Trusted family friend jailed for unlawful sex with girl, 10

Andrew Ryan Speedwell, a 36-year-old man from a rural town was last Friday sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl below the age of 13 years and one count of indecently assaulting the said girl.

The crimes were said to have been committed in 2012 and 2013. She was 10 years old at the time.

Speedwell pleaded guilty to the charges before the High Court on October 30, this year and his sentencing was adjourned to allow for a social inquiry report.

The court heard that sometime in the latter part of 2012, the girl was at her grandmother’s home when Speedwell, a trusted family friend who frequented the home, lured her to the back of the house where he removed her clothes and proceeded to have sex with her.

On another occasion, between January and April, 2013, the girl’s sister had asked Speedwell to get her some coconuts. He asked the girl to accompany him to collect the coconuts. He took her to a deserted, bushy area and asked her to have sex with him but she refused. He took her clothes off, placed her against a coconut tree and proceeded to have sex with her.

The court heard that despite her tears and requests for him to stop, he continued.

On another date in 2013, Speedwell took the girl and her cousins to an area to pick plums. On their way back, he took them to bathe in a river. He told her he wanted to perform oral sex on her. She refused but he proceeded and each time she screamed, he relented.

The court heard that the following month, the girl was hospitalized with an infection. She had to undergo surgery which saw the removal of one of her fallopian tubes. The other tube is now damaged.

The court heard that the victim, now 17 years of age, said that she was shocked by the assault because she had known Speedwell her life. Her mother trusted him and he had helped her mother change her diapers when she was a baby.

Speedwell had so much privilege that he would be left at night in the house with the children watching television and the victim’s mother would tell him to “secure the house” when he was leaving.

The court further heard that the victim was concerned that she could have contracted a fatal sexually-transmitted disease. Also, there is a surgical scar on her stomach that is a perpetual reminder that one of her fallopian tubes has been removed and so makes pregnancy difficult and maybe dangerous.

Now a teenager, she has trust issues as the assault has affected her psychologically. While she has had some counselling, there may be need for further counselling. She is being blamed by persons in her community for the sexual encounters as they accuse her of having consented to the sexual intercourse.

The situation has led her to have thoughts of suicide and she thinks that other persons should be protected from such criminal acts.

On passing sentences on Speedwell, the judge said that he found that the case fell into Category One which is a “category of exceptional harm.”

Justice Cottle said the maximum penalty for such crime is life imprisonment but the court considers 30 years.

On the aggravating features of the case, the Judge said that the girl was vulnerable at her age, Speedwell was a person the family trusted, and the offences were repeated.

The mitigating factors of the case, Justice Cottle said, were: no violence was used except for that which was inherent to the commission of the crime.

Mitigating factors for the accused were that he had no previous conviction and he pleaded guilty.

For the first unlawful sexual intercourse charge, Justice Cottle started with a notional 20 years in prison but he deducted five years for Speedwell’s clean record and a further one-third discount for the guilty pleas, bringing it down to 10 years each. He subtracted 24 days for time spent on remand, bringing it further down to nine years, 11 months and one week. He went through the same process for the second count and said that that the sentences should run consecutively because the two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse occurred on separate occasions. He, however, noted that having regard to the Totality Principle in law he would reduce the sentence on the second count to four years, to run consecutive to the first.

On the matter of the indecent assault on a young child, the Judge said the maximum penalty is five years. He imposed a sentence of one year to run consecutive to the sentence imposed on the second count.