Mum guilty of daughter’s rape
A GOLD Coast mother has been found guilty of watching as men raped her nine-yearold daughter.
The girl told police officers she heard her mother talking to the men about money following the incidents.
The jury of seven women and five men found the mum, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, guilty of three counts of rape and one count each of deprivation of liberty, indecent treatment of a child and maintaining a sexual relationship with a child.
The mother pleaded guilty in the Southport District Court to another charge of indecent treatment of a child.
The jury also found her not guilty of three counts of indecently treating a child and one count of deprivation of liberty.
The woman will be sentenced at a later date.
The woman sobbed loudly in the dock as the jury read out the verdict and struggled to stand when asked by Judge Katherine McGinness.
“I don’t get to say goodbye to anyone?” the mum asked after the sentencing finished. “I don’t get to see my dad?” The jury spent five days listening to the harrowing accounts of the girl, who is now 13, as she told police what had happened to her.
Her accounts included how she woke one night to find her mother had stripped her, was holding her hands and a man was on top of her naked.
The girl also told of how on another night she woke to find she had been dressed as “a playboy bunny” in a frilly dress and rabbit ears.
A man was raping her while her mum was touching her inappropriately.
Police have been unable to identify any of the men involved. The girl was not able to provide a description and the mother has not given any details to police.
The girl said all the incidents happened while her father was in prison between May 2014 and May 2015.
The allegations came to light after the girl wrote a note to a Headspace psychologist when talking about why she did not feel safe to sleep.
“When I was in bed mum came in with her friends and touched me inappropriately,” the note read.
The girl detailed three occasions men came into her room to rape her but said it happened almost every night she was home with her mother.