STATE OF TASMANIA v MATTHEW XAVIER WILSON SHANAHAN CJ
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE 12 AUGUST 2026
Matthew Xavier Wilson, you have pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault contrary to s 127 of the Criminal Code 1924 by rubbing your penis against the complainant’s vagina. Your offending took place between on or about 1 July and 31 August 2009, that is now some 17 years ago.
The complainant at the time of the offending was 15 years old and a student in year 9, she was born in 1994. You were born on 22 May 1991 and had turned 18 years of age at the date of the offending. You are currently 35 years old with no dependents and live with your mother and step-father.
You met the complainant in early 2009, shortly before you turned 18 years old. The complainant was then part of a group of school girls of approximately the same age who spent time in the Elizabeth Street Mall and Franklin Square. The complainant met you in the context of your participation with that group of girls. You purchased alcohol for the girls before you turned 18, using a fake identification. You continued to buy alcohol for the group after you turned 18. You and the complainant met in this context on some five occasions in 2009.
On a day in either July or August of 2009, you contacted the complainant via social media and asked her if she would like to hang out with you after school. The complainant agreed, you asked her to wear her school uniform. After school, the complainant walked from her home in West Hobart to Hungry Jacks in North Hobart. It was after 4pm and she was wearing her school uniform. You and she met at Hungry Jacks where you talked and had an ice cream. You then walked around the streets of North Hobart before going to St Andrews Park, a small park on Church Street.
You sat on a park bench and talked, you said to the complainant that she was your girlfriend. This made the complainant uncomfortable as it was the first time that she had spent time alone with you. The complainant laughed awkwardly but did not say anything to you regarding your comment.
You then walked together to the Uniting Church in North Hobart and sat on a retaining wall outside the church. At this stage the complainant was feeling anxious. You then kissed the complainant on the mouth but she did not kiss you back and pulled her head away. You stopped and said something like, “don’t you want to kiss me”. The complainant replied with words to the effect, “No I don’t want to kiss you, this whole thing is going too fast”. The complainant made it clear to you that she did not want any further physical contact.
The complainant was then able to relax as she felt that she had explained that she did not want any further physical contact and that you had understood her. She thought that you had accepted that she did not want to be touched.
You then walked together to the skate park at Elizabeth College where you sat on the grass and shared one of your cigarettes. There was no-one else at the skate park. You then tried to kiss the complainant again. She did not kiss you back but you persisted and kept kissing her. The complainant felt uncomfortable and anxious, as she had never been kissed like that before. She felt out of her depth.
At approximately 7pm the complainant’s mother attempted to call her on her mobile phone several times. You told the complainant not to answer and she did not. It started to rain and you suggested that you and the complainant move into the public toilets to get out of the rain. You went into the public toilet together. The toilet was quite large. It could accommodate a wheelchair and there was also a baby change table in the toilet. At that stage, you asked the complainant if she was a virgin. Whilst she said that she was not a virgin the complainant was, in fact, a virgin as she had never had penetrative sexual intercourse, but she did not properly understand what the term meant. She was an immature fifteen year old girl and inexperienced with relationships and sexual activity.
You then told the complainant about your own sexual experiences. You told her that you had been with both girls and boys and that she was not the youngest girl you had been with. You then began to forcefully kiss the complainant against the wall of the toilet. You said “I’m not going to have sex with you, I’m just going to rub my dick on you”. The complainant did not reply as she was out of her depth. She froze. She did not know what to do. You pulled the complainant’s dress up and moved her underwear to expose her vagina. You rubbed your erect penis against her vagina for several minutes. Whilst you did so, you said words to the effect “you want this”. The complainant was very scared and her back was pressed against the wall, she did not say anything. There was no penetration.
The complainant did not want to be touched sexually by you, and did not freely agree to you rubbing your penis on her vagina. When you stopped, the complainant was not sure if you had ejaculated as she did not understand what was involved. You then played her a song on your phone titled “Dirty Little Secret”.
You received a telephone call which you answered. The complainant heard you say on the phone that you were with a girl, and the other person asked “how old”, you replied “you know me so well”. I am told by your Counsel, in submission, that you deny making those remarks during the telephone call, despite the reliance placed in the written submissions on sentence at [17] on your “non-contest of the facts”. I will return to this issue in the context of your previous criminal record.
