STATE OF TASMANIA v CPM 16 DECEMBER 2025
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE CUTHBERTSON J
CPM you have pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with persistent sexual abuse of a young person and involving a person under 18 years in the production of child exploitation material. In addition, I am dealing with your pleas of guilty to six counts of breach of interim family violence order on complaint 7121/25.
All of these crimes and offences involve the same complainant. I will refer to them with no disrespect as “Jane”.
You were introduced to Jane by a mutual acquaintance while you were in custody last year. You were 24 years old at the time. The two of you started to speak over the prison telephone system. When you were released from custody, you messaged each other and then spoke on the phone. Jane told you she was 17 years old. You met in person within two weeks of your release from custody. You commenced a romantic and sexual relationship with Jane shortly after and spent a great deal of time in each others company in the following weeks, primarily engaging in sexual contact at her home. Although you had been told and believed Jane was 17, she was in fact 15 years old. You did not find this out until early October 2024, just prior to Jane’s 16th birthday when you were introduced to her mother who asked whether you knew that that she was 15.
Despite receiving this information and being aware of her real age, you continued to engage in a sexual relationship with Jane over the course of the five months that followed. Friends and acquaintances of Jane were unhappy about the relationship given the age difference. In October 2024, an anonymous report was made about your relationship. At that time, Jane attended the Royal Hobart Hospital as she was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage. It is not asserted you were the father of that unborn child, although you indicated to staff that you thought you were.
In November 2024, you obtained a rental property. Jane moved in to live with you at that address. The two of you also engaged in drug use during the course of your relationship, including using methylamphetamine. Jane’s family was concerned about her welfare and her noticeable loss of weight over that period.
Your relationship came to the attention of police on two occasions in that period. On 4 January 2025, you were arrested on an unrelated matter. Jane was present and the two of you kissed each other before you were placed into the police vehicle. Later in January 2025, a report was made to police that you had been violent towards Jane. Police attended your property and found Jane there although she denied being in a relationship with you at the time. All instances of sexual intercourse between were unprotected. As at February 2025, Jane was pregnant with your child.
The crime of persistent sexual abuse of a young person is committed when it is proved that an unlawful sexual act was committed on at least three occasions during the period of the charge. In this case, the State relies on eight specified occasions during which you engaged in unlawful sexual acts with Jane between 7 November 2024 and 6 February 2025. Each of those occasions are the subject of video recordings which were found on your mobile phone. Jane has not provided a statement or otherwise cooperated with the investigation. The State asserts, and you did not dispute, that these eight occasions were not isolated but formed part of a wider sexual relationship that occurred between the two of you in that period.
The occasions relied upon all occurred in the months after Jane turned 16. You are not separately charged in relation to the production or possession of these various videos. During those eight occasions, you engaged in a range of unlawful sexual acts with Jane. On seven of those occasions, you penetrated Jane’s mouth with your penis which constitutes the crime of (penetrative sexual abuse of a young person). On three of those occasions, the penetration caused Jane to gag. You are holding Jane’s head during three of those occasions. One of the instances of oral sexual intercourse is described as forceful. You also slap Jane during another occasion of oral sexual intercourse. On two occasions, your conduct involved an indecent act directed at a child when you masturbated your penis close to Jane’s face. On one such occasion you ejaculated while telling Jane she is a “good girl”. Jane is heard responding “yes please Master” to a question you ask which is not audible. On two of the other occasions, Jane masturbates your penis.
Two of the occasions involve penetrative abuse of a young person when you engaged in vaginal-penile sexual intercourse with Jane. In the videos of one of these occasions, another female was present and she also engaged in sexual contact with the two of you from time to time. You and Jane used drugs on this occasion. Jane asked you for more drugs and you then used a lighter to heat up an ice pipe from which she inhaled. Jane was touching her own genitalia while engaged in sexual intercourse with you and you directed her to touch herself “faster” and “slower”. Another female can be heard talking in the background during that conduct. The videos of that occasion also show Jane engaged in sexual conduct with the other female. You were clearly operating the camera at the time. You filmed the complainant’s buttocks, pulling out her underpants to expose and touch her to that area. At the end of one of the videos taken by you, you stated “I have a nice long two, three minute video going on here right now”.
