The Queen v GC
[2021] NTSC 29
•17 March 2021
CITATION:The Queen v GC & Anor [2021] NTSC 29
PARTIES:THE QUEEN
v
GC
and
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
TITLE OF COURT: SUPREME COURT OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
JURISDICTION: SUPREME COURT exercising Territory Jurisdiction
FILE NO:21944910, 22102395 & 22103710
DELIVERED ON: 17 March 2021
HEARING DATES: 12 February, 1 & 12 March 2021
JUDGMENT OF: Grant CJ
REPRESENTATION:
Counsel:
Crown: T Wrathall with J Ibbotson
Supervised Person: G Chipkin
CEO: E Farquhar
Solicitors:
Crown:Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions
Supervised Person: North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency
CEO:Solicitor for the Northern Territory
Judgment category classification: C
Judgment ID Number: Gra2102
Number of pages: 26
IN THE SUPREME COURT
OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
OF AUSTRALIA
AT DARWINThe Queen v GC & Anor [2021] NTSC 29
No. 21944910, 22102395, 22103710
BETWEEN:
THE QUEEN
AND:
GC
AND:
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
CORAM: GRANT CJ
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
(Delivered 17 March 2021)
By indictment dated 25 August 2020, GC (the supervised person) was charged that on 1 December 2019 at Darwin he committed the offences of aggravated assault and deprivation of liberty. The victim of those offences was a six year old boy. I will come to the circumstances of the offending in greater detail shortly.
The maximum penalty the aggravated assault is imprisonment for five years, and the maximum penalty for the deprivation of liberty is imprisonment for seven years.
In addition, the supervised person has been charged with two breaches of bail by complaints taken on 19 January and 2 February 2021 respectively, in relation to incidents in which he absconded from his carers. Those incidents forms part of a broader pattern of non-compliance which I will describe in greater detail later in these reasons.
Not guilty by reason of mental impairment
Reports by a Senior Psychologist and a Consultant Psychiatrist, dated 20 November and 23 November 2020 respectively, concluded that the supervised person was both unfit to stand trial and unlikely to become fit to stand trial within the next 12 months, and was likely suffering from a “mental impairment” in the relevant sense at the time of the offending. As a consequence, on 15 December 2020 this Court:
(a)dispensed with a special hearing;
(b)recorded a finding of not guilty by reason of mental impairment in respect of the offences charged by indictment;
(c)declared the supervised person liable to supervision; and
(d)ordered the responsible person to prepare and file a report addressing the matters prescribed by s 43ZJ(2) of the Criminal Code 1983 (NT).
While agreed facts were not tendered on the plea of not guilty by reason of mental impairment, the parties are in agreement that the facts for the purpose of fixing the notional term of imprisonment are as detailed in a document titled “Outline of the Crown Case”. Those facts may be summarised as follows.
The offence occurred on the afternoon of 1 December 2019 at the cinema complex in the Casuarina Square Shopping Centre. The supervised person was 18 years of age at the time of the alleged offending and the victim was six years of age. At approximately 5 pm that afternoon, the victim arrived at the cinema complex with his sisters to watch a movie. The three children were being supervised at the time by their 15 year old babysitter while their parents had dinner at a restaurant elsewhere in the shopping centre.
Just before the film was about to start, the victim went to the public toilets in the cinema complex. The supervised person entered those toilets at about the same time. At that time the supervised person was subject to an adult guardianship order and was required by the terms of that order to be under one-on-one care. For reasons that are not addressed in the outline of facts, the supervised person was unsupervised at the time and there were no care staff in attendance at the cinema complex.
The supervised person approached the six-year-old victim as he was standing at the washbasins in the toilet, dragged the child into one of the toilet cubicles, locked the door to the cubicle, told the child to be quiet and attempted to lift up the child’s shirt. During the course of that interaction the supervised person also punched the child in the shoulder. The child was somehow able to free himself from the cubicle, and ran out of the toilets into the foyer of the cinema complex. He was crying at the time and made an immediate complaint to the babysitter and his sisters about what had happened.
The incident was brought to the attention of cinema employees and security staff. Shortly after the child had managed to escape, the supervised person left the toilets and the child identified him to security guards. The supervised person was taken to an office and held until police arrived. The supervised person was taken back to his care placement by police and issued with a trespass notice which prohibited him from visiting the Casuarina Square Shopping Centre for a period of 12 months. The child was subsequently interviewed. On 9 December 2019, the supervised person was charged with the offences and granted police bail.
