Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation v Crowe
[2015] VCC 1657
•18 September 2015
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised and Redacted Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
CR-15-01087
| THE SECRETARY TO THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND REGULATION |
| v |
| PETER THOMAS CROWE |
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JUDGE: | HER HONOUR JUDGE HAMPEL | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 15 September 2015 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 18 September 2015 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | ||
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2015] VCC 1657 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation | Mr O. Holdenson QC | Russell Kennedy |
| For the Accused | Mr D. Dann | Emma Turnbull Lawyers |
HER HONOUR:
1
Peter Crowe, on 24 September 2012 I made a supervision order under the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009. The order commenced on 9 October 2012. The first review was to take place by
8 October 2014 and the order was to continue in force for three years.
2 The first review commenced in September 2014 and by orders finally made on 17 December 2014, the supervision order was confirmed, with some minor amendments essentially to the drafting of the conditions.
3 Under the original and confirmed order, you were
(a) not to leave Victoria without the permission of the Adult Parole Board.
(b) not to knowingly have contact with a child under 16 without the prior written consent of the Adult Parole Board.
(c) not to use or access the internet without the prior written consent of the Adult Parole Board.
(d) not to use a camera without the prior written consent of the Adult Parole Board; and
(e) to comply with written instructions from the Adult Parole Board when using a mobile telephone.
4 The Adult Parole Board gave you a written instruction in respect of your use of a mobile telephone, that you were not to access or store pornography.
5 On the making of the original supervision order and on its confirmation, with the minor variations to the conditions that I have already mentioned, I read the order and its conditions aloud to you in open court, and you confirmed that you had heard and understood the order and conditions.
6 On 11 October 2012, three days after the original supervision order was made and on 9 February 2015, six weeks after the original order was confirmed, you had meetings with your case manager, where the order was again read over to you. On each of these occasions, you were given written instructions pursuant to the supervision order or the confirmed supervision order and each of those written instructions included a direction you were not to access or store pornography.
7 In February this year, at a supervision meeting with your senior case manager, your mobile telephone was inspected. That led to further investigations and ultimately to the laying of 16 charges under s.160(1) of the Serious Sexual Offender Detention and Supervision Act.
8 An offence under s.160(1) is an indictable offence, but pursuant to s.172(5), this court may, on application, grant a summary hearing, to be held in this court, but conducted applying the practice and procedure applicable to the conduct of summary hearings in the Magistrates' Court.
9 A joint application was made for summary jurisdiction and I granted the application. You pleaded guilty to Charges 1, 9, 10 11 12, 13 and 14. Charges 1 and 12 had, with your counsel’s consent, been amended to make them rolled-up charges. Charges 2-8, and Charges 15-16 were then struck out.
10 The charges to which you pleaded guilty reveal that you had, during the period of the supervision order, repeatedly breached a number of the conditions, namely those that I have already read out.
11 Charge 1 is a rolled up charge encompassing four separate occasions between 28 June 2013 and 18 April 2014 where you went interstate without permission. On each occasion you went and stayed with a family comprising a single mother and her four children in Elizabeth Downs, South Australia. The three youngest children were aged 15, 14 and three when you first visited, that is, on 28 June 2013. The 15 year old turned 16 on 7 April 2014 just before your last visit. As the report of the psychologist Mr Candlish, prepared for the purposes of the application for a renewal further supervision order, which was listed for hearing at the same time as the plea in respect of these charges, revealed you had known the mother for a considerable time and knew that her children had previously been sexually abused.
12 The first of the interstate visits took place within nine months of the making of the original supervision order. The next visit occurred only two weeks after the supervision order was confirmed and the last two visits occurred at approximately two monthly intervals after that.
13 You had no permission to travel interstate and did not reveal to your senior case manager or the Adult Parole Board that you intended to or had travelled interstate.
14 Charges 9, 10 and 11 concern contact with the three children of the family who were under 16 at the time of your first visit. The charge concerning the oldest of these children covers the nine month period from your first contact until the day before her 16th birthday. That covers three visits or three occasions when you stayed over, visited and had contact with her. The charges concerning the two younger children cover the period from the first visit to the date of last known contact with each of them. In the case of the child who was 14 at the time of first contact, your contact continued for 19 months, beyond his 15th birthday and up to 24 January 2015. In the case of the child who was three at the time of the first contact, it continued for 18 months, up to 7 January 2015 when she had turned five.
