Attorney-General loses appeal against ‘manifestly inadequate’ sentence handed to child rapist

The State Government has lost an appeal against a sentence handed to a 61-year-old man who spent 13 months in jail for raping two children.

Queensland’s Attorney-General has lost an appeal against the sentence handed down to 61-year-old Anthony Ian Green (left, escorted by police) in Gympie District Court in February. Green pleaded guilty to 16 charges including indecent treatment of a child under the age of 12 and rape.

Queensland’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by the State Government against the sentence handed down to a 61-year-old Gympie man who indecently assaulted and raped two children.

The state’s Attorney General had claimed the sentence handed to Anthony Ian Green was “manifestly inadequate”.

Green, 61, pleaded guilty in February 2021 to 16 charges including 12 counts of indecent treatment of a child under the age of 12, and four counts of rape.

He was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’’ jail, suspended after 13 months.

The suspended sentence was to last five years.

Anthony Green was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ jail in February 2021, suspended after 13 months. The sentence would remain suspended for five years.

The Attorney-General argued Green should have been forced to serve 18 months before the sentence was suspended.

She argued Judge Glen Cash had taken a strictly mathematical approach to sentencing, contrary to principle.

However, Court of Appeal President Walter Sofronoff found that although Mr Cash’s calculations of 16 months jail time was initially incorrect, this was corrected by the prosecutor during the sentencing who pointed out 13 and a half months was right.

The appeal was denied by the state’s Supreme Court which found it had “no merit”.

“There was no impermissible ‘mathematical’ approach,” Mr Sofronoff said.

Regarding claims the sentence was inadequate, Mr Sofronoff said it had been the prosecutor who first raised suspension as part of an appropriate sentence.

He said if the defence or the judge raised the prospect of a suspended sentence and the prosecutor felt such an order was beyond their jurisdiction it was “ the duty of prosecuting counsel to say “so to the sentencing judge” (at the time).

“If such a submission is not made, then the prosecution should not be permitted to advance (it) for the first time on appeal,” Mr Sofronoff said.

“In my respectful opinion this appeal has no merit and, for these reasons, I joined in the order dismissing the appeal,”

Originally published as Attorney-General loses appeal against ‘manifestly inadequate’ sentence handed to child rapist