Depraved South West man guilty of sexually abusing nieces and will be sentenced in March

A South West man has been jailed for raping and abusing his two nieces during family sleepovers when they were just six and nine years old. The 66-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his two victims, would babysit the children in 2018 and 2019 to help his brother-in-law out after the girl’s mother abandoned the family. Instead of protecting them, he showed the girls explicit content and performed sexual acts on and in front of the pair. The Busselton District Court jury found the man guilty this month after a four-day trial. Charged with nine counts of indecent dealing with a child under 13-years and three counts of sexual penetration of a child under 13-years, the man was found guilty on 10 of the 12 charges, being acquitted of one indecent dealing and one rape. The man’s actions were discovered in 2020 when one of his victim’s finally spoke up and told her father. In brave testimony to police, lawyers and the courts, the young girl, now 12-years-old, described five separate incidents where she was either assaulted herself or watched as her little sister was assaulted. She said the reason she took so long to speak up was from the fear of getting into trouble as well as monetary bribes from her uncle. Taking the witness stand to defend himself, the man tried to tell the court his niece had made the story up and had threatened to do so two years earlier in an effort to convince him to buy her a mobile phone and laptop. In one of the most damning parts of his evidence, he claimed never to have raised the issue with her father because “you never believe when a child makes allegations like that”. The State’s prosecutor told the jury the man was able to get away with his acts for so long due to the normalisation of sex in his household, playing and keeping pornography in front of the girls. It was also said in court the man would bribe the girls with money for toys in an effort to keep them quiet. Having been found guilty the man was remanded in custody until his sentencing in March this year.