Former Royal Australian Navy sailor Brodie Reid avoids jail stint for HMAS Cerberus sex assault
A former Royal Australian Navy sailor has sunk his career for sexually assaulting a female colleague at HMAS Cerberus.
South East
Don't miss out on the headlines from South East . Followed categories will be added to My News.
An ex-Royal Australian Navy sailor who sexually assaulted a female colleague while both were on duty at HMAS Cerberus has avoided a jail term.
Brodie Reid, 19, was sentenced at the Defence Force Magistrates Court sitting at HMAS Cerberus after pleading guilty to committing an act of indecency without consent.
Reid, who has since returned to live at Redcliffe north of Brisbane, was dismissed from the Navy after he assaulted his victim in a common room at the Crib Point training base in 2020.
The court heard Reid grabbed his victim’s hand and placed it on his erect penis.
“Do you like that?” Reid asked.
“Just do it, no one is going to see it.”
Reid repeated his lewd conduct then attempted to grab his victim’s groin area.
The sex fiend removed his penis from his pants, grabbed his victim’s head and forced it towards his groin, the court heard.
“It will be fine, no one will see,” Reid said.
The victim later recalled her head came within 10cm of Reid’s penis.
A person who entered the room and interrupted Reid said they saw him adjusting his groin area.
Reid was hauled in for a record of interview days later.
The victim, in her victim impact statement read to the court at an earlier hearing, said she endures “emotional suffering”.
“I blame myself for it,” she said.
“I believed I had done something to deserve it.”
The victim, who feels withdrawn and unsafe, said she had weakened trust in men.
Defence Force Magistrate Group Captain Scott Geeves said he ”won’t be blaming her for anything”.
“(These) are words from a brave and mature young woman,” Group Captain Geeves said.
Navy prosecutor Commander Micheal Paes submitted the “brazenness” in how Reid “violated” his colleague aggravated the offending.
“It’s a remarkable indictment … (which) needs to be condemned in the strongest of measures,” Commander Paes said.
“(It’s an) aggravating factor that this occurred in such a benign setting … there was a certain nonchalance to his conduct … he has not apologised.”
Commander Paes said training Reid received including how to act appropriately in the workplace would’ve been “fresh in his mind”.
“It’s difficult to see how he could be trusted (in tight work spaces with female colleagues),” Commander Paes said.
Defending officer Lieutenant Raphael De Vietri said Reid had “impaired judgment” and was suffering with several “stressors” at the time.
It was submitted Reid was depressed because another female navy member who gave birth to his child had terminated their relationship.
The court heard Reid was also stressed because there was a possibility he would be dismissed from the navy on medical grounds.
“The storm was brewing,” Lieutenant De Vietri said.
The court was told Reid grew up in Brisbane and attended Redcliffe State High School.
Reid returned home to Redcliffe – where he currently lives – after he was suspended by the Navy.
The defence accepted Reid’s offending was brazen.
“It couldn’t be described in any other way,” Lieutenant De Vietri said.
“It’s utterly bizarre, it’s in explicable … it reads as an opportunistic event which occurred out of the blue.”
“There was a degree of persistence which concerns me,” Group Captain Geeves said.
Group Captain Geeves earlier indicated Reid was “at risk” of doing time in a civilian prison but spared the fiend a jail stint after further psych material was submitted.
“On the one hand his conduct was objectively very serious but that the seriousness of the offending had to be balanced against the uncontroverted evidence concerning his state of mind at the time of the offending …,” Group Captain Geeves said in his written remarks.
“Ultimately, the DFM was satisfied that the punishment of dismissal from the Defence Force
satisfied the competing sentencing considerations he was required to balance.”
