WHILE their motives are noble, child abuse support groups are wrong to be outraged with the sentence handed down to former Tasmanian MP Terry Martin this week.
Martin received a 10-month suspended sentence, courtesy of Justice David Porter, after being found guilty of having sexual intercourse with a young person and producing child exploitation material.
The charges relate to Martin’s use of a 12-year-old prostitute.
``The message this sends out is that it’s okay to have sex with under-age children because you are not going to be sent to jail for it,’’ said Survivors Australia founder Nikki Wells, while Tasmanian child abuse advocate Steve Fisher labelled it “one of the most appalling decisions I have ever heard of in a sexual abuse case”.
First let’s make it clear, the abuse of this young girl was abhorrent, dehumanising and disgusting.
She was used by her mother and her pimp – both of whom have been sentenced to 10-year jail terms – as a means to make money.
She was used by Martin (and the other 100 or so men who paid to have sex with her) as a means of sexual gratification.
To all of them, she was little more than a piece of flesh to be sold, bought and played with.
On this evidence alone, the palpable anger over Martin’s sentence is understandable.
As Justice Porter notes, however, this is not all the evidence.
It is fact that Martin committed a criminal act. He abused a child.
But the evidence is also compelling that had Martin not been suffering the side effects of medication he was taking to deal with his Parkinson’s disease, a dopamine agonist (cabergoline), he would not have acted in this manner.
As a result of his medication, Martin suffered from a form of impulse control disorder.
As Justice Porter said in sentencing:
``. . . there is overwhelming evidence that Mr Martin's hypersexuality, punding, compulsive shopping and hoarding were directly attributable to the dopamine agonist for treatment of his Parkinson's disease, and that he was unable to control the dopamine agonist induced behaviour.’’
He later says:
``The commission of the crimes is directly connected to what was effectively a mental illness, caused by medication prescribed for a serious physical condition. But for the medication, he would not have been engaging the services of sex workers and would have had no contact with the complainant.
``Although he ought to have known that the complainant was under 17 at the time of the commission of the crimes, his sexual inhibitions were markedly lessened by the medication, and his capacity to make proper judgments adversely affected.’’
Martin’s drug-induced illness does not absolve his actions.
As a result of those actions he is now a convicted criminal, he has been judged by his peers and he has been sentenced according to the law.
His life has been irrevocably altered.
He has paid a high price, and so he should.
But to deny the role his illness played in his offending and to deny the limitations that places on his level of culpability would be to deny justice.
Martin should have noticed this prostitute presented as a woman was actually a child, and he should have stopped.
It is largely down to the sexual compulsion caused by his medication - a compulsion over which according to medical experts he had little control - that he didn’t.
When a child is a victim of a crime, particularly a sex crime, the first reaction from an angry public is to vilify, often in the name of justice for the victim and society.
But real justice must balance the needs and rights of all sides, including the perpetrator.
In this case, Justice Porter’s sentence gets that balance about right.
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