STATE OF TASMANIA v SATPAL SINGH MARTIN AJ
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE 11 DECEMBER 2024
Mr Singh, you have been found guilty by a jury of indecent assault, committed in the early hours of 19 September 2021. I must sentence you on the basis of facts that I find proved beyond reasonable doubt, being facts consistent with the verdict of the jury. It is apparent that the jury accepted the essential evidence of the victim that when you were parked on Long Point Road, you indecently assaulted her by touching her on the breast. Speaking broadly, I accept the evidence of the victim as to the events leading to and at the time of the indecent assault. Also speaking broadly, I reject your evidence on critical matters. When it came to difficult questions, for example as to what you said and why acted in particular ways, your evidence was evasive, deflective and, at times, I am satisfied that you lied.
You came to Australia from India in November 2019 and you came straight to Tasmania. At the time of your offending, you had been driving a taxi for about 30 days. You had received training and were familiar with the taxi operations. You were also familiar with the area of Salamanca and Sandy Bay, where the offending occurred.
The 22 year old female victim of your crime had been in Hobart for less than a week. She and her husband were living in a shared premises on Hampden Road, but in that section of Hampden Road that is separated from Salamanca by Sandy Bay Road. The victim was not familiar with the area but knew enough to be able to walk from Salamanca Place, up Gladstone Street, left on Sandy Bay Road and right into Hampden Road. From Salamanca Place, this was only a short walk of a few minutes.
During the evening of 18 September, the victim was out with her husband and later she, alone, joined other women at a bar in Salamanca, where they socialised and consumed alcohol until the early hours of 19 September. After accompanying the others to the taxi rank, the victim commenced walking home. She crossed Salamanca Place and turned left to walk up Gladstone Street.
It was about 4.30am as she commenced walking up Gladstone Street. You were driving your taxi down Gladstone Street and you pulled up just short of the Supreme Court carpark driveway. When you pulled up, you were out on the roadway adjacent to a parked truck. It was obvious to the victim that you were looking to pick her up but she indicated that she was okay. In the exchange that followed, she mentioned that it was only a short walk of a couple of minutes. The precise details of the exchange do not matter. Significantly, you immediately told the victim you would not charge her. You said, “it’s free”. You admitted in evidence saying, “it’s free” twice.
The victim accepted your offer. She crossed the street to the rear right door, intending to get in behind you. I accept her evidence that she intended to get in the back and it is apparent from the CCTV footage that she paused briefly at the backdoor. I also accept her evidence that you told her to get in the front, which she did. When I use the word “told” I am not suggesting that you insisted she get in the front, rather it was more of a suggestion, which she accepted. I reject your evidence that she asked if she could get in the front.
Having regard to subsequent events, I am satisfied that although you may not have thought it through, you saw an opportunity to get a young woman into your taxi and into the front seat and you had in mind the possibility of a sexual encounter of some sort.
After the victim got into your taxi, she said something about having sore knees. You responded by putting your hand on her knee and asking if she wanted a massage. You squeezed her knee. The victim removed your hand. I reject your evidence that you did not mean to convey a form of sexual invitation.
When you were asked to explain placing your hand on her knee, you spoke about helping an elderly passenger who was about to fall, by giving them a gentle rub. I reject that evidence. You made it up on the spot. You prevaricated and evaded at that point in your evidence and throughout your evidence in different difficult spots.
I also reject your evidence as to why you offered the victim a free ride. When you evasively spoke about it being close and not having another job. You deflected and avoided answering the question. Your evasiveness and deflection were hallmarks of the evidence you gave when faced with difficult questions and some of your lies were blatantly obvious.
The victim gave you her address, but you did not enter it into your GPS, aware that the direct route was back up Gladstone Street, you chose the long route by turning right into Salamanca Place. Instead of stopping in Hampden Road, you turned left into Sandy Bay Road saying you were taking the Sandy Bay route. As you travelled along Sandy Bay Road, the victim asked you a number of times to pull over, saying she would pay and then walk, but you kept driving without responding.
As you travelled, you asked what the victim perceived, quite naturally, as probing questions. You asked if she had a boyfriend and if you could touch her breast. You admitted in evidence asking if you could touch, as you put it, her boobs. In evidence you admitted asking if she liked sex and although you said in evidence in answer to Mr Munro, that you asked if she wanted sex, during cross-examination, you denied asking that question. I am satisfied that you asked the victim if she wanted to have sex, as you wanted to.