No orders have yet been made in relation to the breaches of bail charged by complaints taken on 19 January and 2 February 2021 respectively. The parties are in agreement that the Court should also dispense with a special hearing into those charges, and record findings of not guilty by reason of mental impairment. Section 37D of the Bail Act 1982 (NT) provides that the Supreme Court is to hear and determine a charge of a bail offence in a summary way and as if the offence were a summary offence. Although the provisions dealing with mental impairment and unfitness to be tried in Part IIA of the Criminal Code clearly contemplate their application to charges brought by indictment and tried before a jury, they are capable of application mutatis mutandis to a breach of bail tried in a summary way.
In particular, s 43H of the Criminal Code is broad enough to permit the Court, on agreement between the parties to a prosecution, to accept a plea and record a finding of not guilty because of mental impairment in respect of a bail offence; and s 43T of the Criminal Code is broad enough to permit the court by agreement to dispense with an investigation into fitness to stand trial for a bail offence. Were that not so, there would be no mechanism by which such a charge could be determined in relation to a person who was suffering from mental impairment or who is unfit to be tried. Orders will be made in those terms in relation to the breaches of bail charged by complaints taken on 19 January 2021 and 2 February 2021, and the supervised person discharged unconditionally in relation to those offences.
Liability to supervision
The parties were also in agreement that the Court should declare the offender liable to supervision in relation to the offences charged by indictment. The question which now presents is what form that supervision should take. Section 43ZA of the Criminal Code provides that a supervision order may be a custodial supervision order or a non-custodial supervision order. The report ordered pursuant to s 43ZJ of the Criminal Code is for the purpose of assisting in that determination. Under the terms of the legislation, that report is required to provide a diagnosis and prognosis of the accused person's mental impairment, condition or disability; include details of the accused person's response to any treatment, therapy, counselling and any other services that are being or have been provided; and detail a suggested treatment plan for managing the accused person's mental impairment, condition or disability.
A report dated 5 February 2021 was subsequently prepared by a Case Manager within the Forensic Disability Unit of the Department of Health. The Case Manager has postgraduate qualifications in social work and postgraduate experience conducting assessments and providing clinical and case management services, including in relation to violent and sexual offenders. The report was reviewed and approved by the Senior Manager and a Senior Clinician within the Forensic Disability Unit. That report contains the following information.
(a)The supervised person is a 19 year old Aboriginal male with cognitive impairment as a consequence of traumatic maltreatment over an extended period of time during his developmental years, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The supervised person’s diagnosis is of Global Developmental Delay with moderate intellectual impairment and severe language delays. That intellectual disability has a significant impact on his executive functioning, including his reasoning, judgement, problem-solving, impulse control, critical thinking, decision-making and emotional regulation. It is also likely, but not confirmed, that the supervised person suffers from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
(b)The supervised person began manifesting sexualised behaviours at a young age, most probably because he had been the subject of sexual abuse. Those behaviours commenced in 2009 when he was in primary school and have continued to the present time. While attending the Henbury School it was reported that the supervised person engaged in sexual intercourse with adults in the community after absconding from supervision, invited other children at the school to engage in sexual intercourse, entered toilet cubicles with other children for that purpose, exposed himself to other students, touched other students on their genitals, and accessed pornography on the Internet. As a consequence, a school management plan was formulated under which the supervised person was required to be accompanied by a staff member at all times when out of class, including during visits to the toilet, and the supervised person was precluded from being out of sight with any other student.
(c)The supervised person went into the care of Territory Families in January 2017 when he was aged 15. His initial residential care placement was terminated because he displayed highly sexualised behaviours towards younger and vulnerable children in the facility. A risk assessment conducted by a psychologist at that time found that the supervised person was largely indiscriminate in his sexual preferences in terms of age and gender, but did not appear to have any attraction to young girls. A subsequent assessment conducted in 2019 concluded that the supervised person presented a greater risk of sexualised and disinhibited behaviours without direct intervention and external controls. A risk assessment subsequently conducted by a psychiatrist found that the supervised person met the criteria for Paedophilic Disorder on the basis of his attraction to and sexual preoccupation with prepubescent male children, and that the supervised person presented a moderate to high risk of repeated sexual offending behaviours.
(d)On 12 July 2019, the Public Guardian was appointed to make decisions relating to the supervised person’s personal matters, including accommodation, healthcare and the necessities of life. At that same time, the Public Trustee was appointed to make decisions in relation to the supervised person’s property and financial affairs. The supervised person has been a participant in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) since in or about March 2019. On 13 July 2019, a Supported Independent Living placement commenced under the NDIS with 1:1 support in the residential placement and 2:1 support during community access.
