Shaun Rayment to appeal loitering charge outside Ave Maria College

A convicted sex offender charged with loitering outside a Catholic girls’ school in the city’s northwest claims he was only there to deliver a rose to a teen he knew.

Shaun Rayment won the right to appeal a loitering charge after he was spotted at a bus stop near Ave Maria College in Aberfeldie on February 14, 2017.

A pervert caught hanging around outside a girls’ school in Melbourne’s north west shirtless on Valentine’s Day, claims he was there to deliver a rose to a teen.

Shaun Rayment has won the right to appeal a loitering charge after he was spotted at a bus stop near Ave Maria College in Aberfeldie on February 14, 2017.

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Mr Rayment, who was found guilty of a sexual offence in 2002, was seen at the school with no shirt on and carrying a cricket bat from 3.30pm, as school girls boarded buses.

But he claims he was there to meet a student at the school called ‘Leah’, who had called him earlier that afternoon asking him to bring a rose to her at the school.

The Supreme Court earlier this month heard Mr Rayment, who has an intellectual disability, spent about 20 minutes unsuccessfully searching for ‘Leah’ before trying to call her and then heading home.

One of the school girls took photos of Mr Rayment on her phone.

Shaun Rayment won the right to appeal a loitering charge after he was spotted at a bus stop near Ave Maria College in Aberfeldie on February 14, 2017. Picture: Kylie Else

Mr Rayment claims ‘Leah’ rang him later that night to ask why he hadn’t shown up and then told him her mother had picked her up from school.

When asked to produce the girl’s telephone number, he said he had since deleted it from his phone and when he was questioned about why he didn’t have a rose he told police it had been too late to get one.

In handing down her findings Justice Lesley Taylor said the purpose of the judicial review was to “establish the element of loitering”, and whether there was enough evidence to suggest Mr Rayment was instead hanging around or idling.

“Whether an offence is committed depends upon whether that person has reasonable excuse for doing so,” she said.

Justice Taylor concluded that the magistrate “did err in law in construing the word ‘loitering’”.

“It is thus a question for the magistrate to determine whether, in all the circumstances, the proffered explanation of the respondent that he was at a girls’ high school, without a rose, because he had been invited there by ‘Leah’, a schoolgirl whose telephone number he stated he had possessed but then deleted, amounted to a reasonable excuse.”

The matter will now return to the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to be determined at a later date.

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