Our 24 year old client is a software engineer. He was charged with film persons private parts without consent – aggravated as the victim was a 14 year old girl.
The prosecution allege that our client stood behind her on the escalator at Wynyard station in Sydney before placing his mobile phone under her skirt to record her. While doing this, the girl’s parents saw and intervened and chased him down before getting him to delete the images. The incident was then reported to police.
He initially claimed it was an accident and denied he did it. Eventually, he came to terms with the fact that he had an underlying medical condition and admitted to committing the offence before seeking help. Our specialist criminal defence lawyer Ahmad Faraj represented our client from beginning to end of the proceedings. Throughout the process, Ahmad guided our client after exploring all of his options.
Our client was guided towards rehabilitation. By the time the case came to court for sentence at the Downing Centre Court, our client had undergone signifiant treatment sessions, we obtain a strong psychologist expert report and good character letters which all significantly strengthened our clients subjective case, placing him in the best possible position before being sentenced.
Due to the nature of this offence, and because it involved a child victim, an Intensive Correction Order (ICO) was not available as a type of penalty for the court to impose. What this meant was that the Judge only had the option of either sending our client to full time jail, or impose a lenient Community Correction Order (CCO). A CCO is considered a lenient (light) sentence for this type of offence because a CCO is not a type of jail sentence at all, and because the offence is considered very serious as it is a ‘prescribed sexual offence’.
On the day of his sentence, our Ahmad fiercely yet professionally represented our client in court, as his mouth piece. Even though the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) lawyer argued that full time jail should be the only option that the court should impose, Ahmad managed to convince the Judge to not impose a jail sentence on his client.
In the result, the Judge was ultimately persuaded to agree with Mr. Faraj, and our client was sentenced with a CCO penalty. Our client was able to continue with his treatment and remain in the community.