(e)Following the offending conduct the subject of the present charges, the staff support ratio under the NDIS plan was increased to 2:1 during the day, both in the residential placement and during community access. However, the supervised person was allowed continuing and unconditional access to a phone with Internet capability, despite the fact he was noted to devote significant periods of time to viewing pornography. That Internet access was revoked in December 2020 when it was found that the supervised person had been taking screenshots of pictures of children from other people’s Facebook accounts and posting them on his own Facebook account with sexually lewd captions. At or about that time, the supervised person also self-reported that he would extract pictures of young children from Facebook and masturbate to the photos.
(f)In the period since the offending conduct the subject of the present charges, the supervised person has been non-responsive to the directions of support staff and has attempted to abscond from carer supervision on numerous occasions. It was said to be of concern that the supervised person’s absconding behaviours have been escalating despite the implementation of positive behaviour support plans and ongoing engagement with service providers in the community since 2019.
Having regard to those circumstances, the report concluded that the supervised person’s risk profile was dynamic and he required ongoing forensic disability assessment and intervention. It also concluded that the supervised person’s placement in proximity to houses with young children, child care centres, primary schools, parks, eateries and shopping centres, where children might be expected to congregate, presented a clear risk of further offending behaviours. Restrictive practices, including locking the supervised person’s residential premises and electronic monitoring, had not been successful in preventing the supervised person from absconding or in curtailing sexually deviant behaviours.
On those bases, the report concluded that at the present time the supervised person presents an unacceptably high risk to the community on a non-custodial supervision order. The report recommended a temporary placement in the Complex Behaviour Unit at the Darwin Correctional Centre to enable the Forensic Disability Unit to introduce a graduated model of support to allow the supervised person’s forensic disability risks to be managed outside the institutional setting. That proposal contemplates that the supervised person’s NDIS service providers would work in collaboration with the Forensic Disability Unit to develop a model of care which adequately addresses his criminogenic risks and needs, and which incorporates adequate supervision and forensic risk mitigation.
The suggested treatment plan is to house the supervised person in the Complex Behaviour Unit for a period of 12 months to stabilise his condition, undertake appropriate forensic disability risk assessments, undertake cognitive behavioural therapy and formulate a graduated transition to a non-custodial supervision order. The conduct of the forensic disability risk assessments is said to be essential to the promotion of public safety and the adequate management of the supervised person. Those assessments would also include a paediatric review in order to determine whether the supervised person does in fact suffer from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, which would assist with future planning for his needs.
During the course of cross-examination, the author of the Forensic Disability Unit report expressed the view that cognitive behavioural therapy cannot be appropriately or effectively administered while the supervised person remains in the community under present circumstances because he is constantly aroused by triggers. In the author’s view, those therapies need to be undertaken in an environment which removes (or at least controls) the supervised person’s sexual preoccupation as far as is possible. Conversely, and for those same reasons, the author was of the view that the risk assessments could not be effectively conducted in the community setting.
I assess that evidence and the opinions contained in the report on the basis that the principal author of the report is a social worker and not a psychologist or psychiatrist. However, the author has relevant qualifications and experience in the provision of clinical and case management services, and in the use of the psychometric tools and individual treatment interventions. To the extent the report makes reference to matters within the purview of a psychologist or psychiatrist, those references are supported by or derived from the opinion of appropriately qualified experts, including the reports prepared by the psychologist and forensic psychiatrist for the purpose of assessing fitness to stand trial and mental impairment in the context of these proceedings.
Custodial or non-custodial supervision
Against that background, it is necessary for the Court to determine whether the supervision order should be custodial or non-custodial in nature. The Court must not make a custodial supervision order unless it is satisfied there is no practicable alternative in the circumstances. In addition or complement to that requirement, s 43ZM of the Criminal Code provides that the Court must apply the overarching principle that restrictions on a supervised person's freedom and personal autonomy are to be kept to the minimum that is consistent with maintaining and protecting the safety of the community.
Section 43ZN of the Criminal Code specifies the matters to be taken into account when the court makes a supervision order. Most relevantly for these purposes, those matters include:
(a)whether the supervised person is likely to endanger himself or herself or another person because of his or her mental impairment, condition or disability;
(b)the need to protect people from danger;
(c)the relationship between the mental impairment, condition or disability and the offending conduct;
(d)whether there are adequate resources available for the treatment and support of the supervised person in the community; and
(e)whether the supervised person is complying or is likely to comply with the conditions of the supervision order.
