Periodic detention for taking infant son

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 13

Periodic detention for taking infant son

A man who Judge Paterson said had used deception and breached the trust placed in him when he abducted his infant son to Australia on September 27 last year was sentenced in the District Court yesterday to four months periodic detention.

The defendant, Trevor Donald Morris, aged 31, appeared for sentence on a charge, to which he had been found guilty by a jury at his trial last month, of unlawfully detaining Jeffrey William Morris with intent to deprive Gillian Fay Pocklington, the parent having lawful care of the child, of his possession. The charge had been reduced during the trial from one of unlawfully taking away his son. Evidence at the trial had been that the child was aged 11 months when he was taken by Morris to Australia. Miss Pocklington subsequently made two trips to Australia and obtained possession of the child on January 9. Morris was later extradited from Australia. Counsel for Morris, Mr G. E. Langham, who appeared with Mr S. C. Clay, yesterday sought the imposition of

a fine for the offence. He said Morris’s motives had been misdirected but were for what Morris believed to have been the best interests of the child.

Mr Langham said Morris’s own childhood and his being “moved round” gave reason for his anxieties about his own son. His relationship with his son could not be called into question and there was ample evidence that he was a good, caring father. So great was Morris’s concern for his son’s continued well-being that he had filed a custody application with the Family Court in Christchurch. Morris did not understand that the written agreement between himself and Miss Pocklington over custody and access arrangements brought matters to an end. He was not aware at the time this incident occurred

that an order had been made relating to custody. At the time he took his child he believed he had a right to do so.

He accepted, in hindsight, that he should not have taken his son in the way he did; and he accepted that he should have told Miss Pocklington that he was taking the child to Australia.

Mr Langham said Morris was a caring parent and had a “track record” to show that he could look after the child. His belief was that the child needed to be in a different custodial situation.

A substantial monetary penalty would be more than adequate punishment to show Morris that he had acted in the wrong way by taking away his child, Mr Langham said. Mr I. J. G. Allan made no submission for the Crown.

The Judge said that by its verdict of guilty the jury had rejected that Morris believed on good grounds that he had a colour of right to take the child. It was quite clear, and had been accepted by the jury, that Morris did this in spite of a firm agreement he had reached with the child’s mother that she should have

“The adequacy of that agreement is an ongoing review situation and I am told you have now lodged an application for a change of custody. That can be considered in the proper arena, the Family Court, as indeed your contest should have been in the first place,” the Judge told him. He agreed there was a difference between the facts of this case and a lot of other abduction-type cases, and that Morris might have been motivated by a genuine concern for his son, and perhaps animosity towards the mother, the Judge said. The steps he had taken by way of deception certainly illustrated that these were factors in the contest, the Judge said.

He said the offence of taking a very young child, a baby, from the person legally entitled to the child’s custody was a serious offence “whichever way you look at it.”

After considering alternative sentences, and counsel’s submissions on penalty, he had decided that periodic detention was appropriate "as an alternative to a custodial sentence in all the circumstances.”