SUPREME COURT Three Years Gaol On Incest Charge

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31832, 9 November 1968, Page 21

SUPREME COURT Three Years Gaol On Incest Charge

A psychiatric report described George Ernest Johnson, aged 56, a clicker, as a ■•miserable, pathetic, shuffling little man, speaking in monosyllabic whispers and suffering from a recurrent depressive state,” said his counsel, Mr D. W. Russell, in the Supreme Court yesterday. Johnson, who had. pleaded guilty to a charge of incest was sentenced to three yeans imprisonment by Mr Justice Macarthur. Mr Russell said that Johnson was of limited intellectual capacity, and his small talents were probably dulled by an accident in the Strongman mine in 1955 when he was buried for two hours by a fall of rock.

Johnson had been in mental hospitals three times, twice as a voluntary patient and once as a committed patient

His Honour said that , one of the most disturbing features of the matter was that although Johnson had no previous convictions for incest he had a record of indecent assaults on his daughters. In respect of those assaults he had been committed to Sunnyside Hospital and had stayed there more than two years. Now he was before the court on a charge of incest in respect of another

daughter, aged 14. The psychiatric report showed that he was not certifiable, and the court could not award a sentence of less than, three years. Sodomy Attempts

“He accepts that his -acts were disgusting and degrading,” said Mr L. M. O’Reilly,' on behalf of Michael Joseph Pullin, aged 27, a driver, who appeared for sentence on two charges of attempted sodomy. Pullin, who had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a total of nine months imprisonment to be followed by 12 months probation. His Honour made it a special condition of the probation that he take out a prohibition order and keep it m force and that he live and work as directed by the probation officer.

Mr O’Reilly said a psychiatric report showed some evidence that Pullin was not a homosexual and bad no basic sexual problem. He submitted that Pullin’s moral fibre had been weakened by alcohol and that the offences arose from his social disabilities. His Honour noted that Pullin bad been convicted of indecent assault on a boy in 1962. He expressed the hope that the sentence would deter him from any subsequent offences.