INDECENCY CHARGES

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 13

INDECENCY CHARGES

Man fined $l5OO Stanley Knight, aged 64, a company director, was fined a total of $l5OO and was admitted to probation for one year when sentenced by Mr Justice Wilson in the Supreme Court yesterday on three charges of doing an indecent act with a girl when she was aged 13 and 14. Knight was ordered to undertake psychiatric treatment at the direction of the probation officer.

Knight pleaded guilty to the charges in the Magistrate’s Court. The Magistrate declined jurisdiction and committed him to the Supreme Court for sentence. Mr D. H. Godfrey, for Knight, asked that he be not imprisoned, as his whole life had crashed as a result of the offences. After a blameless life, much of which had been spent in helping others, Knight had been about to enter a comfortable retirement.

The offences were completely out of character and had probably been caused to some extent by ill health. Knight was prepared to undergo psychiatric treatment, Mr Godfrey said. “The offences to. which you have pleaded guilty are very unpleasant ones,” his Honour said to Knight. "They are ones which show that after your enforced retirement from business, and possibly because of the unaccustomed time you found on your hands, the splendid character that had manifested itself throughout your life was at that time slowly eroded. “One of the reasons I feel able to avoid sending you to prison is that I am going to reject your application for suppression of name — and the publicity which will attend your conviction will be a very severe punishment to a man such as yourself,” his Honour said.