Director of Public Prosecutions v Meyer, Robert
[2012] VCC 1995
•11 December 2012
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised (Not) Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR-12-01923
| DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| V |
| ROBERT MEYER |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE WILMOTH | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 6 December 2012 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 11 December 2012 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Meyer, Robert | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2012] VCC 1995 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject: Plea of guilty Aggravated burglary, criminal damage, intentionally cause injury
Catchwords: Declining personal relationship; chronic post traumatic stress disorder; mild recurrent depression; intermittent explosive disorder
Sentence: 2 years with non parole period 9 months
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the DPP | Mr J Livitsanos | |
| For the Accused | Mr J McLoughlin |
HER HONOUR:
1 Robert Meyer you have pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated burglary, two charges of criminal damage and one charge of intentionally causing injury.
2 At the end of the plea hearing last week I remanded you in custody pending the sentencing date. Mr McLoughlin, who appeared on your behalf, urged me to consider having you assessed as to your suitability for a community corrections order. I considered that course, but after weighing the relevant matters to which I must have regard, I determined that the only appropriate disposition was a sentence of imprisonment to be served immediately. I will explain more about that later in these sentencing remarks.
3 On the night of 28 July 2012 you went to the home of the complainant with whom you had been having a relationship for the previous two years, approximately, and with whom you had a baby son then four months old. She was alone in the house with the baby. You had a sense of grievance towards the complainant arising from the decline in your relationship and your perception that you were being rejected. You arrived at her house at about 10.30 pm and peered through her kitchen window and, frightened, she called the police and a friend.
4 A short time later you knocked on the back door and when the complainant opened it you accused her of not replying to text messages you had sent her but which she had not received. She showed you her phone to make that point and told you to leave.
5 She locked the door and as she walked away you smashed the glass door with your fist and entered the house. She told you to leave but you charged towards her and pushed her with such force that she fell to the ground. You grabbed her mobile phone from her and threw it across the room causing it to break into pieces.
6 You then grabbed the complainant by the throat and held her tightly, then took off the beanie you were wearing and began to hit her in the face with it, using what she described as a whipping motion. You hit her numerous times in this way and then headbutted her, causing pain to her nose.
7 You then forced her onto the couch and continued to hit her with the beanie to her face before she was able to get away from you and call 000 on her home phone.
8 As she did so you grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her back towards you, then grabbed her wrist and took her phone, throwing it across the room, breaking it. You then slapped her to the head numerous times and pushed her on to the couch. She fell on to the floor and you grabbed her by the hair, pulling her head back towards you and continuing to abuse her.
9 Throughout the incident you told her you could kill her and that you had thoughts of killing yourself. You told her that this was coming and that you had felt like doing this for a long time.
10 When you ceased attacking the complainant and she went to the kitchen to wash your blood off herself, her friend and her friend's mother arrived, followed soon afterwards by the police. You were arrested and remanded in custody for six days.
11 The complainant suffered bruising and swelling to several parts of her body and grazing to her hands and soreness and scratches to her entire body, including her nose. She provided a victim impact statement in which she described her fear and her anxiety afterwards, with her health and wellbeing affected adversely.
12 Through your counsel you have expressed your deep regret and shame, and your wish that you had not done what you did. You have no memory of having headbutted the complainant and can only conclude that it may have been accidental, and you had no intention of doing that.
13 You are aged 40, and you are single, and not involved in any personal relationship at the present time. You are a qualified plumber but have not been working recently owing to a back injury, as well as the need to address matters connected to these charges. You are currently in receipt of a disability pension.
14 You have a four year old son from a previous relationship with whom you have regular contact.
15 You have known the complainant since primary school days and, as I said, you had been in a relationship for about two years. You had not lived together and the relationship had not been stable, but your hope was that you would both be able to live together eventually. The baby had been a planned pregnancy and the complainant already had four other children, all of whom lived with her, but were away on the night in question. You had been involved in helping to care for the baby after his birth and had begun to feel shut out in recent times, perceiving that the complainant was spending time with others to the exclusion of you.
16 After a number of text messages and conversations it seemed to you that she was rejecting you and you felt hurt, which was exacerbated by drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis. It was in this condition that you went to her home that night.
17 Your uncle, Raymond Meyer, gave evidence about your family background and your early years, describing a very sad story characterised by the dominating feature of serious mental illness in the family. Your father suffered from manic depression and schizophrenia, for which he was often hospitalised, and eventually took his own life when you were about 23. The illness has affected your paternal grandmother, as well as your uncle and aunt, and tragically your cousin also took her own life.
18 Your childhood was marked by bullying at school owing to the name Dax having been given to you by your father when you were christened. You changed your name as soon as you were old enough. Your father disciplined you and your brother harshly and was violent towards your mother.
19 During the past three months you have been having treatment with a psychologist, Mr David Young, who, in his report dated 25 November 2012 diagnosed chronic post traumatic stress disorder as well as mild recurrent depression, and what he described as intermittent explosive disorder. This relates to your response to feelings of danger or being unfairly treated or trapped, when you become aggressive and struggle to control it. Mr Young also said that you are in early full remission from alcohol and cannabis abuse.