The complainant walked back to West Hobart in the rain. She was crying and she rang her mother from a telephone box as her phone had gone flat. Her mother picked her up and asked her what had happened. The complainant would not talk to her mother about what had happened. The complainant asked her mother not to tell her father. The complainant confided in her best friend about what had happened.
The complainant became very angry with herself about what had happened and the fact that she had put herself in a vulnerable position. She felt “ruined” and began acting out and putting herself in risky situations. She started to have sex as a means to regain control over her own body as she felt she had lost control.
The complainant saw you in the mall a few months later, and you said words to the complainant to the effect that “I can’t believe you said I raped you”. The complainant had told someone about the incident in which you offended when she was drunk at a party, and when you spoke to her she assumed that what she had said at the party had got back to you via the person to whom she had spoken.
The complainant went to a counsellor in 2022 to seek support and help because of the effect that your offending had on her as an adolescent, and the impact it continues to have on her as an adult. It was after speaking with a counsellor that the complainant reported the matter to police. That process explains the timing of these proceedings and the dated nature of this offending.
I have the complainant’s victim impact statement. It records the substantial impact that your offending has had on her, and I note her observation that the anxiety and harmful thoughts which she had as a result of your offending caused her to develop “tics that I still have today”. After 17 years, your offending is still negatively impacting on her life. She has experienced both hyper-sexuality and difficulties with intimacy. She has recurrent nightmares and is “paranoid about being assaulted again”. The complainant has had to take a lot of unpaid absences from work and has withdrawn from friends and school. These observations highlight the need for general deterrence in respect of this type of offending.
Your counsel, Mr Scott, provided written submissions in mitigation filed 14 May 2026. You were born in East Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1991. Your parents were married a month before you were born, and separated shortly thereafter. I am told that as a child you rarely saw your father.
I have a report from a forensic psychologist, Mr Jeffrey Cummins, dated 13 May 2026. Mr Cummins notes that you have lived in Tasmania since December 2002, which is said by him to correspond with when your parents separated and your mother relocated to Tasmania with you and your two sisters. That being so, you must have been 10 to 11 years old when your parents separated and your mother relocated to Tasmania.
You lived with your biological father for a period of about six months in 2017/2018 when he moved to Tasmania. Your biological father passed away from a heart condition in December 2022. From late 2019, you have been living on your own in a shed at the back of your mother and step father’s property. Your mother has been very supportive and she is your closest confidante. Your step-father has also supported you. You have two sisters, one who is aged 26 and who resides in Melbourne, and a 36 year old sister who lives in Devonport and has a child. The psychologist’s report indicates that you have been ostracized by your elder sister due to your offending.
It is reported that you have a history of sexual abuse when at school as at age eight or nine year old, and later as an adolescent when aged 15 or 16 years old. Further, that at about 16 or 17 years of age, you were “kicked out of home” by your mother because you did not get on with her partner. You were homeless at this time and your Counsel submits that you were “associating with negative peer associates”, and that it was about this time that you met the complainant.
From about March 2022 until July 2025, you worked at Woolworths usually doing night fill work. It is submitted that your employment was full time. You no longer work at Woolworths and receive jobseeker benefits of $828 per fortnight.
Your counsel recounted that in 2010, you were dealt with in this Court for similar matters relating to offending in 2009. Your criminal record discloses convictions for four counts of sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 17 years, and a single count of an indecent act with or directed at a young person under the age of 17 years. You were sentenced on 12 April 2010 to nine months’ imprisonment, on the condition that you be of good behaviour and, in particular, commit no offence for two years and submit to probation on the conditions imposed.
I have the sentencing remarks of Crawford CJ in respect of that offending. Those remarks confirm you pleaded guilty to five counts, being four counts of sexual intercourse with a person under the age of seventeen and one count of indecent dealing with a person under the age of seventeen years. The offending was on two different occasions, one when you were seventeen and the other when you were eighteen. Both complainants were 12 year old girls. Of the complainants, the complainant the subject of count 1, sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of seventeen, declined to give a statement. The second complainant, who you admitted you knew was 12 years of age, was the complainant in counts 2–5. Those occasions between May and August of 2009 are contemporaneous to the offending for which I am to sentence you today.
Mr Cummins also refers to that offending and states, with reference to this offending, “Significantly, around that time … [you were] … dealt with in the … Supreme Court in relation to other sexual offending against two females who were under legal age … [you were] … convicted and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment which was wholly suspended and … [you] … abided by the good behaviour bond and remained on the register for sexual offenders for four years”.
