IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA
AT BALLARAT	Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication	
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR-24-01810

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS		
		
v		
		
WAYNE ROBINSON		

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE MOGLIA	
WHERE HELD:	Ballarat	
DATE OF HEARING:	21 January 2025 and 4 February 2025	
DATE OF SENTENCE:	12 February 2025	
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Robinson	
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 94	

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:	CRIMINAL LAW - SENTENCING
Catchwords:		Guilty plea – attempt to pervert the course of justice – persistent contravention of a family violence order – mildly sophisticated offending – moderate to high moral culpability – relevant criminal history – guarded prospects of rehabilitation – growing insight – recent compliance with CCO – deterrence – denunciation 
Legislation Cited:	Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic)
Cases Cited:		Carter v The King [2020] VSCA 156; Shiryar v The Queen [2022] VSCA 96; Verdins v R (2007) 16 VR 269; 
Sentence:	Total effective sentence: 16 months; non-parole period 10 months; 22 days reckoned as served; 6AAA: 2 years; non-parole period 16 months.
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APPEARANCES:
	Counsel	Solicitors	
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	F. Cameron	Office of Public Prosecutions	
			
For the Accused	S. Hall	Marshall Jovanovska Ralph	

HIS HONOUR:  
1	Wayne Robinson, you have pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice and persistently contravening a family violence intervention order between 8 February 2024 and 12 March 2024.  Also, to a summary charge of breaching a family violence intervention order in the same period.
Summary of offending
2	The agreed basis for your guilty plea is set out in the prosecution opening dated 27 December 2024. 
3	In summary, on 4 February last year you were arrested and remanded in custody on charges of family violence against the complainant in this case.  
4	The next day, on 5 February, you were in court when a formal no-contact intervention order was made against you in relation to the complainant.
5	A few days later, from 8 February 2024, while you were at the Metropolitan Remand Centre, you repeatedly contacted the complainant by texts, phone calls and letters, directly and through other persons acting on your behalf, pressuring the complainant to withdraw her statements about the family violence for which you were remanded (charge 1).  You did this all while the subject of the intervention order which prohibited you from contacting her (Charge 2).
6	On 12 March 2024 you sent a further three letters to the complainant in breach of the intervention order which prohibited you from contacting (Summary Charge 3).
7	No victim impact statement has been provided.  In any case, I find that the kind of pressure you sought to place on the complainant was likely to have had a significant effect on her, in particular by having people meet her personally to convey your wishes or demands.  Doubtless, she lived with a sense of not being able to safeguard herself against you in those circumstances.
Procedural history
8	Police interviewed you on 10 April last year whilst you were in prison.  Amongst other things you said you knew the intervention order prohibited you from contacting the complainant.  
9	You agreed that you had sent three letters to the complainant, that you spoke to her in breach of the intervention order, that you had an arrangement with a friend to give messages to her, but you denied attempts to pressure her to withdraw her statements.  You wanted the complainant, you said, to help you get out of prison and that it was also all her fault.
10	As the prosecution opened the case and referred to a number of messages that you had sent or things that you had communicated to the complainant, I find that they were, at least in part, demanding and with the aim of getting her to withdraw her statements to help you get out of prison.
11	On 21 January 2025, you pleaded guilty to the current charges, as you indicated you would at the committal hearing, and you were remanded in custody.
12	Your plea, which you indicated at the committal, I accept came early in the case. Therefore, it avoids the cost and inconvenience of a trial and has utilitarian value in that respect. I accept that you facilitated the course of justice in doing so.
13	I am not so clear about and find it questionable whether or not you accept responsibility or have demonstrated true remorse for what you did given the comments you made in the interview. However I find that your guilty plea does go some way into proving that you have accepted responsibility and are remorseful.
Personal circumstances
14	You were 42 at the time of the offending and you are now 43.  
15	You and the complainant met in about 2022 and you were in a relationship for about 12 months before separating in late 2023 or early 2024.
16	You have two sons from a previous relationship.
17	For your own background, you as a child were adopted because your biological parents were too young to raise a child, and when you were 11 your adoptive father suffered an acquired brain injury in a car accident which rendered him unable to work.  You consequently effectively became his carer.  Sadly, he has since passed away, but you maintain a strong relationship with your adoptive mother.
18	You completed Year 12 at school and you have worked since then.  
