Notorious Pedophile May Walk Free In Ten Years
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.a...toryid=3070536
Door opens for child murderer
By NICOLETTE CASELLA Court Reporter
May 5, 2005
A NOTORIOUS child murderer may be eligible for parole in 10 years – because he admitted he had "a long history of sexual fantasies about underage girls".
In a decision that outraged the victim's family – and prompted Attorney-General Bob Debus to ask the Director of Public Prosecution to consider appealing – a court ruled yesterday that a paedophile should be rewarded for acknowledging he committed the crime.
As a 21-year-old, Rodney Thomas Clarke stalked his nine-year-old neighbour Deborah Keegan before breaking into her bedroom late at night, raping her three times and suffocating her to death on July 15, 1987.
Her mother and three sisters were asleep in their Tregear family home at the time – with Deborah's seven-year-old sister Sarah in the room during the crime.
Clarke was sentenced to life in prison for the killing after being found guilty of one count of murder and three counts of sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 10 in 1988.
He was also sentenced to two 20-year sentences and one 10-year term for the rapes.
The sentences – handed down before Truth in Sentencing legislation was passed – were to be served concurrently and started from his arrest date, July 22, 1987.
Clarke was refused his application to be eligible for parole for on December 15, 1999, when a judge ruled "he had no place in civilised society".
However, Supreme Court judge Justice Peter Hidden yesterday ruled "the time had come to set a date [for] the prospect for his release on parole".
Under Justice Hidden's judgment, Clarke, now 39, could be eligible for parole on 21 July, 2015.
"Dreadful as this murder is, I am not persuaded that it is such as to demand that [Clarke] should never have the prospect of release," he said. Justice Hidden said a date would provide him with an added incentive to work towards a law-abiding lifestyle in the community.
He said Clarke should be commended for his progess in sex offender programs – and that it was "encouraging" that he had started to open up about the crime, which he previously tried to blame on a non-existent "accomplice".
It was revealed in court that while Clarke was taking part in a sex offender program he provided a "long history of sexual fantasies, some with a violent theme, not only about adult women but also about underage girls".
"Clarke is now admitting to a history of sexually deviant behaviour over a number of years – abusive sexual fantasies that began in his mid-teens . . . [and] fantasising about abducting a future victim," psychologist Anne Young wrote in a report in 2004.
She said Clarke also admitted to fantasising about Deborah.
Justice Hidden said that the evidence before him showed that Clarke – who claims he was sexually abused as a seven-year-old boy – did not suffer a mental illness and that "he was not a violent person except for this crime".
Deborah's father Brian Keegan made an emotional plea outside the court, begging parents to "take care of your children – you don't know how precious they are".
