R v Slaughter
[2006] VCC 1982
•3 July 2006
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR-06-00141
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| HAROLD SAMUEL SLAUGHTER |
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JUDGE: | HIS HONOUR JUDGE BARNETT | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 27 June 2006 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 3 July 2006 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v. Slaughter | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2006] VCC 1982 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms A. Eddy | |
| For the Accused | Mr K. Cox |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Harold Samuel Slaughter, you have pleaded guilty to a presentment that contains 12 counts of taking part in an indecent act with or in the presence of a child under the age of 16.
2 You are now aged 65 being born on 22 December 1940. You have admitted two prior convictions from court appearances recorded on 30th day of September 1997. Those convictions were for gross indecency and indecent assault for which you were sentenced to an aggregate of six months on each charge to be served concurrently and wholly suspended for a period of two years.
3 A copy of the plea summary relating to those offences was an exhibit on the hearing of the plea. What was alleged was that between 1980 and 1989, when you were in a relationship with the victim's mother, you sexually interfered with the victim by masturbating in front of her, watching pornographic television with her and asking her to massage your penis with a vibrator and allowing the victim to masturbate you. The summary says the offences occurred over a six month period when the victim was aged between nine and ten years of age.
4 What happened in relation to the current presentment was that you were a friend of the family of the victim. You and the father had apparently worked together at the local council. The various offences occurred at locations such as on a bike track, in the child's bedroom, in a car park outside a hardware store, at a garage, at a spa, at your address in your Silvan and in a car.
5 Many of the offences were you masturbating in front of the child or getting the child to masturbate you. On occasions you would touch the child in the vaginal area although you did not penetrate her vagina. On one occasion it seems that you ejaculated onto the child's vagina area. Your behaviour, of course, was a gross breach of trust to the victim's parents and the trust that they had placed in you and, of course, as a result your actions not only have destroyed that truth but inflicted psychological scarring on the child and on her parents.
6 The victim of your criminal conduct was aged ten, having been born on 16 May 1995. The victim impact statements read like many others in similar types of cases and, of course, the psychological scarring that is evident in the victim impact statements takes a long and considerable time for the child to get over it and to adjust to it.
7 Obviously offences such as yours are serious offences, offences that the community strongly condemns and of course an appropriate sentence will reflect considerations of that condemnation and of general and specific deterrence.
8 I have had the benefit of reading the report of Mr Bob Ives, psychologist, dated 22 June 2005 which outlines in detail some of your history but fails to make any mention of your prior convictions. In addition, there is a further report of Sharon Marcus, another psychologist. That report was also available to Mr Ives and was attached to his report. Again, Ms Marcus makes no mention of your prior convictions.
9 Essentially you were one of nine children and your father died in 1956 at the age of 54. Up until that time your father had been working on a farm. After his death your mother was thrown into severe financial difficulties, as she would have been, raising nine children. She died at the age of 52 in 1961 and you were then aged 21.
10 Following your father's death your mother's brother came from Northern Ireland to assist the family and for a while you considered him most highly. He began to sexually assault you. In the fullness of time you found out he had also been sexually assaulting your ten year old sister. You told your mother and he was asked to leave the house. When you were about ten I was told you had been befriended by another older man who had also sexually seduced you.
11 As I understand it, both Mr Ives and Ms Marcus were of the view that your earlier sexual experiences created in you a view that sexual encounters were to be equated with love and that in turn created in you a greater propensity to become a child molester.
12 Mr Ives said, in respect of his offending, it does seem like paraphrasing his daughter's comments, "That under great stress with more emotional support and concern over his health and his apparent impotence that in a depleted, debilitated and fragile emotional state remembering his own favourable response to sexual molestation when he was child and as he has always confused sex with love with a genuine fondness between himself and [the victim], he was able to relate to her distress and he sought emotional and sexual support through the young child."