15 So far as each child was concerned, the contact included supervised and unsupervised face to face contact when you visited South Australia and stayed with the family, and the exchange of text messages. Most of the text messages were directly between you and the child, but the contact with the middle child, the boy, started with the relaying of messages to and from him through the mother, before progressing to direct contact. You sent birthday wishes to the youngest on the occasion of her fourth and fifth birthdays. With the two older children, many of the messages concerned the children asking you for money or you arranging to send them money for goods such as clothing, phones and jewellery. In addition, you asked the 15 year old girl to send you a photograph of her. There were three photos of the youngest child and at least one with the child who was under 16 for the period covered by Charge 9 and I think one photo also with the oldest child of the family who was over 16 at all relevant times.
16 You did not reveal to your case manager that you were having contact with these children and you did not have or seek the permission of the Adult Parole Board to have contact with them.
17 Charge 12 is a rolled-up charge concerning your accessing the internet without permission over a period of 20 months, from June 2013 to the day before your phone was inspected, namely 2 February 2015. An examination of your mobile phone revealed you had been accessing the internet. You had no permission to do so from the Adult Parole Board. The internet history revealed 301 internet sites had been visited. Some of the websites you visited were benign. Sites such as the weather and the stock market and the like. But many of the websites you visited were pornography sites. Some sites had titles which suggested they involved child pornography. You had bookmarked 15 sites, some of which had titles suggesting they too involved child pornography.
18 Charge 13 concerns your unauthorised use of a camera. Between October 2012 and December 2014, 30 images had been taken and stored on the phone. 3 of those were of a naked, adult woman. The first photo was taken just weeks after the court hearing where the original supervision order was made and only days after it had come into effect and been reread to you by your senior case manager. The last photograph was taken just days after the order was confirmed and had been read to you in open court.
19 Charge 14 concerns the accessing and storing of pornography. A total of 187 adult pornography images and one adult pornography video were stored on your phone. A further 376 adult pornography videos had been downloaded and later deleted but were no longer stored on your phone by the time of examination.
20 These charges reveals that you have demonstrated a blatant and wilful disregard for a number of the conditions of your supervision order. This was persistent, repeated and protracted conduct.
21 The supervision order was made because you had been found to pose an unacceptable risk of committing sexual offences against children, if a supervision order was not made and you were in the community. Although there had been some argument in relation to the nature and extent of some of the conditions of the supervision order, you acknowledged at the hearing in respect of the making of the original supervision order in 2012 and on the review hearing in 2014, that the test, under the Serious Sexual Offender Detention and Supervision Act had been met and you consented to the making of the order and the conditions ultimately imposed.
22 The conditions were imposed to reduce that risk, to prevent you from engaging in behaviour which, on the expert assessments, which you did not challenge, were behaviours which put you at risk of engaging in further sexual offending.
23 You have advanced various explanations or justifications for engaging in this behaviours, that is, in breaching these conditions. They ranged from assertions you were unaware that you were breaching conditions of your order or of the conditions of your order, to admitting to having knowingly breached the conditions of the order, but in those circumstances you were unable to advance any explanation for doing so other than ,“I don’t know” or, "It was a stupid thing to do". You were quick to point out that no child pornography had been found and to assert the mother of the children was an old friend of yours. You repeatedly asserted that you have no longer any sexual urges or sexual interest in children, but the conduct revealed by these breaches would suggest otherwise. You show no insight into the gravity of the offending or the increase in risk of committing further sexual offences against children. Concerningly, some of the patterns of behaviour here are behaviours which preceded the commission of some of the sexual offences against children for which you have been sentenced in the past.
24 As Mr Candlish said in his report, your non-contact offending is considered to be related to your risk of contact offending and your contact offending has, in the past, involved a period of grooming and ongoing interaction before any attempt to sexually offend in a contact sense against a child has occurred.
25 I cannot and do not make findings the breaches in Charges 9, 10 and 11, that is, the contact with the children involve grooming. I make no finding that you were intending to sexually offend against these children, but they were, as you knew, vulnerable children, by reason of their past experiences, and your readiness to give them money and spend it on their behalf, and their readiness to ask your for money and gifts is evidence of behaviour which puts you at greater risk of further offending: the very thing the conditions of the supervision order which you breached were designed to reduce.
