DPP v Nguyen [2026] VCC 240

1. In accordance with the verdicts of the jury, I find the facts of your offending to be as follows.
2. Your victims are Ella Godson[4] and Hugo Joyner-Tisdall.[5] Ella is your primary victim; she was born in August 2001. Hugo is her stepbrother, who coincidentally was born on the same day.
3. You were a friend of Owen Tisdall,[6] Ella's stepfather and Hugo's father.
4. When Ella was aged around 13 to 14 years old, she went to your parents' house in Broadmeadows. She caught the train.
5. You gave her bud and alcohol. You bought the alcohol and you were smoking bongs and drinking with Ella. She said she was 'cooked'. When she was in this condition you fingered her. Ella was lying down and you held her arm. You put your hand in her pants. She said you touched her in her vagina.
6. Ella was saying no and telling you, 'You're 40 and I'm 14'. You apologised but then said, 'Can I fuck you'. Ella said no.
7. Ella said there were three other times you fingered her, but the next time she remembers was at your house at Keilor Park. She said she went there with Hugo. She was 14 years old.
8. Both Hugo and Ella had smoked bongs provided by you.
9. When Hugo and Ella were affected by the cannabis Ella got on to your bed. She got under a blanket. You got under the blanket with Ella on your bed and tried to touch her vagina. She kept moving your hand and telling you she was only 14, but you kept going and fingered her.
10. You then gave Ella a pill which she said was a 'purple club'. Ella said the pill contained heroin. What the pill contained could not be established. There was a charge on the indictment which alleged you gave Ella the pill and it contained a drug of dependence. However, because the substance could not be proved, I directed your acquittal on that charge. I am nevertheless satisfied that you gave Ella this pill and its effect on her was to heavily intoxicate her and render her susceptible to sexual abuse by you. You admitted the pill contained an illicit substance in subsequent communications with Ella and with her sister Piper.[7] Your explanation in the record of interview that you gave Ella Panadol and then just pretended it was an illicit substance must have been rejected by the jury, as must have been your denial of the sexual offending and your claim that while you permitted Ella and Hugo to use drugs at your place you did not supply them with drugs.
11. On the second occasion you also pulled out your penis and touched Ella with it. She said no and you put your penis away. Ella then fell asleep.
12. You undid her bra and sucked on her breast. Ella told you to leave her alone and punched you hard in the arm.
13. Ella was sick and vomited.
14. Ella and Hugo caught the train home and Ella told Hugo that you had touched her. Hugo told his parents. There was a report to police on 31 May 2016. You were interviewed on 5 January 2017.
15. There has been considerable delay in finalising this matter. A joint chronology was prepared by the parties. You were not charged until 20 November 2019. Thereafter it appears there was delay attributable to COVID shutdowns until January 2022. You failed to appear at a mention at the Sunshine Magistrates' Court on 19 January 2022, but you appeared at a mention in February and at two subsequent mentions. This matter was in the summary stream until it was transferred into the indictable stream, where the first court date appears to be a committal mention in October 2022 which you failed to attend. A warrant was issued on 17 November 2022. There were delays while you sought legal representation. A committal finally took place on 24 February 2025 and the initial directions hearing in this court on 26 March 2025.
16. Having reviewed this chronology, very little of the delay in progressing this matter is attributable to you. Rather it seems to have been a combination of you not being charged until nearly two years after your interview, COVID disruptions and the matter commencing and remaining in the summary stream for some time before it was transferred. I therefore accept your counsel's submission that you are entitled to rely on the principles concerning delay in two ways. First, you have not reoffended during this entire period, and this will be relevant to my assessment of your risk of reoffending and prospects of rehabilitation; and, secondly, this has been hanging over your head for nine years from the time you were interviewed, causing you significant anxiety.
17. Victim impact statements were tendered from Ella and her sister Piper.
18. Ella says that speaking about what you did to her is overwhelming. She says she grew up with you. She says you she was only a kid and you violated her. She says her mental health has been severely impacted by your offending. Ella says, 'I was just a kid. I'm now a full-grown adult and I still don't understand it'.
19. Piper says she is Ella's older sister, and it has been devastating to see the effects on Ella. She says:

I watched her go from a bubbly, happy, outgoing beautiful girl to a young woman riddled with anxiety and her self-esteem and self-worth plummet. I watched her become a shell of herself.

1. The effects of childhood sexual abuse are long-lasting and profound. As Ella has described, it robs victims of their innocence, self-esteem, sense of wellbeing and safety.
2. I take into account the effects of your offending on your victims in the sentence I will impose.

