A 12-year-old boy thought he was in safe hands when he hung out with his father at his Ballarat home on weekends and during school holidays.
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But the boy, now aged in his early teens, lives in fear he will see his father in the street and harm him again.
The 35-year-old father, who The Courier cannot name for legal reasons, started to send his son numerous text messages, making references to masturbation, in 2016.
In one text message, the man wanted his son to know he was masturbating. In another, he asked the boy if he was playing with himself.
The boy was staying at his father’s Ballarat house on weekends and during the school holidays when further sexual offending occurred.
About four or five times over three months, the boy’s father touched him inappropriately over his clothes or pyjamas.
The boy’s mother said in a victim impact statement her heart stopped the day she saw the text messages on her son’s mobile telephone.
She said she experienced depression, felt she had let her son down and did not go out in public anymore.
The boy said his experience with his father had affected him in so many ways. He had lost his confidence, became angry and violent towards other people and was unsocial.
“I am scared I will run into my father in case he will hurt me,” the boy said in a victim impact statement.
The father pleaded guilty to four counts of an indecent act with a child under 16 after he was given a sentence indication at the Ballarat Magistrates Court on Thursday.
He denied the allegations in a police interview in August 2017, and was contesting the offences up until Thursday’s court hearing.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Aimee Heal said the offending occurred in an environment where the boy thought he was safe with his father.
“Offending of this nature is abhorrent and so destructive to the child,” Sergeant Heal said.
Defence barrister Simon Tan said his client did not remember the offending, due to a skull fracture he suffered while having an epileptic fit in March 2016.
He said the man turned to alcohol and drug abuse after a relationship broke down and he experienced financial strain 11 years ago.
But magistrate Fiona Hayes did not accept the man’s medical condition, including memory loss and black outs, was a defence to the sexual crimes.
She sentenced the man to six months in jail. When released, he will be placed on an 18-month Community Corrections Order.
The man, who has no prior convictions, will be a registered sex offender for eight years.
If he pleaded not guilty, Ms Hayes said he would have been jailed for at least one year.