|
|
[Home]
[Databases]
[WorldLII]
[Search]
[Feedback]
County Court of Victoria |
Last Updated: 1 December 2014
AT MELBOURNE
---
|
JUDGE:
|
||
|
WHERE HELD:
|
||
|
DATE OF HEARING:
|
||
|
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:
|
||
Catchwords: Very elderly offender; serious offending against children in care; conditions of imprisonment; partially suspended sentence imposed.
---
|
APPEARANCES:
|
Counsel
|
Solicitors
|
|
For the DPP
|
Ms S.G. MacDougall
|
Office of Public Prosecutions
|
|
For the Accused
|
Mr D. McGann
|
Shane Balkin & Associates
|
1 Ronald Buckley, you have pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault on a male contrary to section 68(3A) of the Crimes Act 1958. The maximum penalty for that offence is five years imprisonment.
2 Committal proceedings were conducted in the Magistrates’ Court at Melbourne on 15 and 16 October 2013, and the victims of your offending were required to attend for cross-examination, and were in fact cross-examined by your counsel. You pleaded guilty on 12 November 2014 after the matter was listed for trial in this court. A plea Indictment was filed over the trial Indictment, and the matter was adjourned to 21 November 2014 for plea.
3 Your plea of guilty has spared the community and the witnesses the cost and difficulty of what would have been a complex criminal trial, and for this reason I have taken your plea into account in your favour in mitigation of sentence. For reasons which I will come to, I do not, however, accept that your plea of guilty is evidence of remorse for your offending.
4 You have no prior convictions, no subsequent convictions, and no outstanding matters before courts.
5 A prosecution opening was read to the court and tendered in evidence, and your offending may be summarised as follows -
6 Between 1959 and 1985 you were the superintendent in charge of Hillside Boys Home, a state-run orphanage situated in Jells Road, Glen Waverley. Hillside housed approximately thirty six boys of varying ages in dormitories. Most of the boys had come from broken homes. They suffered from behavioural issues, mental and physical illnesses and intellectual disabilities.
7 At all relevant times you were employed by the Social Welfare Department or equivalent government departments and your principal responsibility was to secure the welfare of the vulnerable children who were in your care.
8 The child the subject of count 1 on the Indictment arrived at Hillside in 1966 aged twelve years. Approximately one month after his arrival you instructed him to attend at your office after his evening shower. At approximately 7.30pm the victim attended your office, at which time you told him to remove his pyjama pants. You forced his foreskin back and fondled his penis.
9 The child the subject of count 2 on the Indictment arrived at Hillside in 1966 aged nine years. He was disabled, having defective eyesight and a bowel condition which caused him to regularly soil his clothing. Prior to residing at Hillside he had resided at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Royal Institute for the Blind. Some months after his arrival he was summoned to your office from the swimming pool where he had been playing. You told him to take his bathers off, and then began to play with his penis and masturbated him. Your offending in this instance was against a very young boy who you knew was disabled.
10 The child the subject of count 3 on the Indictment arrived at Hillside in 1967 aged fourteen years. During the course of his stay at Hillside you summoned him to your office after he was showering. You told him to remove his towel, and then fondled his penis and also his anal area.
11 The child the subject of count 4 on the Indictment arrived at Hillside in 1969 aged twelve years. Following a fire at the school at Hillside he was summoned to your home, which was on the site. You instructed him to lie down on your bed and remove his clothing. After this you fondled his penis and unsuccessfully masturbated him. The victim ran from your room with no clothes on, and hid from you under the school.
12 It is clear from this summary that your offending may properly be described as of the utmost seriousness.
13 Your offending involved a gross breach of the trust that the community had placed in you. As I have observed, it was your primary responsibility to secure the welfare of the vulnerable children in your care. Instead, you sexually abused them.
14 The Prosecution Opening which was tendered in evidence details a number of other uncharged acts performed by you in relation to the victims of your offending. The sentence that I will impose is only in respect of the charges to which you have pleaded guilty and the conduct relied upon in support of those charges. However, it is clear that your offending, which took place over a period of approximately three years, occurred in the context of other offending against your victims. Whilst it would appear that some of the children at Hillside were treated appropriately by you, you also chose vulnerable children to offend against in order to satisfy your criminal and amoral sexual desires.
15 The sentence that I impose must be calculated to deter persons who are responsible for the care of vulnerable children from offending in this way.
16 You must also be punished for your offending and your appalling conduct must be denounced by this court.
17 Your offending occurred almost fifty years ago. Whilst it is clear that the passage of that time is an important sentencing consideration in your case, it is also fundamental that persons such as you are brought to justice. The court process has facilitated the disclosure of the truth of what occurred at Hillside whilst you were the superintendent responsible for the children who lived there.
18 I now turn to your personal circumstances.
19 You were born in Melbourne on 21 October 1921, and you are now aged ninety three. You have no criminal history. Your family life and developmental years were unremarkable and you grew up in a stable hardworking family. Both of your parents died when you were a mature adult and your only sibling died recently.
20 You have never married and have no children.
21 You left school at the age of fifteen and worked in various unskilled positions before enlisting in the Australian Army medical corps during World War II. Following the end of hostilities you returned to civilian life, joining the Victorian Children’s Welfare Department, where you worked at the Turana Youth Training Centre.
22 You commenced employment at Hillside in 1959 and following your retirement you worked voluntarily as a youth probation officer and also carried out some advocacy work for the Victorian Office of the Public Advocate.
