Women ‘never safe’ from groper

Court got it wrong, badly, says ex-wife. Libby Wilson reports.

The former wife of a man who repeatedly groped women has warned he’ll do it again if he’s freed from prison.

Kelly Biddick’s ex-husband, David Benjamin Carline, has a string of indecent assault and criminal harassment convictions.

He was sentenced to preventive detention after he ran up behind a 61-year-old woman on Hamilton’s Claudeland’s Bridge in April 2015, and put his hand up her skirt.

While the woman was not physically injured, she ‘‘suffered significant emotional harm’’. The incident occurred four weeks after Carline was released from a sentence of home detention for obstructing the course of justice, and at the time he was still seeing a psychologist as part of his postdetention conditions.

But although Justice Edwin Wylie labelled him a ‘‘recidivist sexual predator’’ at a High Court sentencing in February, a Court of Appeal overturned the sentence last month. Carline – who often goes by Ben was instead sentenced to two – years and seven months in prison, and must serve at least 20 months.

He had committed six other similar indecent assaults since 1992, including groping women he didn’t know – in one case targeting the same woman twice in 10 days. He also followed women on his I don’t think he’ll ever be rehabilitated. I think this is just what he’ll do. bicycle

In a2005 case, he drove past a woman’s house and yelled ‘‘I’ll f. . . you if you want. It’s your choice now but it won’t be next time’’.

Biddick says that people need to be warned about Carline, and she to slap them on the bottom. is horrified that his most recent offending happened a month after he finished home detention.

‘‘He will do it again. That’s my main point for doing this [speaking up]. He is a repeat offender.

‘‘I don’t think he’ll ever be rehabilitated. I think this is just what he’ll do. It’s quite heartbreaking really, to think there are so many women. If he gets out, it’s just going to happen again.’’

The Court of Appeal ruled Carline’s original sentence of preventive detention was too harsh because his offending was at the lower end of the scale. It was the repetition that created risk of serious harm. Carline already had at least one indecent assault conviction when a he and Biddick were married in 1997 – a conviction she said she had no idea about.

The pair met through mothers, both of whom involved in Neighbourhood

As they got to know each other better, Carline would pick Biddick up after her night shift. They would watch movies together, and he bought her flowers.

But their relationship ended, and Biddick was forced to take out a protection order. He would tap on the windows of her sister’s home, follow her car and make threats, Biddick said. They were divorced in 2006.

After learning about his past and new convictions, she wonders their were Support. what was happening her marriage.

She rejects a psychologist’s finding that his offending was compulsive and prompted by ‘‘vengeance for being treated badly by women in the past’’.

The appeal judgment referred to Carline’s allegedly alcoholic father who was jailed for sexual offending, and romantic relationships involving abuse and infidelity. It also said Carline, who became a Christian in his teens and remained actively involved in his church, was interested in attending Corrections’ Adult Sex Offender Treatment Programme while in prison.

Biddick, however, convinced. throughout is not