John Cattle: Jury to decide fate of Canberra tennis coach accused of historic child sex crimes
Jurors will begin deliberating over allegations of historic child sex offending levelled at former suburban tennis club coach, who is now 83.
Canberra Star
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- Tennis coach denies molesting girls
- Coach quit job after girl’s father accused him of indecency
- ‘False memory’ expert testifies for alleged child molester
Jurors have been urged to find former Canberra tennis coach John Walter Cattle guilty of molesting two girls in the 1980s.
Cattle, now 83, has pleaded not guilty to four charges stemming from a series of alleged indecent acts committed against one girl and the groping of another. In his closing address to an ACT Supreme Court jury, crown prosecutor Keegan Lee said the jurors should accept the alleged victim’s account of Cattle’s conduct, despite what he said were “minor” discrepancies between the memories of different witnesses.
Mr Lee said the second alleged victim’s description of Cattle putting “his big hand in my tight scungies” was reliable, as was her description of his tongue kiss as being similar to a “doggie lick”.
Both victims are now women in their 40s.
Mr Lee said the jury should not accept Cattle’s denial when confronted by one of the alleged victim’s fathers.
“I’d suggest that it’s something you might expect Mr Cattle to say in the circumstances and you wouldn’t accept it,” Mr Lee said.
Cattle has no criminal record, and Mr Lee said he was well respected at the club at the time.
He is also accused of showing his first alleged victim a pornographic magazine, an act which he is not charged over but which Mr Lee said shows he tended to be sexually interested in young girls.
He said there was “no other reason why you would show a young girl a pornographic magazine other them to sexualise them”.
Cattle’s barrister Craig Smith SC said the evidence should leave the jury with a reasonable doubt about what, if anything, happened, and his client should be acquitted on all charges.
Mr Smith said the decades that have passed since Cattle allegedly molested the girls meant the memories of the witnesses were unreliable.
“This isn’t a memory of what you did last Saturday, four or five days ago … this is a memory, or a recollection, or something that is said to have occurred in excess of 30 years ago,” he said.
The allegation of the one-off indecent assault committed against the second girl is tied to a Saturday, April 4, 1987.
He said even if the jurors had a reasonable doubt about the date on which the alleged offending took place, they were required to acquit the now elderly former tennis coach.
The trial, before Chief Justice Helen Murrell and a jury, continues.