19	You first worked in hospitality and then spent about 15 years renovating houses.  You suffered a workplace injury during that time which left you with injuries to your back and neck.
20	Your lawyer, Mr Hall, submitted that you began using methamphetamines after suffering these injuries in 2018, as a misguided attempted to self-medicate so that you could continue working.
21	During your most recent period in the community you stated that you did not work because the outstanding court matters made it difficult to commit to a job, although you looked for work in warehousing during that time.  
22	You also, during that time, relocated to Abbotsford to live in housing arranged by the Neighbourhood Justice Centre.  I am told, and I accept, that since December or November 2024 you have been co-operating and engaging properly with the Neighbourhood Justice Centre in relation to charges there.
23	You have a criminal record which is relevant.  
24	On 6 November 2023 you were convicted and sentenced to a month imprisonment for harassing somebody over a telecommunications service. In 2010 you received a couple of months’ intensive corrections order for threatening to kill and breaching an interim intervention order.  You were also convicted of failing to comply with a 6-month community-based order imposed on 13 April 2010, again for making a threat to kill and breaching the intervention order.
25	In this case, recently you were assessed by clinical neuropsychologist, Dr Robert Bourke, who provided a report dated 10 October 2024 (Exhibit 1). 
26	Your lawyer, Mr Hall, did not seek to rely on that report in any substantial way with respect to cognitive impairment and it did not make any formal diagnoses relating to mental health. However, it did acknowledge that you found your adoptive father's car accident to be significantly traumatic and you have lived with the consequences of that over the years.
27	You were also assessed by a general psychologist, Austin Campbell, who provided a report dated 29 April 2024 (Exhibit 2).  
28	It identifies underlying mental health issues relating to your offending, noting that your scores in relevant tests and symptoms are consistent with diagnoses of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, although it is unclear whether the report writer makes formal diagnoses of these conditions.  
29	It is noted that you may have developed a substance use disorder in early adulthood, which is consistent with your description given through your counsel in court.
30	The report noted that these underlying mental health issues impaired your functioning and reduced your ability to resolve interpersonal conflict.  
31	It also notes that you presented with limited insight into your mental health needs and that you had never really engaged with mental health support prior to entering custody last year.  
32	The report concludes that you are likely to continue experiencing issues with your mental health that require treatment and support.  Importantly, it notes that you found the mental health treatment you received in custody last year useful, which is a good step forward.  You said that there were positive results from being on sodium valproate prescribed for the bipolar symptoms.
33	I accept that these symptoms and the conditions mentioned are likely to make your time in prison somewhat more onerous than it is for others.
34	Ultimately, your counsel conceded on your behalf that it could not be said that the symptoms that the psychologists report could relevantly reduce your responsibility for your offending, however, and I accept that concession.
Sentencing issues
35	The maximum penalty for Charge 1, attempting to pervert the course of justice, is 25 years in custody.  For Charge 2, persistent breach of an intervention order, it is five years, and the Summary Charge 3, a breach of intervention order, attracts a maximum of two years.
36	As to the objective gravity and your responsibility for the offending, the maximum penalty on Charge 1 indicates that it is considered to be a very serious offence, although I accept that attempting to pervert the course of justice covers a wide variety of conduct.
37	Your role in the offending is such that you were the sole orchestrator of it, albeit that you got other people to do things for you, and you directed those other people to carry out some of the offending on your behalf, so your role is significant.  
38	The explanation for your offending was that you were attempting to have the charges against you withdrawn so that you could be released.  Of course, nobody suggests that that is a justifiable reason.
39	Your lawyer submitted, however, in all the circumstances that your offending is at the lower end of objective gravity compared to others who have offended in this way.  He submitted that it was of limited sophistication, particularly knowing that any communications by phone you made were being monitored by Corrections.  
40	However, in my view, your offending was repeated, somewhat protracted over weeks, and even if you thought your calls would be recorded if you made them, the calls made by other people or communications sent by other people would not necessarily be connected to you.
41	In my view this all demonstrates something of a mildly sophisticated nature.  
42	The fact that the complainant was also a protected person under the intervention order at the time of the offending increases the objective gravity of your offending on Charge 1, that is, the attempt to pervert.  I do not thereby increase the gravity of your offending on Charge 2, the breach of the intervention order, because the charge itself is about breaching such an order.
43	Accordingly, in all the circumstances I find your moral culpability to be moderate to high.
