Ackland v The King [2025] SASCA 15 (11 February 2025)
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which delivered its report in 2017, made clear that the harm done to children by sexual abuse was not only devastating in its impact, but had the potential to blight the life of the child well into their adult years. It has taken some time, gradually over the last 25 years or so, for the community, and the courts, to appreciate that fact. Usually, child sexual abuse will generally be perceived in the community as involving a paedophile making physical sexual contact with a child in the commission of the offence. However, paedophiles are known to use electronic communications via messaging apps to communicate remotely with children and to commit offences against them, such as inviting the child to behave in a sexually explicit manner or exchange sexually explicit videos with them.
The child sexual abuse offender in this case pleaded guilty to one charge of the sexual abuse of a child and thirteen charges of aggravated communicating with a child for a prurient (sexual) purpose. What aggravated those offences was the fact that the appellant was a teacher at the time of the offending. His offending persisted for just over a period of three years.
For his offending Ackland was sentenced to imprisonment for 14 years with a non-parole period, of 11years, 2 months and 12 days. The offences for which he was convicted did not involve any ‘contact’ sexual offending, and was confined to electronic communications and, in some cases, communication in person. The offence of the sexual abuse of a child, for example, involved the exchange of sexually explicit videos between he and the child victim.
Ackland brought an appeal against his sentence on the basis that it was a too heavy one and ought to be reduced by the Court of Appeal. The Court observed that the case tended to demonstrate the dangers associated with making assumptions about the scope for harm to be caused by different kinds of child sexual abuse. The victim and community impact statements in the case showed that communication offending is not necessarily less harmful than contact offending to victims, their families and the community.
The court noted that while the sentence was a heavy one, it did not exceed the limits of a sound exercise of sentencing discretion. It was necessary for the sentencing court to protect the safety of the community and mark its disapproval of serious child sexual abuse offending undertaken by a teacher towards his students.