It was put on your behalf that if you had been dealt with for all of your offending in a timely way, you would have been sentenced at a time when the Court would have taken the sentence imposed on 12 April 2010 into account and, it is put, that the principle of totality suggests that had that occurred, you would not necessarily have been sentenced to a custodial term.
Your repeated offending of this nature during 2009, would have meant that had all the matters been dealt with together, instead of only being sentenced in respect of two complainants, you would have been sentenced in the context of offending against three underage girls, and that you would have been eighteen at the time of your offending against two of those three complainants. Had that occurred, it suggested the likelihood of a significantly more punitive sentence than that applied by Crawford CJ in 2010.
The Sentencing Advisory Council’s 2020 Guide to Sentencing in Tasmania notes at 40:
“Sometimes an offender is sentenced for an offence that happened many years ago. This is common, for example, in cases involving sexual offences against children. There is a principle that there is a presumption against the retrospective application of a sentencing law or standard … However, a distinction needs to be made between an actual change in sentencing law or principle (which does not apply to past offending) and a more precise application of the established standards based, for example, on a better understanding of the factors relevant to the past offending (which will apply to past offending).”
An example of how that principle works is when events shed more light on your offending. It is now clear that at or about the material time in 2009, you sexually offended against three rather than two complainants, being girls, whose ages ranged from twelve to fifteen years. Crawford CJ’s sentencing remarks in 2010 regarding your offending against one of the twelve year olds, suggested that your counsel had put your genuine feelings for that girl as part of the mitigation upon which you relied, and that the Court had taken that into account in the sentence applied. That explanation for your offending against that complainant becomes less cogent when it is now clear that you were offending against all three girls at or about the same time.
It is put by your counsel that you do not accept that the phone call described in the facts occurred. That was the phone call in the context of your current offending, said to have been reported by the complainant, to the effect that you said to an unknown person “you know me so well” in the aftermath of your offending. That really is not a significant issue of fact in this sentencing exercise when your own criminal record discloses a closely contemporaneous conviction in respect of two other underage female complainants. Clearly, you had a prurient sexual interest at that time in underage girls and I will sentence you on that basis.
Also, the impact of your offending on the complainant for which I am to sentence you today, was not known in 2009. The Victim Impact Statement to which I have referred above is salutary. It demonstrates the seriousness of your offending and emphasizes the continuing need for general deterrence.
In DPP v Harrington [2017] TASCCA 4, Wood J at [23] made reference to the increase in severity of sentences for maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person. In CJP v State of Tasmania [2015] TASCCA 9, Blow CJ at [2] observed that it was time to increase sentences for serious sexual crimes. Those comments were adopted by Brett J in DPP v WLNH [2017] TASCCA 15 at [27]-[28].
These are sentencing principles that have changed since your offending in 2009, which would now be seen through a different prism. I am to sentence you against applicable sentencing principles in 2009, but with a better awareness of the nature of your offending and the efficacy of the sentencing outcomes in respect of the sentence then imposed on you by Crawford CJ.
Mr Cummins states that, in his opinion, you were traumatised as a result of being registered as a sexual offender pursuant to the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act 2005. Of course, as its name suggests, the primary object of that legislation is the protection of the community. He reports that you were eventually able to move on with your life, albeit you have always felt embarrassed and ashamed about having been on the register.
Mr Cummins assessed your risk for further offending as being low, or non-appreciable. Under s 6 of the Community Protection (Offender Reporting) Act, I am to make an order requiring your registration unless the Court is satisfied that you do not pose a risk of committing a reportable offence in the future. In that regard, a low risk remains a risk, however, because I am sentencing you for offending in 2009, I am now aware that your registration in 2010 has been effective and you have not reoffended in a relevant sense in the seventeen years since then. Thus, I am satisfied that you do not pose a risk of re-offending based on your conduct in respect of this conviction.
That conclusion is reflected in Mr Cummins’ opinion that there is no clinical need for you to participate in offence specific treatment. Mr Cummins diagnosed you with a Major Depressive Disorder, which has become recurrent in type and is associated with features of anxiety and traumatization.
