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You contracted HSV-2, also known as genital herpes, in 2020.

Victim Impact

19. The victim did not give a victim impact statement in this matter. Section 53(1)(b) of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 (ACT) prohibits me from drawing any inference about the harm suffered by the victim from the fact that a victim impact statement is not given to the court. In the absence of a victim impact statement, the information contained in the agreed statement of facts assists me in understanding the impact of this offence on the victim.

20. The agreed facts record that the victim continued to experience flare-ups following her diagnosis of HSV-2. During flare-ups, the victim would experience pain in her genitals and then a day or two later sores would appear.

21. Messages sent by the victim to you on 8 April 2023 also shed light on the impact on her. The victim stated, “I feel disgusting. I feel betrayed. I trusted you. I don’t know what to do. You have changed my life forever and for what? Just for a quick fuck.” The victim later sent a message saying “Like this changes everything. I now have to tell every person I want to be with. This could change what people think of me. Like you said people don’t want to be with you if you have it.”

22. The victim sent you the following message on 2 May 2023: Hey this is probably so stupid to message you. But how did you ever accept what you had. It’s been like a month since I got diagnosed and you said you eventually forgot about it but I can’t. I’m loosing [sic] sleep over it, can’t focus on uni like it’s fucked. Sorry I know you probably don’t want to hear from me but I just need advice haha

23. The prosecution asked me to infer the likely psychological repercussions of a life-long STI in a young person, including embarrassment and shame, and concern regarding future relationships. These repercussions are evident in the extracts from the agreed statement of facts that I have included. The ancillary information filed at court indicates that the victim will suffer diverse ongoing health issues during her life.

Objective Seriousness

24. Your counsel submitted that the following features are relevant to the objective seriousness of your offending: (a) You were directly asked about your STI status, and you deliberately answered falsely. (b) You knew you had HSV-2. (c) HSV-2 is an incurable, lifelong infection causing recurrent physical symptoms and carries social stigma, albeit it is medically manageable and is not life-threatening in the way untreated HIV is. (d) Your recklessness must be assessed considering your cognitive impairments and the information provided by Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT about your obligation to make disclosures to sexual partners; and (e) The offending was not accompanied by violence, threats, coercion, humiliation or other degrading conduct.

25. I will discuss your cognitive impairments when I turn to subjective circumstances.

26. In addition to the matters earlier described, the victim is now subject to a life-long, recurring infection due to your offending. Subjective Circumstances

27. Your subjective circumstances are set out in a pre-sentence report, intensive correction order assessment report and a report of Tabitha Frew, clinical psychologist, dated 2 March 2026. You have also provided references from your partner, your mother, your previous manager, your friend and a letter you had written to the court.

28. You were 21 years of age at the time of offending. The pre-sentence report records that you grew up in Canberra and that a Forensic Mental Health Assessment dated 2 March 2026 indicated you reported frequent arguments between your parents, had difficulties with emotional regulation throughout your childhood and grew up in a household in which matters of sex and sexual conduct was not discussed. You say your knowledge of sexual matters was gained online. The meaning of that expression is unclear as it is impossible to know what you looked at and its content. However, you attended school to a high level, and this court is aware of the programs of sexual education conducted in schools. Nothing was said of this in submissions.

29. You completed a Bachelor of Secondary Education after finishing school and you had worked as a Learning Support Assistant for around two years before you began teaching. You taught for just over a year until April 2024 at which point your work was impacted by the present offence. You were a very popular teacher. You undertook other duties until approximately April 2025, and you are currently suspended without pay. Your counsel properly conceded that you are unlikely to obtain employment in education in the future as a result of this matter.

30. The pre-sentence report records that you have had diagnoses of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and anxiety. Your counsel contended in your written submissions that these conditions made a material contribution to your offending. They directed me to the well-known case of R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102 in their written submissions.

31. In R v Verdins, Maxwell P, Buchanan and Vincent JJA held at [26] that: Impaired mental functioning at the time of the offending may reduce the offender’s moral culpability if it had the effect of – (a) impairing the offender’s ability to exercise appropriate judgment; (b) impairing the offender’s ability to make calm and rational choices, or to think clearly; (c) making the offender disinhibited; (d) impairing the offender’s ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of the conduct; (e) obscuring the intent to commit the offence; or (f) contributing (causally) to the commission of the offence.

32. The report of Ms Frew found that your longstanding diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 2 severity, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder did not result in you having a substantially reduced capacity for judgment, insight, or behavioural control at the time of the offending. Ms Frew stated that you understood that you were diagnosed with HSV-2, that you understood that you were being asked directly about STIs by the victim and that you had sufficient capacity to know you were providing false information to her.