Five videos were also located of the second occasion during which you engaged in penile-vaginal sexual intercourse with Jane. One captures a discussion between you concerning the possibility of making money from the videos. The videos depict sexual touching between the two of you including Jane masturbating your penis and you licking Jane’s genitals. At one point, you penetrated Jane’s mouth with your penis while slapping her several times to the buttocks with force. You also grabbed Jane to the throat and she said “Yes Master” as you did so. This was one of the occasions of oral sexual intercourse during which Jane gagged. At another stage, you placed a leg across Jane’s throat causing her to gasp for air while the two of you were touching your own genitalia. While you were forcefully penetrating Jane’s mouth with your penis, causing her to gag, you also covered her nose and mouth for a period of seconds after which she gasped for air. You also bit her to the breast, holding it between your teeth and pulling. While engaged in vaginal-penile sexual intercourse you placed your hand on Jane’s neck and throat area and also your hand over her nose and mouth, again causing her to gasp for breath. The penetration of Jane’s vagina on this occasion was forceful and you are recorded yelling at her that she was a “slut” and a “whore” as you ejaculated. The State’s case is that Jane was pregnant at the time of that occasion.
The charge of involving a person under 18 years in production of child exploitation material relates to a further video dated 18 January 2025 located on your phone which shows Jane licking and touching another female to the genitalia. Jane is naked in the video. You were operating the camera and you spoke to Jane and the other female while you filmed them.
Jane has spoken to police but denied that there had been a sexual element to her relationship with you once you discovered she was 15.
You were arrested and participated in a video recorded interview. During the course of that interview, you attempted to convey the impression that you were not at all interested in sex, that you were not sexually attracted to Jane and that she dominated you and told you what to do. You claimed that Jane had drugged you on occasions to get you “frisky and horny”. You claimed not to remember what had gone on after this. You denied having a memory of any of the occasions depicted in the videos on the mobile phone and stated you were not consenting. You denied knowing that all of them had been filmed. The State does not accept any of these propositions. You have not maintained them in this Court. I am satisfied that you were sexually attracted to Jane, that you were fully aware that you were engaging in sexual activity with her on each of the occasions relied upon by the State, that there was no compulsion involved and that you were well aware that the conduct was being filmed. During the interview with police, you were questioned about the occasions where you grabbed Jane to the neck. You told police Jane asked you to do that but that you did not want to. You told police that you understood it was dangerous but also that it was something that you enjoy having done to yourself. You told police that you had never worn a condom when engaging in sexual intercourse with Jane. You said that you did not intend to impregnate her. You agreed that during the seventh occasion of unlawful sexual activity relied upon by the State, where you applied force to Jane’s throat and restricted her breathing, you were aware that she was pregnant at the time.
At the conclusion of the interview you were charged and remanded in custody. You were made the subject of an interim family violence order with full no contact conditions. Despite that order, on 9, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 25 April 2025, you contacted Jane via the prison telephone system. During those calls, you spoke about Jane’s pregnancy and discussed how you wished to be part of Jane and the baby’s lives in the future. You spoke about your sexual relationship, the filming of the sexual acts and told Jane you thought about it often and masturbated while doing so. You asked Jane to contact your lawyer, not to disclose to your lawyer that she had made contact with you and requested that she take action to vary the family violence order. The two of you discussed an occasion where you assaulted Jane. Jane asked why you did it and you promised not to do it again. You told Jane that you hated yourself for what you had done. During a subsequent phone call, the two of you joked about that assault and the fact that she was pregnant at the time. You continually pressed Jane to tell you who she had been intimate with since you had been in prison and whether she had been engaged in relationships with your friends. The two of you spoke about your mutual drug use. During the phone calls you also discouraged her from speaking to her family and told Jane that you blamed them for being in gaol and that she should too. You regularly said “I love you” to each other and called each other husband and wife. You also told Jane to deny to anyone who asked that you had been talking, including to police.
