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Article Category: 2006 November

Judge overruled on reduced rape compo

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Article originally prepared on : 21 November 2006

Judge overruled on reduced rape compo

PETER HANSEN. The Sunday Mail. Brisbane, Qld.:Nov 19, 2006. p. 41

THE State Court of Appeal has reversed the decision of a north Queensland judge

who halved a compensation award to a teenage girl raped by her stepfather,

because he had sexually abused her previously.

Women's groups were outraged by the original ruling, based on the fact the

Crown had elected to prosecute only the rape charge and not charge the man over

earlier lesser sex abuse.

Townsville District Court judge Clive Wall, QC, in September cut the girl's

criminal compensation payout by 50 per cent, ruling that part of her

psychological problems could be put down to the earlier abuse she suffered.

The court was told she was 14 at the time of the rape. It was alleged the rape

was the culmination of years of abuse which began when she was 10.

Her stepfather was convicted of one count of rape and jailed in 2003 for five

years.

Judge Wall said that the girl had told police she had been abused by her

stepfather over a number of years but the man had not been convicted of these

offences, only the rape.

He said the amount of compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder and

adverse effects she later suffered should be reduced by 50 per cent because it

was impossible to divorce the psychological impact of the sexual abuse from the

effects of the rape.

The Court of Appeal's Justice Cate Holmes, said there had been a miscarriage in

the exercise of the judge's discretion.

The uncharged acts were part of a course of similar and reprehensible conduct

of which the rape was the culmination.

Also (overlooked) was the fact that the child was powerless, both in the course

of what happened to her at the hands of the man, and also in what seemed to

have been a "relatively arbitrary decision" not to charge the stepfather with

the earlier abuse.

The court on Friday reinstated the full amount of compensation, $42,750.

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