44	Whilst you have indicated issues with substance abuse, I do not accept that those are factors that reduce your moral culpability.  
45	I have not disregarded the symptoms of your bipolar or your borderline personality and I have taken into account of those in a general way when assessing the overall circumstances of your case, but I do not attract the principles in the case of Verdins in that regard.
46	The only way the courts have of deterring others and yourself from engaging in this kind of behaviour is to impose a stern sentence.  It is important that the courts send a message to others in the community tempted to contact their exes and the like – that it is going to be met with stern punishment.  Often, as in this case, the only way to appropriately denounce that kind of behaviour and to appropriately punish it is to impose a sentence of imprisonment, which I will.
47	The administration of justice also must be protected.  What that means is that when a person makes a statement to police and signs it and are therefore on their way to court, so to speak, they have to be protected from being influenced, let alone threatened about doing so.  And so it is that prison is often the only way that the courts can protect the administration of justice in that respect, and when that happens it must be denounced and punished.
48	Your criminal history of course is relevant and I have given some weight to the need for specific deterrence, that is deterring you from doing this again or something like it, and to some degree protecting the community.  The fact that your offending revolves around circumstances of family violence also attracts the need for general deterrence.
49	In your circumstances, however, all three charges relate to the one set of circumstances, the first charge being for your attempt to pervert the course, the second and third charges are actually how you went about doing that by way of breaching the intervention order and sending the messages or the communications.  
50	Of course, they each represent factually distinct crimes, but because they are so inter-related I have come to the view that I should make any sentences on all of them wholly concurrent.
51	As to your prospects in the future, I find that they are somewhat guarded but with some signs that they are becoming reasonable.  
52	You have shown limited insight into your offending and why it is wrong. You are now older and wiser than you were in your 20s, and notwithstanding the significance of the criminal history, your recent move to Abbotsford and engagement with the Neighbourhood Justice Centre, complying with a CCO, moving away from Ballarat, even for a fairly short period, are some positive signs.  I have reduced your sentence because of that.
53	Gaining insight into all the many and varied ways in which our deep attitudes contribute to misbehaviour is often a long-term project.  I find that your growing insight into your mental health needs, the need for treatment and engaging in that with professionals over a long period, is both an area of future risk for you but also, because of what you have done with the NJC, an area of hope.
54	Having heard the submissions from the parties, the prosecutor submitting that a sentence of imprisonment and one that attracts a non-parole period, was appropriate, alongside the very fair concessions made by your counsel about the seriousness of the case and the significance of what other cases imposed in circumstances such as this, I have come to the view that the only sentence I can impose is one that involves imprisonment and your release under supervision on parole.
55	I have had regard to the two cases I was referred to in court or soon after the last hearing. Firstly, Carter v The King [2020] VSCA 156, resulted in a two year sentence for attempting to pervert and related offences, albeit I think that that was in more serious and overtly threatening circumstances. Secondly, Shiryar v The Queen [2022] VSCA 96, where the sentence was two years and six months, was also, in my view, in more serious circumstances.
56	Having determined that you need to be imprisoned for this offending, I turn to the question of how much time you must spend in custody.  
57	I have taken into account the period over which you offended, the nature of the contacts you had, how threatening they got and also how threatening they did not get.  I have had regard to the fact that you involved others and that you have moved on from this situation and that there are no further offences alleged about this context.
58	I have had regard to some 30 days that you had spent in custody that had not been referred to in a previous sentence, and I have taken them into account in your favour.  
59	I have had regard to the 22 days that you have already served and will declare that as pre-sentence detention to be taken off the sentence I now impose.
60	I sentence you as follows:
On Charge 1, attempting to pervert the course of justice, I impose an imprisonment term of 16 months; 
On Charge 2 for persistent contravention of a family violence intervention order, 3 months; 
On Summary Charge 3, contravention of a family violence intervention order, 1 month.
61	All three of those sentences are to be served concurrently which means they all start today, and the total effective sentence is 16 months.
62	I fix a non-parole period of 10 months.
63	In accordance with s6AAA of the Sentencing Act, if you had not pleaded guilty but had been found guilty of those charges following a trial, I would have imposed 2 years and fixed a non-parole period of 16 months.
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