Director of Public Prosecutions v Stevenson

[2018] VCC 986

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

AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

COLIN STEVENSON (a pseudonym)

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JUDGE:	HER HONOUR JUDGE GAYNOR
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:
DATE OF SENTENCE:	28 June 2018
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Stevenson
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2018] VCC 986

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:
Catchwords:
Legislation Cited:
Cases Cited:
Sentence:

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms C. Jago
For the Accused	Ms N. Karapanagiotidis

HER HONOUR: 

1Colin Stevenson,[1] a jury has found you guilty of two charges of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16.  You were acquitted of seven charges of sexual penetration and one charge of indecent act with a child under the age of 16.  The facts underlying your offending are as follows. 

[1] Colin Stevenson is a pseudonym.

2You engaged in a ten-month relationship with the complainant which ran from about July 2014 to early May in 2015.  During the course of that relationship, you were aged 24 and the complainant was aged 14 to 15.  The complainant first made a report of this relationship in June of 2016.  The defence mounted by you was that you were unaware of the age of the complainant throughout the relationship. 

3Evidence was led of the fact that the complainant, when you met her, was actively seeking work, was intermittently attending school, was - and this is in no way demeaning of the complainant - was sexually confident, and indeed, during the course of the relationship, essentially ended up living with you at your home. 

4However, the complainant decided in late April, early May to end the relationship.  It was her evidence that she decided the best way to do this was by engaging in another sexual relationship with a man she met at the funeral of a friend's mother.  Thereafter, she had sex with you in which you penetrated her vagina first with your finger and then your penis.  She explained that she had had sex with you on that occasion because she felt uncomfortable about ending the relationship to some extent, felt she owed it to you, and it was essentially - if I can put it this way - "goodbye sex". 

5Just previous to this, there had been a Facebook posting by the complainant's sister about sexual harassment of women in general during which she mentioned the age of the complainant as being 15.  There were a number of answers to this post by various people including you.  And it would seem the jury had concluded that you were made aware of the complainant's age as a result of that Facebook post which pretty much immediately preceded the last episode of sexual contact between yourself and the complainant.  

6You have no prior convictions. 

7I turn now to your personal - sorry.  The maximum penalty for sexual penetration of a child under 16 is 15 - is it 15?  Sorry.  It is 20 years, I think, is it not?  I should know. 

8MS JAGO:  I think it is ten, Your Honour, I will just confirm. 

9MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  I think that is right.  I think that is what Mr Albert - sorry, Your Honour.  I should know this off the top of my head too but I have a memory of Your Honour being told ‑ ‑ ‑ 

10HER HONOUR:  Twenty.  It is now 20 years, is it not? 

11MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Ten?

12MS JAGO:  Twenty-five.

13HER HONOUR:  Is it now 25?

14MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Twenty-five, there you go.

15HER HONOUR:  Is 25 years' imprisonment, an indication of the seriousness with which Parliament regards offending of this kind. 

16You are 27 years of age.  Your parents are both deceased but they separated when you were nine and between the ages of ten, moved backwards and forwards between living with your mother and father.  When you were about ten, your father returned to live in Romania and shortly after that, died from what you believed was liver cancer. 

17When you were about 11 and a half or 12, your mother sustained major injuries in a motor car accident, was in a coma for some time and as a result, you moved to Noosa where you lived with your maternal grandmother, your much older stepbrother, some cousins and uncles, remaining there until about the age of 18 or 19 when you returned to Melbourne. 

18At the time of this offending, you were residing in a house you bought with money left to you by your father.  But she died in her mid-40s in September 2016, right around the time that you began being involved in the proceedings surrounding the allegations made the complainant.  

19You told psychologist Jeffrey Cummins, whose report dated 12 June 2018 was tendered on the plea, that you were told that she alighted from a taxi, tripped and fell and died.  You made it clear that you assumed your mother's death was related to her drug-using lifestyle, saying that you had observed her engaging in this sort of activity from the time you were five, that she smoked cannabis from the time you were about eight to ten and believed that she - to quote you - "probably in and out of trouble with the law." 

