Seventeen-year-old pleads guilty to raping 13-year-old girl and walks free

The court heard the victim could actually face penalties if she told anyone her rapist had pleaded guilty to the crime.

The 17-year-old walked free from Toowoomba court after pleading guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl.

The absurdities of Queensland’s Juvenile Justice Act was laid bare before a Toowoomba court on Monday when a teenager who pleaded guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl walked free with no conviction recorded.

Judge Alexander Horneman-Wren said he couldn’t impose a sentence of detention on the 17-year-old if there was another sentencing option available and he instead placed the teen on three years probation with no conviction recorded.

In a further insult to the victim child, Crown prosecutor Shontelle Petrie explained that if the girl told anyone that her rapist had pleaded guilty to raping her, she would in fact be in breach of the Juvenile Justice Act.

Under the Juvenile Justice Act, the teenage boy cannot be named due his age.

Ms Petrie told the court the then 15-year-old boy had invited the 13-year-old girl over to his house in September 2020 and she had gone to console him because he had been lonely.

However, knowing she had a boyfriend he had forced her to take off her clothes before he raped her, the court heard.

When spoken to by police, the boy denied even knowing the girl but DNA samples proved that was not the case.

Ms Petrie said the girl through her victim impact statement told of the trauma the event had caused her and that she had become distant from her mother and found it difficult to concentrate at school.

“She is distressed, she has no self worth and no longer has close relationship with her mother,” Ms Petrie said.

The event had impacted on the girl’s whole family, she said.

The boy’s barrister Dan Boddice told the court his client had ADHD and autism but he should have known what he was doing was wrong and he pleaded guilty to the charge of rape.

Judge Horneman-Wren noted by reports tended to the court the boy was a “low risk” of reoffending.

He told the teenager that the consequences of his offending against the young girl were “immeasurable”.

Part of the three years of probation the boy was sentenced to would include his reporting to and being treated by the Griffith Youth Forensic Service.