The assessment of the likelihood that the supervised person will comply with the conditions of the supervision order is most obviously directed to the question whether conditions designed to ameliorate risk would likely achieve that purpose if a non-custodial supervision order were to be made. In conducting that assessment and balancing exercise, the Court may only make a custodial supervision order if satisfied that it would not be reasonably practicable for the supervised person to be managed and supervised in the community in a manner that would keep the relevant risks at acceptable levels.
Although the legislation is silent on the relevant standard of proof in determining whether to make a custodial or non-custodial supervision order, it is common ground that the determination falls to be made on the balance of probabilities. The Chief Executive Officer of the Department of Health bears the onus of satisfying the court to that standard that there is no practicable alternative to a custodial supervision order in the circumstances. The evidence which might bear adversely on the supervised person’s interests in that respect must be of a sufficient level of cogency to satisfy the Briginshaw standard.
Risk, reasonable availability and compliance
I am satisfied to the requisite standard that by reason of the supervised person’s cognitive impairment and ongoing sexual preoccupation with prepubescent children he presents a danger to children while he is in the community. The level of danger which he presents is apparent from the facts of the offences with which he was charged. Those facts disclose that he attempted to sexually interfere with a six-year-old child in a predatory and opportunistic fashion in the toilets of a public cinema complex. While the Court is limited to what appears in the outline of the Crown case in determining the notional term of imprisonment (discussed further below), the Court may have regard to all available information concerning that incident in determining the level of risk which the supervised person presents. Of course, the Court must be satisfied that any matter to which it has regard for that purpose has been established to the requisite standard.
When discussing the incident with the psychologist who reported on his fitness to stand trial, the supervised person disclosed that during the course of the incident he touched the child’s “private parts”, and had taken his pants down during the incident. Similarly, during meetings with staff from the Forensic Disability Unit, the supervised person disclosed that he had touched the victim’s genitals, that he had been feeling “horny” on the day of the offending, and that he had been watching the victim before he followed him into the toilet and assaulted him. The supervised person also disclosed that he had previously watched little boys at the Casuarina Square Shopping Centre, obviously with sexual interest.
Even making due allowance for the supervised person’s intellectual impairment, and having regard to the contexts in which those disclosures were made, I am satisfied that is an accurate and truthful description of both the incident and the supervised person’s sexual motivation on that occasion. The description is also consistent with the supervised person’s recorded behaviours at the Henbury School. Having regard to those matters, and the information indicating the supervised person’s continuing sexual preoccupation with prepubescent children, I am satisfied that he presents a serious and ongoing risk of harm to the community, which requires external controls to manage that risk.
I am also satisfied to the requisite standard that at the present time the supervised person is unlikely to comply with the conditions of a non-custodial supervision order requiring him to remain in the company of a care worker at all times outside of his residential placement, and requiring him to stay away from children. At the time of the conduct the subject of these proceedings, the supervised person was subject to a Supported Independent Living placement with 2:1 support for community access. Despite that, the supervised person was clearly alone and unsupervised at the Casuarina Square Shopping Centre at the time of the offending conduct. The only inference available is that the supervised person was there in breach of the arrangements for his community access, and that his purpose was to take sexual advantage of a young child if possible. I am further satisfied that the supervised person has extremely limited insight into his compulsions, will engage in similar behaviours in the future if and when the opportunity presents, and will actively seek those opportunities.
It is relevant to that finding, and to the consequences which flow from it, that the supervised person has a history of absconding from his carers, particularly when he does not want to do something or is feeling anxious. The recorded history shows it is not uncommon that the supervised person cannot be located for hours or days at a time, and for the supervised person to sleep outdoors on those occasions. On one such occasion, he was captured on CCTV entering the Darwin Middle School at night and masturbating in the library. When the supervised person does abscond, it is frequently to places where wireless Internet is available for the purpose of accessing child abuse material on the Internet.
In recent times, there have been 22 incidents since September 2020 which have involved the supervised person either absconding or being non-compliant with staff directions. Those incidents include multiple occasions of absconding while on community access for varying periods of time, trespassing on the grounds of a primary school, damaging property at his residential placement and the respite house, stealing a staff mobile phone and using it to access pornography on the Internet, and procuring and possessing a phone after his permission to access the Internet was revoked. Many of those incidents have required notifications to police and police assistance to locate the supervised person.