26 It is clear that general deterrence, just punishment and denunciation are subject to consideration of matters personal to you, significant sentencing considerations when dealing with breaches of the conditions of the supervision order.
27 As can be assumed by reason of the fact you have been the subject of a supervision order, you have a history of sexual offending against children, and pose an unacceptable risk of committing further offences against children. You were first before a court for sexual offending against children in 1961, when you were 20. There have been various convictions since then, the most significant resulting a sentence of imprisonment of six years and two months with a non-parole period set at three years and three months. That was imposed by this court in 2002. You are now 74 and your last court appearance for sexual offending was in 2011, when you received a 12 month term of imprisonment for possession of child pornography. The 2012 supervision order was imposed on the expiry of that sentence. Your offending from the period from 1961 to 2011 has included both contact and non-contact offences.
28 Mr Candlish had recently assessed you again.
29 Mr Candlish expressed the view you pose a high risk of committing further non-contact offences and a moderate to high risk of committing further contact offences against children.
30 In paragraph 101 of his report, he says,
“Mr Crowe's contact offending appears to have largely involved a period of grooming and ongoing interaction prior to his attempts to sexually offend. He has been found to have maintained a relationship with a woman and three children and actively maintain contact with these children.".
And at paragraph 104, he said,
"Mr Crowe appears most at risk for non-contact sexual offending involving possession of child sexual abuse images or taking photographs of children in public for sexual gratification purposes. It is noted that he has recently breached the supervision order through maintaining contact with the three children and has also recently breached the Sex Offender Reporting Act, through maintaining contact with the three children. He possessed images of these children on his phone. These behaviours raise concern about his willingness to place himself in highly risky situations given his long standing history for sexual offending".
31 Mr Candlish concludes at paragraph 118 of his report, from the commission of these breach offences, that you have displayed non-compliance and disengagement in supervision and case management and interventions, and that you have engaged in high risk behaviours. In his view you do not appear to have shown an active desire to address the causes of your sexual offending. At paragraph 119 of his report, he characterised your communications with your case manager over the period of the breach offending as dishonest and evasive. Those are apt terms in my view.
32 In addition to Mr Candlish’s report of 24 May 2015, I was provided with the two most recent quarterly review reports prepared in accordance with the Act. They are dated 31 March and 20 July 2015 respectively. I was also provided with a report prepared at the behest of your legal advisers, by the psychologist Dr Aaron Cunningham. The quarterly review reports are consistent with the report of Mr Candlish. Dr Cunningham’s report too confirms your level of risk of reoffending and your lack of motivation to engage in discussion about your sexual offending or motivations. I was told by Mr Holdenson that Mr Candlish, having now read the quarterly review reports of 31 March and 20 July, indicates they do nothing to change the views expressed in his report and serve only to confirm the conclusions that he has reached.
33 At the age of 74, with that history and those findings, your prospects for rehabilitation can best be described as poor. It is clear that the sentence for these breaches must also act as a deterrent to you, as well as to others who are subject to supervision orders.
34 You appear, as I commented during the hearing, to by considerably frailer than when you were before me in 2012 and even last year. Your hearing has been impaired since birth. I was told your mother had rubella when she was pregnant with you and for many years you have had hearing aids in both ears. You report that you recently damaged one hearing aid and have not replaced it. That has made communication even more difficult. You are currently walking with a stick, the result, I was told of a fall last year. You had a hip replacement ten years ago and about that time, also suffered a stroke. You report having had two heart attacks in recent years. Earlier this year, you were hospitalised for some time with a bowel obstruction. It appears your contact with doctors over the early part of this year at least, if not before then, had been infrequent. That difficulty in contact or infrequent contact with your regular GP had been in part due to difficulties with your continuing to be able to see him. He is based in Ararat and I am told that there is an arrangement between Corella Place or Corrections and the city of Ararat that people held at Corella Place, do not visit Ararat unless accompanied. Whether that was the reason or not, because it seems much of your poor health had arisen before you were returned to Corella Place in February this year, it is clear that you had not been under adequate medical care and there did not seem to be anybody who was interested in or taking responsibility for assisting you to get the medical care that you needed.
