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THE owner of a Wodonga fun park has been jailed after sexually assaulting an 18-year-old employee.
Darren Harvey, the owner of Harvey’s Fun Park on Lincoln Causeway, repeatedly tried to convince the schoolgirl to “get naked” with him and used his position as her boss to get her alone, Wodonga Magistrates Court heard yesterday.
Harvey, 51, was supported in court by his wife and parents as he pleaded guilty to two charges of indecent assault.
He was jailed for 15 months, with a non-parole period of nine months.
His lawyer, Neil Hutton, lodged an immediate appeal on the severity of the sentence.
Harvey was then released on bail.
Magistrate John Murphy said Harvey was “almost trying to groom (the victim)” in the series of events on October 13 last year, that culminated in him taking the girl’s clothes off and assaulting her.
The court was told Harvey had asked the girl to help him in the pump room of the park’s pool three times over the course of the day.
The first two times he told her to take her clothes off so the chlorine in the mixing tank would not ruin them, and had her stand inside the tank, where he touched her inappropriately.
She kept on her tights, singlet and undergarments the first time, while Harvey stripped to his underwear.
On the second, she argued with him for 10 minutes before giving in and removing her clothes.
The victim was “shocked and scared”.
She “did not want to encourage Harvey to go any further by looking him in the face so she stared at the roof instead”.
Later that day, Harvey said “Let’s go back to the pump room and get naked”; she tried to laugh it off and said she had work to do, but Harvey said he was the boss and would have someone else do her duties.
The victim told another employee not to leave her alone with him, but this employee was sent to work in another area.
Harvey grabbed the woman’s arm and forced her to walk to the pump room, pulling her toward it when she tried to stop.
This time he said: “We didn’t come here for the float. Let’s get naked and get in the water.”
He forced her clothes off while she was standing against the wall and assaulted her again.
She pleaded with him to let her go to the toilet and she would come right back; Harvey let go and started dressing himself and said: “Maybe we shouldn’t come back”.
The victim reported the assault three days later, initially not wanting to say anything as she needed the job.
A formal report was made on October 23.
The court was told that in March last year, Harvey had shown a “sexual interest” in the victim through a series of incidents including telling her to take off her shorts to clean the outdoor pool, getting her to help in the pump room, and making comments like “let’s go and get naked”.
Mr Murphy said Harvey’s behaviour had been “step by step by step”.
“She was a young lady trying to better herself, you were her employer... you were the one in the position of power, not her,” he said.
Mr Hutton said Harvey was of good character with a long standing history of charitable work through the fun park, and this was a one-off offence to which he had pleaded guilty at an early stage.
He said given the park’s budget, a jail term would send it into insolvency immediately.
Mr Hutton argued the victim laughing off comments from Harvey may have encouraged him to continue, and that “in the absence of clear verbal signals ... he became enamoured with the idea that it might have been a mutual attraction”.