Appeal win for kid-sex convict

A CHILD-SEX offender who abused and humiliated his victim is likely to have years wiped off his jail term following a successful appeal to the High Court.

The man, who is identified in court documents as KMC, was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for abusing a young girl from the age of six.

However, he has become the latest in a string of sex offenders to take advantage of a loophole in South Australia’s child-sex offender laws.

KMC was charged with persistent sexual exploitation of a child – a criminal offence that requires at least two acts of abuse across more than three days to be proved.

During a trial before a jury, KMC was accused of four specific acts of abuse.

The jury was told it should return a guilty verdict if it agreed that at least two of the acts had been committed against the victim.

The jury returned a unanimous verdict but was not asked how many and which of the four acts had been proven.

KMC was sentenced to 10 years in prison with a non-parole period of five years, backdated to July 19, 2017.

Years after being sentenced, he launched an appeal against his sentence in the wake of a similar decision in the High Court that wiped more than six years from the sentence handed to paedophile teacher Marco Chiro.

Chiro was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but his jury had not been asked which acts of abuse they had found were proved beyond reasonable doubt. As a result, the High Court held that Chiro should be sentenced “on the basis most favourable to the offender” – that being the two least serious acts making up the charge.

THE OFFENDER WILL HAVE TO BE SENTENCED ‘ON THE BASIS MOST FAVOURABLE TO THE OFFENDER’

COURT JUDGMENT

The precedent set by the decision also affected the sentencing of notorious sex offender Stephen John Hamra, a former teacher who abused two young boys for a decade in the 1970s and ’80s.

Former attorney-general John Rau rushed through legislation to try to close the loophole, only to have it declared invalid by the South Australian Supreme Court.

The matter then went to the High Court, which concluded the amendment was not called into question and it was not necessary to consider its validity.

KMC’S case will return to the South Australian District Court for resentencing.