Director of Public Prosecutions v Edwards
[2015] VCC 1807
•10 December 2015
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised (Not) Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Case No. CR-14-01461
Indictment E11704795.1
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| BRADLEY EDWARDS |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE PATRICK | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | ||
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 10 December 2015 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Edwards | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2015] VCC 1807 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Ms L. Dipietrantonio | |
| For the Accused | Ms J. Munster |
HER HONOUR:
1 Bradley Edwards, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of indecent assault. The maximum penalty for that offence is 10 years' imprisonment.
2 The circumstances of your offending are set out in the Summary of Prosecution Opening – Plea, which was tendered as Exhibit A. Your offending occurred on 18 August 2011. You have been a long-time sufferer from schizophrenia and the victim suffers from mental health issues and has an intellectual disability. You and she met on 25 July 2011 whilst you were both attending the State Trustees Office. The victim had invited you and your girlfriend to stay at her unit. On the day of the offending, the victim returned home at about 1.30pm to find you walking in her driveway. You said you wanted to apologise for leaving for your belongings at her unit. You said you had been waiting for her since the morning. You left to get some drinks and came back. You appeared to have been drinking alcohol.
3 You asked the victim for coffee and she let you into the unit to make you a coffee. While she was boiling the kettle, you began touching her on her body, including her stomach and breasts under her clothes. She asked you to “Piss off”. She then sat on the couch and you started touching her on the back. You asked her for a cold drink so she got up and went to the fridge to get it. She got a can of soft drink out of the fridge. You got up and punched her on the chin causing her to fall to the ground. You then pulled down her tracksuit pants, ripped her underpants off and said that you were going to give her sex. She said, “No”. You took off your pants and pulled down your boxer shorts.
4 You were on top of the victim. She asked you to get off her three times. You had an erect penis and you moved up and down against her vagina while she told you to get off repeatedly. You then said that you were “Coming”. You then got up and got dressed, as did the victim. You left the unit, leaving her with some cigarettes.
5 You left Victoria soon after the offending and were not located until 7 May 2012. On 8 May 2012, you were interviewed by the police. You said that you only knew one woman from the Footscray area and that you had never had sexual contact with her. You said you suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. You said you had never heard of the victim. You were released pending summons. You again left Victoria. You were extradited from Queensland on 20 May 2014 and remanded in custody. You have spent 572 in pre-sentence detention. Whilst you were in pre-sentence detention on remand you were very unwell at various points and were admitted at one point to the Thomas Embling Hospital.
6 On 4 May 2015 you were found unfit to stand trial. You were reassessed on 12 October 2015 by a psychiatrist who determined that you were then fit to stand trial. The doctor who assessed you provided a report dated 20 October 2015 and on 26 October 2015 you entered a plea of guilty to the charge on the indictment.
7 A victim impact statement from the victim was tendered as Exhibit B. The prosecutor advised that the prosecution was not relying on the first point on section 3 of that victim impact statement. In her victim impact statement the victim describes her reaction to your offending which included drinking alcohol and self-harming. She says she was angry and upset. She said she was scared to leave her flat. She says thinking of the incident makes her cry.
8 In sentencing you, I have taken into account your personal circumstances which were outlined in submissions by your counsel and in the psychiatric report of Mr Jeffery Cummins, psychologist, dated 3 December 2015 (Exhibit 2). You are now thirty-five years old. You were born and raised in Sydney. You clearly had an extremely dysfunctional and disrupted childhood. Your mother had drug and alcohol problems and sadly passed away when you were sixteen. You never knew your father. The primary carer in your life has been your maternal grandmother but you ran away from home at twelve and were made a ward of the State and have lived independently since then. You have spent time in youth refuges and in foster care.
9 You had a severely disrupted education and left school at the end of Year 9. You have completed certificate courses during periods in custody. You have had a very fragmented and brief work history. You have lived a transient lifestyle since about 2000 and have been in receipt of disability support pension since about 2004. You entered into a voluntary arrangement with State Trustees in about 2005 and State Trustees have administered your financial affairs since that time.
10 You used cannabis up until about three years ago and have tried to stay away from alcohol as a result of seeing the effect on your mother.
11 You have had three significant relationships with women but are currently single. You have two children from those relationships who are not in your care.
12 You were diagnosed with schizophrenia in approximately 2000 in South Australia and have had numerous psychiatric admissions. You have been on community treatment orders in Victoria or on equivalent orders interstate at various times.
13 You have admitted a prior criminal history. You have no prior criminal history for sexual offending. You have four prior court appearances, three of which were in 2004 in New South Wales for contravening an apprehended domestic violence order which you say, and I accept, relates to you attending your grandmother’s home when there was an apprehended domestic violence order in place.
