Central Desert father of three guilty of sickening sexual assaults on five year old sister-in-law

‘For a long time after the incident, she had nightmares’: An NT court has heard devastating details about a series of sexual assaults committed against a young girl. Warning: Distressing.

A Central Desert father of three, aged in his thirties, has been jailed for a maximum of five years for gross indecency with a child aged five. Picture: Facebook

A father-of-three who was living in the Territory’s Central Desert region at the time has been jailed for sexually assaulting his partner’s younger sister, who was aged five at the time of the “depraved” attacks.

The man, who is aged in his thirties and cannot be identified, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory to four counts of performing an act of gross indecency on a child.

The assaults occurred approximately a decade ago, Chief Justice Michael Grant told the court at the man’s sentencing hearing late last month.

Justice Grant said the young girl was sexually assaulted four times in the space of three months while the family unit was living together at an address in the Central Desert region.

The man’s offending – much of which is too graphic to publish – involved nudity and forced mutual touching.

The man’s relationship with his partner, the girl’s older sister, broke down around the time of the last assault, which was “no doubt fortunate for the victim, because I infer that otherwise the offending would most likely have continued,” Justice Grant said.

Chief Justice Michael Grant described the man’s offending various as “predatory”, “depraved” and an “egregious breach of trust”. Picture: File

It wasn’t until about five years later that the girl disclosed the assaults to family members, resulting in the man being arrested and remanded in custody in late 2021.

Justice Grant said the sexual assaults had left deep scars on the girl.

“In her victim impact statement, she says that whenever your name is mentioned or whenever she sees a man with the same build as you or whenever she sees a man with some sort of similarity to you, her chest starts to hurt, her heart races, she shakes and she feels physically ill,” he told the court.

“She does not feel comfortable being around men generally, and she has understandable trust issues.

“These issues have impacted on her relationships with various members of her family.

“For a long time after the incident, she had nightmares about men touching her.

“She would wake up frightened and she could not get back to sleep.

“Her childhood has been overshadowed and defined by this experience.”

Justice Grant described the man’s offending variously as “planned, premeditated and predatory”; “depraved interference”; and an “egregious breach of trust”.

The court heard the man was born in Alice Springs but grew up in Darwin.

He left high school early without achieving a qualification, and had a patchy work history involving stints as a labourer, field officer and takeaway food worker.

Although he had no prior history of sexual offending, he had a number of convictions for violence against women.

Justice Grant sentenced the man to five years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of three and a half years, backdated to his arrest in late 2021.