Former owners of Eyre Peninsula bakery who sexually abused and groomed young girl sentenced next month

A woman guilty of sexually abusing a teen girl at their Eyre Peninsula bakery was simply trying to please her husband, a court has heard.

A woman who helped her husband groom young employees at their bakery, where he eventually went on to father three children with the victims, was trying to please him within a “cult-like” situation, a court has heard.

The former married couple, who ran a bakery on SA’s Eyre Peninsula, can’t be named to protect the identities of their victims.

They appeared in the District Court on Thursday after being found guilty by a jury last year of child sex crimes dating back to the 1980s.

Benjamin Armstrong, for the woman, told the court his client accepted the jury’s verdict and said the nature of her relationship with the man was similar to the relationship with the main victim.

“What’s unusual, she is herself a victim,” he said.

“There is a period of time where she is effectively ensconced in this relationship.

“There are some significant parallels … (between her) offending – the offending against the victim – and the way in which my client became involved with (the man).”

Mr Armstrong said his client encountered the man when she had no sexual experience.

“She quickly became involved with him and in that regard, the reasons for that, were he paid attention to me,” he said.

“It’s the same pattern repeating itself, in my submission, over and over again.”

A court previously heard there were two other victims – one of which was also brought into the close family circle and another who was sexually assaulted by the man while working at the bakery.

Prosecutors allege the man groomed the young employees at the bakery before getting his wife involved and making them pseudo members of the family and fathering their children.

Mr Armstrong said the woman, now 67, had a “deprived childhood” that led to the inability to pursue healthy relationships.

“Effectively the inability to develop normally psycho-sexually,” he said.

“(The woman’s) involvement in the offending has a particular genesis … that is the desire to ensure (the man’s) sexual appetite was satisfied.”

A former employee told the court during trial the husband regularly made “sexual innuendos” in the workplace and mentioned how he wanted to have a “baker’s dozen of children”.

The male had three children in seven months with three women, two of them victims of his abuse, in what one of the victim’s brother described to the court as a “cult-like” situation.

“He just said he wanted 13 children regardless … that was his goal.”

Mr Armstrong said his client did not go out of her way to find victims but did play a “significant role” in that offending.

Mr Armstrong said because of these points, his client should not be considered a serious repeat offender.

The pair will be sentenced later this month.