In evidence you claimed that you were behaving in this way because the victim was friendly. You did not admit that you had a sexual interest in her. However, I am satisfied, and when I say “I am satisfied”, I mean satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, that you were strongly interested in having a sexual encounter with the victim.
The victim had consumed a significant quantity of alcohol. She felt intoxicated. The precise degree of intoxication does not matter, but in that state, wisely, she was anxious not to aggravate you. She had no way of knowing whether you were a violent person or whether you were armed. Instead of a blunt “no” to your questions or requests, she tried to keep the situation calm by saying things like, “I’m not in a position to make a decision” or “I’m not in a state to make that decision”. She was endeavouring to behave in what she perceived would be seen by you as a respectful way.
I accept the victim’s evidence that this was not a conversation in the normal sense. To some extent you were, as she put it, “rambling on”. At times you did not acknowledge her requests to pull over and to the victim, it seemed as if you were in your own world.
You drove down Sandy Bay Road and turned left into Long Point Road, where you drove to an area without houses, which can fairly be described as deserted. The area in which you stopped was poorly lit. As you approached that area, the victim made her first of three calls to the police. The first call was at 4.42am. The victim used her left hand, with her mobile telephone under her thigh, and dialled the general police line, hoping someone would hear. The audio of the call showed that no one could hear anything which would indicate a problem and after 32 seconds, the operator disconnected the call. The times recorded on the GPS material from the taxi company, cannot be relied upon as precise and accurate, but the timing of the calls, is an agreed fact, and no doubt came from both the victim’s telephone and police records.
At some point, on Long Point Road, probably when you were stopped, or just shortly before stopping, you activated the tablet in the taxi to indicate that you were on a break. You denied doing so, but I am satisfied that you activated the break as you were intending to become involved with the victim in a sexual way. Also at some point near the end of the journey, or after you had stopped, you made a comment about the drive being free and said the victim owed you something.
After stopping the car, you faced the complainant and started, as she explained, grabbing at her. In evidence, the victim said, “that grabbing was probably not the best word”. She described you as placing your hands all over her and said you managed to get your hand under her shirt and under her bra. It was an aggressive action. I accept the evidence of the victim that you were trying to place your hands on her legs and she was pushing your hands away. You were placing your hands all over her and trying to get your hands under her shirt. Every time the victim pushed your hands away, you would place them back on her body. I accept the victim’s evidence, as did the jury, that your hand made contact with her breasts and mid-section.
Mr Singh, those events described by the victim, provide the immediate facts of your indecent assault and the immediate facts associated with the indecent assault in touching the victim’s breast, but that offending occurred in the wider context, and a wider context is important. Your sexual assault involved an element of planning from the moment you set out to attract the victim into your taxi, a young female person alone at 4.30am in the morning who, it would seem from your subsequent actions, you found sexually attractive and who you found to be a prospect for a sexual encounter of some time.
From the outset, you set out to test her responses to sexual connotations and you ignored her requests that you stop and let her out of the taxi. With sexual activity in mind, you took the victim to a deserted and poorly lit location. From the victim’s perspective, the events leading to Long Point Road were very frightening. She was not to know whether you would turn violent and cause her significant physical harm. You did attack her, but you did not cause physical harm. The absence of physical harm is not a mitigating circumstance. It amounts to the absence of an aggravating circumstance of your offending. There are no mitigating circumstances in connection with the objective circumstances of your crime.
Your physical assault ended when the victim undid her seatbelt and made to leave the vehicle, but you grabbed her wrists and attempted to prevent her from getting out. The victim pulled against you and you relented saying words to the effect of, “fine, we’ll go for a walk”. The victim left the car, thanked you for the ride and walked quickly away. You remained in your taxi and drove away. After leaving the taxi, the victim contacted police who came to the locality.
Throughout the ordeal, the victim remained calm and coherent and continued to be so in her dealings with police. During the trial, it was suggested that the victim’s demeanour was inconsistent with her having been attacked as she described. I do not agree with that suggestion. The victim demonstrated both courage and composure in the face of very frightening circumstances and subsequently she remained composed, but such composure should not be misunderstood. It was not an indicator of unreliability. It was an example of how the responses of victims to sexual assaults vary infinitely. It should not be overlooked that there were signs observed by the police, such as the victim hugging her body, and her closed effect, as well as her reluctance to get into the police car. Those signs reflected a disturbed emotional state.