35 According to the most recent quarterly report, since your return to Corella Place, you have been assisted and been prepared to accept assistance from corrections authorities to help you re-engage with appropriate medical practitioners. The medical care or attention to your physical problems appears to have been reinstated and is now better.
36 Dr Cunningham assessed you as functioning at a low level intellectually. I am a little surprised, as I said to Mr Dann in the course of the hearing, that there appeared to have been no consideration of whether your low level of functioning or motivation could be attributable to age related decline, but as it is clear, and accepted, you were aware of the conditions of your supervision order, and that your breaches were persistent, deliberate, and deliberately not revealed to your senior case manager, there is nothing to suggest that I should consider whether your moral culpability for the breaches should be reduced by mental illness, intellectual impairment or age related decline in intellectual functioning.
37 Your hearing impairment, and poor physical health are matters properly to take into account when considering the appropriate sentence and in particular, the type and length of sentence.
38 This is the first time you have been dealt with for breach of conditions of a supervision order. You have twice been convicted of breaching your obligations under the Sex Offender Registration Act 2004. The first of those was dealt with in October 2011, at the same time that you were sentenced for the charge of possess child pornography to which I have earlier referred. You received a one month sentence for the breaches of the Sex Offender Registration Act, which was to be served concurrently with the sentence imposed for possession of the child pornography.
39 The most recent conviction for breach of the Sex Offender Registration Act is not a prior conviction for sentencing purposes. It arose, in part, out of the circumstances surrounding your trips to Adelaide. In May this year, you pleaded guilty to six charges of breach of your Sex Offender Registration Act obligations. One of those charges was a rolled-up charge in respect of your failure to report unsupervised access to children between June 2013 and April 2014. That therefore has an overlap with Charges 9, 10 and 11 that I am dealing with. The other five charges dealt with in the Magistrates' Court for breach under the Sex Offender Registration Act dealt with different breaches: failing to report the obtaining four new phone numbers; and failing to report the purchase of a vehicle. You were sentenced to an aggregate $1,500 fine.
40 So far as that one Sex Offender Registration Act charge which overlaps with these charges, I must, as Mr Dann pointed out, ensure there is no double punishment. Although the factual background is the same, or the charges arise out of the same circumstances, namely contact with the three children under 16 in South Australia, the offences are very different. It is not an offence under the Sex Offender Registration Act to have contact with children under 16. Under the Sex Offender Registration Act, it is the failure to report something which is not of itself prohibited which constitutes the gravamen of the offence. By contrast, the charge I am dealing with is one where you were under a condition which prohibited contact with children without the prior written consent to the Adult Parole Board.
41 Having said that, this case is another demonstration of the unsatisfactory nature of the over wide and non-discretionary operation of the Sex Offender Registration Act. It is difficult to see any reason why a person on a supervision order needs to be subject to the Sex Offender Registration Act. It simply creates unnecessary overlap and duplication for offender and those responsible for monitoring those orders alike. Supervision orders provide a much more comprehensive and stricter set of individually tailored conditions, designed to address the identifiable risks posed by a person who is adjudged to be an unacceptable risk of further sexual offending. The Sex Offender Registration Act is a blunt instrument. It has no mechanism for tailoring conditions or their duration, to the identifiable risks of an individual offender having regard to his circumstances. Even if a comprehensive review of the operation of the Sex Offender Registration Act is not undertaken by government and even if the recommendations of the Victorian Law Reform Commission, in its report on the operation of the Sex Offender Registration Act, continued to sit unadopted, in my view, consideration should be given to legislating to suspend the requirement to comply with the Sex Offender Registration Act for so long as a person is subject to a supervision order. I would urge the representatives of the Secretary to bring these concerns of mine to the attention of the Secretary.
42 Coming back to consideration of matters personal to you. You have pleaded guilty and I accept the pleas should be treated as being made at the earliest opportunity. You are entitled to a reduction in the penalty otherwise appropriate. Although you lack insight into the offending, and therefore cannot be said to be remorseful, save for the position you now find yourself in, the pleas have considerable utilitarian value.