On one of those occasions, the supervised person absconded while at a McDonald’s restaurant, evaded staff and caught a bus, and was not located by police until the following day in the Darwin CBD. That episode is the subject of one of the charges for breach of bail. While that episode occurred after the supervised person had visited the Royal Darwin Hospital for the purpose of viewing his deceased mother’s body, and he might be expected to have been experiencing emotional distress at the time, it is by no means atypical of his non-compliant conduct over an extended period. On other occasions, the supervised person has manifested a preoccupation with schools and playgrounds. He gravitates to them and becomes fixated by them, and staff are unable to redirect his attention.
It is not enough to say that on most occasions the supervised person is located a relatively short time after he has absconded. That is as much good fortune as anything else. Every occasion on which he does abscond presents a serious risk of sexual predation to children in the community. It is also not determinative that the supervised person has not committed any further sexual offence during subsequent absconding. The operative question is whether he presents a risk of doing so, and the magnitude of that risk. While there is no doubt a strong legislative presumption in favour of the liberty of the subject, in this case the likelihood that the supervised person may abscond and engage in predatory behaviours, and the magnitude of the harm that might result from such conduct, must both be assessed as relatively high. In his current placement in the community, the NDIS service providers have no authority to prevent the supervised person from absconding and limited power to impose restraints; and nor would they have that power under a non-custodial supervision order. As already observed, locking the supervised person’s residential premises and electronic monitoring have a limited efficacy.
In addition to those restraints, the supervised person was commenced on anti-libidinal medication some time ago. That medication is clearly of limited utility, to this point in time at least, as the supervised person continues to report that he gets “horny” at night time and masturbates every day while thinking about children. He also reports that his preferred age range is between one and 10, and that his preference is towards prepubescent males. Counsel for the supervised person submits that daily masturbation is not in and of itself unusual for a young man of the supervised person’s age. However, the nature and level of that activity rather tells against any proposition that his compulsions are being adequately managed by chemical restraint.
Counsel for the supervised person also submits that there is insufficient evidence to establish that this medication may not be effective with some adjustment of the dosage and attention to therapeutic serum levels, but there is equally nothing to suggest that adjustments of that nature will yield any benefit. At this point, the assumption must be that the supervised person’s treating medical practitioners have prescribed what they consider to be an appropriate dosage having regard to the potential side effects of the medication, and that dosage is not having the intended effect.
Counsel for the supervised person points to the fact that no attempt has been made to find alternative residential accommodation in the rural area, which would be a suitable distance away from facilities and locations which present a risk. During the course of his evidence, the manager of Life Without Barriers, which is the Supported Independent Living placement provider under the NDIS plan, said that it would be his role to source alternative residential options in conjunction with other stakeholders. He stated that restrictions in relation to proximity to schools made finding suitable residential options challenging. The supervised person’s placement has already been moved from Durack to Zuccoli in response to that perceived risk. He said that while the service had provided supported accommodation in the rural areas previously, and while that might be a viable alternative, the current rental market and the need to source a residence sufficiently distant from schools would likely present challenges. He estimated that it would take a minimum of four weeks to assess whether there was alternative accommodation available.
As matters presently stand, there is no such alternative accommodation identified and available. Even if there was, it would not necessarily obviate the risk of absconding which the supervised person presents, and the very clear consequential risks that entails. I am also prepared to accept, at this point in time at least, the Forensic Disability Unit opinion that the assessments and therapies necessary to stabilise the supervised person’s condition, and to ameliorate his compulsions if possible, can only be effectively undertaken in the custodial setting. The supervised person has been on bail for an extended period of time to this point. His performance on bail and the risk which he continues to present demonstrates the need for a custodial supervision order for at least some period of time in an attempt to stabilise his condition and carry out the necessary assessments and therapies.
In light of the supervised person’s condition and the attendant risks it presents, and the evidence of the Forensic Disability Unit, I find that as matters currently stand a non-custodial supervision order would not provide adequate protection to the community and that there is no practical alternative to a custodial supervision order. While I am loath to make a custodial supervision order in circumstances where the effect of that order will be to commit the supervised person to a custodial correctional facility, that is an unavoidable consequence of the finding that a non-custodial supervision order is not presently suitable and the absence of any alternative facilities for the custody of supervised persons. Having regard to the notional period of imprisonment which will be fixed, that order will be subject to review within a relatively short timeframe to consider the results of those assessments and to determine the success of those therapies.
