Judge sends child molester to prison
Nathan Rossiter was completely naked, crouching unseen in the bushes as his victim, a five-year-old girl, strayed within his reach.
The girl and her slightly older cousin had been running through the bush-clad shortcut at the northern end of Cooks Beach – a shortcut from the beach to a small reserve on the way home, following an evening stroll with their family along the shoreline at the summertime holiday spot.
The two children were temporarily out of view from the rest of the group. It was just the opportunity that Rossiter had been waiting for. He jumped out of the bushes and approached the youngsters. ‘‘What’s the time?’’ he asked them.
Startled by the sight of the undressed man in his mid 30s before them, the children said they did not have watches and could not tell him what time it was.
‘‘What’s this?’’ Rossiter asked, pointing at the girl’s wrist. As she looked down at her hand he grabbed her and forcibly pressed her face into his crotch.
She pushed him in his stomach to escape his grasp. The children’s shouts of terror had alerted the approaching adults, and Rossiter made one last grab for her before grabbing his bundle of clothes, sprinting to the car he had parked nearby and making a speedy getaway.
It was a dramatic scenario that Judge Merelina Burnett recounted in the Hamilton District Court on Thursday as she sentenced Nathan Henry Rossiter, 38, to two years and three months in jail on a single charge of doing an indecent act on a girl under 12.
Rossiter must serve a 60 per cent nonparole period – or 16.2 months – before he can be considered for release.
Following a four-day trial in November, a jury took just over an hour to find him guilty, clearly not buying his argument that he was the victim of an unlikely string of coincidences on the night of January 5, 2013.
These included witness accounts that the offender was driving a car similar to his; the fact that cellphone records put him in the Cooks Beach area at the time; and the fact he was stopped by police on the main route south half an hour after the incident happened.
He was allowed to go on his way because the police communications system cut out at the precise moment information about his deviant past would have been passed on to the officer who had stopped him.
Rossiter has a history of doing indecent acts in public, including flashing and covertly photographing women. Traces of his DNA were later detected in a swab sample taken from the girl’s face.
‘‘It was well planned and well executed,’’ Judge Burnett said. ‘‘This was plainly premeditated. You selected a beach where you knew there would be young children around.’’
Hiding in the bushes, taking off all of his clothes and parking his car close by where he could make a quick getaway also pointed to Rossiter’s sinister intentions. Rossiter was still denying what he had done – a fact not lost on the judge.
‘‘The trial was not an easy one for the families … Your denial is self-delusory.’’
A pre-sentence assessment had placed him at high risk of harm to the community and at moderate to high risk of reoffending within 10 years.