Central QLD mine truck driver jail for sex with stepdaughter

A teenage girl has told a court how her miner stepfather’s “disgusting” sexual abuse of her for more than a year left her “terrified and traumatised”.

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A Central Queensland mine truck driver has been jailed and also faces deportation for the sexual abuse of his young stepdaughter.

The man in his 30s was found guilty by a jury after a trial in the Rockhampton District Court recently on the charge of “maintaining a sexual relationship with a child”.

Judge Jeff Clarke said the victim, who he found to be “a quiet and unassuming girl who gave evidence in a direct manner”, told the court she was scared, that she didn’t know what to do and was left “terrified and traumatised”.

“I never thought something like that would happen,” the child said in her evidence.

“I didn’t want it to happen.

“I didn’t want to be there.

“It made me feel really bad afterwards; made me feel disgusting.

“I didn’t want to exist on Earth anymore.

“I didn’t want to be here.”

Crown prosecutor Cameron Keast said the man digitally penetrated the young teenage girl when she was aged 12-14 at least once during the offending period.

The child was asked in court if the abuse had physically hurt her to which she replied that it had not, but she didn’t like it.

Judge Clarke said he found the child did not “exaggerate or embellish” her answers.

“She was an unsophisticated witness who was doing her best, it seemed to me, to give a clear account of what had happened,” Judge Clarke said, adding her descriptions were supported by two other girls who also gave evidence in the trial.

Judge Clarke said the man would often grab the victim, pull her towards him and touch her breasts.

“Sometimes (the defendant) would do that under the ruse of starting to have a play fight or while tickling her,” he said.

The court heard the stepfather would also put his hands down the girl’s pants and she would push his hand away, but he would persist, even when her mother was in the same room with such “conduct hidden under a blanket, for example, when watching a movie or when her mother was out of the room or in another part of the residence”.

The court also heard that on two occasions the man forced the girl to explicitly touch him.

“She was understandably scared, confused and disgusted,” Judge Clarke said, describing the girl as being of a “very impressionable age”.

“You told her not to tell.

“She has lost the support of her mother who has chosen to side with the defendant, seemed effectively disbelieving her and it’s hard to fathom what this all might have done to her self-esteem.”

The court heard the miner had children of his own and had worked in construction as well as a truck driver in the mining industry.

He also faced deportation as he was not an Australian citizen.

He was sentenced to three and a half years’ jail with no order made about parole.