He was drunk and friends were visiting. He made her younger sister watch.
The third assault was when he claimed she took too long to poop-scoop a dog mess on the lawn outside. He threw a metal spade, which glanced off her forearm and leg.
She hid under a trampoline and when he couldn’t move it to uncover her, he threw the spade underarm at her. She managed to block it with the palm of her hand.
Throughout the incident, her father kept dishing out verbal abuse saying, “I’m gonna burn you”; “Nobody wants you”; and “I’m gonna hurt you”.
The girl ran off and was found by two friends who phoned her mother, with who she now lives.
The man, in his late 40s, cannot be named due to automatic suppression that protects the identities of child complainants.
He initially denied assaulting her with the racquet or the bat, telling police he hit her once on the bottom with the spade as she was running out the gate.
He maintained his innocence until a week before a scheduled trial when the Crown agreed to make charges representative.
The man was sentenced last week on one (representative) charge of assault with a weapon, and a representative charge for breaching a protection order, which had been issued after previous family violence by him.
Judge Warren Cathcart imposed six months community detention and 18 months intensive supervision — an alternative to the notional end sentence he had reached of 11 months imprisonment.
To determine that end sentence, the judge set a starting point — based on comparable cases — of 20 months imprisonment.
The case had several of the aggravating factors listed in a special provision Section 9A within the Sentencing Act. It was a provision designed to “reflect the community’s deep concern about child abuse” and “a clear indication from Parliament that child abuse against children needed to be treated with the utmost seriousness”, the judge said.
Those factors in this case were the victim’s defencelessness because of the strength and size disparity between her and her father, her dependency on him as her father and sole carer, the breach of the protection order, and harm caused.
In terms of physical harm, the judge accepted the girl suffered a cut to her shoulder and bodily bruising during the incident with the tennis racquet; large bruises from being hit with the baseball bat; and a glancing blow to her forearm and leg from the spade.
It was difficult to determine if the verbal abuse she suffered crossed a threshold where it was likely to cause her long-term psychological harm. While it was close, it probably did not meet that threshold, the judge said.
There was two months uplift for the man’s previous relevant convictions — five of which were for breaching a protection order, two for assault with intent to injure and three for assaulting a female.
Discount for guilty pleas was limited to 10 percent due to the man’s belated decision to agree to a resolution.
Witnesses had been prepared for the trial and although ultimately spared from giving evidence, his young daughter was left believing she would have to until a week short of the scheduled start date.
The man got five months discount for his good compliance on electronically-monitored bail for 10-and-a-half months.
He got four months discount for his willingness to attend restorative justice, albeit it didn’t go ahead, and for his background factors.
The judge noted references to the man’s childhood being marked by physical discipline and violence. He had essentially inflicted on his daughter the experiences of his past.
Judge Cathcart told him, “That’s tragic and sad because you are repeating the cycle,”
Nothing in the man’s past or anything he had learned from his childhood or the poor parenting of him, justified him assaulting his daughter.
“This was serious offending against a child,” the judge said.
