A YOUNG girl sexually abused by a boarder in her father’s home now struggles with the terror of what happened.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Jeffrey Hutson was 46 and the girl just 11 when he climbed on top of her and removed her underwear in her father’s Wangaratta house.
Hutson then rubbed his body up and down on her — on one occasion for an hour, on another for two.
“Since this happened I have become very clingy with mum,” the girl said in a victim impact statement read out to the County Court in Wodonga yesterday afternoon.
She said the only male she now trusted was her brother.
“I don’t like being cuddled much any more and I don’t like being kissed goodnight.”
The girl moved back to her mother’s Queensland home immediately after the last of three incidents around Easter 2011.
A jury convicted Hutson last year of three counts of an indecent assault on a child under 16.
He was found not guilty of five other charges, which related to allegations that he made contact with the girl with a finger and his tongue.
The prosecution and defence agreed there was no “skin-on-skin” element to the charges on which Hutson, now 48, had been convicted.
Hutson still boards with the girl’s father, who continues to offer him his support and takes him to bingo venues.
Prosecutor Andy Moore said the girl visited her father in February 2011.
Mr Moore said Hutson and the girl played board and video games together one night when her father went to work.
At one point she went to her bedroom to watch television. Hutson followed and got on top of her.
He removed her underwear and starting rubbing his body on her.
About a week later the girl was in the backyard with Hutson, her father and another person when she decided to go inside.
She went into her father’s bedroom to watch television and was again followed by Hutson, who carried out a similar assault.
The third assault happened on April 11, 2011, about 9pm, again when her father was at work.
Judge Marilyn Harbison was told that Hutson’s initial trial heard there was a video circulating in the community depicting a sexual familiarity in the pair’s conversation.
Mr Moore said while the girl appeared comfortable with the accused, he nevertheless had committed a crime that breached a position of trust.
The court heard Hutson was of low intelligence and had shown no remorse for his crimes.
He spent many years with his mother drifting around Victoria, sleeping in cars and caravan parks. She died four years ago.
Hutson and his mother became estranged from the rest of his family when a brother was convicted of murder in Albury in the early 1980s.
Hutson was remanded in custody for sentencing tomorrow.