20 Mr Young said you have made good progress in your treatment and have demonstrated good insight into recognising your problems. An important indication of this is your participation in a number of programs designed to provide assistance for people in your situation. This began following a court appearance for assault in February 2011. At that time you were placed on an adjourned undertaking to be of good behaviour with the condition that you complete an anger management course. You engaged with a family violence program and you completed the course over ten weeks, following which you completed a further ten week course on parenting for fathers who have been involved in using violence in families.
21 Those courses took place last year, whilst these offences occurred in July 2012. In October this year you returned to the same organisation and joined a 20 week course designed to deal with male violence in families. To date you have attended three of those sessions.
22 You state that you have remained abstinent from alcohol and drugs since you were charged and have attended regularly at counselling sessions dealing with this substance abuse. Regular drug screens have shown the absence of cannabinoids since late September, which is likely consistent with that claim of abstinence, given the chemical behaviour of cannabis as I understand it. Of course I heard no evidence or submissions about that other than the fact that you completed detoxification in late August, which lends weight to the likelihood of abstinence as you claim.
23 These recent efforts towards rehabilitation have been under the auspices of your case manager in the court integrated services program known as CISP. Clearly you have been entirely cooperative with those charged with your care and support and you appear to have benefited from all the steps you have taken.
24 That is a mitigating factor of considerable weight and it suggests that you would benefit from a long period of parole, once you are released, in order to continue the progress you have been making.
25 You have good family support from your uncle and his family, and from the letters I have read you are held in high regard by others as well. This is despite the fact that you have been in trouble with the law in the past, although most matters, even though often connected with some form of violence, or threat of it, were relatively minor. It is not an extensive criminal history and is consistent with the significant psychological or psychiatric difficulties you have had over the years.
26 Other mitigating factors are your plea of guilty, your remorse, and your motivation to change your ways, and I will address those matters briefly.
27 Your plea of guilty entitles you to a discount on your sentence because it has avoided the need for a trial and saved the witnesses from having to give evidence at a trial. That is acknowledged as a valuable contribution to the criminal justice system deserving of some leniency. It is also accepted as evidence of remorse which you have expressed elsewhere, as I have already mentioned.
28 You have developed some insight into the reasons for your offending and you have stated that you wish to be a good father to your sons. You already have a good relationship with the older child and you are hoping for the same with the baby after your release. This is something your friends and family members have commented upon in their letters to the court, suggesting it will continue to be a strong, motivating factor in your rehabilitation.
29 It is clear from the maximum penalties applicable to each of these offences that they are regarded as serious crimes. The maximum penalty for criminal damage is ten years imprisonment; for aggravated burglary, 25 years and for causing injury intentionally, ten years.
30 A vicious attack at night on a woman in her own home with her baby present in the house and with injuries inflicted deserves a sentence of imprisonment, and it is necessary to send a message to the public that such violence will be dealt with harshly by the courts so that others will be deterred from similar behaviour.
31 The importance of that message must also be impressed upon you yourself, in order to deter you from ever acting in this way again, and indeed to avoid any further offending. I note that the prosecution has conceded that the overall circumstances of the aggravated burglary place it at the lower end of the range for sentencing in respect of the offence. Fortunately the complainant's injuries were not long lasting, and as to the damage to property I understand you replaced the phone and the glass door was replaced through insurance.
32
I am also satisfied that the risk of you offending again in this way has been reduced by the steps you have taken and so I can fix both a head sentence and a non parole period reflecting that. Would you stand now please,
Mr Meyer?
33 I sentence you to the following periods of imprisonment. For Charge 1, breaking the glass door, six months.
34 For Charge 2, aggravated burglary, 18 months.
35 For Charge 3, breaking the mobile phone, four months.
36 For Charge 4, intentionally causing injury, 12 months.
37 The sentence for Charge 2 will be the base sentence for purposes of cumulation. I order that six months of the sentence for Charge 4 be served in cumulation upon the base sentence. The sentences for Charges 1 and 3 will be served concurrently with each other and with the base sentence. That results in a total effective sentence of two years. I fix a period of nine months which you must serve before being eligible for parole. If you had pleaded not guilty I would have sentenced you to three years imprisonment with a non parole period of 18 months.
38 I declare that you have spent 11 days in custody, not including today, which will be reckoned as already served and I shall note that on the court record.
39 The prosecution seeks orders for forfeiture and for compensation of $1200 to be paid to an insurance company and I make those orders.
40 The prosecution also seeks an order for a forensic sample of saliva to be obtained. I understand that is not opposed, Mr McLoughlin
41 MR McLOUGHLIN: It's not opposed.
42 HER HONOUR: I make that order and I must advise you that the police have the power to use reasonable force to obtain the sample but I trust that will not be necessary. Mr Livitsanos, is there anything I have neglected?
43 MR LIVITSANOS: Nothing else, Your Honour.
44 HER HONOUR: Mr McLoughlin?
45 MR McLOUGHLIN: No Your Honour.
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