Judge calls out strange actions
AN electrotherapist’s “unusual if not bizarre” behaviour towards three girls at a public park has earned him possible psychiatric treatment.
Damian Grant Burnett, 42, was convicted in July of indecently treating the girls aged 13 and 14 at Brinsmead’s Goomboora Park while he was foraging for clay in 2017.
Burnett had pleaded not guilty to the charge and stood trial in Cairns District Court, his second on the charges after a mistrial in February.
The crown had alleged Burnett slapped the girls with mud and indecently touched them in the process, grabbing their buttocks and thighs.
Burnett met the girls as he was gathering clay with his dogs to treat irritable bowel syndrome.
The court heard he made a number of inappropriate comments to the girls before the four engaged in a mud fight.
Burnett had denied he had preyed on the girls and gave evidence that he flung mud at the trio from afar after they launched their own muddy projectiles at his head and back.
The jury nevertheless ruled that his actions breached standards of decency.
“As an adult you ought not to have involved yourself in any mud fighting,” Judge Dean Morzone said.
“You ought to have removed yourself from the situation – you were a stranger in a public place.”
The court heard Burnett self-diagnosed himself as being on the autism spectrum and possibly showing characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome.
A pre-sentence personality profile that described the defendant as “volatile”, “eccentric” and “unusual” also indicated Burnett possibly suffered from schizophrenia and recommended further psychiatric treatment.
“Your behaviour was unusual, if not bizarre,” Judge Morzone said. He said Burnett’s past convictions including assault occasioning bodily harm showed “an inability to regulate your emotions”.
“You seem to react physically to events,” Judge Morzone said.
He ordered Burnett to serve a six-month prison term as an intensive community order.
“You have no deviant traits to children or others in a sexual sense.”