Bowen man sentenced after jury’s guilty verdict for rape, indecent treatment of a child under 12 in his care

A judge has handed down the sentence for a Bowen region man who secretly abused his young stepdaughter in the family home over a number of years.

A jury heard shocking details of child sexual abuse in a trial at the Bowen courthouse.

A Bowen-region man who secretly abused his young stepdaughter in the family home for his own sexual gratification has been sentenced to six years’ jail.

The 37 year old was found guilty after a two-day trial in Bowen District Court that heard the man preyed on the girl over a number of years from when she was nine or 10 years old.

The abuse occurred when the girl’s mother was at work, and began when he asked the girl to wear a bikini around the home.

The court heard the man later began inviting the girl to shower with him, touching her inappropriately, and making her watch him perform indecent acts – all while the girl’s younger siblings were in the same house and, on some occasions, when a babysitter was in the home.

The escalating abuse ended when the girl, then aged 12, moved away to live with her biological father.

A man has been sent to jail for child sexual abuse after a trial at Bowen District Court. Picture: File

The man cannot be named for legal reasons.

The jury accepted the man orally and digitally raped the girl four times before she disclosed the abuse to her biological father’s partner when questioned about an inappropriate photograph found on an iPad.

When sat down for a police interview in 2019, she unleashed a “torrent” of details, which formed the bulk of the evidence at the trial.

The man had pleaded not guilty to all 16 charges against him, and the defence maintained the girl fabricated the allegations as a way to break up the relationship between the man and her mother.

During the trial, defence barrister Rowan Pack called the girl’s accounts of the offending “bizarre” “implausible” and “inconsistent” and questioned why she had not come forward earlier despite multiple opportunities to do so.

Crown prosecutor Scott Collins told the jury the girl was too scared to report the man’s actions while they were living under the same roof as he had a history of physical aggression towards her and her siblings.

Mr Collins said the girl did not think her mother would have believed her if she had told her what was going on at the time.

The accused chose not to testify at the trial, but the jury heard statements from the girl.

In summing up the case, Judge Gregory Lynham mentioned the “striking” level of detail the girl was able to recall about the offending that occurred as far back as 2016.

The jury took about two hours to reach its guilty verdict for all 16 charges on the trial’s third day.

Judge Lynham remanded the man custody overnight to return for sentencing on Thursday.

For the most serious charge – maintaining an unlawful relationship with a child – the man was sentenced to six years‘ jail.

For the remaining charges including four counts of rape, he received jail sentences of four years, two years, and 18 months.

The sentences are to be served concurrently, with no parole date set.