You are now 25 years old. You are eight years older than Jane. You have a well-documented history of childhood trauma. Your mother had mental health issues and was addicted to drugs. There were allegations of abuse and neglect of you and your siblings. You were in the care of the State for many years and had multiple placements and carers. You are currently involved in court proceedings relating to your experiences of abuse while in care. You have a long history of illicit substance abuse. You have engaged in programs whilst in custody to address your drug use. You are also on an opiate replacement therapy program. You have been remanded in custody since your arrest and I am told that you have been subject to approximately 60 days lockdown in that period, which has impacted upon your time in custody. You indicated that this matter would resolve at an early stage. Jane has since given birth to a son. You would like to be involved in your child’s life.
I was provided with a report authored by Dr Jennifer Wright, a forensic psychologist. That assessment outlines your trauma history including severe neglect, exposure to violence and drug addiction which ultimately resulted in your removal into State care where you began to harm yourself. You experienced further trauma in State care, including physical and sexual abuse. Your education was severely disrupted due to multiple changes in foster care placements and your poor behaviour. You became homeless and started abusing illicit drugs at a young age. You present developmentally as younger than your stated age. In summary, Dr Wright concludes that your development of interpersonal skills, social communication, emotion regulation and behavioural controls was halted by trauma. Your behaviour and ability to cope were also impacted by ADHD and you have developed mental health conditions directly associated with the impacts of trauma.
Your clinical presentation and history include diagnoses of ADHD, reactive attachment disorder, borderline personality disorder (sometimes referred to as complex PTSD) and substance use disorders. You were diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Reactive attachment disorder is a condition directly caused by severe neglect or deprivation in the provision of basic emotional needs including repeated changes in primary care givers. Your borderline personality disorder, likely related to your experience of childhood trauma, leads to unstable relationships and unstable emotional regulation. In Dr Wright’s opinion, your personality disorder impacts upon you in a significant way due to your highly unstable affect, and your tendency to respond with reckless and impulsive behaviours which include severe acts of self-harm. You have experienced significant difficulty in connecting emotionally to other people and building relationships and have difficulty in managing yourself so as not to cause distress to others.
As to your relationship with Jane, you explained to Dr Wright that Jane had told you she was being sexually abused by a family member. You felt protective of her and wanted to keep her safe. You described a strong attachment that you found it very difficult to disconnect from. You stated that by the time you realised Jane’s true age, you were “head over heels for her”. You claimed to have tried to break off the relationship on two occasions, but said that Jane self-harmed which you found distressing. You denied the videos were your idea and said they were only for the two of you. You denied any knowledge of them being sold. You told Dr Wright that you did not consider that Jane was a child and that you would not have been with her if you knew at the beginning.
Dr Wright was asked to provide her opinion regarding whether any of the matters identified in R v Verdins, Buckley and Vo [2007] VSCA 102, 16 VR 240 were relevant to your sentencing. Dr Wright considers that the symptoms of your reactive attachment disorder and personality disorder made you more vulnerable to continuing your relationship with Jane after you discovered her actual age and realised the relationship was unlawful. In Dr Wright’s view you became attached to Jane and felt protective of her, perceiving that you both had a shared history of abuse. This relationship was an exception to your pattern of a lack of ability to attach or connect with others. In the absence of any previous experience of such an attachment, once you discovered Jane was underage, you did not know how to, and in many ways did not want to, sever that connection. In Dr Wright’s opinion, your mental health conditions impaired your ability to exercise appropriate judgment and cease the relationship and, in that way, they causally contributed to the offending.