43 You have, as the quarterly reports tendered by Mr Holdenson reveal, already suffered penalty as a result of the breach of your supervision order. You had previously been living either on site at the tow truck business where you were working, or at the Golden Gate, a supported accommodation facility in Ararat. Since February of this year, when the breaches were first discovered, you have been required, under direction of the Adult Parole Board, to live at Corella Place. That is a much more restricted and controlled environment. You have always had and suffered from very limited social contact, a matter that was commented on in the reports supporting the original supervision order, and its review that was confirmed again in Mr Candlish’s most recent report. The direction to live at Corella place, whilst perhaps understandable in light of these breach offences, will only compound your social isolation.
44 Mr Dann submitted, in this post Boulton[1] environment in which we operate, that I should consider having you assessed for suitability for a community correction order. I see no basis for doing so. Even if safe worksites were available for a person who poses a high risk of further sexual offences against children, your age, your hearing impairment and your poor physical health make you unsuitable for consideration for performing unpaid community work or imposing it as a condition. You are already subject to the coercive operation of a supervision order and as I have already noted, that provides a higher, more specialised and much more individualised level of case management, supervision, psychological treatment and specialist sex offender programs than any community correction order can offer. Mr Dann was unable to identify any other programs which would or even might be available or suitable to your needs under a CCO. Any CCO programs would only duplicate, and in a less specialised, and less individualised form, those to which you are already subject under the supervision order. As such, it seems to me a, community correction order, could have no punitive or rehabilitative effect and would lead to simply and unnecessary duplication of time and effort and the imposition on you of additional conditions which would have no real benefit for you or the community.
[1]Boulton v The Queen [2014] VSCA 342
45 Given the widespread nature of the breaches and your history, in any event, I have come to the conclusion that no sentence other than one involving imprisonment is appropriate to serve the needs of deterrence, both general and specific, denunciation and just punishment. However, your poor hearing, your age and your poor health as well as your pleas of guilty operate to moderate that sentence.
46 At the end of the hearing, Mr Dann submitted it was open to me to impose a suspended sentence. After some discussion, it was acknowledged that on any analysis, a suspended sentence was not available on Charge 14, the accessing and storing pornography charge because of the time of the commission of that offence or the detection of the commission of that offence.
47
The question of whether it was open to me to impose a suspended sentence in respect of the other charges became unexpectedly complicated. It is not open to impose a suspended sentence in the Magistrates' Court or exercising Magistrates' Court jurisdiction for an offence committed after
1 September 2014. It is not open to impose a suspended sentence in this court for an offence committed after 1 September 2013.[2]
[2]Sentencing Amendment (Abolition of Suspended Sentences and other Matters) Act 2013 (Vic) s 22.
48 I have been assisted by the supplementary written submissions filed by the parties. They have, having had time to consider the complicated transitional provisions relating to the staged abolition of suspended sentences, reached the same conclusion.
49 If, in imposing sentence, in the exercise of summary jurisdiction conferred by s. 172(5) of the Serious Sexual Offender Detention Supervision Act, the requirement to adopt the practice and procedure of the Magistrates' Court conferred by s.172(6) of the Act extends to applying all sentencing options open to a magistrate, it is open to me to impose a suspended sentence.
50 If, on the other hand, the requirement to adopt the practice and procedure of the Magistrates' Court as required by s.172(6) of the Act does not extend to applying all sentencing options open to a magistrate, and I am exercising the power of this court, it is still open to me to impose suspended sentences, having regard to the commencement date of all of the offences, save for Charge 14.
51 Having come to the conclusion that no sentence other than one of imprisonment is appropriate for these offences, I have also come to the view, having regard to your age and frailty that it is appropriate to make orders in respect of all charges other than Charge 14, which will require only part of those sentences to be immediately served. But the whole of the sentence in respect of Charge 14 must be immediately served. In order to implement that, what I have done is impose sentences on Charges 1, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13, with partial cumulation orders where appropriate, to come to a total effective sentence and then imposed a period of partial suspension in respect of that. I have separately or I am separately going to impose a sentence on Charge 14 which will run concurrently with the total effective sentence in respect of the other charges and which will run for the same period as the non-suspended part of the sentence on the other charges. That seems to me to be an appropriate form to ensure that it is clear that I am not imposing a total effective sentence and then partially suspending a sentence which includes a term of imprisonment for Charge 14. Is there anything that the parties want to say to me about the form in which I have indicated I propose to impose the sentences?
