Man jailed for vigilante attack on paedophile
A young man has avoided adult prison after pleading guilty to a vigilante attack on a paedophile who was responsible for a sexual assault on a “vulnerable” four-year-old girl.
Police & Courts
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A vigilante attack on a paedophile who sexually assaulted a four-year-old girl has landed a young man behind bars.
Cameron Carter, 20, was today ordered to spend nine months in youth detention instead of an adult prison for his gang assault on Beau Rowe in Ballarat in August 2018.
He pleaded guilty in the County Court to false imprisonment and intentionally causing injury.
Then 19, Carter was a friend of the victim’s parents, who had returned home to find Rowe sexually assaulting their daughter, aged just 4.
Later that day, he joined three co-accused in bundling Rowe into a car, where they interrogated him before driving him to bushland along the Midland Hwy near Magpie where he was punched, headbutted, kicked, stomped on and left unconscious.
Nearby residents heard Rowe’s cries for help some two hours later.
Rowe, then 20, has since been jailed for nine years for his crimes, including the sexual assault on the girl.
Judge Michael Bourke said Carter’s offending was serious but considered the motive behind the attack when sentencing him.
“It is clear that there were serious sexual assaults and I accept there was much distress and understandable anger at the discovery,” Judge Bourke said.
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“Whilst your motivation was clearly punishment outside of the law, your victim here was not innocent of the crimes which so outraged you.
“Further and perhaps more importantly, I should bear in mind that your group was provoked and so outraged to a high level by offending of a dreadful kind against a vulnerable child.”
Other mitigating factors, he said, included the fact Carter co-operated with police, confessed to his crimes the next day and even directed investigators to where they had taken Rowe.