Director of Public Prosecutions v Olifent

[2014] VCC 2218

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 13-00570

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

CHARLOTTE OLIFENT

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE GAYNOR
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	17 December 2014
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v OLIFENT
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2014] VCC 2218

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms A. Ellis	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr G. Boas

HER HONOUR: 

1Charlotte Olifent, you have pleaded guilty before me to four charges of obtaining property by deception, six charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, one charge of possessing substances, material or equipment for the purpose of trafficking in a drug of dependence, and three charges of handling stolen goods.  The facts scenario underlying your offending is contained in the very detailed prosecution opening which is annexed as an exhibit to these sentencing remarks. 

2In short compass, you engaged in offending between 30 June 2012 and 20 July 2012 in four areas.  First, you used a number of credit cards which had been stolen in burglaries or used the detail of credit cards owned by other people in order to purchase certain goods.  Those actions underlie Charges 1 to 10 on the indictment and include also the booking and use of you of hotel rooms.

3Secondly, on raiding premises where you lived in Pakington Street, Kew, police discovered a number of chemicals and materials, being various liquids, laboratory equipment, and other items including scientific glassware, solvents for the extraction of pseudoephedrine, filter papers.  As per Charge 11, police also discovered various items, being pseudoephedrine, iodine, a coffee grinder, an electric grinder, glassware, filter papers, a retort stand and metal clamps, plastic containers containing liquids, all of which could be used in the manufacture of methamphetamine or ice, which was said to be possessed by you in order to traffic that substance.

4Finally, while at those premises police also found in your possession a number of stolen goods.  This relates to Charges 12 to 14 on the indictment.  Those items were a Victorian driver's licence, Commonwealth Bank debit card, Commonwealth keycard, Redibank card and RACV card belonging to Sage Scott, whose car was broken into on 27 May 2012 and those items taken.  You were also found in possession of a Toshiba laptop, charger and mouse, which items had been stolen from the home of Joanne Ingram on 26 June 2012.  You were also found to be in possession of documents in the name of Bill Mandalitis and his wife Sophia Kotsaras, those documents including a passport and driver's licence, receipts, a large number of jewellery items, cufflinks, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings, a Buffalo brand computer external hard drive, a box containing six watches, and a suitcase.  It is also noted that Mr Mandalitis and his wife were also shown photographs of items of jewellery which they could identify as having been stolen from them in a burglary which took place on their home on 19 July 2012.  The total value of the property stolen from them was $75,624.

5You were interviewed by police, telling them that you lived with your parents in Pakenham, denying that you were living at the Pakington Street apartment, and basically telling them untruths about the number of mobile phones that you used, which were later identified by police as having been part of the fraudulent activities undertaken by you, in particular in relation to the hire of hotel rooms.

6You were remanded in custody, then released on bail.  A condition of that bail was that you attend a drug rehabilitation service whilst you lived with your mother.  However, you relapsed into drug use and disappeared for some time,  about two months after you being released from custody.  You were re-remanded, placed back in custody then released again to live with your mother but ultimately again relapsed into drug use, left your mother's home and resided in the city, in the interim period failing to appear at court on two occasions in relation to the setting down of this matter.

7There is some history to the hearing of these charges against you.  A contested committal was conducted and listed for trial on 2 December 2013.  Following negotiations a plea of guilty was entered in this court on 21 November 2013 and the plea listed for 2 December of that year.  On that date the matter was adjourned, as a prosecutor was not available, to 7 April 2014 and on that date you appeared before me in this court, seeking to change your plea of guilty to one of not guilty.  This matter was listed but was not heard until 12 December 2014.  It was originally listed for hearing on 2 June 2014, at which stage I recused myself and the matter was to be listed to be heard before His Honour Judge Tinney on 25 July 2014.  However, His Honour could not hear it on that date and the matter was mentioned before Judge Taft.