The State has some difficulty with Dr Wright’s reliance on your diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder as part of the foundation for her formulation, but accepts that your diagnosed personality disorder is also relevant in the way described in the report. The State, however, submits that any moderation of your moral culpability needs to take into account the ongoing nature and objective seriousness of your conduct.
Dr Wright also considered that you present as low risk of future similar offending, particularly producing, accessing or possessing child exploitation material. This is because she considered you do not present with risk factors that are more specific to sexual offending such as extreme minimisation or denial of sexual violence, attitudes that condone sexual violence, problems related to child abuse, sexual deviance, problems with sexually violent ideation, psychopathic personality disorder or problems with anti-social attitudes. This was not further explained in the report. I have difficulty accepting that you did not present with risk factors related to sexual deviance and problems with anti-social attitudes, particularly in light of your acknowledgment to police that you enjoyed having your own breath restricted during sexual activity and your history of offending generally.
You first came to the attention of police when you were 14 years old. You have a number of prior matters in Queensland commencing from when you were 17 years old. Your record in that jurisdiction includes convictions for drug and dishonesty matters, possessing weapons, assaults occasioning bodily harm, serious assault, damage to property, robbery and breaches of court orders. The sentences imposed for that offending included periods of actual and suspended imprisonment. In Tasmania in November 2024, you were sentenced to time served and made the subject of a 12 month community correction order for breaches of bail, attempted burglary, stealing, possessing a dangerous article in a public place, drug offences and unlawful possession of property. In March 2025, you were sentenced to time served on new matters of stealing, destroy property and trespass. You have no history of sexual offending in either jurisdiction. Most of the offending for which you fall to be sentenced breached the condition of the community correction order that you not commit an offence punishable by imprisonment while the order is in force. You have been in custody since 6 February 2025, however, it is apparent that 42 days of that period has been allocated to a sentence of imprisonment imposed in the Magistrates Court on 19 March 2025.
You did not know that Jane was 15 years old when you first commenced a sexual relationship with her. You were, however, well aware of her age from some time in October 2024. Despite this, you continued to engage in a sexual relationship with her. It is apparent that during the course of that relationship, the two of you engaged in particular sexual practices that posed a risk to Jane, such as restricting her breath. You engaged in drug use together. Your counsel says you did not introduce Jane to drug use. That may be so, but her family observed she lost a lot of weight while she was with you which suggests her use was more problematic during that period. It is quite clear that you did not discourage Jane’s use of drugs; on one occasion, you directly facilitated her smoking methylamphetamine during the course of sexual activity. It is particularly concerning that you did not use protection. You told police that you thought Jane was on the pill, but you were not sure of that. This only serves to highlight how irresponsible and reckless your conduct was. Jane fell pregnant and has now given birth to your child. She has not provided a victim impact statement. While I accept the sexual activity you engaged in was consensual, it appears that Jane was a vulnerable young person. You were aware of this as she disclosed her own history of abuse to you. In any event, in cases such as this, consent is not mitigating: see s 11A(3)(a) of the Sentencing Act. It is also clear that your relationship was far from benign. You have assaulted Jane in the past. The breaches of the police family violence order, all recorded on the prison telephone system, included instances of you putting pressure on Jane to take action to vary the order and to deny any contact had taken place between the two of you. You also persistently questioned her about who she had been intimate with since you were remanded in custody. You discouraged her from having contact with her family. These are concerning examples of your attempts to exert control over Jane, even from within the prison.
You are entitled to mitigation from your plea of guilty, although the case against you was overwhelming. I am required to take into account any aggravating circumstances as set out in s 11A of the Sentencing Act. One relevant factor in this case is that you committed the offences, in part, in the presence of another person besides Jane. The filming of the sexual activity is, in my view, a circumstance that has the real potential to seriously and substantially degrade or humiliate Jane in the future. While I accept that Jane did not object to this conduct being filmed at the time, there is a risk she will not always feel this way. At the very least, she would have to deal with the knowledge that these videos and images were reviewed by police and prosecution as they investigated your offending.