20You finished Year 12 at the Noosa District State High School in Cooroy, describing yourself as an average student.  After returning to Melbourne and living with your mother, you worked at Cash Converters in Dandenong for a period of about three years until 2013.  This job ended because you were sometimes late for work and were told that you spent too much time on the phone.  In 2014, you worked at a call centre in Dandenong for about six to eight months. 

21You had a relationship with a girlfriend between 2011 (the two of you living together) and this relationship was ended abruptly by her in 2013.

22After leaving the call centre, you had some part-time call centre work over a couple of months.  You began working at another call centre in 2014 for about four months but this employment ended about the time of your mother's death, leaving you shocked and depressed.  It appears you have not worked since and are currently unemployed. 

23You appear not to have a problem with drugs and alcohol.  You told
Mr Cummins since the age of 16, you have been very committed to the Christian religion, attending church, praying and undertaking Bible studies.  You believed that your faith was extremely important to your mental health. 

24You have been actively involved in roller blading since you were about 16 or 17, including competition roller blading.  You have been a keen tennis player although you ceased doing this in your early 20s. 

25Importantly, you met your now wife in August 2015 and the two of you were married in September 2017.  She works in administration for a telephone sales business.  She has never been in trouble with the law and she is reportedly very supportive of you.  Indeed, I received a reference from her to that effect. 

26The offending, although clearly serious as I have already stated given the maximum penalty available in such cases, has some distinctive features which have led me to the conclusion that I need not consider a term of imprisonment for you but instead place you on a community corrections order which I note the prosecution has submitted was in the range of appropriate penalties available for this offending. 

27It is clear from the jury's verdict that they were not satisfied that for the bulk of the relationship - that is the time that you lived with the complainant - you were aware of her age and became aware of it only after the relationship  had virtually terminated.  It is also clear from Facebook entries that you were extremely distressed at the ending of the relationship. 

28It is also clear that the complainant did present as much older than her age and was engaging, during the period of time you were living with her, in activities which took her away from the sorts of important life aspects of a teenage girl such as receiving an appropriate education, and dealing with other important features which can underlie the successful progression of a young person to being a stable and productive adult. 

29In her victim impact statement, the complainant stated that as a result of this offending, in particular after the charges, she developed anxiety about seeing you in public, that her mental health declined, that she was unable to attend to school in the way she had wished to, and that generally this whole experience had prevented her from engaging in the age-appropriate activities of a girl at her stage of life. 

30It was Mr Cummins' view that given the circumstances surrounding this offending and your lack of prior or subsequent history that, he regarded you as being a person at low risk of reoffending in this way indeed.  It was his view that you did not require, for example, a sex offender course.  He pointed out that this was the only age-inappropriate relationship you have engaged in.  You are now married to a woman in the same age group as you with a stable relationship.  It is ongoing.  You do not present as having any interest in under-aged girls and so forth. 

31I had you assessed for a community corrections order.  In that assessment, concerns were expressed at your view of the offending, stating that you appeared to have little insight, did not take responsibility for it and so forth.  In my view, that assessment appeared to centre upon the whole of the relationship between you and the complainant rather than the particular circumstances of it.  Whilst in no way approving of your engaging in sexual intercourse with the complainant once you were aware of your age, I do accept there is a mitigating factor in that it occurred at a time when you had been in a relationship with her of some months, were very emotionally involved with her, rather distressed at the ending of it so that your engagement in that sexual activity was not as a result of predatory desire but more a rather immature and irresponsible response to the knowledge that in fact she was 15 rather than the older age you believed her to be at the time.

32I accept the findings of Mr Cummins.  In my view, you do not present as a danger to the community; as a person who is likely to engage in appropriate sexual activity with under-aged girls and it is not my belief that you require a sex offenders program, nor do you require psychological intervention or treatment for drug or alcohol issues.  This is a most unusual case, very confined to its facts and in my view, you need only be placed on order with a work component which you have agreed you will engage in. 

