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Mechanic, who was jailed for violent discipline of young stepdaughters, now in immigration detention

A MECHANIC who violently disciplined his two young stepdaughters and slapped his stepson in the face has been shifted into immigration detention after spending more than a year in prison on remand

A man has been jailed for four months for violently disciplining his young stepdaughters and slapping his stepson in the face. Picture: Che Chorley
A man has been jailed for four months for violently disciplining his young stepdaughters and slapping his stepson in the face. Picture: Che Chorley

A MECHANIC who violently disciplined his two young stepdaughters and slapped his stepson in the face has been shifted into immigration detention after spending more than a year in prison on remand.

The man, who the NT News has chosen not to name to protect the victims’ identity, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to three counts of aggravated assault against his young stepchildren in 2018.

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The court heard the man had been married to the children’s mother for two years after immigrating to Australia from South Africa when his two stepdaughters, aged between 6 and 12, were late coming home from the park one evening.

The man had been drinking before pulling out of the driveway to look for the girls when he saw them coming down the road and asked them where they’d been.

In sentencing, Justice Judith Kelly said during the conversation, the man “became angry” and used his belt to strike the older girl “a few times around the buttocks and legs”.

“The metal buckle and the leather belt hit her skin, leaving marks on her upper legs,” she said.

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“(The girl) and her mother put some make-up on that to try to hide the marks when she went to school (but) the following day, she was unable to sit down or go to the toilet without pain.”

Following the assault on the older girl, the man then smacked the younger girl with his hand “very hard, causing her pain and leaving a blue coloured bruise”.

Sometime during the same year, the man was working on a car in the back yard with his 10-year-old stepson when the boy stepped on a door handle in the dark.

The man pushed his hand against the child’s neck and slapped him in the face and when he started crying, the man told him to stop “or I will kick you”.

He was arrested in March last year and has been in custody ever since after more serious charges were dropped.

In handing the man a four-month jail sentence, Justice Kelly said the use of violence to discipline children was not only “simply unacceptable in our society” but the violence used against the girls was “excessive by any standard”.

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“The assault on the boy was particularly inappropriate and could not even remotely be considered a case of excessive use of force by way of discipline,” she said.

“You lost your temper with the boy for no apparent reason, he just stepped on something

in the dark. The nature of the violence that you used on him, the throat, bore no relationship to any form of discipline to be used on a child and on top of the violence you actually used on the boy, you threatened further, singularly inappropriate violence.”

After time served, the man will remain in immigration detention while his future in Australia is considered by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Original URL: https://www.ntnews.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts/mechanic-who-was-jailed-for-violent-discipline-of-young-stepdaughters-now-in-immigration-detention/news-story/d7f83bb24903a7c01d7bf5ac5921864a