6 Mr Tehan also relied upon the fact that his Honour had sentenced above the range submitted by the prosecution.[1]

7 The respondent submitted that when the orders for cumulation are taken into account a total effective sentence of six years with a non-parole period of three years and six months was appropriate.

8 The applicant was sentenced on charges 3, 4 and 5 as a serious sexual offender pursuant to Part 2A of the Sentencing Act 1991.

1. As I said to your counsel during the course of the plea hearing, I have difficulty with the suggestion that your marital difficulties were causally connected to your offending. The offences that you committed against each girl were clearly premeditated, not spontaneous, and carried out for your own sexual gratification. I note that in the same interview, you told the police that you had been prepared to use the services of adult prostitutes in the past. Other than your pursuit of your own pleasure, there is no other real explanation for your sexual abuse of these two complainants. In saying that, I am not overlooking what the psychologist Mr Healey said, but I am not prepared to accept and act on it, given the speculative language in which he expressed himself.

10 Mr Tehan submitted that there was nothing about either sets of offending which justified the use of the word 'premeditation'. If his Honour was using the expression in the way it is used relating to other crimes, indicating a significant planning and organisation, then Mr Tehan may be correct.

11 If, however, the paragraph is read as a whole, I regard what his Honour said as being a rather emphatic rejection of the suggestion that the offending was a response to his marital difficulties. If it be an error, it is not one which leads to a different sentence being imposed.

12 I would grant leave to add the ground of appeal, but I would not grant leave with respect to it.

13 The matters in mitigation of the applicant were substantial, but his offending remains largely unexplained. Although the sentence is high, I am not convinced that the total effective sentence is outside the range open to his Honour.

14 One major aggravating feature of offending of this kind is that we now know that the effect on young victims is ongoing, as the Victim Impact Statements show. The offending on charges 3, 4, and 5 was serious and it was in that context that the applicant (who was about 33 years of age) sought to establish an entirely inappropriate sexual relationship with a 15 year old girl. The offending on charge 5 was particularly brazen.

15 The other aggravating feature of the offending was that it constituted a breach of trust not only with the complainants but with their families who were entitled to trust the applicant. It should also be noted that although the offending on charges 3, 4 and 5 was objectively towards the lower end of the range, the applicant did fall to be sentenced as a serious sexual offender. Because of the view taken by the respondent on charge 5, I would grant leave to appeal but I would dismiss the appeal.

[1] DPP v Blackwood (Unreported, County Court of Victoria, Judge Gamble, 4 September 2013) [33].