RAPE OF CHILD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30829, 14 August 1965, Page 22

RAPE OF CHILD

Five Years’ Gaol William Nelson Brokenshire, aged 21, a mine-worker, who had pleaded guilty to raping a seven-year-old girl in Westport on June 12, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday. His Honour told Brokenshire that to strike and cruelly beat a little girt, then to force her sexually, was as horrible a crime as it was possible to commit. “She has a background of horror that will disturb her for the rest of her life,” said his Honour, “and she is only seven.”

For Brokenshire, Mr B. J. Drake said that al though a mental hospital report said that Brokenshire was not mentally ill and had no mental deficiency, there was something in his mental makeup to explain, if not to excuse, his rather dastardly crime.

Brokenshire had a pathetic background of drinking, quarrelling parents, and it appeared he had been drinking heavily since the age of 15. There was nothing to show that he was so drunk at the time of the crime as to have been incapable of knowing what he was doing, but drink must have had something to do with the uncontrolled way in which he attacked the girl. The medical report said Brokenshire did not appear to show any remorse, said Mr Drake. He said Brokenshire did not appear to have any clear understanding of what he had done. This was not a sign of callousness, but of his background. For the Crown Mr C. M. Roper said that Brokenshire was convicted in 1960 of indecently assaulting a child aged nine. Because of the girl's age in the present case, Brokenshire's crime must be regarded as one of the worst types of rape.