8On that occasion it was adjourned for mention to 8 June 2014, at which time you failed to appear.  The matter was then adjourned for mention to 1 September 2014 and then to 8 September 2014 before Her Honour Judge Hannan, on which occasion you again failed to appear and a warrant was issued.  Eventually you were apprehended and placed into custody on 15 October 2014, where you have remained ever since.  You have served 184 days in custody in relation to these matters, the matter finally proceeding by way of a plea before me today, your change of plea application, ultimately being refused by Judge Chettle.

9I now turn to your personal circumstances.  You are 21 years and were 19 at the time of this offending.  Your parents separated when you were born and your father moved to Sydney, and whilst you enjoyed a good relationship with him, have had no contact with him since turning to drug use at about the age of 17.  You were raised in the inner Melbourne area until your mother re-partnered and moved to Pakenham, where she now lives with her husband, your stepfather, who runs a car yard and with whom you also have a good relationship.  Your mother is a special education teacher.  You have a seven-year old younger half-brother who suffers from autism and deafness.

10It appears your life was fairly unremarkable until you were about 15 and became involved with a boy from the area, whom was also a co-accused in this matter, Andrew Nicolls.  He had prior convictions and a drug habit.  It appears you did not begin using drugs immediately despite his influence.  He was sent to gaol, and whilst in custody you visited him in the hope that you could assist him to change his ways.  By the time he was released from custody you had left school and were living away from home in the city in an apartment and working for Telstra.  He immediately came to live with you and you soon succumbed to drug use, becoming addicted to the incredibly destructive substances methylamphetamine or ice and GHB.  As a result of drug use you soon lost your job.  You also lost contact with your mother.

11Almost immediately after the offending that brings you here before this court, your boyfriend Mr Nicolls was gaoled.  You were evicted from your premises and became involved with another much older man whom you had met through drug circles, and he invited you to share his house in Carlton.  You did this and the two of you became involved in a relationship and you continued with your drug use, ultimately ending up living in a Housing Commission flat with him.

12In the meantime, as a result of your drug use, you continued to offend, being dealt with on 30 August 2012 for possession of amphetamine, trafficking in a drug of dependence, and dealing with property suspected of being the proceeds of crime.  You were then dealt with on 7 September 2012 for theft, driving offences, obtaining property by deception, and there was a rehearing of the matter on 30 August and you were placed on a Community Corrections Order.

13Then on 30 July 2013 you were dealt with for contravention of that Community Corrections Order for further offending comprising another charge of trafficking in amphetamine and possession of ecstasy.  You were placed on a second Community Corrections Order which was then breached by further offending when you appeared before the Heidelberg Magistrates' Court and were fined for obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

14MR BOAS:  Your Honour, can I just interrupt.  In relation to the CCO, as I understand it, it was reinstated.  So it was the same CCO breached again by reason of offending but it was reinstated because Ms Olifent had failed to complete the number of hours required in the 12-month period.

15HER HONOUR:  You were placed on a Community Corrections Order as I have said in September of 2012.  That order was reinstated on 30 July 2013 by reason of you being breached for failure to complete the community hours.  You were dealt with by way of fine on charges of trafficking methylamphetamine and possession of ecstasy in August of 2013 and finally were fined in April  this year for obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

16During this time, (this offending clearly occurring whilst you were on bail for the matters which have brought you before this court), you lost contact with your mother who reported you missing to the police, tried to hire a private investigator and eventually found you by looking through the law lists and discovering you were appearing fairly regularly before court on the offences that I have just outlined.  Ultimately, you returned to your mother in the way that I have described, before again falling into drug use and ending up living in the inner city and being arrested.

17In that time your mother made contact with a group named Narconon, a drug rehabilitation program run in Warburton East, and paid around $27,000 for a place for you there.  You entered that program in August 2014 but left a month later.  It would appear you were simply not ready to attend to your drug addiction.  That place has remained open and I have received a letter from that organisation to the effect that a place will be held open for you until 7 March next year, at which time your mother will forfeit the considerable money she has paid on your behalf.  It would appear that whilst, of course, gaol has not been an enjoyable experience for you, it has been an important one.  You have undergone two urinalysis screenings whilst there with, I understand, a negative result.  You have been made in a very harsh fashion to give up drug use and whilst on remand have undertaken several courses.