23 You have been involved in a range of community activities including Rotary.
24 You are in relatively good health for your age, although I accept that you have difficulty walking and require the assistance of a walking frame, and suffer from partial deafness. You have a history of various physical ailments which have been the subject of medication and treatment. You do not currently suffer from any acute illness.
25 You have lived independently in Geelong for approximately thirty two years. You are in receipt of the aged pension, and receive limited home help. Until recently you drove your own vehicle and swam at the local swimming pool. Your days are spent gardening, watching television and reading.
26 I have received in evidence a psychological report of Mr Ian McKinnon, a consulting and forensic psychologist, detailing your background and psychological profile. He concludes that you do not suffer from any psychological disorder and have no history of mental illness. He describes your general cognitive functioning as normal.
27 Mr McKinnon questioned you about your offending, and stated as follows:
“No expression of remorse or empathy for the victims was forthcoming from Mr Buckley.”
28 Mr McKinnon arrived at the conclusion that in all probability at the time of your offending you were adversely affected by “a Disorder of sexual preference: Paedophilia”. He further concludes that having regard to your advanced age there is a significantly reduced risk of you reoffending and I accept that this is the case.
29 I have received in evidence Victim Impact statements of three of your victims, and the Victim Impact statement of the wife of one of your victims. Your fourth victim also prepared a Victim Impact statement, but this was not sworn in accordance with the relevant statutory provisions, and was therefore not received in evidence but no doubt he was traumatised by your offending.
30 It is clear from the contents of the Victim Impact statements that your offending has had a profound effect on the victims and their families. Each of your victims has suffered from complex depressive illnesses characterised by substance abuse and suicidal ideation. In each case their development was seriously disrupted by your offending, and they have not been able to live stable fulfilled lives.
31 It would appear that despite the responsibilities you had, you did not consider the devastating effect that your offending would have on the vulnerable children in your care and how your offending would affect their futures. As recently as November of this year, when you were interviewed by Mr McKinnon for the purposes of his psychological report, you expressed no remorse or empathy for your victims. It was not until after the Victim Impact statements were read to the court that you instructed your counsel to express your sorrow for the distress that you had caused the victims. In my opinion this expression of sorrow does not amount to meaningful remorse in your case.
32 When you were interviewed by investigating police in 2005 and 2012 you denied your offending.
33 Nevertheless you have not re offended for many years and it would appear that you have successfully rehabilitated yourself. I do not believe you will reoffend and specific deterrence is not a significant sentencing consideration in your case.
34 I accept that your prosecution and sentencing for your offending will result in a high degree of public shame and the complete loss of your standing as a good citizen but that standing did not reflect the whole truth about you.
35 In its written submission on sentence to this court, the Prosecution submitted that:
“Having regard to all of the circumstances of this case the Crown does not seek an immediate custodial sentence.”
36 The basis of this submission was your age and the proposition that Corrections Victoria would not be able to adequately deal with your vulnerability in prison. In response to this submission I requested that evidence be placed before the court regarding how you would be managed in the event that I decided to impose a term of imprisonment to be served upon you.
37 Brendan Money, the Assistant Commissioner of Corrections Victoria, gave evidence before me and I am satisfied on the basis of that evidence that despite your advanced age, your health and wellbeing will be managed appropriately in the event that you are required to serve a term of imprisonment. The Canton Unit at the Hopkins Correctional facility in Ararat is specifically designed to house elderly sex offenders such as you.
38 In my opinion, imprisonment is the only appropriate proportionate sentence to be imposed in your case. Your offending is of the utmost seriousness and the purposes for which this sentence is to be imposed will in my opinion, be achieved by you being required to serve actual time in custody.
39 However, I have significantly moderated the terms of imprisonment I would have otherwise imposed by reason of your age and the fact that your offending occurred many years ago.
40 Furthermore, it is desirable that part of the total sentence that I will impose be suspended also by reason of your age and the relative hardship you will experience in prison.
41 In relation to count 3 and count 4 on the Indictment you are to be sentenced as a serious offender by operation of Part 2A of the Crimes Act 1958. For this reason the protection of the community is principal purpose for which the sentence on those counts is to be imposed.
42 In the result the sentence of the court is as follows -
43 On count 1, the charge of indecent assault on a male, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for six months.
44 On count 2, the charge of indecent assault on a male, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for twelve months.
45 On count 3, the charge of indecent assault on a male, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for nine months.
46 On count 4, the charge of indecent assault on a male, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for six months.
47 The sentence imposed on count 2 is the base sentence. I order that one month of the sentence on count 1, four months of the sentence on count 3, and one month of the sentence on count 4, be served cumulatively on each other and cumulatively on the sentence imposed on count 2.
48 This makes a total effective term of imprisonment of eighteen months.
49 I order that fifteen months of that sentence be suspended for a period of eighteen months.
50 I declare that you have served two days by way of pre-sentence detention not including today.
51 But for your plea of guilty I would have sentenced you to a total effective term of imprisonment of three years, and ordered that you serve nine months imprisonment before becoming eligible for release on parole.
52 You will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life. My Associate will provide information to you regarding the Register.
53 I have made the forensic sample order sought by the prosecution.
AustLII:
Copyright Policy
|
Disclaimers
|
Privacy Policy
|
Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VCC/2014/1987.html