CRIMINAL CASE NO. 180 OF 2010
You came to know the victim in this case as she was one of your school pupils. When she left primary school in 2007 you became her private tutor. Her mother let you into her home and trusted you to tutor her alone in her bedroom. Under the guise of that tutelage you commenced to abuse the daughter sexually.
She was only 13 when you started touching her and had her masturbate you. Still at 13 you had her perform oral sex on you. Still at 13 you had full and unprotected sexual intercourse with her. It is an overwhelming inference that you took her virginity and you did so in the bedroom at her home and afterwards casually chatted to the mother who had been present in the next room. That is the substance of counts 2, 3 and 4 on the indictment. The unlawful sexual intercourse was repeated, that is the substance of Count 5.
When she was 14 you started photographing her, recording her masturbating you and performing oral sex showing all of her body. That is the substance of counts 7, 8, 9 and 10.
On the second of the photographic occasions concerned there, you had taken her to your home. Towards mid 2009 when she was still only 14 you started video taping your activity. This child pornography that you were making for yourself was found in two clips on your computer, showing not only oral sex and masturbation but also full sexual intercourse. This is the substance of counts 13, 14 and 15.
Count 17 reflects the last act of unlawful sexual intercourse on the indictment in September 2009 when she was 15. Count 18 charges possession of the child pornography you had created, 605 items in all, 270 involving erotic posing, 335 involving non penetrative sexual activity and the two video clips, one of which involved penetration.
The Summary of Facts reveals some of the quality of your exploitation. Forcing your penis into her mouth on the first occasion of oral sex and thereafter. Her dislike of it, yet her continued compliance because you helped her to solve problems with her homework and resolve conflicts with her mother. Her dislike of the sexual intercourse which she found painful but her reluctance to disclose it to her mother for fear of upsetting her. Her hatred of your photography of her and her tears caused by it. She described the relationship as one of master and servant.
A feature of your abuse that requires mention is the exploitive nature that accompanied your domination of her. The first video clip reveals you scolding her as you touched her body, brainwashing her into believing that you were her saviour. In the second clip you told her that the sexual intercourse you were having with her and recording was punishment for her going out with other boys and you demanded her fidelity for the rest of her life.
That stifling of her natural development by your sexuality is a particularly ugly feature of the case and worthy of punishment. You named the files which contained the two clips, “Baby fuck punishment 1 and 2.”
Yours is a bad case. It is so because of the high degree of trust you enjoyed; the young age of the victim when it started when she was 13; the extent of the sexual activity; the recording of it photographically; the repetition of the conduct from September 2007 until September 2009; the ugly nature of the sexual dominance and the psychological damage done to that young girl.
Those video clips vividly illustrated how unequal the relationship was between the two of you. It also illustrates how the girl appeared to react to your activities with repugnance.
Your victim has been seeing a psychologist who noted that under her apparently unperturbed presentation was a chronic sense of helplessness and fear along with emotional distancing from unpleasant personal experience. The psychologist’s report speaks of her sense of being powerless in your presence, holding a belief that nothing could help her, explaining her failure to disclose her experience of sexual abuse to others earlier. The psychologist records the girl’s belief that she would only be able to resume normal functioning if she did not see you again.
The report, as is often the case, records a tendency in the young victim to blame herself for what happened. It also notes a period when she felt distrusted and blamed by her mother. The report concludes that the psychological impact of your sexual abuse, especially in the long term, cannot yet be fully assessed but that much more therapy work and much more support from her family may be required before she is ready to open up herself to look into the trauma inside.
What you did is bound to live with her. There must be a real risk that your conduct will have caused lasting and serious harm. There is a risk that she may be denied a satisfying and full life.
I have a psychological report on you. In it you are assessed to be a manipulative person and that your victim was one whom you found you could manipulate progressively creating a dependency. The writer of the report perceived that you deceived both the victim and yourself that the relationship was a loving one. The psychologist was of the opinion that you have distorted sexual cognition; that your remorse was shallow; that you have no insight into the matter and that the risk of your re-offending was moderate to high.
I find it neither helpful nor realistic to seek to work out individual sentences for the various counts on a pretended basis that they may have stood alone and then work out some complicated scheme of overlapping adjusted for totality. It is the whole of your conduct that has to be judged.
I judge that what you did to this girl over the period covered by the indictment calls for a sentence of imprisonment on pleas of guilty of no less than six years. A 9 year starting point overall, after trial, would have been justified at the least. Whilst I perceive that starting point to be at the higher end of the bracket, it would have been designedly so because serious sexual abuse and breach of trust calls for no less.
The significant mitigation is your plea of guilty tendered as it is by a man with a clear record. In cases like this pleas are important because they saved the girl the tension of waiting to give evidence and the prospect of repeating in public what you had done to her knowing that others would have to study the photographs and watch the tapes.
You will receive the full one-third discount and I want you to know that if there had been a trial I regard it as likely that the starting point would have been in the region commencing in double figures. In other words the plea does help you further beyond that one-third discount. There was ample scope here by overlapping the sentences to create a longer one. The pleas have played their part in diminishing that prospect.
I will achieve the overall sentence by passing sentences of 3 years, based on a 4½ year starting point on the counts of indecent assault, indecent conduct towards a child under 16 and unlawful sexual intercourse. That is on counts 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 14, 15 and 17. I will pass sentences of 16 months’ imprisonment based on a 2 year starting point for the counts concerning child pornography. That is counts 7, 9, 13 and 18.
I will repeat that for the benefit of counsel making a note. It is 3 years on all of the counts save the child pornography ones where there are sentences of 16 months. All the sentences will run concurrently with each other save that the sentence on count 15 will run consecutively to the others making a total of 6 years’ imprisonment.