STATE OF TASMANIA v RST 4 JULY 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BLOW CJ
RST has pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to report the abuse of a child. She had a male partner for several years. Their relationship ended in 2022. RST has a daughter whom that man sexually abused for about the last four and half years of the relationship, when the daughter was between seven and eleven years old. The abuse was ongoing and frequent, occurring almost daily. RST became aware of the abuse when the girl was about eight years old.
RST and this man always maintained separate households. Much of the sexual abuse occurred at the man’s house. In the early stages the abuse involved the partner kissing the girl on the lips and touching her vagina, her breasts and her buttocks. Subsequently there were occasions when he photographed the girl naked or wearing a bikini, requiring her to pose by moving her body. There was at least one occasion when the man got the girl to rub a sex toy on her vagina while he photographed that act. There were times when he licked the girl’s vagina, licked her anus, and penetrated her vagina with his finger. There were occasions when he got the girl to play with his penis, and when she performed oral sexual intercourse on him.
Not long after the girl’s eleventh birthday, there was an occasion when the partner got the girl to drink some alcohol. RST was present. The partner told her and her daughter to take off all their clothing. They refused. He yelled abuse at them and hit them with a spoon. On that occasion he touched the girl on the vagina and photographed her.
During 2022, some months after the couple’s relationship had ended, the sexual abuse was reported to the police. The man was interviewed and denied all allegations. He and RST communicated by means of text messages. Those text messages revealed that RST was aware of the sexual abuse, and that the sexual abuse continued after the man’s first police interview.
In October 2023 RST was interviewed by police officers. Under caution she admitted knowing that her partner had taken photos of the girl both naked and dressed up. She explained that she was emotionally abused by the man. She admitted that until earlier in 2023 she had not told anyone about the abuse or attempted to report the matter to the police.
It is clear that RST knew about the abuse from a fairly early stage. When her daughter was about eight years old there was an occasion during a camping trip when RST entered a tent and found her partner touching her daughter with his hand inside her bikini. He told RST not to tell anyone. She was present on other occasions when abuse took place, including times when her partner took photographs or made videos. On some occasions she took photos of her daughter at the man’s request. Her daughter told her of the abuse. There was an occasion in September 2022 when she spoke to the police, failed to disclose the abuse, and said that she had no concerns for the girl’s safety while she was with the man.
I was not provided with a victim impact statement. However it is highly likely that the victim of the abuse will suffer psychologically and emotionally to some extent, possibly for all her adult life. She and her younger brother have been removed from their mother’s care.
RST was in her early 30’s when she became aware that the abuse was occurring. It continued for about another three years. She is now in her mid 30’s. She has no significant prior convictions. Her two children are both children from a previous relationship. Both are now in the care of their father. RST is able to see them at the discretion of their father. Friends and family have stopped talking to her.
Counsel for RST has provided me with a thorough report by a clinical psychologist in relation to her behaviour. She has a history of depression from the age of 16, low self-esteem and poor self-image. As a result she had a strong desire to please her partner, and a desire to avoid his disapproval or displeasure. He was emotionally abusive and controlling through most of their seven-year relationship, consistently telling her that she was not good enough and that she was a bad mother. There was some physical violence. She had a history of disrupted attachment experiences.
The psychologist opined that she was likely to have become desensitised to the increasingly inappropriate and harmful nature of her partner’s requests, to the point where her fear of the negative consequences arising from non-compliance constrained her capacity to effectively care for and protect her daughter. The psychologist suggested that she had disassociated from the logical and emotional processes necessary to empathise with the impact of the sexual acts on her daughter. RST told the psychologist that she did not think critically about what her partner intended to do with the photographs, and that she complied with his requests without considering the negative impact of her complicity on her daughter. The psychologist considered that it was only recently that she began to fully comprehend the gravity of her behaviour. She now acknowledges that she has permanently damaged the relationship with her children, that they may never be returned to her care, that they may reject her when they understand the seriousness of the abuse and her betrayal, and that she now experiences feelings of shame and remorse. She said that she is likely to benefit from psychotherapy.
I understand that RST has been an inpatient at a mental health clinic for most of the last three months as a result of depression and suicidal ideation. There is no suggestion that she derived any pleasure from anything her partner did to her daughter.
I accept that RST’s moral culpability for not reporting the sexual abuse is significantly reduced because she was overborne by her emotionally abusive partner. That is a powerful mitigating factor. So is the fact that prison will be particularly difficult for a person in her present mental state. However the failure to report the abuse amounts to an extremely serious breach of trust on the part of the mother of a very vulnerable child. The gravity of the partner’s physical acts, the frequency of them, and the duration of the sexual abuse all make this a very serious case. The only appropriate penalty is a sentence of imprisonment. Because of the mitigating factors that I have mentioned, particularly the nature of RST’s relationship with the abuser, I will impose the shortest possible non-parole period.
RST, I convict you and sentence you to 12 months’ imprisonment. You will not be eligible for parole until you have served six months of this sentence.