Gippsland transient Jesse Read pleads guilty to rape and sexual penetration of a child

A Gippsland transient caused his victim to dread she was pregnant after he lured the child from a bus stop and raped her.

Jesse Read pleaded guilty to rape and sexual penetration of a child under 16. Facebook.

A Gippsland vagabond who raped a child while not wearing a condom after luring the young girl from a shopping centre bus stop has been jailed.

Jesse Read, 22, was sentenced in the County Court on Tuesday to a minimum 44-month jail term after pleading guilty to rape and sexual penetration of a child under 16.

Read targeted his victim at the Traralgon Centre Plaza bus stop in December, 2019.

The court heard Read and another person bought the 14-year-old girl lunch.

Read, who told the victim he was 16, then asked the child how old she was.

The victim asked Read “why does it matter” then told him she was almost 15.

Read, who convinced the girl to return to his home, sexually penetrated the victim after she went to his bed for a “nap”.

The child told Read to wear a condom but he removed it after a short while.

The victim exclaimed “what the f**k” after she realised what Read did and refused to engage in further sexual activity.

“Get the f**k off me,” the victim said.

The child then pushed Read away and hit him in the face.

Read grabbed the victim as she attempted to flee his bedroom.

The victim resisted Read but he overpowered her and raped her.

The “angry” child, who managed to escape the room, yelled out to another man at the house to “keep him (Read) away from me” before fleeing the home.

The other man armed himself with a wooden bat, confronted Read and told him to leave the house.

The victim later told her mother what happened.

“Everything bad happened … he raped me,” she said.

“I told him to stop and he didn’t and I think I might be pregnant.”

Police eventually interviewed Read in September last year.

Read, who denied raping the child, told investigators a story about he and the child planned to have a baby but then she just up and left for Melbourne without notice.

The court heard Read grew up in Gippsland and was living in a tent near Bairnsdale at the time of his arrest.

Read, a father, worked various jobs after leaving school, including stints as a landscaper and a bricklayer.

Judge Amanda Chambers said Read’s rape was “serious offending”.

Read, who appeared via videolink from Hopkins Correctional, was made a registered sex offender for 15 years and jailed for a maximum of five years and six months.

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