The law prohibits conduct of this nature because of the potential harm that can result from a young person engaging in sexual activity prematurely. It is recognised that a person of Jane’s age is not mature enough to make considered and informed decisions about engaging in such activity or to assess the harm that may flow from doing so. In this case, your sexual abuse of Jane has resulted in her becoming pregnant and now giving birth to your child. The need to protect children and young people from the harm that may flow from decisions they make when they are less emotionally, intellectually and sexually mature is particularly stark in this case.
General deterrence is an important consideration when sentencing for each of the offences to which you have pleaded guilty. Your decision to persist in the relationship with Jane, even in the face of reports being made and your breaches of the police family violence orders require that consideration be given to a sentence that will also deter you from such offending in the future. I accept that your psychological conditions made you more vulnerable to committing these offences given your reduced capacity to make reasoned decisions about ceasing the relationship and is in that way causally connected to your offending. It is a matter to which I have regard, but in my view, it is not one that justifies the elimination of general or specific deterrence as a sentencing consideration. Ultimately, I have determined that your conduct on the indictment requires the imposition of a period of imprisonment. It will be backdated to take into account the period you have spent in custody that has not been allocated to another sentence. I will allow for parole at the earliest opportunity. I will impose a separate sentence on the breach of interim family violence offences to provide you a further incentive to rehabilitate.
CPM, you are convicted on each count on the indictment and on complaint 7121/25. I direct pursuant to s 13A(1) of the Family Violence Act 2004 that the offences of penetrative sexual abuse of a young person and breach of interim family violence order be recorded on your criminal record as family violence offences. I am not satisfied that you do not pose a risk of committing a reportable offence within the meaning of that term in the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2005 in the future. I note Dr Wright considers you are a low risk of future sexual offending. I cannot discount your risk of committing a reportable offence in the future given your psychological conditions are such that they made you vulnerable to committing these offences in the first place. The maximum length of such an order in your case is for the remainder of your life as you are being sentenced for one Class 2 offence and one Class 3 offence: s 24(3)(b)(iii). I make an order directing that the Registrar cause your name to be placed on the register and that you comply with the reporting obligations under the Act for a period of five years from your release from custody.
On the indictment, I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for two and a half years backdated to 20 March 2025. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served one half of that period of imprisonment. Pursuant to s 11(3) of the Sentencing Act, I note that I would have imposed two and half years’ imprisonment for the charge of persistent sexual abuse of a young person and three months imprisonment for the charge of involving a person under 18 years in production of child exploitation material. Obviously, I have taken totality into account in determining the length of the sentence of imprisonment I impose.
On complaint 7121/2025, I make a community correction order for 18 months commencing on your release from custody. That order is subject to the core conditions set out at s 42AO of the Sentencing Act. They will be provided to you in writing, but include that during the operational period of the order: you must not commit an offence punishable by imprisonment; you must report to a probation officer as required and must comply with their reasonable and lawful directions; you must not leave, or remain outside, Tasmania without the permission of a probation officer; and you must give notice to a probation of officer of any change of address or employment before, or within two working days after, the change. In addition, you must report to a probation officer at the Hobart office of Community Corrections at 75 Liverpool St within three working days of your release from custody. During the operational period of the order you are also subject to the following special conditions:
- You must attend educational and other programs as directed by a probation officer;
- You must submit to the supervision of a probation officer as required by the probation officer;
- You must submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a probation officer.
Pursuant to s 130F(2) of the Criminal Code I order that the mobile telephone seized from you on 6 February 2025 be forfeited to the Crown.
Pursuant to s 36 of the Family Violence Act, I make a family violence order for two and a half years from today in the same terms as the interim family violence order made in the Magistrates Court at Hobart on 7 February 2025 on matter no 150093/2025. Those conditions will also be provided to you in writing.