13 I note from Mr Ives' report that by and large your work history has been solid, that is that you initially worked as a butcher, you married in 1963 when aged 22. In 1971 you got firm employment as a security officer with MSS Security. There were four children of your marriage, three daughters and a son. As well as working as a security officer I am told you had other jobs such as lawn mowing and tree lopping which you participated in during weekends. Your wife was employed at a local supermarket however in 1978 the marriage ended after your wife formed a relationship with her then employer.
14 In 1977 you became employed with the St Kilda Council as a traffic and by-laws officer. You then worked with the Richmond City Council, moved back to St Kilda and then in 1981 you worked for the Maroondah Council as a by-laws officer where you have worked for the last 25 years resigning after being charged with these matters.
15 After your separation from your wife it seems, as I have already mentioned, you formed another relationship with a woman between 1982 and 1988 or '89 and in the year 2000 you met your present wife.
16 I note Mr Ives makes reference to the fact that your wife had a gambling problem and led you in some financial difficulties which, as I understand his report, have been compounded by the selling of your older home and buying a bigger home which your wife and her family have moved into.
17 In addition to the stresses associated with your current matter, you have had in recent times, quadruple bypass and a back injury. You have worried about one of you daughter's health and you have had a fear of impotence. You have become depressed.
18 It would be, on my understanding of the matters contained in Mr Ives' report, that you have generally led a law-abiding life. You are supported in the court by three of your daughters and I also understand that your son has given you support. Your current wife has also been in court, as I understand it.
19 The personal references tendered indicate that you have generally been a reliable, responsible person and a good father to your children and grandchildren, clearly that you are at an age that would make any period of incarceration hard for you in the prison yards. The overwhelming number of prisoners being of course much younger than you and of course very often sexual offenders are looked down upon by the general prison populace.
20 I am mindful of the fact that these matters could have been heard in the Magistrates' Court which would have had an overall jurisdiction to impose a total sentence of something like five years’ imprisonment. I also note that you by and large co-operated with the police. You made the necessary admissions, you pleaded guilty at an early stage albeit it seems that there may have been some playing down of the full tenor of your offending conduct.
21 Nevertheless it seems to me that you are entitled to substantial discounts for an early guilty plea and the frankness that by and large you displayed to the police. I have noted your demeanour during the course of the plea and it is obvious that you were distressed. I am prepared to accept that you have experienced remorse however you must appreciate that your prior convictions do limit the degree of leniency that can now be extended to you in the sense that a court in the past has told you to mend your ways and again you have offended in a very similar way.
22 Obviously these a very serious charges because they do not only involve, as I said, breaches of truth of the child and her parents but they also have inflicted psychological scarring on the victim and indeed her parents for that matter.
23 Consequently there is a need for a court to impose a sentence that denounces such conduct as being totally unacceptable by the general public as well as reflecting, as I have already said, considerations of general as well as specific deterrence.
24 Balancing up as best as I can the various considerations, on each count, you will be sentence to 12 months’ imprisonment. I order one month of Counts 2, 3, 4 and 5 and two months of Counts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 to be served cumulatively on each other and upon the sentence on Count 1, a total effective sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment.
25 I fix a minimum of 15 months before you are eligible for parole. I declare that you have spent seven days by way of pre-sentence detention and it is my intent that that be reckoned as time already served pursuant to this sentence and is to be deducted by the appropriate prison authorities.
26 You are to be registered pursuant to the provisions of the relevant legislation as a sex offender and you are required, as I would understand the current state of the law, to report to the police for a period of your lifetime. I will now as my Associate to deliver the appropriate documents pursuant to the relevant legislation to you. Is there any other matters that I need to attend to?
27 MS EDDY: Your Honour, one outstanding matter the Crown seeks, which I understand is by consent, a disposal order for some of the items seized. I can leave those with your Associate.
28 HIS HONOUR: Yes.
29 MR COX: Yes, I consent, Your Honour.
30 HIS HONOUR: Yes, I signed those disposal orders.
31 MS EDDY: Thank you, Your Honour.
32 HIS HONOUR: Mr Stewart.
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