Prison term for ‘bizarre break-in’

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 4

Prison term for ‘bizarre break-in’

Breaking and entering of a young woman’s house at 3.30 a.m. on New Year’s Day, in circumstances which Judge Fraser said were “unusual and even bizarre,” resulted in Kelvin Charles Goodwin, being given a six-months prison sentence.

Goodwin, aged 29, a metal polisher, was appearing for sentence after having been found guilty by a jury at his trial last month of breaking and entering the 18-year-old complainant’s flat. The jury had found him not guilty of related charges of indecently assaulting the woman, and doing an indecent act with intent to offend her.

The Crown had alleged that the indecencies occurred after Goodwin had broken into the flat. Evidence at the trial was that the woman, wearing a nightie and dressing gown, called at a nearby house, where Goodwin was staying at the time, to wish the residents a happy New Year.

After she had returned to her flat and gone to bed, Goodwin knocked at her window and asked to have sex with her.

She told him to go home, but he climbed through a window and appeared, naked, in the lounge, where she was telephoning the police.

The woman detailed other actions, saying Goodwin “played with himself’ and she pushed him away and ran from the house screaming. She sought help from a neighbour.

Goodwin, in evidence, claimed he had been led on by seeing the woman in her nightie at the house where she called and he thought she was, in a way.

trying to give hints. He said he later went to her flat, dressed only in underpants, and asked to have sex because she had led him on. Defence submissions were that Goodwin had not, by legal definition, broken into the flat. He had entered to seek sex with her consent, and not forcibly. Defence counsel, Mr E. Bedo, yesterday sought a fine, or periodic detention, for the offence. He submitted that the burglary was outside the normal type of such offences, without expectation of material gain. Rightly or wrongly, Goodwin had become aroused at the woman’s being dressing in a nightie. Goodwin was a person who tended to act on the spur of the moment, and his consumption of alcohol that evening had contributed to his actions. He had not intended, and not committed any violence on the woman, and when she made her intentions clear and left he did not try to stop or follow her, Mr Bedo said. He referred to Goodwin’s stable work record. The Judge said the dominant factor in the case was the nature of the offence. Any sentence imposed must mark such conduct as being totally unacceptable to society. The woman had made it clear to Goodwin that she did not want him in her flat; it must have been a frightening and •alarming experience for an 18-year-old woman alone in a house in the early hours of the morning, to have Goodwin enter her flat in the circumstances he did, the Judge said.