Notional period of imprisonment
Pursuant to s 43ZG of the Criminal Code, the Court is also required to fix the period of imprisonment or supervision that would have been the appropriate sentence to impose on the offender if he or she had been found guilty of the offence charged. The Court must then conduct a review of the supervision order at least three months prior to the expiry of that term. Section 43ZG of the Criminal Code also provides that if the supervised person is charged with the commission of multiple offences, the Court must fix the term by reference to the offence carrying the longest maximum period of imprisonment. In this case, that is the offence of deprivation of liberty, which carries a maximum penalty of imprisonment for seven years. While that requirement does not mean that the context in which this offending took place is excluded from consideration, the term is to be fixed only by reference to that offence.
Fixing the term brings ordinary sentencing principles into play, including any psychological condition from which the supervised person might suffer bearing upon the sentencing purposes of general deterrence, specific deterrence and community protection: see The Queen v Gibson [2017] NTSC 47 at [11].
Fixing the appropriate term in this case presents a number of particular considerations. First, the supervised person is still relatively young and would still be entitled to a lenient and therapeutic approach to the sentencing exercise. Secondly, the supervised person’s history of sexually dysfunctional behaviours is both relevant to the purpose of community protection and informs the question of the accused's prospects for rehabilitation. Thirdly, the abnormalities in the supervised person’s mental and intellectual functioning, and his dysfunctional upbringing, reduce his moral culpability in a way that bears on the weight properly given to punishment and denunciation, and reduce the weight properly given to deterrence. On the other hand, they increase the significance of community protection in the sentencing calculus, subject to the condition that the sentence imposed must not be disproportionate to the criminality of the offending.
There is no tariff for the offence of deprivation of liberty, and probably not even any sentencing range given that the circumstances of the offending vary so widely. Subject to that qualification, offences involving deprivation of liberty using weapons and accompanied by sexual or other assaults can attract sentences around the three year mark. Where the deprivation consists only of presenting a physical obstacle to the victim leaving a room or other place, the offence will often attract sentences around the two year mark. Where the deprivation is effected only by some form of psychological domination, the sentence can be around about the one year mark. In this case there was physical restraint with a sexual motive. Although of relatively short duration, and even allowing for the supervised person’s cognitive condition, circumstances involving the restraint of a six-year-old child in a public toilet cubicle are horrific and such as to shock the public conscience.
Having regard to those matters, I consider the appropriate sentence which would have been imposed on the supervised person, if he had been found guilty of the offence charged, to be imprisonment for 11 months. I fix that term for the purposes of s 43ZG(1) of the Criminal Code. It is unnecessary for these purposes to determine whether that term would appropriately have been subject to a non-parole period or an order suspending sentence and, if so, the period of actual imprisonment to be served under such an order.
Orders
Accordingly, I make the following orders:
1.In File Nos 22102395 and 22103710, the defendant is unfit to stand trial pursuant to s 43T(1) of the Criminal Code and is unlikely to become fit to stand trial within 12 months.
2.In File Nos 22102395 and 22103710, the defendant is not guilty by reason of mental impairment.
3.In File Nos 22102395 and 22103710, the defendant is released unconditionally pursuant to s 43XB(b) of the Criminal Code.
4.In File No 21944910, the supervised person is subject to a custodial supervision order pursuant to s 43ZA(1)(a)(i) of the Criminal Code, under which he is committed to custody in the Complex Behaviour Unit of the Darwin Correctional Centre.
5.While subject to the custodial supervision order, the supervised person is to remain under the care and treatment of clinicians employed by the Department of Health and service and support providers under the supervised person’s NDIS plan (the treating team).
6.The supervised person is to co-operate fully with the treatment plan formulated by the treating team, and in particular he is to:
(a) comply with all reasonable directions of the treating team, including taking prescribed medications and submitting to testing, assessment and other medical interventions necessary as adjuncts to the taking of those medications;
(b) comply with all ongoing assessments relevant to his cognitive condition that may be ordered as part of his treatment plan;
(c) participate in any counselling or education relevant to his cognitive condition and criminogenic factors as deemed necessary or appropriate by the treating team; and
(d) attend any rehabilitation or treatment program as required by the treating team.
7.A term of 11 months is fixed pursuant to s 43ZG(1) of the Criminal Code.
8.The term of 11 months is to commence on 17 March 2021.
9.The appropriate person is to file and serve a major review report pursuant to s 43ZG(5) of the Criminal Code by close of business on 15 October 2021.
10.The matter is listed for major review at 9.00 am on 15 November 2021.
11.The parties have liberty to apply.
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