18It does seem appropriate that you be able to take advantage of the Narconon program, which involves a residential program, and I say that not just for your benefit, Ms Olifent, but for the community's benefit.  I am satisfied that all the offending you have engaged in which brought you before this court and the subsequent offending are all drug-related and drug-based.

19It appears along the way you have fallen into the typical junkie habit of picking up with whichever boyfriend comes along and offers you protection at the time, and certainly the older man you resided with was most inappropriate, being a hardened drug user.  After that, at another stage when you had left home, you ended up living with Ty Stephens, the stepson of one of the most (thankfully now deceased) notorious criminals in Victoria and one of the major drug suppliers in Victoria.  You have gone down a very long and dangerous path.

The offending that you engaged in was appalling.  It was essentially identity theft and exploitation involving use of items stolen from other people.  I am satisfied that at the time you were engaged in this offending you had no concern for anyone other than yourself.  You were essentially uncooperative with police, conducted a contested committal, the plea of guilty that you entered was then sought to be withdrawn by you, and I have no doubt that had you been successful in your application we would now be running a trial rather than a plea. I do not regard your plea of guilty as having anything other than utilitarian value, and the behaviour that you exhibited, that is in engaging in constant deceit, in sophisticated, underhand, manipulative behaviour, the lack of remorse shown by you, the lack of thought shown by you to your mother who had raised a considerable amount of money to pay for the place in the course, the subsequent offending that you continued to engage in regardless of your bail conditions were absolutely typical of what would be called junkie behaviour. 

20It was absolutely typical self-centred behaviour of somebody who is concerned only with the way they feel, that is concerned only with satisfaction of the physical cravings that arose from your addiction to drugs.  It was a wretched path, a selfish path, a destructive path, not only to you but everyone associated with you.  One can only imagine the amount of distress caused to your mother, who was reduced to combing the law list to find her daughter and who must have been absolutely desperate to have to raise that amount of money, which you virtually threw away by leaving that course, your second failed attempt at rehabilitation.  People in the state that you were in become incapable of behaving in any way other than in response to their own physical cravings, and as I said, woe betide anyone who seeks to help them or get in their path.  You need to understand that is what you did, that is how you were, and it was because you were using drugs.

21If you continue to use drugs you will ultimately destroy your relationship with your mother, who in the end is only going to be able to take so much.  This court has seen thousands of addicts who have totally burned families who have stood by them, have virtually ruined themselves financially and emotionally to support a much-loved drug addicted son or daughter who in the end they had to abandon because they could not continue their lives with any modicum of happiness or security.  If you do not change you will end up on the scrapheap.  Your mother will not be able to keep supporting you and you will end up reliant on drugs and on others for shelter, food, clothing, and on whichever drug-addled crook you might choose to link up with.  That is the inevitable future that awaits you, Ms Olifent, unless you take advantage of the opportunity this court is offering you.

22You also need to understand if you ever offend in the future it will be evident from your record that you have been engaged in offending of such gravity that it has brought you here to the County Court.  You would be well aware that you only come to the County Court if that offending is too serious to be heard in the Magistrates' Court.  When a person has been offered an opportunity by the County Court of which they do not take advantage, they can expect little or no sympathy from any court that they might subsequently appear before.  In other words, Ms Olifent, if you continue to offend, your priors are so bad that you can only expect gaol from now on. 

23This will be the second Community-Based Order you have been offered.  If you breach this order you can never expect the Office of Corrections ever to find you suitable again and you cannot expect a court to even consider it.  You have burned all your bridges.  If you do not get off drugs, if you do not stop offending, your life will be one of the horrible, vicious cycle that accompanies all persons who continue to be junkies, who continue to be drug addicts.  That is, use, commit a crime to raise funds to buy drugs, buy the drugs, use, commit a crime to buy the money to use drugs, buy drugs, use drugs, commit a crime - it goes on.  Your whole life will be taken up with offending to get money for drugs, using, coming down, offending to get money, and on and on it will go. 