Mr Singh, as a consequence of your criminal conduct, as the victim explained in her victim impact statement, you have left an indelible mark on her life. Your conduct stole her confidence, independence and sense of security. The immediate aftermath was, for the victim, devastating. As she put it, she found herself spiralling into a dark and overwhelming despair and she was consumed by feelings of shame and guilt, questioning every decision she made that morning. Despite knowing, deep down, that she was not to blame, the victim was experiencing, as she put it, toxic guilt and, in her darkest moment, she attempted to take her own life, believing she could no longer bear the pain or the shame. She was hospitalised. Today, she still feels the ripple effects, her independence is gone, she is unable to travel alone or use public transportation and, as she described it, just the sight of a taxi triggers waves of panic. The victim has come to a realisation that the shame and guilt she has felt do not belong to her, rather they belong to you.
I emphasise that the victim has nothing to feel guilty about. She has nothing to be ashamed about. The victim should be praised for remaining calm and composed.
It was suggested to me that perhaps the victim is exaggerating in her victim impact statement. I reject that suggestion. Sadly, the type of effects and impact described by the victim are all too common in cases of sexual assaults, of varying degrees, which come before this Court. The victim’s description of her emotional state following the crime possesses the ring of truth. Men who are minded to commit these types of crimes should understand that for many victims, the impacts of a crime are both devastating and long standing.
Mr Singh, every crime of sexual assault, including indecent assault, is a serious crime, but as with every crime, there is a scale of seriousness. Your crime is well removed from the lowest end of the scale of seriousness. Some brief touching of a breast, without more, might be seen by some as at the lower end of the scale of seriousness, but there is more to your crime and the gravity of your offending is not to be determined in isolation from the context to which I have referred.
People in our community trust taxi drivers to keep them safe, particularly women alone on a street in the early hours of the morning. You took advantage of your position as a taxi driver and you abused the trust placed in you. You used your position to entice a vulnerable young person into your taxi at 4.30am, and you did so with the possibility of a sexual encounter in mind. You immediately set about putting your sexual idea into action and you ignored the requests of the victim to stop and let her out. You ignored her offers to pay. The accumulative effect was that you put the victim through a harrowing experience, culminating in the indecent assault. You are not to be punished for any form of different offence, but these matters put the indecent assault in its proper context.
Sexual crimes, including indecent assault, are far too common and they cause great concern across our community. General deterrence, that is deterring others who are minded to behave in the way you behaved, and denunciation are significant aspects of sentencing and this includes deterring persons engaged in transporting members of the public and who are trusted to do so in safety.
As to matters personal to you, born in 1987 you are now 37. You were raised in Punjab, India and you are of Sikh religion. You obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in India and you have not previously been in trouble in India or in Australia. At the time of offending, you had been in Australia for about two years, all of which were spent in Tasmania and you had been driving the taxi for about 30 days. Since then, you have been driving a concrete truck for the last 12 months.
You are in Australia on what I have been told is an e-Visa, being a temporary visa which is renewed every three months. Your wife, with whom you have two young children, is on a student visa. I do not have any specific evidence, but I assume that following the conviction and sentence, it is unlikely that your visa will be renewed. As to you future prospects, you have not accepted responsibility for your conduct, you pleaded not guilty and I have no evidence of remorse, other than the obvious distress you are experiencing, and your wife if experiencing, for the situation in which you are now placed.
I assume that you have been a good worker, and I have been provided with two references from people within the Indian community that speak highly of your activities within the community and of your standing within the community. They also speak highly of your conduct as a family man and of the impact that any sentence of imprisonment will have upon your young family.
It cannot be said, however, that the impact is in the category of being special or exceptional. It is very common for imprisonment to be particularly hard on the family and in your case, I accept that a period of imprisonment will be particularly difficult for you and your family. I am not satisfied that you are not a risk of committing a reportable offence in the future, and I direct that your name be placed on the Register, pursuant to the Community Protection (Offenders Reporting) Act and that you comply with the conditions for a period of two years.
You are convicted, having regard to the entirety of the circumstances, particularly circumstances of aggravation. In the absence of your plea or acceptance of responsibility, and not overlooking the maters personal to you that I have discussed, I impose a sentence of imprisonment of 12 months, commencing yesterday. Then comes the very difficult question as to how much of the sentence you should serve. Notwithstanding the matters personal and the sympathy that naturally arises for the circumstances in which your young family finds itself, I have determined that the circumstances require that you serve a period of three months, commencing yesterday. The sentence will be suspended after you have served three months. You will be on a bond of $1,000 to be of good behaviour for a period of two years from the date of your release, during which time you are not to commit any offence punishable by imprisonment.