North Queensland rapist father bids for reduced sentence in Court of Appeal

A father jailed for raping his daughter, ultimately impregnating her, appealed his 12 year prison sentence because he says it was excessive. (Warning: distressing)

Picture: Istock

A father who was jailed for 12 years after a jury found him guilty of raping and impregnating his daughter has argued his sentence was too harsh.

The man was found guilty of rape by a Townsville jury in the District Court and sentenced on July 27, 2023 to 12 years’ jail, the 580 days he spent in pre-sentence custody was declared as time already served.

While his lawyers during the trial argued the victim was neither “honest nor reliable”, he represented himself during the Court of Appeal in Brisbane Supreme Court this month, court documents show.

The man, who was 50 at the time of sentencing, was proved to have raped his teen daughter on three separate occasions while she lived with him, with the girl having woken up to him on top of her.

She found out she was pregnant with his baby at 17.

One of the grounds for the appeal was that the guilty verdicts were unreasonable due to the victim originally lying about who raped her.

The victim told people she fell pregnant after getting drunk at a party and having sex with a male she didn’t know – which was ultimately proven to be false as there was no party and her family knew she didn’t leave the house.

Her father told her not to tell anyone as no one would believe her, so when police questioned her after the pregnancy she said it was her stepbrother, which was once again proven as not true.

The court documents outlined that the jury were made aware of the accounts the victim gave and it was up to them to decide if they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that her father was the one guilty of raping her.

“In addition, the jury had the benefit of the complainant’s evidence as to her reasons for why she did not disclose her father’s offending against her, including that he told her that no one would believe her, until it came out in the argument with her partner in July 2021,” the documents stated.

“It was open to the jury to consider the complainant’s explanations as to why she lied about how she fell pregnant in 2017.”

The jury also heard evidence from a doctor within the Forensic DNA analysis laboratory at Queensland Health who said the DNA profile of the terminated foetus was “approximately 41 million times more likely” to be from the victim and her father.

The Supreme Court judges said the man did not successfully show the guilty verdicts were unreasonable.

“There is no significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted,” the document stated.

The man during his appeal also argued the sentence was excessive.

“The trial judge identified the seriousness of appellant’s offending as a ‘terrible betrayal of the role of a father’ and described the appellant as remorseless in respect of his offending,” the application said.

“The appellant had not been the father figure in the complainant’s life during her childhood but she turned to him when she was 16 years old, she was rejected by other family members, and she needed a place to stay.”

Ultimately the Court of Appeal dismissed both his application against the conviction and refused the appeal against his sentence.

Originally published as North Queensland rapist father bids for reduced sentence in Court of Appeal