out the history of sentences that you received subsequent to this offending. After offending against this complainant you commenced a period of offending against children over a number of years, with the last offending for which you were sentenced being between 2003 and 2006. In July 2007 in Queensland, you were sentenced for offending against four complainants to a total effective sentence of seven-years-and-nine months. The sentence was reduced in March 2008 on appeal, to a total effective sentence of six-years-and-nine-months, with a release date on parole fixed. In March 2011 you were sentenced in Queensland to a concurrent term of imprisonment of three years with eligibility of parole set at 10 March 2011. In February 2015 you were sentenced in Victoria in respect to 15 charges of indecent assault in relation to six complainants, to a total effective sentence of six-years-and-one-month, with a non-parole period of three-years-and-seven-months.
11 In sentencing you I have taken into account your personal circumstances which were set out by your counsel and in the two psychological reports which were tendered. Exhibit 4 is a psychological report from Ms Janelle Bardsley, psychologist, dated 15 January 2015. Exhibit 3 is a report from Mr Jeffrey Cummins, psychologist, dated 9 March 2016.
12 You grew up in Melbourne. At around 12 you were diagnosed with high-functioning autism. You have five siblings but are not particularly close to your siblings. Both of your parents were highly educated professionals. You felt that you did not fit in at school. You say that you felt more comfortable talking to younger children than adults and felt that because of your autism you had difficulty in understanding people.
13 You were very able academically. You completed a degree in business administration. In the 1980s you became editor of a small rural newspaper and after that time became involved in the production of magazines particularly to do with radio. You produced magazines under contract through your own company. You have also acted as a technical electronics advisor and a weekend manager at a Safeway store.
14 In around 1999-2000 you relocated to Queensland. You had been diagnosed with diabetes and felt that your health would improve in Queensland. By this time you were married and in 2001 or 2002 your then wife and mother of your three children asked you to leave the family home. You have been sentenced in relation to sexually abusing a family member and have not in recent times had contact with any of your children.
15 You have engaged in further courses, including while in custody. Since August 2012 you have been in a same-sex relationship. You and your partner are in regular contact although your partner lives in Queensland.
16 You require hearing aids in both ears to understand speech and utilise lip-reading. You suffer from varicose veins in both legs and have had some surgery on your hands. You have been diagnosed with sleep apnoea for which you use a CPAP machine.
17
Mr Cummins says that in the past you would have attracted the diagnosis of paedophilia and hebephilia. Mr Cummins conducted a Risk Assessment.
Mr Cummins notes that you completed a High Intensity Sexual Offender Program in Queensland. He is satisfied that you are genuinely remorseful and regretful and understand what is meant by complainant empathy. He says you are able to verbalise genuine complainant empathy. Mr Cummins assesses your current risk of re-offending as low to moderate, placing considerable weight on what you say you learnt while participating in the High Intensity Sexual Offender Program while in custody in Queensland.
18 Mr Cummins is of the opinion that your high-functioning autism impaired your perception, judgement and ability to think clearly. He also considers that you may have been prematurely sexualised as a result of being sexually abused as a child and teenager.
19 In sentencing submissions your counsel relied on Mr Cummins’ opinion as to your high-functioning autism and submitted that your moral culpability would be reduced to an extent which should lead to moderation of general deterrence and specific deterrence.
20 Your counsel submitted that important sentencing considerations are the applicable maximum sentences, your youth at the time, your lack of prior criminal history at the time, the considerable time you have spent in custody since the offending and your engagement in rehabilitation. She also submitted that you had health issues consistent with your age.
21 The prosecutor, in sentencing submissions, submitted that there could be some concurrency in sentence. The prosecutor also addressed the issue of delay in this matter submitting that it should be taken into account that the understandable delay on the part of children complaining was a factor to be considered when considering how much delay should impact on sentence. The prosecutor relied upon the Court of Appeal’s decision in R v Nikodjevic [2004] VSCA 222, and particularly the discussion in that case of the significance of delay in sentence. The court in that case said there would not be an automatic discount in respect of every case of delay. The court referred to the significance of delay usually depending on whether the offender can say that the sentence has been hanging over him or whether the person has engaged in rehabilitation.
