The Court:
Dandenong Magistrates Court
The Charges
The Allegations
The client was charged with persistently breaching a Family Violence Intervention Order as well as breaching a Community Correction Order.
The client had a prior for similar family violence offending with the same victim, including breaching an intervention order, and was placed on a Community Correction Order for 12 months. Corrections Victoria initiated breach charges against the client for contravening his Community Correction Order (CCO) as a result of the new offending.
When a person breaches a Community Correction Order, they will need to be re-sentenced on their original charges. As our client had an extensive prior history of family violence, the penalty imposed would typically be imprisonment.
Our client had a deficient understanding of his intervention order, which was issued almost two years ago in an instance where he was listed as a respondent. His previous legal representative did not inform him that an exception existed in the order, allowing him to contact the Affected Family Member (AFM) by letter, email, or text message for child arrangements only.
It was also not explained to the client that there are benefits of initiating Family Law proceedings to apply for joint custody. He therefore believed he was precluded from seeing his young son, who had been living with the AFM, and the client had not seen his son for nearly two years as a result of this.
In intensifying the circumstances, the AFM would consistently make contact with our client to harass in a derogatory manner, which made it difficult for him to abide by the intervention order and subsequently led to a breach of its conditions.
At Court
The matter proceeded as a plea of guilty. When making submissions, our solicitor provided evidence of the AFM’s harassing messages to our client and made a balanced argument to explain why this offending, in its context, was not serious enough for an immediate custodial sentence.
The prosecution, however, argued that a term of imprisonment was warranted given the repeated breaches of the intervention order, as well as breaching an opportunity on a CCO.
The Outcome
The Magistrate sympathised with the client’s circumstances and sentenced him to a 12-month CCO in combination with a $2,000 fine.
The client was delighted and determined not to re-offend, considering he was now properly educated on the conditions of the intervention order in place.