24The other issue that you need to attend to is this.  Amphetamine-based drugs are the most dangerous drugs available on the market and crystal meth or ice is a particularly potent form of them.  Amphetamine-based substances interfere with the electrical impulses of the brain.  If a person uses amphetamine or ice for long enough, they end up with a permanent psychiatric disorder, usually paranoid schizophrenia.  What that means is you will physically damage your brain, you will damage the physical impulses which actually tell you how to cope on a day-to-day basis, what is real and what is not real, and that will be irreversible.

25I do not know if you have been at Dame Phyllis Frost for long enough, but I am sure you have seen a number of women who are "not quite there".  They are inevitably going to have been speed or ice users who did it for too long and they will be damaged for the rest of their lives.  You are only 21.  If you do not give this up, my confident prediction is by the time you are 30 there will be some sort of permanent irreversible brain damage.  Along the way, no doubt, you will have popped out a couple of children who you will be unable to care for and who will be taken into care by the Department of Human Services if your mother is unable to take over the care for them which, given the difficulties that she has with your younger brother, would appear to be unlikely.  It is a horrible future that you are condemning yourself to.

26There is no glamour in the freewheeling, cowboy ice dealer. They might look as if they control the world for a bit because everyone they know grovels to them because they want drugs from them, but in the end they end up behind bars and they more often than not end up crazy and in a constant psychotic state, usually a psychotic state involving paranoid delusions, that is that they are under attack from all sides.  The mother of a paranoid schizophrenic once described the existence of her son as if he was mentally living in Auschwitz, as if he was living in a concentration camp and he spent his life in a horrible fear.  I can guarantee that if you do not get off this, that is your life: a sad, crazy woman with a couple of kids she cannot look after, grabbing on to a series of unreliable men who will use her, abuse her, who will give her drugs and who will disappear out of her life, and that will be it.

27You are no doubt aware that at the moment you are a pretty, young woman, you have got a lot going for you; in ten years' time if you keep this up.  You will be a ravaged, mumbling scarecrow, and I am saying that to you having seen this as has anyone in this court who has been involved in criminal law for any period of time.  We have seen this over and over and over.

28You are going to be serving a bit more time and you should be glad of that because that is going to keep you off drugs.  If you are offered anything in the gaol, as you will be if you have not already been, do not touch it with a barge pole.  (A) it is bad for you, (b) it is usually about four grades worse than anything you would get on the street. 

29You can expect no more chances from court.  You will probably lose your mother and you will probably lose all the promise of your life with a permanent psychiatric disorder if you keep going down this trail, and you have already been there for four years.  Basically, you have lost four years of your life - it is gone, you cannot get it back, and all you have learned is how to score if you have to. 

30You do still have hope.  Unlike many of the people who come before this court you have a supportive and crime-free family.  Hopefully by now you understand that crime is a grey, sad, dismal business.  It is full of temporary highs and huge black lows and a lot of grey nothingness in between.  There is nothing glamorous about it and there is nothing glamorous about the people who stay in it long-term. I advise you to watch those sad, shambling women and hear their stories of lost children and lost men and nowhere to live and no one in their lives and who cry with loneliness and desperately want some man to come into their lives to fix everything up.  One drug-addicted hero after another who turns out to be nothing.  You watch, you talk to them, you find out the sorts of lives they have lived.  Get someone older.  You will probably find out they are not quite as old as they look, most of them, and you find out how they have lived and what their lives have been.  They still want the white picket fence and the happy life and their chances of getting it are virtually nil.  So now is the time, it is crunch time for you, and never again will you present to this court as a youthful offender, you are 21.  That definition no longer applies to you, so you will always be treated as an adult with serious prior convictions and you can expect little mercy from any court.  None of that has to be your future, it is up to you.