33. Ms Frew opined that your autism likely affected your capacity to navigate the interpersonal complexity of disclosure in an intimate context and described your conduct as being functional in nature. Ms Frew stated that your focus appeared to have shifted towards meeting your own emotional and sexual needs, rather than carefully evaluating the magnitude of medical risk to the victim.

34. Ms Frew opined that your decision making at the time appears to have been influenced by a desire to avoid embarrassment and preserve sexual opportunity rather than the consideration of foreseeable harm.

35. Following your diagnosis of HSV-2, you read a pamphlet created by Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT. The pamphlet included the following statement: What about telling sexual partners that I have herpes? You are not legally required to tell a sexual partner that you have herpes. However, we know that openness and honesty usually work best in a relationship. It is normal to feel concerned about discussing it, and fear of rejection and feeling uncomfortable about sexual health contribute to this.

36. Your counsel submitted that you had genuinely formed the mistaken belief, based on this pamphlet, that you were not legally required to disclose your diagnosis to sexual partners. Ms Frew states that your autism is relevant to how you interpreted this external guidance regarding disclosure. According to Ms Frew, you gave disproportionate weight to the explicit legal statement and insufficient weight to the conditional and relational guidance, particularly when emotionally activated. Your counsel submitted that your belief that you were not legally required to disclose your diagnosis collided with your shame and your ASD/ADHD-driven impulsivity to produce your false statement, being your lie to the victim.

37. The pamphlet also contained information regarding how herpes is transmitted and how to reduce transmission, including the statement “Using condoms or dental dams can reduce transmission.” In cross-examination, Ms Frew accepted that you could exercise free choice over what parts of that information you actioned and retained. She agreed that sexual gratification was part of your decision-making process. Even though you appeared not to have a malicious intent, you were aware from the message exchanges that you were discussing having sexual intercourse on that evening after you finished work.

38. Ms Frew opined that you did not have the skills to negotiate a conversation about having HSV-2 and risking not getting the sex that you wanted. I had great difficulty accepting this opinion. The text of the messages makes plain you were discussing having sexual intercourse that night. The only topic not raised was whether you had a communicable STI. This conversation occurred later that night and you told a lie in response to her enquiry. After this first night, you had sexual intercourse with the victim on four or five further occasions, and only on two of which you used a condom. On none of those occasions were you asked about your sexual health status. Ms Frew agreed that, on those further occasions, you were not suffering from the stress of possible rejection due to disclosure and the embarrassment which may follow. On those occasions you made a conscious decision to have unprotected sex with the victim without disclosing your health status. You consciously decided to continue to expose the victim to the possibility of infection.

39. Ms Frew said in cross-examination that you had a belief that you were not contagious because you did not have lesions; you still had opportunities to inform the victim of your sexual health status, but you decided not to and she could not explain why. I am unable to accept this view, largely because from the outset you had been asked about STIs, you knowingly lied in response and even accepting the effect of your ADHD and autism, you knew the existence or not of lesions had no influence upon the fact that you were infectious with the genital herpes HSV-2. You decided not to inform the victim and as Ms Frew said, no explanation is given as to why.

40. Your counsel submitted that Ms Frew’s conclusion that your conditions made a moderate and indirect material to the commission of the offence reduce your moral culpability.

41. I have read the letters provided by your friends and family. They speak of your good character and demonstrate your pro-social supports. I also note that you have no prior convictions. However, the prosecution submitted that evidence of good character must be tempered with the acknowledgment that you had previously engaged in similar uncharged conduct with a previous partner. As the agreed statement of facts sets out, almost 12 months prior to the current offending, you gave a previous sexual partner chlamydia and exposed her to the risk of contracting HSV-2 as you were knowingly carrying these infections at the time of intercourse with her. This does not increase the sentence I will impose on you, but it does demonstrate that you could not have been ignorant of the risk you posed to sexual partners from unprotected sex and the prosecution submitted that this relevant to your moral culpability

42. The prosecution also submitted that Ms Frew’s report does not establish that your mental conditions contributed to the commission of the offence in a material way, such that your moral culpability is reduced. The prosecution submitted that Ms Frew states your conditions did not substantially reduce your capacity to understand the nature or wrongfulness of his conduct. Accordingly, the prosecution submitted that there is no basis to moderate the sentence on grounds that you are not an appropriate vehicle for general deterrence. I accept the prosecution submissions in this regard.