He has encouraged you to seek mental health treatment, and expressed the opinion that such treatment was required for you to better manage your symptoms of depression, and to become more optimistic about the future. The timing and genesis of that condition is uncertain, and its relationship with your 2009 offending is therefore unclear. I have taken into account your background and your contemporaneous circumstances in 2009 in this sentencing disposition.
In 2009 you were a youthful offender. However, your convictions in 2010 suggest there was a persistent quality to your offending at that time.
One of the reasons why rehabilitation is a primary consideration for youthful offenders, is that such offenders have the time and youth to recognize and change their behaviours. At 35 years of age, you are not such an offender. Thus, the reference to age and immaturity in mitigation, as it relates to this sentence, has to be understood through the prism of what is now possible. Whilst I accept that your offending has to be seen as that of a much younger person, the sentencing disposition has to be effective and has to engage your current circumstances.
Your counsel made the submission that, having previously been sentenced for similar offending in 2010, you have not offended since. Thus, it is put on your behalf that it is now clear that a penalty short of actual imprisonment did have a deterrent effect on you. I would accept that submission. On that basis, it was put that either home detention or a fully suspended sentence were available options. If I imposed a suspended sentence, I was encouraged to consider a community corrections order dealing with your use of cannabis and your need for treatment in respect of your mental health.
I have taken into account your plea of guilty.
I have a home detention assessment report, dated 1 July 2026. That report recites your history and your current circumstances. It sets out your mental health and cannabis use. It records your remorse and that you hate the fact that you have hurt someone. It suggests you would like to change the past and regret your conduct. You were deemed suitable for the home detention option described as option 4. In the end, I do not consider that home detention is a suitable disposition given the state of your mental health and your residential circumstances.
Matthew Xavier Wilson, after pleading not guilty to one count of rape on indictment 412 of 2025, but pleading guilty to one count of indecent assault contrary to s 127 of the Criminal Code, you are convicted of indecent assault. It was a serious indecent assault and has had substantial on-going effects on the complainant’s life. Whilst you have not relevantly re-offended since your sentence in 2010, and your conduct in 2009 needs to be assessed against your obvious immaturity at that time, your conduct is to be denounced and the needs of general deterrence are to be served. Those considerations are to be balanced against your continuing needs around rehabilitation.
I impose one sentence. I sentence you to 12 months’ imprisonment but fully suspend that term for 18 months. The order suspending the 12 month term is subject to the following:
- It is a condition of that order that whilst in force, you do not commit another offence punishable by imprisonment. If you breach that condition, then a court must activate the suspended part of your sentence unless that is unjust.
- I make an order under s 24(2)(b) of the Sentencing Act 1997 that the order suspending the whole of the 12 month term of imprisonment is subject to your compliance with the following Community Correction Order.
- I order that you are to be subject to a Community Correction Order, pursuant to s 42AN of the Sentencing Act 1997. The order commences today. You must comply with the order for 18 months. While the order is in operation, it is subject to all of the core conditions under s 42AO of the Sentencing Act 1997 and the following special conditions:
- You must, during the operational period of the order, submit to the supervision of a probation officer as required by the probation officer;
- You must attend educational and other programs as directed by a probation officer;
- You must undergo assessment and treatment for drug dependency as directed by a probation officer;
- You must submit to testing for drug use as directed by a probation officer;
- You must not, during the operational period of the order, take any illicit or prohibited substances. Illicit and prohibited substances include:
- any controlled drug as defined by the Misuse of Drugs Act 2001, including cannabis, unless you provide written evidence from your medical professional that it has been prescribed as medication;
- any medication containing an opiate, benzodiazepine, bupropion, hydrochloride or pseudoephedrine, unless you provide written evidence from your medical professional that you have been prescribed the relevant medication;
- You must, during the operational period of the order, submit to psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a probation officer.
You must report to a probation officer at 75 Liverpool Street, Hobart, by close of business tomorrow.
The effect of the order under s 24(2) of the Sentencing Act, is that the Community Corrections Order works as a condition upon which the suspension of your sentence rests. If you breach those conditions, you may be brought back to the Court for re-sentencing and required to serve an immediate term of imprisonment. By making those orders under s 24(2), I acknowledge the seriousness of your offending.
The intention of this sentence is that having recognised the need for deterrence, you also have the opportunity to find a new direction in your life whilst under supervision within the community. It is entirely a matter for you whether you now commit to improving your life, but these orders seek to give you that opportunity.