31In all the circumstances I have decided that it is in the community's best interest that I deal with you in a way which reflects the punitive aspects that attach themselves to offending of this kind - that is, that punishes that meanness, the dishonesty, the exploitation which inevitably accompanies offending of this kind, with a rehabilitative aspect, that is a sentence of imprisonment to be followed by release on to a Community Corrections Order.

32The offending is serious, but I am not imposing as much as I ordinarily would in order to take advantage  of the Community Corrections opportunity and your drug rehabilitation placement.  I give utilitarian value to the plea of guilty, I take into account you are a youthful offender, I take into account the fact that you have the support of a good family and that you are not so far down the track as to be irreclaimable, although I must say your behaviour in the last four years has been appalling and escalating, getting worse.  It is just a sad, tragic read, Ms Olifent.  I can look at this sort of offending and then say, guess which drug she's on, because she's on something.  All the possessions, the obtain property by deception, obtain financial advantage by deception.  Those deception charges go with junkies.  It is all trickery, deception, get what I can, who cares how the other person suffers, who cares how dishonest, manipulative, outrageous my behaviour is, I just want the ice, I just want the drug.  Your prior convictions, and it started only when you were about 17, you have clocked up a lot of priors fast and you have run out of chances.

33I am going to sentence you as follows.  On Charges 1 to 10 you are sentenced to two months' imprisonment on each charge.  On Charge 11 you are sentenced to ten months' imprisonment.  On Charge 12 you are sentenced to six month's imprisonment.  On Charge 13 you are sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, on Charge 14 you are sentenced to six months' imprisonment.  Six days of each of the Charges 1 to 10 will be served cumulatively to each other and to the sentence imposed on Charge 11.  All other sentences are to be served concurrently.  That should give a total effective sentence of 12 months.  The base sentence is the sentence imposed on Charge 11, ten months. Six days of each of the sentences imposed on Charges 1 to 10 are to be served cumulatively, that is 60 days so that is another two months, that comes to 12 months, and then all the other charges are to be served concurrently.  You are then to be released and I order that 184 days of that sentence have already been served by way of pre-sentence detention, so that means you will - sorry.  She has been in for six months and another four months is needed.  She has done six months to today and then we have got another - it is a lot less than I would like to give her.  It really means that I end up giving nine months, not the 12 months.  I thought I could do 12 months, I do not know if I can justify it.  What do you say, Ms Ellis?  If I released her on a Community Corrections Order for three years with judicial monitoring every six months so she has to come back and report to me.  It is so hard to get anyone into residential rehabilitation now, I just do not want to lose the opportunity, Ms Ellis, and she is a young offender.

34MS ELLIS:  Yes.  Would Your Honour just excuse me for a moment.

35HER HONOUR:  I can give her millions of community hours, I can have supervision, judicial monitoring.

36MS ELLIS:  It is a matter for Your Honour.

37HER HONOUR:  Thank you, that is a very helpful indication.  I am going to have to redo this.  On Charge 11 you are sentenced to 259 days, on Charge 12 you are sentenced to six months' imprisonment, Charge 13 you are sentenced to 259 days and on Charge 14 you are sentenced to six months' imprisonment.  They are all to be served concurrently, with a total effective sentence of 259 days and I declare that 184 days of that sentence have already been served.

38In relation to each of Charges 11 and 13, each of which attracted a sentence of 259 days, I am going to release Ms Olifent on a Community Corrections Order for three and a half years.  In that time she is to perform 400 hours of unpaid community work.  She is to undergo supervision, she is to undergo assessment and treatment for drug addiction, she is to undergo assessment and treatment for psychological difficulties.  Anyone who has been using for four years has usually got psychological difficulties.  By the time you finish, one of the things you will discover is that once you come off the drugs your first point of call to deal with stress will be to do something dishonest, because it is an ingrained way you have behaved for four years so you will need some help with that.  Everyone does who has done what you have done.  I am going to order judicial monitoring every six months.  You will be coming back to see me and I will be receiving a report on you every six months that you are on that.  So really, this is not going to be over for another four years.