43. However, the prosecution did concede that the sentence may be modestly ameliorated on the basis of Ms Frew’s finding that you would find the conditions of custody more onerous than someone without your mental conditions.

44. The prosecution drew my attention to Ms Frew’s comment that within your explanations there are elements of rationalisation of your conduct that show your insight is still not fully-formed. You told the authors of the pre-sentence report that you felt remorseful about these events and wanted to move on. Your counsel submitted that you were genuinely remorseful and in your letter to the court you articulated that you were sorry for your actions and the impact they had on the victim. I reject your counsel’s submission that your “immediate expressions of regret and apology” to the victim provide a basis for your remorse. You lied to the victim on multiple occasions and when she put it to you that you had given her herpes, your response was ““Oh, yeah. I didn’t think you’d get it though.” It is unclear to me how that could be considered as an immediate expression of regret or apology. I view your expressed remorse in the context where you have previously given a different sexual partner an STI and repeated a similar behaviour against this victim and in the context of the text messages you sent to the victim after she revealed her diagnosis to you. I accept that you are remorseful, however, in my view, your remorse seems to be at least partially based on your regret towards the consequences you have now experienced.

45. Your counsel submitted that specific deterrence has reduced weight, particularly where offending arose from impulsive, condition-driven behaviour. I reject the suggestion that your behaviour was impulsive, given there were multiple sexual encounters and, as discussed above, ample opportunity to inform the victim of your status.

46. In written submissions, your counsel suggested that the likely loss of your teaching career represented a profound collateral consequence that amounts to extra-curial punishment and that I ought to take this into account when assessing the proportionality and totality of your sentence. Your counsel drew on the NSW case of Wanstall v R [2024] NSWCCA 167 where Sweeney J stated at [49]: The loss of the applicant’s career, more significant than the loss of a particular employment, as a result of his offending, which was not committed in the course of his employment, although not completely remote from it, I regard as significant extra-curial punishment, given his former success in that career, his age and the likelihood that he would have continued in that career for some time, but for his offending.

47. I note that this case has not been discussed in the ACT Supreme Court and that the facts and nature of the offender’s career is different to your own. In Wanstall v R, the offender had been a teacher for 23 years, had received several awards for his teaching and was working as an assistant principal.

48. Relevantly, Acting Chief Justice Refshauge found in Atmore v Milner [2016] ACTSC 260 at [103] that: Employment is an important factor in rehabilitation and often can prevent further offending. The loss of a job can have devastating effects, including leading to homelessness. This does not mean that in an appropriate case a proper sentence should not be imposed where it will have this effect. There are consequences for breaching the criminal law, but where a proper sentence can be imposed that does not result by its terms in the loss of employment, the community is usually better served. There are many examples of criminal sanctions, such as periodic detention and special driver licences that have recognised that in the past.

49. In R v Gatica [2020] ACTSC 22, Loukas-Karlsson J held at [42] that: It is clearly consistent with legal principle, and I therefore accept, the loss of employment does not mitigate the seriousness of the offending. Additionally, also consistent with legal principle, I take into account the loss of employment as a relevant subjective matter.

50. Accordingly, I take into account your loss of employment and potential difficulties gaining future employment in your desired area of work.

Consideration

51. The prosecution submitted that I should give primacy to the sentencing purposes of adequate punishment, general and specific deterrence, accountability and recognition of harm. I accept these submissions. I have earlier set out a detailed discussion of the factual circumstances surrounding this offending that I will not repeat. Regardless of the effects of ADHD and autism upon you on the first occasion, you continued to have unprotected sex with the victim on at least a further three occasions and you did not make admissions to her until you were challenged. By then, she was suffering the dramatic effects of a disease of her sexual health. Your responses were quite feeble, and you explained that you had learned to live with the condition. Cold comfort to someone with no prior infection and the sequelae of such infection having such devastating consequences as I have earlier explained. The absence of lesions on your body at times is an equally feeble approach. You were infected with the virus, but she was not and you infected her as you had, during unprotected sexual intercourse, infected another female with chlamydia before her.

52. You put your own sexual desires above the safety and wellbeing of the victim. The victim asked you a question, and you told a lie. You compounded the effect of that lie by having further unprotected sex with the victim and only confessing your deception when challenged by the person you had then infected and who was demanding the truth that you had always known it, but did not reveal when initially asked by her.

