Citation: R v Charlton [2024] NSWDC 633
Court: District Court of New South Wales
Date: 28 August 2024
Judge: King SC DCJ
Background
The offender, a man now aged 66, was convicted following a jury trial of 21 counts of sexual offending against seven child victims. The offending spanned approximately 23 and a half years, from May 1995 to January 2019. All seven victims were under ten years of age at the time of each offence.
The offender was known to the families of every victim. The victims included his own daughter, children of a family he assisted through a charitable organisation, and children from a rural family who knew him as "Uncle Peter." In each case, the offender placed himself in a position of trust and familiarity before the offending occurred.
The offender was arrested on 20 December 2021 and had been in custody for approximately two years and eight to nine months by the time of sentencing. He did not plead guilty, expressed no remorse, and no contrition was identified by the court.
Legal Issues
- What are the appropriate individual sentences for each of the 21 counts, having regard to the objective seriousness of each offence, aggravating factors, and relevant uncharged acts?
- What aggregate sentence appropriately reflects the totality of the offending across nine separate incidents involving seven victims over more than two decades?
- How should the court weigh subjective factors, including the absence of remorse, the offender's age, and his prospects of rehabilitation?
- Whether special circumstances existed justifying a departure from the standard non-parole period ratio.
Decision
The court found the offending to be gravely serious. All victims were very young children, each known to and trusting of the offender, and the offending occurred in domestic settings where the victims were under the offender's authority. The court identified multiple aggravating factors, including serious breaches of trust, the vulnerability of the victims, and the offender's deliberate positioning of himself to gain access to children over many years.
King SC DCJ treated the offending as a course of conduct involving grooming behaviour across multiple victim groups over an extended period. The court took into account uncharged acts as context, consistent with the approach affirmed in cases including Chiro v R and R v Way, and assessed each count individually before constructing an aggregate sentence that reflected the overall criminality without being crushing.
On subjective matters, the court found little that mitigated the sentence. The absence of remorse, the absence of a guilty plea, and the offender's pattern of placing himself in positions of trust over decades all weighed against him. The court acknowledged his age and the possibility that increasing age might reduce the risk of reoffending, but characterised that possibility as speculative.
The court declined to find special circumstances justifying a departure from the standard non-parole to balance of term ratio. A four-year parole period was considered sufficient to serve the purposes of rehabilitation and community supervision.
Orders Made
- Aggregate sentence of 16 years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 12 years.
- Sentence commences 20 December 2021 (date of arrest).
- First eligible for parole: 19 December 2033.
- Balance of term expires: 19 December 2037.
- Individual indicative sentences imposed for each count, ranging from one year to ten years imprisonment (with the longest single sentence of ten years imposed for Count 21, carrying an indicative non-parole period of seven years and six months).
Key Takeaways
- The District Court confirmed that where an offender deliberately positions himself across multiple families and settings to gain access to children over decades, the course of conduct and grooming behaviour are significant factors in assessing the aggregate sentence.
- Uncharged acts may be taken into account in sentencing where they are relevant to context and demonstrate that the charged offending was not isolated, consistent with the approach in Chiro v R and R v Way.
- Absence of remorse and the rejection of a guilty plea are relevant subjective considerations that weigh against an offender at sentencing, even where the court otherwise considers the offender's age and health.
- No special circumstances were found on these facts, despite the length of the aggregate sentence, because the four-year parole period was assessed as adequate to meet rehabilitative and supervisory purposes.
- A prolonged pattern of offending against multiple vulnerable victims in positions of trust, occurring across different family groups over more than two decades, was treated by the court as warranting a substantial aggregate non-parole period, with individual indicative terms structured to reflect the differing gravity of each incident.
Legislation and Cases Referenced
Legislation:
- Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)
- Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW)
Cases:
- Chiro v R [2017] HCA 37
- DPP v Burton [2020] NSWCCA 54
- Kennedy v R [2022] NSWCCA 215
- R v Lulham [2016] NSWCCA 287
- R v Way [2004] NSWCCA 131