REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday May 24, 2008

A SOUTHPORT judge who criticised a colleague’s sentencing in the controversial Aurukun rape case followed through on his promise, sentencing a father who sexually abused his daughter to 20 years’ jail – double the term the prosecution had asked for.

Judge Clive Wall said the sustained abuse suffered by the daughter, when she was aged between nine and 15, was the ’most gross abuse a father could commit on a daughter’.

He said the prosecution’s submission of 10 to 12 years jail was ’completely inadequate’.

“It’s difficult to think of a worse category of offending by a father against his daughter over such a long period of time,’’ said Judge Wall.

“You used and abused her.” Judge Wall indicated he would jail the man, who couldn’t be named for legal reasons, for more than the prosecution had suggested.

He said he was not bound by the prosecution advice and was ’not going to be a Judge Bradley’.

Judge Wall was referring to Cairns District Court Judge Sarah Bradley, who controversially sentenced nine males - six juveniles and three men - who had raped a 10year-old girl in a remote Aboriginal community to noncustodial sentences.

In 2004, after the man sentenced had stopped sexually abusing his daughter, he was convicted of raping an eight-year-old Gold Coast girl, the daughter of one of his friends.

On that occasion, he was sentenced to three years’ jail, suspended after 10 months.