Probation For Indecency

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29366, 19 November 1960, Page 7

Probation For Indecency

He regarded the prisoner’s offence as an isolated laspe, said Mr Justice Macarthur in the Supreme Court yesterday, when he placed John Evans, aged 25, a painter and paperhanger, on probation for two years on a charge of indecent assault on a male. His Honour ordered that Evans pay £25 towards the cost of prosecution of the charge on which he had been found guilty by a jury. Mr C. M. Roper represented the Crown and Mr G. S. Brockett appeared for Evans. The probation officer’s report showed that Evans was in real need of help. He had had a long, hard struggle financially and was at present only just solvent, said Mr Brockett.

Evans had met the youth involved purely by change. Evans had no previous criminal record whatsoever and had never given any indication of perversion in any way.

“I ask the Court most earnestly for clemency. I ask the Court to assist the prisoner by its clemency in this particular case, 1 ' Mr Brockett concluded. His Honour said be was impressed by the fact that Evans was a first offender, and more impressed by the fact that careful inquiries by the probation service had revealed no evidence of homosexual tendencies on the part of Evans.

In the circumstances, he thought probation and a monetary penalty was a just sentence and he hoped it would prove a wise one, his-Honour concluded.