Former property tycoon loses home detention bid

Pat Rippin. File photo / Doug Sherring

A former reality TV star and property tycoon's bid to delay a home detention sentence has been scuttled by the Court of Appeal.

Patrick Euan Rippin, a discharged bankrupt, was last year sentenced to five months' home detention for concealing property worth $277,709 from the Official Assignee.

An appeal against the sentence is scheduled to be heard by the Court of Appeal next month.

Pending this, Rippin asked the court for his sentence to be suspended, but in a decision released today Justice Lynton Stevens declined this.

Rippin's appeal submissions speak of his chronic psychiatric and physical illnesses, saying: "The sentence was unjustly harsh and lacks compassion given that the sentence of home detention will have the same dire consequences for Mr Rippin as jail".

Justice Stevens said the sentencing judge discounted Rippin's sentence to allow for factors such as his age and previous good character, despite the lack of a guilty plea or remorse.

"Given the nature of the offending and the generous discounts applied, it is difficult to perceive any apparent strength in this ground of the appeal," Justice Stevens said.

"The material filed in support of the application does not demonstrate that the sentence of home detention has caused or will cause a situation that cannot be appropriately dealt with by the medical authorities."

Rippin and his folks started in the 2007 reality TV show The Family that charted their decadent lifestyle.

A year later he was declared bankrupt.