39You will be in gaol until 7 March.  Hopefully that works out.  It is a matter for you to arrange Narconon but I need to explain to you the fundamental principles that apply to any Community Corrections Order, which you should know off by heart but undoubtedly you will not because this is not the first time you have been on it.  Whilst you are on this order you must not commit any offences punishable by imprisonment inside or outside of Victoria.  You may not leave Victoria without the permission of the community corrections office.  Whilst you are on the Community Corrections Order you must report to and receive visits from a community corrections officer.  You must advise the community corrections officer of any change of address or employment within 48 hours.  You must report to the community corrections office within two working days of being placed on the order.  That is, the first day out of gaol you will be going to Narconon and then the next day you will be reporting in to the community corrections office.  You must obey all lawful directions of the community corrections office, and as I have said, the special conditions attaching to this are that you must perform 400 hours of unpaid community work, you must be subject to supervision, you will be subject to judicial monitoring every six months whilst you are on that order.  You will undergo assessment and treatment for drug addiction, you will undergo assessment and treatment for psychological difficulties, that is you will undergo mental health treatment and assessment.  Are you prepared to enter the order?

40OFFENDER:  Yes.

41HER HONOUR:  I will not forget who you are either, Ms Olifent, because everything I say today is going to be written down and when your name comes up I simply go to my sentencing file and I will know precisely what I have said to you, what you did, and why you are getting this.

42MS ELLIS:  Your Honour, can I just clarify.  Your Honour has imposed a sentence on Charge 11 of 259 days.  The Charges 1 to 10 ‑ ‑ ‑

43HER HONOUR:  They have still got two months each.  They are just going to be concurrent. Then there are 259 days on Charge 11, there are six months on Charge 12, then there are 259 days on Charge 13 and six months on Charge 14, and that gives a total effective sentence of 259 days and I order that 185 days have already been served by way of pre-sentence detention.  Sorry, I have made a mistake.  Charges 11 and 13 will be 265 days and I declare 185 days have already been served by way of pre-sentence detention.

44Were you injecting or smoking ice?

45OFFENDER:  Smoking.

46HER HONOUR:  It makes it a bit hard to check for future boyfriends' needle marks because they will not have them. 

47I have signed the forfeiture order, the disposal order.  Remember what I said.  You need to go and talk to some of those - pick the most wrecked woman you can find and talk to her.  Find out how many kids she has lost, how many men have been through, and some of them along the way the abuse that they suffer.  Some of the most damaged women you will ever see are in there.

48I am also ordering a restitution order, that is in relation to Sage Scott, a restitution of his cards, restitution in relation to Ms Ingram of her laptop and other items, there is a restitution order of cash moneys to Park Avenue Accommodation Group.  The $16,000 is in relation to the restoration of the room?

49MS ELLIS:  Yes, Your Honour.

50HER HONOUR:  The amount of $16,647.61 in relation to the restitution of the hotel room.  You will probably be able to come to some sort of pay off.  If I have missed any dates, Ms Ellis, just fill them in - the main thing is I have signed it. 

51Is there anything else that I need to do?  Did I say three years?  I thought I meant three and a half years.  I meant it to be three years and six months.  I have made that change and initialled them.

52MS ELLIS:  I think the only outstanding matter is the s.6AAA.

53HER HONOUR:  I do not think I need to, do I?  Because a Community Corrections Order has been handed down I do not think I have to.

54MS ELLIS:  I thought given that there has also been a term of imprisonment - I will check that, Your Honour.

55HER HONOUR:  Pursuant to s.6AAA I declare that had Ms Olifent not pleaded guilty I would have sentenced her to a term of imprisonment of four years with a two and a half year minimum - actually, more like five with a three I think, it is pretty bad offending.  That is everything?

56MS ELLIS:  Yes, Your Honour.

57HER HONOUR:  I thank counsel for their assistance.  Good luck, Ms Olifent.

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