53. Your past actions demonstrate the importance of specific deterrence in this matter. You have admitted infecting another of your female partners with chlamydia and that you contracted genital herpes during a threesome of unprotected sex. You then deceived the victim and as a direct consequence you have infected her with the same herpes virus. Any of your future sexual partners face the same difficulties and it is necessary that the Court impose condign punishment reflecting the gravity and seriousness of your specific conduct. For the same reasons, general deterrence is of particular importance. During submissions, the court received information about the occurrence of STIs in the Australian setting. The statistics are extraordinarily high. You are not responsible for them, but you contribute to these statistics and so the message from this Court to all those who like you, fail to disclose the truth of their sexual health when asked must be very well understood. The infection of another person in the position of the victim by an offender will be met with condign punishment reflecting the seriousness of the crime committed. I reject your counsel’s submissions that your offending arose from specific neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and that you were not an appropriate vehicle for general deterrence. Ms Frew said that your decision making “appears to have been influenced by a desire to avoid embarrassment and preserve sexual opportunity rather than the consideration of foreseeable harm”. However, Ms Frew accepted in cross-examination that this may be a decision faced by many young heterosexual males at the prospect of having sex with an attractive female who might not have HSV-2 when they themselves are infected with HSV-2.

54. Your counsel submitted that rehabilitation is particularly significant in this matter due to your age, the fact you are a first-time offender, your strong community supports and the findings of the PSR and ICOAR.

55. I find that the s 10 threshold has been crossed in this matter. During submissions I was informed that the courts have not had to grapple with sentencing for your crime in the Australian context. I have been directed to some overseas authorities, but the parties agree that they turn on and may be distinguished by their own peculiar facts. There is a South Australian decision which also turns on its own peculiar facts. As is usually the case, comparative sentences are of very limited assistance as each case is factually discrete. I am embarking afresh on the process of sentencing.

Discount

56. You pleaded guilty on 11 November 2025 after this matter was committed for trial. Section 35 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 requires me to consider your plea of guilty, the time of your plea and whether the plea was related to negotiations between the prosecution and defence regarding the charge you plead to, among other considerations. The prosecution submitted that you have already benefited from plea negotiations as you received the opportunity of being sentenced for less counts and less serious charges compared to the original indictment. They contended that you should not be given a second benefit in the form of a substantial reduction for the utilitarian value of your plea. The prosecution also submitted that the Crown case was overwhelmingly strong and, thus, that there should not be a significant reduction in your sentence due to your guilty plea.

57. Your counsel maintained that your guilty plea carried real utilitarian value and disputed that the case against you was overwhelmingly strong on the basis that it may have been difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the victim had not contracted HSV-2 from a previous sexual partner. In oral submissions, your counsel also submitted that the charge you were originally facing carried a lower maximum penalty than the charge that you ultimately pled guilty to, as a means of disputing the prosecution’s contention that you had benefited from the negotiations. Although the prosecution case was strong, you have pleaded guilty to an alternative charge following what at times appears to have been robust discussions between the parties. A matter that I think attracts significant weight is that your plea has obviated the trial of the issues that would have been excruciatingly distressing and embarrassing for the complainant and would have added to the almost Sisyphean burden she carries and will carry for life.

58. For those reasons, I consider that the utilitarian value of your guilty plea attracts a discount of 15% to your sentence. Intensive Correction Order

59. The intensive correction order assessment report dated 20 March 2026 assessed you as suitable for an Intensive Correction Order. The author said that you would likely benefit from ongoing support with your mental health.

60. The prosecution submitted that I should impose a sentence of imprisonment, but that it would be open to me to impose a custodial sentence that is less than that of full-time imprisonment. Though your counsel submitted that a good behaviour order would be an appropriate sentence, they acknowledged that if I concluded a sentence of imprisonment was the only appropriate sentence, then that sentence should be wholly suspended or served by an ICO.

61. As I am not intending on sentencing you to a period of imprisonment for more than two years, s 11 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 allows me to order that your sentence be served by intensive correction in the community. Upon giving due consideration to the intensive correction order assessment report and the evidence contained in both the prosecution and defence tender bundles, I find that you are suitable for an intensive correction order per s 78 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 and that you are eligible for such an order under s 77 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005. Therefore, the sentence I impose on you will be served by way of an intensive correction order.

Orders

62. The orders of the Court are: (1) On the charge of recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm (CAN 494/2025), you are convicted and sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment, reduced by 15% to one year one month and seventeen days’ imprisonment, commencing on 6 May 2026 and ending on 22 June 2027. (2) Pursuant to s 11 of the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005, the sentence is to be served by intensive correction in the community, with the core conditions contained in s 42 of the Crimes (Sentencing Administration) Act 2005.

I certify that the preceding sixty-two [62] numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Sentence of his Honour Acting Justice Slattery. Associate: Date: 7 May 2026