South West man jailed for six years for engaging in sexual conduct with teenage stepdaughter

A 41-year-old South West man has been jailed for six years after engaging in sexual conduct with his stepdaughter on numerous occasions over several months. The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, was sentenced by the Bunbury District Court on Monday after pleading guilty to 13 counts of knowingly sexually penetrating a child who was a lineal or defacto relative. The court was told the man and the victim, who was 15 years old at the time of offending, engaged in sexual conduct with each other on multiple occasions between December 2021 and April this year. While the majority of the incidents took place in their Davenport home, the court was also told of several occasions where the pair would use the victim’s mother’s car to drive to a nearby location and engage in sexual conduct. The court was also told the pair would smoke cannabis together before performing sexual acts on each other. The offending stopped after an incident during the evening of April 29 when the victim’s mother walked in on the pair engaging in sexual conduct, prompting a heated argument between them. The following day, the man and the victim considered leaving and travelling to Melbourne together, until they were confronted by relatives, prompting the man to flee the address. The girl participated in a police interview several days later and the man was arrested. In submissions, the man’s defence counsel Fiona Walsh told the court her client’s state of mind at the time of offending was “difficult for him to talk about” and found it difficult to understand why he took that course of behaviour instead of just saying no from the beginning. “My client agrees that he had started to believe that they were in a relationship that would be ongoing,” she said. “He says that he had grown strong feelings for the victim and that after they were caught, he told the victim’s mother that they were planning on going to Melbourne together.” It was also submitted that the cannabis use was not used as a way to groom the teenager since the use of the drug was already prevalent in the house prior to the offending. A victim impact statement was also submitted to the court, in which the victim wrote of feeling depressed and guilty, as well as describing how it has affected her family relationships, particularly with her mother. In sentencing, District Court Judge Michael Bowden said while he accepted there was “no duress or coercion” when the offending took place, it was the man’s responsibility to avoid sexual conduct with the girl. “She wasn’t a lineal relative in the sense of perhaps traditionally considered, but she was your defacto child,” he said. “You ought to have been caring and nurturing, but you violated her by engaging in sexual activity to her. “It doesn’t matter whether or not she wanted sexual contact with you. “As the adult, the law imposes on you the obligation to resist these sort of temptations.” The man’s sentence was backdated to May this year and he will be eligible for parole after serving four years of his sentence.