Cairns crime: Jack Patrick Bon guilty of six indecent treatment charges of child Under 16 in District Court

A man who was ‘perfectly positioned’ to take advantage of a ‘young and naive’ teen has been sentenced in Cairns District Court after being found guilty on six counts of indecent treatment.

A MAN who pleaded not guilty to six counts of indecent treatment of a child aged under 16 was found guilty in Cairns District Court on Tuesday.

Jack Patrick Bon, 45, received a sentence of 18 months for five of the charges and a sentence of two years for one charge, to be served concurrently and suspended after 12 months.

The victim alleged that on different dates and at two addresses, the accused squeezed her thigh and put his hand down her shorts, squeezed her legs and put his hand in her underwear, pulled her between his legs to move his penis against her bottom in a grinding motion, squeezed her thigh and tried to put his hand under her shorts, grabbed her hand and rubbed it against his erect penis both outside and inside his underwear, and touched her vagina on the outside of her clothing.

She said in a victim impact statement she started smoking and drinking and “fell in with the wrong crowd” as a result.

“The whole situation made me feel like I had no one, like I was all alone … I lost my only father figure, it is difficult without him,” she said in the statement read to the court by prosecutor Aaron Dunkerton.

Mr Dunkerton acknowledged there were inconsistencies in the dates the victim gave of when the offences occurred.

“She didn’t embellish any of the accounts … she was presented with the opportunity to really put the boot in, she was asked if he put his fingers inside her and she said no, if she truly was making it up you might expect her to stick the boot in, and she didn’t,” he said.

Mr Dunkerton said she was “plausible and believable”.

But defence barrister Michael Dalton, in his closing address to the jury, argued the victim’s inconsistencies stretched plausibility and that she made the allegations because she did not want Mr Bon to have parental control over her.

“There’s no secrets here, it didn’t happen,” Mr Dalton said.

“There are inconsistent dates, time frames, schools, in what grades at what schools, that go beyond what you might think are a couple of mistakes, it is a litany of inconsistencies.

“It is a very unsophisticated lie told by a teenager wanting to remove (him) out of her life,” he said.

The court heard Mr Bon had an excellent employment history and continued to provide for the family.

Originally published as Cairns crime: Jack Patrick Bon guilty of six indecent treatment charges of child Under 16 in District Court