Discharged without conviction

Stuff reports:

A 21-year-old man who admitted assaulting two young men at a Young Labour summer camp has been discharged without conviction. 

The young man was originally charged with five counts of indecent assault against four complainants, which he denied. 

However, during his trial in September, the Crown withdrew the indecent assault charges, amending them to assault, withdrew a third charge and offered no evidence on the remaining two charges. 

On Thursday at the Auckland District Court, Judge Russell Collins discharged the man without conviction and did not grant him permanent name suppression. 

However, defence counsel Emma Priest immediately appealed the judge’s decision. 

I have huge sympathy for the victims who have had to deal with all this, because of Labour’s mishandling of it. After all this, the guy doesn’t even get a wet bus ticket.

Considering the victims were teenagers several years younger than him, it is somewhat surprising that he didn’t even get community service.

Judge Collins said the defendant was an impressive young man who had succeeded in life and his chances of further offending were very low. 

“He is a talented, capable young man who should treat today as a challenge to not only get on with his own life but use his talents to contribute positively on society.”

Must be galling for the victims to hear the Judge laud their attacker as a talented capable young man. So presumably if he came from the wrong side of the tracks in South Auckland, he wouldn’t have been let off.

The Judge did made the right decision on name suppression though. To gain permanent name suppression should be very hard and very rare.