1. I turn now to your personal circumstances.
2. You were born in September 1977 and you are presently 48 years old. You were aged 36 to 38 when you committed these offences.
3. A psychological report of Ms Gina Cidoni, consultant psychologist, dated 12 February 2026 was tendered at your plea. Ms Cidoni assessed you on 7 February 2026. Your personal history is set out in her report.
4. You were born in Vietnam and came with your family as refugees to Australia. You spent two years in Malaysia before settling in Maribyrnong and then Broadmeadows. Your parents worked very hard. They had limited English and you and your brothers translated for them.
5. You have two brothers who are both married with children. You have the continued support of your brothers.
6. You experienced racism and bullying at school.
7. You left home at 17 after conflict with your parents.
8. You started using drugs at 15. You had a near-fatal overdose of heroin when you were only around 23 years old. Your parents organised for you to relocate to Darwin to separate you from your drug-using peer group.
9. You did well in Darwin, finding employment, forming new social networks and abstaining from drug-taking.
10. You returned to Melbourne in 2012, where you initially lived with your parents until you found a rental property in St Albans.
11. At the time of your arrest, you had a partner. You told Ms Cidoni you are still in contact with her.
12. You told Ms Cidoni you did not use drugs upon your return to Melbourne; however, this assertion is contradicted by your behaviour subject of this offending.
13. You completed your Year 12 and enrolled in a tertiary course in sound and audiovisual engineering, but you did not finish this course. You have worked as a DJ, in community radio and in sound and lighting operations and stage set-ups for concerts and theatre. At one point you did cleaning and maintenance at Melbourne Airport.
14. You told Ms Cidoni that these legal proceedings affected your employment stability and that you have experienced periods of unemployment and you rely now on Centrelink benefits.
15. You have a limited criminal history, with two appearances in the Magistrates Court. You were subject to a youth supervision order for a period of 52 weeks without conviction for recklessly causing serious injury and assault with a weapon and you were fined $500 without conviction for trafficking heroin in 2008.
16. On your health and mental health, you have hepatitis B for which you are not receiving treatment and has not caused you any liver-related disease or impaired functioning.
17. You sought help for mental distress upon your return to Melbourne from Darwin. You reported seeing a psychologist in Keilor for 12 sessions under a mental health plan.
18. You told Ms Cidoni that you experienced periods of suicidal thoughts in 2018.
19. Ms Cidoni found no evidence of a major psychotic disorder, intellectual disability or neurocognitive impairment.
20. She assessed your risk of reoffending in the low-to-moderate range and driven more by past life factors, including your drug use, than by your current mental state.
21. You have apparently adapted to life in custody. You are working as a billet in the gymnasium.

1. I turn now to the submissions of the parties and I begin with the prosecution.
2. Mr Pirrie submitted that the objective gravity fell within the mid-range and your moral culpability was high.
3. He submitted the offending constituted a breach of trust and that Ella was a vulnerable victim. He submitted while I must take care not to doubly punish you for supplying Ella the cannabis and then aggravating the charges of sexual misconduct by reference to your supply of the cannabis, I can, however, take into account in assessing your moral culpability on the charges of sexual misconduct that you understood Ella was intoxicated and your conduct was therefore predatory.
4. Mr Pirrie submitted that different types of penetration are not considered more or less inherently serious than another. The gravity of your offending depends on all the circumstances of the case.
5. He relied on the significant age difference between you and Ella and you and Hugo.
6. He submitted your offending involved some premeditation and planning. He submitted it was Hugo's evidence that you had 'groomed' Ella.
7. He submitted your offending against Ella involved some physical and verbal force.
8. He submitted it was open to me to find that part of your motivation in supplying Hugo with the cannabis was to facilitate your abuse of Ella.
9. He submitted you are without remorse.
10. He submitted you fall to be sentenced as a serious sexual offender on Charge 6.
11. He submitted the only appropriate sentence was a term of imprisonment involving a head sentence and a non-parole period.
12. In mitigation your counsel Mr Battersby relied on the following matters.
13. First, he submitted that you are 45 years old and you have no prior history of sexual offending and you have no matters pending.
14. Secondly, he made submissions about the relevance of delay, which I have already discussed in these reasons.
15. Thirdly, he relied on Ms Cidoni's assessment of your risk as low-to-moderate and to Ms Cidoni's opinion that your risk is not characterised by persistent sexual deviance but by situational and responsivity factors.
16. Fourthly, he submitted that the charges involved two incidents and there was a requirement of some concurrency across the charges to properly reflect the principle of totality.
17. Mr Battersby accepted that the only appropriate sentence was a sentence that involved a term of imprisonment consisting of a head sentence and a non-parole period.
18. Both parties referred me to comparator cases which have been of some assistance in sentencing you, but ultimately I must sentence you on facts and circumstances specific to you and your case.[8]

