When childcare child molester Joshua Dale Brown is sentenced for his laundry list of offences, he’d be wise to play the Rainbow Card. After all, it’s working a treat for other pillow-biting kiddy-fiddlers.
A musical-theatre couple from Berwick who collected copious child abuse material and fantasised about inflicting violent, sadistic, abuse on children known to them have had their jail terms reduced on appeal.
By ‘musical-theatre couple’, of course, they mean ‘flaming fanny-bandits’.
Benjamin Heels, 36, a music teacher at Fountain Gate Secondary College in Melbourne and a private tutor, pleaded guilty to 28 charges including multiple counts of sexual assault of a child under 16, sexual activity in the presence of a child under 16, procuring a child for sexual activity and transmitting child abuse material. His partner Tristan Cullinan-Smayle, a chef, pleaded guilty to 51 sex offences in the County Court of Victoria in March 2023.
For that, Heels was given a non-parole period of seven years and three months. Cullinan-Smayle was given a non-parole period of six years and seven months for 23 offences. The two paedophiles, who committed many of their crimes together including fantasising about raping Heels’ students, were given a shared jail cell after their arrests. Aw, isn’t that nice?
Which, clearly (at least in the tiny minds of the Victorian legal system), were vastly excessive punishments for something as apparently trivial as raping multiple children and sharing their vast child-porn collections.
Heels’ jail term of 11 years with a non-parole period of seven years and three months was found to be “manifestly excessive” by the Court of Appeal.
It was reduced to eight years with a five-and-a-half year non-parole period.
This being Wokeistan Victoria, the gay couple who child-rape together get their sentences reduced together.
In the Supreme Court of Appeal on 22 May, judges Rowena Orr and Stephen Kaye noted that there was now a lack of parity with Heels’s sentence, whose jail term was substantially reduced on appeal last year […]
On appeal, [Cullinan-Smayle’s] resentencing on 22 May totalled nine years jail with a six-year non-parole period.
Which means his non-parole period was reduced by 10 per cent. On the other hand, Heels’ was reduced by 25 per cent.
For context, the original sentencing judge described the couple’s offending as “seriously depraved” and noted that their child-abuse material was of the worst kind and included victims aged as young as two months old.
The couple, who were both part of the South East amateur performing arts scene, had committed much of the offending together.
Cullinan-Smayle was a chef running his own baking business and volunteering for performing arts groups.
Heels was a music teacher at Fountain Gate Secondary College and a private music tutor for three performing art studios.
Both were without prior convictions and had Working with Children checks at the time.
They had fantasised about inflicting violent, sadistic and “seriously depraved” abuse of children known to them, according to the original sentencing judge.
“It is deeply depraved, confronting, explicit and without exception, provides extreme examples of child abuse,” the original judge said of the couple’s online chats.
“It explicitly describes violence, humiliation, and sadistic acts towards young and very young human beings.”
On the other hand, Pride Month was coming up, and everything.
By the time they get out – which will surely be just in a few years – they might even get their own float at Mardi Gras.