14 In 2009 in this court, you were sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of six months on charges of theft of a motor vehicle, theft, conspiracy to commit armed robbery and attempted armed robbery. I have had the benefit of reading the "Reasons for Sentence" of His Honour Judge Nixon, dated 4 February 2009. His Honour took into account your background which His Honour described as tragic. On the basis of the reports provided to him, His Honour concluded that supervision and support would be critical for you in addition to compliance with your prescribed medication. His Honour hoped that those matters could be supervised by the Parole Board. It appears from the report I have obtained from Corrections as to your suitability for a community correction order that that hope was not entirely fulfilled and that you breached parole three times and were taken back into custody.
15 I accept that you have no recollection of this offending. You have spoken to doctors and to Mr Cummins about the time of this offending. It is not clear from what you have said or from any other material, whether or not you were compliant with your medication at the time of this offending. There are some odd aspects to your offending, such as you calling the victim by the name of your girlfriend, but it also appears that you were adversely affected by alcohol. You have a history of relapsing into drug use and non-compliance with prescribed medication but there is no material on which I can conclude that this was the situation when this offending occurred.
16 It is clear that you have a history of chronic severe mental health difficulties. You have had periods where you have had hallucinations and delusions, but I am not able to conclude that you were psychotic at the time of this offending. In view of the longstanding nature of your schizophrenia and Mr Cummins’ description of your presentation to him, which was at a time when your mental health was stabilised after treatment, I consider that it is probable that your mental illness would have impaired your perception, judgment and reasoning ability in respect of this offending.
17 It does appear that you are quite clear that this type of offending is wrong and you describe it as being repulsive to you. In view of the strong views you have expressed as to that, and your acceptance that you were alcohol-affected at the time, I consider that your mental illness only gives rise to a very limited degree of moderation of sentence in application of Verdins principles in respect to general deterrence and specific deterrence. I accept that your mental health makes imprisonment more difficult for you and I have taken that into account in moderation of sentence.
18 Bradley Edwards, your offending is serious. This is a serious example of indecent assault. The indecent assault was accompanied by violence. You took off parts of the victim’s clothing and your clothing. You are not accused of penetrating the victim but short of penetration, this is a serious sexual assault. This was a serious violation of a person who was a vulnerable victim. You must have been aware that she was vulnerable in terms of her difficulties. You took advantage of her in order to achieve your own sexual satisfaction. You apparently accept this was very wrong behaviour. It must be strongly denounced and you must be punished for behaving in this way. It is also important that others be deterred from this type of offending and that you be deterred from this type of offending ever again.
19 You have no prior criminal history for sexual offending. I note the discussion by Mr Cummins of various risk factors and his assessment that you pose a low to moderate risk of reoffending. I accept that supervision together with stability in housing and compliance with medication would significantly reduce the risk of you reoffending in any way in the future. Having given the matter some thought, I also consider that it would be appropriate if you are assessed as suitable for the Sex Offender Treatment Program. It is important that you give some thought to understanding why you might have engaged in this type of behaviour on this occasion.
20 You have a case worker from the Community Integration Program at Forensicare who is able to assist you in liaising with other organisations in relation to the obtaining of stable accommodation and appropriate treatment for your mental health issues. You have spent a considerable time in custody already. During that time in custody, your mental health has been stabilised and it appears that you are now wishing to try and lead a more stable, safer and less erratic and less transient life on your release from custody on this occasion. It is clearly in the interests of both your rehabilitation and community protection that you be provided with appropriate support, treatment, supervision and engagement with appropriate programs to prevent further reoffending. In respect of community protection, it is relevant that since this offending there are no pending or outstanding matters. There has been considerable delay since this offending and it appears that during that period of time, you have not committed any further offences or including any offences of a sexual nature. That suggests that generally you do not have a tendency towards offending of a sexual or violent nature.
21 In this situation, I consider that a sentence of imprisonment to be followed by a community correction order would appropriately meet the sentencing requirements of denunciation, just punishment, general deterrence, specific deterrence and community protection, taking into account some moderation of sentencing factors in application of Verdins principles.
22 You have been assessed as unsuitable for a community correction order. The main and significant difficulty is your lack of stable accommodation and tendency to lead a transient lifestyle. Despite those concerns, which I share, I have decided that it is appropriate to give you an opportunity to demonstrate that you can now comply with such an order. Through your counsel, you have been advised of the conditions that I propose to attach to such an order including the special conditions that the order will last for 18 months, you will be supervised by Community Corrections staff and monitored by this court. You will also be required to be assessed and undergo any treatment directed in respect of mental health issues, drug and alcohol issues and programs to reduce reoffending.
23 Mr Edwards, could you stand up please? Mr Edwards, do you consent to that order being made?
24 OFFENDER: Yes, I do.
25 HER HONOUR: Thank you. Bradley Edwards, on one charge of indecent assault, you are convicted and sentenced to 572 days’ imprisonment to be followed by a community correction order of 18 months with the special conditions that I have outlined.
26 I declare that you have served 572 days of this sentence by way of pre-sentence detention.
27 But for your plea of guilty, I would have sentenced you to a term of imprisonment of three years and six months with a non-parole period of two years.
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