Sentence reduced on appeal

A man who had sex with a 12-year-old Northland girl has had his jail term reduced by two months after an appeal.

In January Jodie Herbert Fairbrother, now aged 21, from Christchurch, was sentenced by Judge Duncan Harvey in the Kaikohe District Court to two years' jail for having sexual intercourse with a girl aged less than 16 years.

The offence happened near the mid-North town.

Fairbrother pleaded guilty to the charge and appealed the sentence saying it was manifestly excessive.

In a just-released decision the Court of Appeal said the sentence was not manifestly excessive, but was longer than the judge intended to impose and reduced it to one year and 10 months jail.

In his appeal Fairbrother said he accepted the judge was entitled to take a starting point of three years imprisonment for his crime, but contended the judge miscalculated his sentence, after reducing it by six months for his youth, lack of previous convictions and "to a very modest extent ... mental impairment", when setting out to give him "full credit" for his plea.

He submitted that full credit must mean a 25 per cent reduction and that the sentence the judge must have intended was imprisonment for one year, 10 months.

Appeal Court Justices Wild, Heath and Keane said in their decision, "The appellant's sentence will need, we accept, to be reduced by two months to take account of that miscalculation.

"The larger question is whether, as he also contends, the judge erred in deciding that only imprisonment would serve the purpose of general deterrence."

However, the Appeal Court judges maintained the jail term and did not commute it to home detention, citing another Appeal Court case where it was found that while all sentences of two years or less should be considered on their merits for home detention, it was recognised that the likely sentence for sexual offending against children was imprisonment.

Fairbrother was 19 when he had sex with the girl in late December 2012 and was initially charged with rape, but that was withdrawn after police reviewed the victim's statement and he pleaded guilty to the replacement charge. At his sentencing Judge Harvey said Fairbrother's crime was "very serious offending" and premeditated, despite Fairbrother denying he knew the girl was only 12.

"You knew that there was some interest expressed by this little girl towards you," Judge Harvey said at sentencing.

"You had been warned ... to stay away," but Fairbrother had gone on to offend against the girl.

APN News & Media