MR DANN: I do not, Your Honour.
HER HONOUR: I know it is tricky, Mr Holdenson.
MR HOLDENSON: The whole thing is tricky.
HER HONOUR: So it is a single separate sentence, Charge 14. A total effective sentence in respect of all of the other charges and, although I do not need to make a specific direction because of presumption in favour of concurrency, the sentence on Charge 14 will run concurrently with the sentence on the other matters.
MR HOLDENSON: The answer is in s.16 of the Act. I am just looking at s.16.
HER HONOUR: Yes, so s.16(1)? Is that presumption in favour of concurrency unless otherwise directed? Sub-section (1A) does not apply, sub-s (2) does not apply, sub-s (2A) does not apply, sub-s (3) does not apply, sub-s (3B) does not apply, sub-s (3BA) does not, sub-s (3C) does not, sub-s (4) does not and sub-s (6) seems to suggest that I can do it. Yes, so it is an individual sentence which is not suspended in respect of Charge 14.
MR DANN: As long as - from my point of view, Your Honour, as long as it is made clear that it is an individual sentence in respect of 14, it is permissible.
HER HONOUR: That is why I structured it that way, even though the time served will be the length of the sentence imposed on Charge 14, because that runs concurrently with the time to be served in respect of the partially suspended sentence on all the other charges. Does that seem to work,
Mr Holdenson?
MR HOLDENSON: I am not going to make a submission to the contrary.
HER HONOUR: Thank you. All right. So these are the sentences Mr Crowe. As I said, you can remain seated. On the charges to which you pleaded guilty of breaches of your conditions under the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act:
52 On Charge 1, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of four months.
53 On Charge 9, to be imprisoned for a period of six months and I direct that one month of that be served cumulatively upon the base sentence and the other partial cumulation orders.
54 On Charge 10, to be imprisoned for a period of six months and again, one month cumulative.
55 On Charge 11, to be imprisoned for a period of four months and again, one month cumulative.
56 On Charge 12, to be imprisoned for a period of eight months and that is the base sentence.
57 On Charge 13, two months with one month cumulative.
58 That makes a total effective sentence of 12 months and I suspend six months of that for a period of six months. On Charge 14, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of six months and by operation of s.16(1) of the Sentencing Act, the sentence on Charge 14 is to run concurrently with the sentences imposed on Charges 1, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
59 I declare, pursuant to s.6AAA of the Sentencing Act that but for your pleas of guilty, I would have imposed a total effective sentence of 18 months imprisonment and I would have fixed a period of nine months as the time that you would have to have served before being eligible for parole.
60 So that then I think deals with the breach offences and all orders that are required to be made pursuant to that.
61 MR HOLDENSON: Yes, Your Honour. Just to matters, I would respectfully request that Your Honour provide in due course, a copy of your revised reasons in order to facilitate those instructing me to draw attention to certain matters to the Secretary, the matters raised by Your Honour with respect to the Sex Offender Registration Act and its operation and effecting circumstances where a supervision order under the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act is in force.
62 HER HONOUR: Thank you, yes, I will make that direction. I will make that arrangement.
63 MR HOLDENSON: And the only matter is I think there might have been a slip just at the end just before, Your Honour was to the individual sentences.
64 HER HONOUR: Yes?
65 MR HOLDENSON: I think Your Honour may have made a slip and referred to the Sex Offenders Registration Act?
66 HER HONOUR: Instead of the Serious Sex Offenders Detention and Supervision Act?
67 MR HOLDENSON: Yes, Your Honour.
68 HER HONOUR: Thank you. Happy for me to correct that when the transcript comes through?
69 MR HOLDENSON: Yes, Your Honour.
…
70 I must also tell you insofar as the suspended sentence is concerned, that if you commit any offence during the period of suspension that is punishable by imprisonment, then you are required to be brought back to me for breach proceedings and parliament requires that I then sentence you to serve the unexpired term of that sentence unless exceptional circumstances have arisen since today, since the imposition of a sentence. Do you understand that?
71 So if you breach your suspended sentence by committing another offence, you have got to come back to me and parliament requires that I activate the balance of that sentence, that last six months, unless exceptional circumstances have arisen.
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