33I note the line in the community corrections report, "This service has some reservations about Mr Stevenson’s capacity to fully engage in completing a CCO."  That comment is based on, as I understand it, the assessor's understanding of your offending which in my view is somewhat misplaced, with the greatest respect to that assessor.  As I have said, I prefer the assessment of
Mr Cummins, a most experienced forensic psychologist, particularly in matters of sexual offending.  In my view, you do not present as a person who would not engage as required with the conditions of the CCO which will not for the reasons I have already outlined contain the recommended engagement in programs designed to reduce reoffending.  That is the sex offenders program, supervision or other conditions beyond that of unpaid community work.  Could you stand up please, sir?

34On each of the charges of sexual penetration of a child under 16, you are placed on a community corrections order for a period of two years.  Before I can place you on that order, you must first consent to it so I need to outline the core conditions of that order.  First, you must report to your local community corrections office which I understand is in Box Hill?

35MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Yes.

36HER HONOUR:  Yes.  Within two working days.  That is by Monday of next weeks.  Whilst on that order, you must not commit another offence punishable by imprisonment.  Now, what that means is if you are charged with an offence, you do not have to be gaoled for it but if it is an offence that you could be gaoled for theoretically, like stealing a box of matches from Woolworths, that will constitute a breach. 

37You may not leave Victoria without the permission of the community corrections office.  You must inform the community corrections office of any change of employment or address within 48 hours of the making of that change.  You must not attend upon the community corrections office under the influence of drugs or alcohol.  You must report to and receive visits from the community corrections office.  You must abide by all lawful directions of the community corrections office. 

38I also order that you undertake 200 hours of unpaid community work. 

39Are you prepared to enter this order?

40OFFENDER:  Yes, Your Honour.

41HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  We will just print out the appropriate documentation.  Thank you.

42MS JAGO:  Your Honour, just with respect to the maximum penalty, it was ten years.

43HER HONOUR:  It is ten years.  I thought they had gone up.

44MS JAGO:  It has gone up.  This is the ‑ ‑ ‑ 

45HER HONOUR:  But after this ‑ ‑ ‑ 

46MS JAGO:  Yes.  This is the legislation that was - yes.

47HER HONOUR:  Really?  I thought it had gone up to 15 before that.  There you go.

48MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  I had a recollection of Mr Albert saying ten years, Your Honour.  But again, off the top of my head ‑ ‑ ‑ 

49HER HONOUR:  No, I should know.  No, I said no supervision.  No.  It is just a straight order with 200 hours' unpaid community work.  I am grateful for the fact that counsel discussed that report because I had some concerns myself.

50I will make sure that a copy of this report goes to Corrections.

51MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Thank you, Your Honour. 

52HER HONOUR:  Indeed, it went to them at the time but I do not know whether it was read very - thank you.  All right.  I will get you to sign this.  Thank you,
Mr Stevenson.

53MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  May I approach with your associate, Your Honour?

54HER HONOUR:  Yes, of course.

55MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Thank you.

56HER HONOUR:  Is Mr Stevenson placed on the Sex Offenders Register?

57MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Mandatorily, he will be.  Yes, Your Honour.

58HER HONOUR:  For how long?

59MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Fifteen years.

60HER HONOUR:  Yes.  You will also be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for a period of 15 years.  Thank you.  Yes, so we will need to print that out too please.  You can come back.  Come back and we can do it and
Ms Karapanagiotidis can give that you.  Thank you, Ms Karapanagiotidis.  I have just got a plea running next so ‑ ‑ ‑ 

61MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Sorry.  Yes, Your Honour.

62HER HONOUR:  That is all right.  Could I have that please to sign?

63MS KARAPANAGIOTIDIS:  Yes, of course.  Sorry.

64HER HONOUR:  Thank you.  Yes, I will sign that in my chambers and then we will give it to you and we also probably need a copy of the corrections order as well.  Thank you very much.  And I will say I will not come on the Bench for the plea until quarter to 11.  Thank you very much.

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