Geraldton man found guilty of sexually abusing young daughters over number of years

A man who sexually abused his daughters for at least two years has been found guilty by a Geraldton District Court jury, after more than eight hours of deliberation which extended late into Friday night. The man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of his victims, indecently dealt with his daughters separately on five occasions when they were under 13, and once when one of them was 13. He also faced one charge of sexually penetrating his stepdaughter, but the jury found him not guilty of that count. The abhorrent events occurred when they were at the man’s home in Geraldton, while the children were away from their mother after their parents split up. The prosecution’s evidence relied on the testimonies of the two girls, who are still underage, with both detailing how they were abused by their father. In five instances, with the first occurring between 2013 and 2017, and the last between 2016 and 2020, the man indecently dealt with one of the girls, and after she stopped frequently visiting his home, he indecently dealt with the other girl once between 2019 and 2021. The girls’ mother was notified by the Department of Communities in 2021, after the younger child told her friends about the incident, and went to police. Defence lawyer Craig Astill suggested to both girls that they were lying, which both denied. In tears, the older daughter told the court she had not told anyone earlier about the abuse as she was “too scared” to tell. “I thought that nobody would believe me,” she said. In his closing remarks, State prosecutor Stuart Packham said the testimonies were clearly sincere, and it was “absurd” that the daughters could have co-ordinated plans to lie, let alone provide detailed lies over hours of police interviews and examination. “What you saw was a lived experience, you can’t make that up,” he said. Mr Astill said there were a number of inconsistencies in the surrounding details of the testimonies of the victims which he claimed showed their evidence was inaccurate and unreliable. Mr Packham responded that it was unsurprising the children did not remember exact details of the events, but noted they had no doubts the events did happen. The jury spent more than eight hours deliberating well into Friday night, before finding him guilty on six of seven charges. The man will appear in court in Perth on April 28 for sentencing.