22 The prosecutor argued that you should not get any benefit from the application of Verdins principles, other than potentially in the sense of it making imprisonment more difficult for you. The prosecutor addressed aspects of your offending which she submitted were aggravating features and described your offending as opportunistic and predatory, engaged in for sexual gratification.
23 Christopher Edmondson, the offending in which you engaged is serious. Your offending was opportunistic and predatory. You took advantage of a young boy, who trusted you, for the purposes of your own sexual gratification. I am satisfied that you were aware that what you were doing was wrong. You took him under the house into a secluded spot, a place where others could not see. Taking him to that place in itself must have been a very disturbing experience for the child. You were young but you were an adult and you were significantly older than this child. I accept that you had high-level autism but you knew what you were doing was wrong and that you should not have been doing it. I accept that your autism would have made it more difficult for you to appreciate the impact your offending might have on the complainant. I consider that your moral culpability is only reduced to a very small degree because of your autism.
24 The harm you caused this particular complainant is clearly set out in his Victim Impact Statement. Sexual offending against children must be strongly denounced and severely punished. General deterrence and denunciation must be of first importance in sentencing you. I have borne in mind the applicable maximum penalties and the application of the principles of totality. I consider that your offending on this occasion was at the mid to high end of gravity in terms of indecent assault.
25 I am sentencing you now as a 60-year-old man for offences committed when you were in your 20s. There are some difficulties in that exercise, given that you were a young person at that time and, if your offending had been detected at the time, you would have been sentenced as a youthful first offender and your prospects of rehabilitation would have been given significant weight in sentencing you. The difficulty now is that time has proved that your prospects of rehabilitation at that time may have been questionable, due to the lengthy history of sexual offending against children that you then embarked on. Not only did you offend on numerous occasions, but you offended against children who trusted you.
26 I do not propose to go into the details of your subsequent offending but it is serious and significant. Mr Cummins’ opinions as to your current prospects of rehabilitation need to be seen in the light of that lengthy and serious history of offending against children. I accept that you now have greater insight. I accept that you also appear to have reached a stage of greater emotional stability in your first same-sex relationship. I regard your prospects of rehabilitation as being moderate at present, as a result of the combination of your greater insight, your greater emotional stability and your increasing age. Specific deterrence need not be given significant weight in the sentence to be imposed.
27 In this case I am satisfied that the principal relevance of delay is that you have served a number of sentences of imprisonment since this offending and are accordingly entitled to consideration of concurrency of sentence in application of the principle of totality. You have also engaged in some rehabilitation in more recent times which must be taken into account.
28 I accept that autism makes imprisonment more difficult for you and I have taken that into account in sentencing you. I also accept that your physical problems make imprisonment more burdensome for you. I have taken that into account also.
29 I have considered and applied s.6D, s.6E and s.6F of the Sentencing Act 1991. I do not consider that it is necessary to impose a disproportionate sentence for the purpose of community protection. I have also considered the issues of cumulation and totality.
30 Some cumulation in the sentences to be imposed is appropriate to reflect the two different occasions of sexual abuse. A modest amount of cumulation between the sentence I am imposing and the sentence you are currently serving is warranted to reflect that there is an additional victim of your offending.
31 Please stand, Mr Edmondson.
32 On Charge 1 you are convicted and sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment;
33 On Charge 2 you are convicted and sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment;
34 Four months of the sentence on Charge 2 is to be served cumulatively on the sentence on Charge 1.
35 The total effective sentence is 16 months' imprisonment.
36 Four months of that sentence is to be served cumulatively on the sentence you are currently serving.
37 But for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to a term of imprisonment of 22 months with nine months to be served cumulatively on your current sentence.
38 Each of Charges 1 and 2 are Class 1 offences, for the purposes of the Sex Offenders Registration Act 2004. Accordingly, you will be required to comply with the reporting conditions of that legislation for life, as you are in fact already doing. Because of the mandatory nature of these provisions I am going to again make that order and provide to you the documentation in relation to that order. My Associate will come with your counsel to ask you to sign a document saying that you have received that documentation.
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