1. I turn now to my own assessment of the objective gravity of your offending and your moral culpability.
2. Both Ella and Hugo were the children of your friend. Ella said she had known you since she was a child. They trusted you and you abused their trust. Clearly they came to your home because you gave them cannabis and alcohol. They were only 14 years old. You should not have been providing them with these intoxicating substances and you must have been aware, given their age, that you should not have been doing so.
3. I do not find that your sexual abuse of Ella was premediated or planned, and I do not find that Ella was groomed by you. In my view you supplied her with drugs and alcohol, then opportunistically took advantage of her. Similarly, I do not find that you gave Hugo cannabis on the second occasion with the intention of making it easier to abuse Ella. Rather, Hugo was also drug-affected, and you seized your opportunity to abuse Ella.
4. You were probably sexually disinhibited by your own consumption of drugs and given the two occasions of sexual misconduct against Ella, you must have had a sexual interest in her.
5. Furthermore, your offending was predatory in the sense that you were aware of Ella's vulnerability after you had given her drugs.
6. I accept Ella's evidence that on both occasions you wanted to go further with her sexually and penetrate her with your penis but she was able to resist your further sexual advances. All your sexual offending against Ella took place against her protestations.
7. In the second incident, as I have discussed, notwithstanding that I directed your acquittal on the charge of supplying Ella with a pill, I am satisfied that you did give her the pill, and that it contained an intoxicating substance. I am satisfied that you gave Ella this pill to increase her intoxication and vulnerability. On Ella's evidence this occurred after you penetrated her vagina with your fingers but before you got out your penis and rubbed it on her. It is therefore an aggravating circumstance on that charge, which is Charge 6.
8. Your offending was objectively serious and your moral culpability high.

1. Turning to the application of sentencing principles. The sentencing principles of general deterrence and denunciation are the predominant sentencing considerations in a case involving child sexual abuse and supplying children with a drug of dependence. I must denounce your conduct on behalf of the community and the sentence I impose must send a clear and unequivocal message that the sexual abuse of children and the exploitation of children will not be tolerated by the courts. The sentence I impose must also send the message to you that you must never behave in this way again.
2. You have shown no remorse. You continue to protest your innocence, most recently to Ms Cidoni when she assessed you in February.
3. On your rehabilitation I accept the delay has given you the opportunity to demonstrate that you have in fact rehabilitated.
4. You have no subsequent criminal history and you have no prior criminal history for sexual offending.
5. I accept the opinion given by Ms Cidoni that your offending against Ella and Hugo was situational and was in the context of your own drug use at that time.
6. I accept you pose a low risk of reoffending and that your prospects for rehabilitation are good.
7. You fall to be sentenced as a serious sexual offender on Charge 6. The court is therefore required to consider protection of the community as the principal purpose for which sentence is imposed, although the prosecution does not seek a disproportionate sentence. The court is also required to impose cumulative sentences unless otherwise ordered. The principle of totality is not displaced by the application of the serious sexual offender provisions.

1. Taking into account all the matters I am required to under the Sentencing Act[9] and matters personal to you I intend to sentence you as follows.
2. You can remain seated in the circumstances, Mr Nguyen.
3. You are convicted on all charges.
4. On Charge 1, sexual penetration of a child under 16, you are sentenced to four years' imprisonment.
5. On Charge 3, supply a drug of dependence to a child, you are sentenced to one years' imprisonment.
6. On Charge 4, sexual penetration of a child under 16, you are sentenced to four years' imprisonment.
7. On Charge 6, indecent act with or in the presence of a child under 16, you are sentence to one year and six months' imprisonment.
8. On Charge 7, supply a drug of dependence to a child, you are sentenced to one year's imprisonment.
9. On Charge 8, supply a drug of dependence to a child, you are sentenced to one years' imprisonment.
10. Charge 1 is the base charge. I order one year of the sentence on Charge 4, and six months of the sentences on Charges 3, 6, 7 and 8 to be served cumulatively upon Charge 1 and upon each other.
11. That makes a total effective sentence of seven years' imprisonment. I direct you serve a non-parole period of five years.
12. Pursuant to section 18(4) of the Sentencing Act[10] I declare that you have served 86 days pre‑sentence detention of the sentence I have passed upon you and I direct this be entered into the records of the court.
13. You are a registered sex offender for life.
14. You are sentenced as a serious sexual offender on Charge 6.

[1] Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 45(1).

[2] Ibid s 47(1).

[3] Drugs, Poisons And Controlled Substances Act 1981 (Vic) s 71B(1).

[8] Tones v The Queen [2017] VSCA 118; Allen v The Queen [2021] VSCA 249; DPP v Coomer [2018] VCC 2249.

[9] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5.

[10] Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 18(4).